Something has changed in America, and pretending otherwise is no longer safe. If a sitting president can deny, delay, or obfuscate the outcome of an election, then democracy itself is in jeopardy. And if one political team claims the right to question or refuse legitimate election results, then the opposing side logically inherits the same right. That is not a threat —it is a consequence. Just like in a football game, there has to be an level playing field with the same rules for both teams in order for the true winner to gain the moral highground to take the reigns of government in a democracy.
If Team Trump were to deny, delay, or obfuscate the procedures or results of the 2026 midterm elections, then Team Democracy would face a choice: accept a broken democracy, or prepare a constitutional, collective response. The publishing of said constitutional, collective response should be created now, well ahead of the midterms, so there is no chance of getting caught flat-footed in November.
One possibility is for the Democratic Governors Association — or a similar alliance of state leaders — to announce today that they are standing together to defend free and fair American elections. An Article Five–style pledge — “you come for one, you come for all” — would signal unity and strength. The purpose would be to prevent foul play and its resulting mayhem in November.
Let me lay out the logic plainly. Many Americans believe the country is already in a political war — a conflict not of weapons but of institutions, trust, and power. Democracy, once a radical idea, depends on citizens choosing representatives who argue and negotiate within agreed rules. Authoritarian systems do not operate that way.
The Founders wrote about “self-evident truths” for a reason. Evidence literally means from what is seen; video hides in the word evidence. And today’s polls reveal most Americans feel they have seen enough. With the midterms approaching, the question is not whether citizens should reject results they don’t like; they should not, of course. Elections carried out by longstanding rules, with broad participation and lawful procedures, must be accepted regardless of outcome. Americans have done this before. Many disliked prior results, but the system held because people respected the process.
The fear today is totally different: that elections may be contested not through law but through power. If attempts are made to delay or undermine the midterms, states should be prepared to respond lawfully and collectively. Governors could announce that, in the event of clear election interference, they would enact their emergency powers to protect their citizens and institutions — including reconsidering how and to whom federal tax dollars are paid and managed until constitutional order is restored.
This would not be a declaration of separation, nor the creation of a new country. It would be a conditional safeguard ; a contingency plan meant to preserve constitutional norms if they are threatened.
Such a stance might resonate with many Americans across the political spectrum. Distrust of federal power is not new; it has appeared in movements from the Tea Party to modern progressive coalitions. The idea of states asserting greater autonomy has deep roots in American history.
And here is the strategic point: if citizens know there is a peaceful, organized, constitutional backup plan, attempts to manipulate elections lose much of their power. Deterrence works when the consequences are clear and there is a feeling of reassurance. History shows that would-be strongmen respect strength. Institutions survive only when people are willing to defend them collectively.
This is not a call for chaos or refusal to accept legitimate outcomes. It is a call to prepare calmly, lawfully, and transparently ,so that no leader, from any party, can undermine the rules that make democracy possible.
Because if a sitting president can deny or delay the outcome of an election, then democracy itself is already in checkmate; and Americans of every political belief should refuse to accept that future.
Joseph Aronesty (2026) Inspired by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776)
Introduction
In January of 1776, a short pamphlet began circulating through the American colonies. It was written not for scholars or statesmen, but for ordinary citizens. Its purpose was simple and radical: to explain, in plain language, why submission to concentrated power was neither natural nor necessary.
The pamphlet was Common Sense, and its author, Thomas Paine, did not argue that King George III was uniquely wicked. Instead, he made a far more unsettling claim—that monarchy itself was a flawed system, and that placing excessive authority in any single individual inevitably corrupted both ruler and ruled.
Nearly two and a half centuries later, the outward forms of power have changed, but the underlying dynamics have not. Titles evolve. Justifications adapt. The language of authority modernizes. Yet the temptation toward autocratic rule—and the willingness of people to accept it—remains a constant of political life.
What follows is not a historical reenactment, nor an argument about personalities. It is a modern restatement of Paine’s central insight: that free societies do not lose their liberty all at once, but by failing to recognize familiar dangers in unfamiliar forms.
Paine wrote to awaken his contemporaries to patterns they were already living through. The purpose here is the same.
On the Nature of Concentrated Power
There is a persistent belief among free people that power, once granted, will restrain itself. Human history offers no support for this belief.
Power does not seek balance. It seeks continuance, expansion, and ultimately immunity from challenge. Democracy dies not because of a moral failing of individuals so much as a predictable feature of absolute authority once it is detached from regular accountability. The problem is not that one person becomes all-powerful, but that many people slowly grow accustomed to absolute power.
The defenders of concentrated power often argue that a strong executive is necessary to protect the nation. Yet history repeatedly shows the opposite: such power rarely protects a people from danger, but very often protects the autocrats from the people.
Personal rule—whether it wears a crown, a uniform, or the language of popular mandate—rests on a simple inversion of responsibility. Citizens are told that judgment is a burden best surrendered. Loyalty is redefined as obedience. Dissent is reframed as weakness, or worse, betrayal.
This is how liberty erodes without being formally abolished. No proclamation announces it. No constitution need be rewritten at first. The shift occurs in tone, in expectation, in what citizens come to tolerate in the name of order. A free people does not wake one morning to discover itself unfree; it arrives there by degrees, persuaded that exceptional power is both necessary and temporary.
At this stage, the question is no longer whether power has overreached, but whether the public has forgotten why limits existed in the first place.
Those who argue that “this time is different” must answer a hard question: different from what? From human nature? From history? From every prior instance in which concentrated power promised stability and delivered submission?
A government of laws depends on citizens who understand that strength lies not in domination, but in restraint. When restraint is abandoned—when power is admired for its force rather than its limits—the transition away from self-government has already begun, whether it is acknowledged or not.
On Why Free People Surrender Their Judgment
The loss of liberty rarely begins with force. It begins with a sense of relief.
Democratic self-government is demanding. It requires attention, disagreement, patience, and the humility to accept that no single voice—including one’s own—is sufficient. In uncertain times, this burden feels heavy. When a confident figure offers certainty in place of complexity, many experience not alarm, but comfort.
This is the first seduction of personal rule within a democracy. People do not abandon freedom because they despise it, but because they are persuaded that freedom has become impractical. They are told that debate is weakness, that disagreement is disorder, and that unity requires obedience. The promise is simple: trust me, and you may rest.
What is surrendered first is not rights, but personal judgment.
Fear plays a central role, but not always in obvious ways. It is not merely fear of enemies, foreign or domestic, but fear of instability, fear of social conflict, fear of economic uncertainty. A population anxious about its footing becomes willing to trade liberty for reassurance, even when said reassurance is largely performative and offers no real relief.
Those who resist this trade are often caricatured as dangerous, radical, unrealistic and disloyal the leader’s cause. In this way, caution and protest are recast as cowardice, and submission as strength.
The most effective autocrats do not demand admiration; they cultivate dependency. They position themselves as indispensable solutions to problems they continuously emphasize and rarely resolve. Each new crisis reinforces the narrative that only extraordinary authority can preserve order, and that ordinary checks are luxuries of a calmer time.
None of this requires the suspension of elections or the abandonment of constitutional language. The words remain. The habits change.
The final psychological shift occurs when people come to believe that resistance is futile—that the trajectory is inevitable, and that adapting is wiser than objecting. At that moment, power no longer needs to coerce. It is sustained by resignation.
And so, a free society depends not on perfect leaders, but on citizens who retain the nerve to think, to question, and to withstand the discomfort of disagreement. When that nerve is lost—when convenience replaces vigilance—no external enemy is required. The erosion is complete from within.
On How Institutions Are Emptied Without Being Overthrown
Free societies often imagine that tyranny arrives by spectacle—tanks in streets, constitutions burned, courts shuttered. In reality, institutions are more commonly hollowed than destroyed.
The outward forms remain. Elections are held. Legislatures convene. Courts issue opinions. Yet their authority is gradually diminished, not by decree, but by disregard. When power is personalized, institutions are tolerated only so long as they comply. When they resist, they are portrayed as illegitimate, corrupt, or obstructive.
Another method of hollowing out a democracy is selective obedience. Rules are praised when they benefit the powerful and dismissed when they restrain them. Enforcement becomes inconsistent. Precedent is ignored. Over time, citizens learn that law is not a standard, but a tool—applied unevenly and explained afterward.
Once this lesson is absorbed, trust in government collapses. Faith in institutions declines, while faith in the authoritarian rises. The public, weary of complexity, begins to see institutions as theater and the individual leader as the only “real” actor.
At this point, institutional failure is not an accident; it becomes evidence used to justify further consolidation of power. The damage itself becomes the argument.
On the Myth That This Is Inevitable
Perhaps the most paralyzing belief in any republic is the belief that decline is unavoidable.
When citizens are repeatedly told that norms are obsolete, that restraint is naïve, and that past standards cannot survive modern pressures, they may come to accept erosion as adaptation. What was once alarming becomes familiar. What was once resisted becomes expected.
Yet history shows that inevitability is often an illusion created by momentum and fatigue. Systems do not collapse because collapse is natural, but because enough people conclude that resistance is useless. The belief that “nothing can be done” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Those who benefit from concentrated power rely on resignation. It discourages participation without provoking opposition. It replaces outrage with detachment, and engagement with cynicism. A disengaged citizenry is far easier to manage than an angry one.
The most dangerous phrase in a free society is not “this must be done,” but “this cannot be stopped.”
On the Duty of the Citizen in a Free Society
Thomas Paine understood that liberty is not sustained by declarations alone. It is sustained by citizens willing to accept the inconvenience of freedom.
Self-government demands more than periodic consent and voting, It requires continuous attention, the courage to dissent, and the refusal to confuse comfort with stability. It asks citizens to tolerate disagreement and to defend principles even when doing so is socially costly.
Liberty does not depend on optimism, but on memory—the memory that concentrated power has always justified itself as necessary, temporary, and benevolent. A government of the people is a historical exception, not the rule. It survives only so long as citizens remember that order imposed without consent is not democracy, but quiet submission.
A free people need not be perfect. But they must remain awake.
The moment citizens surrender their judgment in exchange for reassurances, they trade a difficult freedom for an easy dependence. History offers many names for this arrangement. None of them describe a democratic republic.
Something has changed in America, and pretending otherwise is no longer safe. If a sitting president can deny, delay, or obstruct the outcome of an election, then democracy itself is in jeopardy. And if one political team claims the right to question or refuse legitimate election results, then the opposing side logically inherits the same right. That is not a threat —it is a consequence.
If Team Trump were to deny, delay, or obfuscate the procedures or results of the 2026 midterm elections, then Team Democracy would face a choice: accept a broken system, or prepare a constitutional, collective response. The publishing of said conditional response should be made well ahead of the midterms.
One possibility is clear. The Democratic Governors Association — or a similar alliance of state leaders — could announce ahead of time that they will stand together to defend free and fair elections. An Article Five–style pledge — “you come for one, you come for all” — would signal unity and deterrence. The purpose would not be confrontation but prevention.
Let me lay out the logic plainly.
Many Americans believe the country is already in a political war — a conflict not of weapons but of institutions, trust, and power. Democracy, once a radical idea, depended on citizens choosing representatives who argued and negotiated within agreed rules. Authoritarian systems do not operate that way.
The Founders wrote about “self-evident truths” for a reason. Evidence comes from what we see. And many Americans feel they have seen enough. With the midterms approaching, the question is not whether citizens should reject legitimate results; they should not. Elections carried out by longstanding rules, with broad participation and lawful procedures, must be accepted regardless of outcome. Americans have done this before. Many disliked prior results, but the system held because people respected the process.
The fear today is different: that future elections may be contested not through law but through power. If attempts are made to delay or undermine the midterms, states should be prepared to respond lawfully and collectively. Governors could announce that, in the event of clear election interference, they would explore emergency powers to protect their citizens and institutions — including reconsidering how and to whom federal tax dollars are paid and managed until constitutional order is restored.
This would not be a declaration of separation, nor the creation of a new country. It would be a conditional safeguard ; a contingency plan meant to preserve constitutional norms if they are threatened.
Such a stance might resonate with many Americans across the political spectrum. Distrust of federal power is not new; it has appeared in movements from the Tea Party to modern progressive coalitions. The idea of states asserting greater autonomy has deep roots in American history.
And here is the strategic point: if citizens know there is a peaceful, organized, constitutional backup plan, attempts to manipulate elections lose much of their power. Deterrence works when the consequences are clear and there is a feeling of reassurance. History shows that would-be strongmen respect strength. Institutions survive only when people are willing to defend them collectively.
This is not a call for chaos or refusal to accept legitimate outcomes. It is a call to prepare calmly, lawfully, and transparently, so that no leader, from any party, can undermine the rules that make democracy possible.
Because if a sitting president can deny or delay the outcome of an election, then democracy itself is already in checkmate; and Americans of every political belief should refuse to accept that future.
A Call for a Union of Governors to Protect Citizens from Federal Overreach
And Continued Resistance
Across the country, people are watching federal power being used in ways that feel increasingly detached from constitutional limits: aggressive immigration enforcement without clear judicial oversight, sweeping tariffs imposed without Congressional approval, and rhetoric that treats political opposition not as fellow citizens, but as enemies.
When force replaces our Constitution, and subdues representation, democracy fails — not all at once, but quietly, via normalization, pressure and time.
This post is not about left versus right. We really are all in this together now. It is about whether our constitutional government will continue to function as it was originally crafted to do.
Waiting for elections may not be enough
Elections matter — but we are seeing blatant attempts to affect the midterms just like they do in Russia and other fascist countries around the world. We need to be fully prepared well ahead of the midterms to survive this. So all tools and strategies need to be on the table. Hoping for the best while preparing for the worst applies when all is at stake, and it is.
Further, elections are not the only safeguards the Constitution provides. The American system of governance was designed with the safeguard of shared sovereignty. States are not subsidiaries of the federal executive. Governors are not required to enforce federal actions that violate their citizens’ constitutional rights. In fact, they have a sworn duty to protect their citizens’ rights.
When executive power exceeds constitutional bounds, the states were meant to act as a stabilizing force, not as silent accomplices.
We have seen the Trump administration is willing to openly lie to the public. January 6th is being framed as a peaceful protest, and peaceful protestors are being called radicals and shot dead.
What will happen if the midterm results are framed as phony or rigged, and our purchased Supreme Court majority rules for the administration? We cannot wait for elections with this administration in power. Just as he has done all his life, Donald Trump cheats in public and buys off the heat. He shows no respect for our Constitution and is even on record saying he would like to end the Constitution.
Two peaceful, constitutional pressure points
There are two areas where unlawful federal overreach is very visible — and where lawful, non-violent resistance can restore balance quickly.
1. Immigration enforcement without warrants
Border security at the border is popular with most Americans. But federal agents do not have unlimited authority inside states. When arrests or detentions occur by masked men without proper judicial warrants, state governors are within their rights to refuse cooperation and even arrest said ICE agents. This is not obstruction of justice; it is constitutional compliance. Communities are safer when fear is not used as policy. Public safety improves when law enforcement operates transparently and lawfully. It is a governors sworn duty to protect his citizens.
2. Tariffs imposed without Congressional approval
The Constitution gives Congress — not the executive — the power to levy taxes and tariffs. When tariffs are imposed unilaterally, they function as a hidden national sales tax, raising prices for everyone while bypassing representation.
Sovereign state governors can decline to collect tariffs through their ports until Congress approves them as per the Constitution. Prices would fall on goods coming through their ports. One would think that could be good for those state’s citizens.
Citizens in these states would feel the difference with lower prices in real time, and red state citizens would get jealous very quickly. The tariff scam would be exposed in a way that Fox News can’t spin away. Note: As of February 21, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s tariffs were illegal, as if we needed a SCOTUS to decide that. It is clear in the Constitution. And this 150-day exception, we should have no respect for that. After 150 days, Trump can restart the 150 days again. Yep. And he will. So I give no respect for that workaround to tax the public, which is what tariffs are.
Refusing to collect tariffs is plan with teeth. It would get popular so quickly Trump couldn’t stop it and be the party pooper. Will he go to physical war about this money? I doubt it. But if he does, he won’t have public support and it would mean a physical war is happening at midterms anyway. So it’s better to initiate real resistance now. Talk in back rooms, but spring it suddenly.
And like Republicans, worry later about the legality of it all. The Constitution and the public are on our side on tariffs. If Supreme Court justices say no, we can say they are aiding an insurrectionist, hence disqualified to serve hence rule in our states; and it will be true. This is also pocketbook economics citizens in all states will appreciate. It’s populism in an FDR way; and he became a populist because he knew he was up against domestic enemies as well as foreign enemies, just as we are today.
Why this matters right now
Authoritarian systems thrive when people feel powerless and divided. Our enemies abroad has gotten influence here, and they want our population just as subdued as theirs are. Why? Because phones connect the world now, and people all over the world believe their eyes. The existence of well-functiong democracies, where people have a say in how they are governed, taxed and rewarded, makes it harder for autocrats to survive, as they want as little as possible to flow to the people; their prime goal being wealth for the ruling class.
Democracy survives this challenge only when its citizens insist — peacefully, lawfully, and in great numbers — that power flows from the Constitution, not from loyalty to any single leader.
Russia and Hungary do have elections, but their results do not matter. Democratic backsliding rarely ends at the ballot box. Democracy will prevail only when institutions and key agents in our government refuse to participate in illegal, unconstitutional actions. And that includes these tariffs which Trump has lied about. Citizens in all states know tariffs are a tax by now.
The goal is de-escalation, not conflict
This is a call for governors to reclaim their sworn duty to protect their citizens from federal overreach and create some constitutional equilibrium as the founders of our nation intended. This is not a call for violence. It is not a call for chaos. But if our enemies are going this route anyway, we need to prepare ahead of time.
If the unlawful ICE actions stop, street tensions will drop. After the unapproved tariffs stop and the savings passed on to consumers, prices will fall and financial anger will cool. When constitutional law replaces fear, democracy will begin to regain its footing.
America does not need a “strongman” or king. It was formed to get away from that way of governance. It just needs the Constitution to be enforced as written. State power to balance federal overreach is built in to the constitution to protect the consitution. So now, well before midterms, is the time for that governors union.
Why a union of aligned governors is critical right now
Imagine if Tim Walz announced he would no longer allow ICE agents to enter his state, nor be quartered in the state, if they came without warrants to arrest specific people. He would need the power to enforce said action if Trump sent ICE without warrants anyway. But Minnesota is just one state. They were over-powered and outnumbered. If the federal government knew 50% of the states, many of which surround Washington DC, were in a mutual self-defense union much like NATO, Trump would have cause to re-think military actions against Minnesota. There is real strength in unified numbers.
“We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Benjamin Franklin, 1776, as the Constitution was being crafted.
What governors can do today
Blue state governors and any others inclined to resist the debasement of our Constitutional can call each other and form a union. I like to call said union States United, dedicated to protect the member states from federal overreach. Announce said union. The announcement of its creation will be an instantaneous comfort to Americans in all states, blue and red. As we stand today, most US citizens feel there is no one in government to protect them from federal government overreach. Their plan is working because Democrats refuse to call this a war, and are going to gamble our entire existence on the results of an election run by a man who does not admit he lost 2020, which makes him a 3rd term president, looking for four, in his own fantasy. And that’s the only place this man lives folks.
What citizens can do today
Write your governor, online and on paper, and ask where they stand on warrantless federal enforcement. Ask them to form a union with other like minded governors, much like NATO, so that an attack on one is an attack on all.
Ask why your governor why he is collectingtariffs that Congress has not approved and if he will consider refusing to collect tariffs until they are approved by Congress as per the Constitution.
Ask your governor if he believes he has a duty to protect his state’s citizens from the dangers and costs of Trump’s unconstitutional executive actions
Make it clear you will not support your governor is he does nothing to stop tariffs and warrantless arrests.
Continue to protest peacefully.
Share this plea on social media. Get this plea to citizens and governors going viral.
About the author: Joseph Aronesty was a classmate to Donald Trump at Wharton in 1968 and worked in his orbit from 1986-99 in Atlantic City NJ. He has been warning Americans about the danger Trump poses for our country since 2016.
I just asked CHAT GTP if America will still be a functioning democracy in 2028. Go ahead. Try it yourself.
Chat GTP:It’s not guaranteed that America will remain a perfectly functioning democracy in 2028, but it is still within the realm of possibility if the country takes steps to address its most pressing challenges.
Even artificial intelligence knows we must act now to save our democracy. But all we hear now is surrender to a tyrant who won an election, though he was constitutionally disqualified, by his own words and actions, to hold the office he won – and wait to see if things get better. Better? How?
Donald Trump said he was running against some very stupid people. He is right about that. We will be very stupid people if we let him assume the great powers of the presidency again. And we don’t have to. Nor do we need an insurrection. We have the 14th Amendment of our Constitution to back us.
Under the cover of the 2024 holiday season, we are witnessing the end game of the 2016 Russo-Republican Alliance strategy play out and met with no real resistance. Trump has officially tipped his hand with his cabinet picks. They confirm that he is working to end America, as we know it. There will soon be a ruling class, chosen oligarchs based on their loyalty to Trump, and the rest of us. That’s how it is in China, Russia, Hungary, North Korea and all the countries run by people Trump admires.
Dictators wish the entire planet was one big autocratic, wild free-for-all. And on January 20th, they are getting their wish come true, if we do not stop Trumpism now. And we can. The presidential election of 2024 was a battle in an act of war we permitted to happen under our democratic rules.* It does not have to be our last battle, but that’s what our new rulers will want.
But, not all our rules. We have one rule that Trump and most of his party members violated: the 14th Amendment. Many candidates and current congresspeople are constitutionally disqualified to hold office under the 14th Amendment for having aided or comforted insurrectionists. Some also physically took part in the J6 event.
Joseph Goebbels was the German media czar during World War II. This is what he said about democracies that play by its own rules: “It will always remain one of democracy’s best jokes that it provides for its deadly enemies the means by which it can be destroyed.”
While we still have the power, we can and must use this tool written into our constitution during the aftermath of the Civil War, to prevent the enemies of our country from taking away our right to self-govern.
The 14th Amendment, sec 3, declares that no one may hold any office in our government, state, federal, judicial or military having been party to an insurrection, or having aided or given comfort to insurrectionists or the enemies of our country. All Americans should please google 14th Amendment, sec 3.
As tax-paying citizens, it is our constitutional right, and the current president’s sworn constitutional duty, to demand Donald Trump not be sworn into office on J20.
Many of his allies in the current GOP congress, and some of those who were elected, are also barred from holding office. Even Supreme Court members are included in the disqualifying statement of the 14th Amendment. But the most important person to bar from office is the ring leader, would-be dictator, and ally to our country’s foreign enemies, Donald Trump.
Absent of his J6 activity, Donald Trump would have every right to be president. Now, Trump has no constitutional right whatsoever to be president, even if he won the election. It’s as if the GOP ran a candidate who said he was thirty-five years old and we found out he was thirty. The Constitution is very clear about the qualifications to hold any office in the United States.
Why Trump is Constitutionally Barred from Being President
Donald Trump called a mob to Washington DC broadcasting “it would be wild”. We do not need FBI, lawyers, justices, or politicians to tell “we the people“ what we saw that day. There was an attempt to stop the election process, which included breaking into the Capitol and attacking officers, threatening the vice-president and congresspeople – and people ending up dead. Trump did not even try immediately call it off. He watched it on TV for hours, like we did. He said maybe Pence had it coming in so much words.
J6 was clearly an attempt at insurrection. We do not need to examine every curve and motive of this act. It was a bank robbery gone bad, caught on film. Trump’s actions and words on J6 made him constitutionally unqualified to serve in any government office, local, state, federal or judicial at any level.
We have little time. So, it’s now or never. There may not be a way back for the foreseeable future. Putin has held Russia for over twenty years. Hungary is no longer a democracy. Three times, Trump took election help from Putin, our enemy in a live war. For that help, he owes Putin for life. At least, that is how Putin thinks of his relationship with Donald. Putin does not allow people who deal with him to get away. Ask Prigozhin. Oh, we can’t.
If Donald Trump, a person constitutionally barred from holding any office in the USA, takes office on J20, by the end of January, we should know if he will be going into full-on fascist mode. Trump’s personal political opponents were targeted during his candidacy. If he verbally continues with that line of attack, we will know what he intends to do about the “revenge” he made a talking point during his campaign. It’s not a gamble we need to take, but Biden seems to be willing to overlook the 14th Amendment as if it does not exist.
Ask yourself this question: If your family was about to board a plane, and the pilot said there is a small five percent chance the plane would go down, would you let your family board that plane? Do you currently think there is a five percent chance we lose our democracy? Then why are we letting it happen, when we have the 14th to protect us? We are boarding that plane on J20, if we do nothing. AI also seems to think there’s a good chance we become something less than a functioning democracy by 2028.
BLANKET PARDONS FOR REPORTERS AND BLOGGERS
If Biden is not going to fight as if we are at war, then, at the very least, he should issue blanket pardons for all reporters and bloggers who ever wrote anything negative about Donald Trump, the president.
But, this post is not about surrender. It lays out the simple steps we can take now, to ensure we do not risk ending democracy in the USA. after all, oligarchy is what America set out to end when it broke away from the tyranny of King George.
FDR said there is nothing to fear, but fear itself. We have the power now to avoid this fate, if we are not afraid to use it. We must fight while we have the weapon called the 14th Amendment. These politicians have said they intend to destroy the “deep state”, a phrase they invented, and one they do not define. But they are ready to take our women’s rights away. Do you think they will care a whit about silencing dissent after we give them absolute power over us all? Biden saw fit to pardon turkeys, but so far, he has not pardoned the people who will need protection from Trump.
After Trump’s telling cabinet picks, more Americans today would be relieved if Trump were barred from holding office than they were on November 5th. There is even a chance it would be cheered on by the majority of voters on both sides, provided we demand a new special presidential election with no candidates permitted to run who are unqualified by the plain language of the 14th Amendment. That means no Trump.
And it means no Kamala Harris as well, but for a different reason. She did lose. We should not rub it in the faces of those who voted more for no black woman to be POTUS, than for Trump, to place her on the ballot again.
Once in power, the MAGA GOP crimes will naturally escalate to such heights that they will realize they must stay in power to stay out of jail. That’s why Trump could not afford to stop fighting to be president. The increase in government corruption is a certainty under Trump because his ambitious new administration people are given free for all passes, provided they protect the king.
In an April 2024 poll, seventy-five percent of Americans wanted neither Biden nor Trump. And to many, Harris was Biden, inside a female POC body.
An April 2025 special election, with two fresh faces would likely be cheered on by the general public. Trump’s cabinet picks even have many MAGA voters scared, as they should be. Billionaires who can pay off Trump, and loyalists, are getting top posts. MAGA people are figuring out they may have been duped.
To actually accomplish barring Trump from being president via #ENFORCINGTHE14th, we’ll need to do some things.
First.We immediately need vast public support for enforcing the 14th, sec 3. That’s why this manifesto should be submitted to newspapers and media people. Help me do this now. I am easy to reach. Pressure must be put on Biden, Harris and the Democratic Party leaders. They represent us. If we the people have surrendered to Trump and his allies, or are “tired” of fighting, which we should fear the most, our reps have no impetus to push for this.
Second.We need Biden or Garland to call for some of the worst 14th offenders in the House to be unseated, right now. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and a few others, are good starters. This will serve as a test balloon for Trump and SCOTUS members to be barred. Democrats could have the majority in the House now, if we unseat glaring House insurrection comforters. It’s crucial for line of succession too.
If SCOTUS members object, we can start unseating them. It is all constitutional. No one gets hurt. We just pack up their files and send them home and nominate new SCOTUS members.
We must treat this like a war, because what Trump has done is a war against the American way. And democracy’s enemies are not all domestic. Being engaged in a war with Russia through Ukraine, makes it easier for a president to do things to protect our country.
I’d also like to suggest Jack Smith should just release or leak evidence he has on Trump. If Mueller held anything back, he should as well. (Sadly, it looks like Jack Smith surrendered on 11.25 as well.) That should only amplify the need to act now. There’s no help coming past J20.
Third. We cannot be afraid of our SCOTUS. The importance of a Supreme Court majority was well understood by Putin, who owns his courts and Donald admires that. The Helsinki translator notes Trump being ripped up was a big tell. Trump quickly got three justices on his side, in preparation for what we are seeing now.
Women’s rights? Out the window. Separation of church and state? This Supreme Court is on the side of fascism and oligarchy. Pay them, and they do your bidding.
The Supreme Court super majority served like a move made early in a chess game. The goal being to seal the fate of the opposing king during the end game. However, if justices are on Trump’s side, they are also aiding an insurrectionist and subject to disqualification.
That is the attitude we must have. We need not fear the SCOTUS. The 14th does not say SCOTUS members are immune. It says no one shall hold any office under the United States if they even comforted an insurrectionist or the enemies of our country. It is plain language.
Justice Clarence Thomas is most vulnerable justice. He lives with a known insurrection planner. He comforts her every day. He has taken bribes from wealthy GOP donors. He needs to be told he will also be unseated via the 14th if he objects to the current administration using the 14th to remove insurrection comforters from our government.
No one needs to get hurt. The Sergeant-of-arms locks his files, removes them from his offices, Biden nominates a new justice. For unseated congresspeople, our current president just calls for special elections to replace them with candidates who are not on public record of beininsurrection supporters.
Fourth. We must openly discuss and prepare for the possibility of a national divorce. It’s possible the plan will not work, even though if implemented with the resolve that Project 2025 seems to have, I don’t see why it would fail.
In that case, the governors of Blue States must be ready to say they will not be ruled in any way – including by federal taxation – by an insurrectionist allied with Russia.
We should start serious discussions on splitting into two American tactically allied countries, bound by trade and travel agreements both protected by one military. Both countries pay a military protection and common infrastructure tax of about seventeen percent. Seventeen percent of budget is close to the amount we pay for military and infrastructure now. The rest of taxes are paid to the individual states. Since, red states rely more than blue states on federal funds, the citizens in red states will come crying back in a few years. This may actually be the fastest way back to a truly United States, if we allow Trump to be POTUS. Just say we want nothing to do with a president who organized an insurrection, and be done with it.
We cannot feel forced to accept the craziness of another four years of Trumpism. There is no telling it will just be four years. This discussion of a two-state will serve to temper the craziness of the GOP. If they cross hard lines, we implement the divorce. We are sort of culturally divided anyway. Maybe it’s best, for a while.
Joe Biden: You are still the commander-in-chief. Do so some commanding for god’s sake. You don’t have to go to battle with a gun and a helmet like our brave fathers did in 1943. Your tools are the Constitution you have sworn to protect, your resolve to defend democracy and the American people you profess to love, and your spoken words.
My father taught me the difference between men is primarily the words they speak. The nothing burger we have heard from you, post-election, feels like you have given up on democracy.
Are you afraid that the Republican Party will do the same thing if you bar Trump from being president? Spoiler alert. They are doing it anyway.
Republican voters and independent brothers and sisters: Today, Trump said he will be putting tariffs on Mexico and Canada on day one. That will cause the cost of mushrooms and avocados go up. He has chosen relatives with no experience to be ambassadors. He has billionaires as allies. Have you figured out yet, that Donald trump does not care about us. I knew him since age eighteen at Wharton. He never cared about others. Trump is do into his own self that as a billionaire he hardly ever gave money to charities. He speaks well of the dictators, Putin, Kim and others, who brutally kill their own citizens should they speak out. And worst of all, Trump accepted election help from Russia, three times. He now owes Putin for that help. Putin’s mission has always been to destroy America, and make it be more like Russia. I say no, thanks.
Joe Biden: The Supreme Court is not checkmate, unless you think it is. Do you want to be remembered as the cowardly, meek president who surrendered democracy to fascists? The plans in this post, along with what you know having been on the inside of government all your life, are all you need to save the American democracy. You said you would not surrender to Trumpism “over my dead body”. Is that body already dead, sir? If so, step down and give your VP a chance to defend this country.
We the people demand that you bar Trump from holding office, in accordance with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, and call for a new special presidential election in April, with no insurrection aiders or comforters allowed on the ballot as per the Constitution. Become a real commander-in-chief, the way FDR was, and you potentially will go from being the last, and therefore worst, president of the original United States, to one of its greatest commanders-in-chief. We are at war, sir. You seemed to know that. Act like a war president then, for god’s sake.
We The People: Tell your representatives to #EnforceThe14thNow. Start this conversation, today! That is how the ball starts rolling in a representative democracy. Talk to MAGA voters and independents as well. Tell them a new special election can be with two fresh faces. Call into talk shows. Organize #ENFORCETHE14TH protests. Use that hashtag. Trump has tipped his fascist bent agenda with his cabinet picks. The time is now, while we can without risking our lives, to resist Trumpism. Christmas can wait.
Our beautiful American women: Are you ready to surrender your bodily autonomy to a party that nominates rapists and racists to wield power over you? The holidays may be sidetracking you. But this is not the time to pretend all is well and holly jolly. We need to hear from you now about using the 14th to bar disqualified humans from holding office. It can happen, but only if we all speak up now! Use #EnforceThe 14thNow as a hashtag in all your SM posts. It’s not too late to resist Trumpism. The January 20th surrendering democracy date only happens. if we let it happen without using the 14th.
Thank You all and may God bless the American spirit.
Citizen-private first-class in the cyber war we have been in
12/13/24 :
PREPARE TO BE RULED IN THE NEW UNTIED STATES OF TRUMPLANDIA
We lost the popular vote. That tells me that more than 50% of our countrymen have succumbed the cancer of Trumpism. In a human body, 20% cancer cells is way too much to bear. The situation for our body politic is dire, to say the least. Hitler had 25% less people behind him on his day one, than Trump does now. (source: Dan Simon‘s brilliant piece )
Losing the popular vote will give these fascists the chutzpah to say they can do whatever they want. The alliances that those who don’t wish to be ruled by a fascist elite mob should be making right now are not with dems, but with the people who voted for Trump. Many are beginning to see they made a mistake. It’s no small percentage of people. I speak to many Trump voters who already know he’s not going to do much of anything to help them in their own lives.
Do some Google searching about Google searches. Things could change. We need someone brave enough to start the ball rolling. It cannot be Harris, of course. I wonder why it is not Jack Smith, sometimes.
Where have you gone, Jack Smith? A nation turns its weary eyes to you.
Jack Smith seemed like the guy who was not afraid to go on the offensive versus Trump. Did they get to him too? Doesn’t feel like anytime someone wants to uncover the real political truth, they suddenly surrender as if they were never that serious to begin with? That’s what makes people think all politics is dirty, and just back away from it all.
So I’d like to add Jack Smith to my list of cop-outs if he does not fully release all he knows about Trump’s crimes for his New Years Resolution. I wish Jack Smith find the courage of Michael Cohen, and just do what is right. Where is our Joe DiMaggio?
I am a mere citizen who had some contact with Trump in my younger days, but that was enough to inform me that 100% Donnie has been compromised by his intellectual superior, Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump simply does not have the kind of soul that can get close to another man with more power that he has, and not want to learn how to attain that power himself. His role model used to be his father, now it’s dictators, – not that there was that much of a difference. Why? With no allegiance to anyone but self, Trump’s life is empty without the adventurous scenes he creates in his mind. He was ripe for the picking.
I am sure Smith knows Trump has been compromised. We cannot have a compromised US president. There is too much to lose here. Smith can do a lot to start the ball rolling to save this country before it is too late. If J6 began their insurrection, J20 is their victory day. Do not surrender in advance.
And can someone open a government hot-line for MAGA voters who have been already turned off by Trump’s cabinet picks which includes sex traffickers ex-cons and relatives, – and sometimes the ex-cons are relatives? These people can be talked back into reality, especially after the cabinets picks. I called for this in June, but it fell of deaf ears. Everything we ever needed to keep America a free country has been posted in my blogs since 2016. I am not surrendering. But I will get off Twitter soon. Resistance is going to have to go underground soon. It’s not a good sign.
Putin’s war vs democracy began in 2016 with help to get Trump elected. His plan is working, – not only here, but now in Hungary, and today Trudeau said her would step down in Canada. Country by country, Putin is getting his way to become autocrat of the world. This will not end well.
This simple plan, put into action, can save the United States from what is now projected as a risk of falling prey to fascism should Trumpism prevail. This race will be women vs men, in a way Barbie vs Oppenehimer. But there are plenty of men who identify with saving our democracy. The question is will there be more women standing by their “man” who are sold on to taking America backwards in time, than men who are brave and smart enough to embrace the future.
So here we are, fellow Americans. We are in a domestic war, but there are no bombs. It’s a cyber war. Putin’s genius really. He knew he could never beat the USA with bombs. The weapons of his cyber war arewords.
And with three weeks left it is coming down to a few states and therein – their men versus their women. Sad, but very true. It’s coming out in the press now. Obama spoke of it today. I called this Barbie vs Oppenheimer months ago.
This post was a lot longer a year ago, but I am paring it down to its bare structure because there is no time left for complicated processes. Women are the largest class of people that are polling for Harris now.
The newest Pew Research poll found found 51% of male registered voters supporting Trump, and 43% supporting Harris. Among female registered voters, that is effectively reversed: 52% of female registered voters support Harris, while 43% support Trump.
Why Women United?
Women United starts with women because they have a natural bond this election season due to the GOP removing women’s rights constitutionally guaranteed for fifty years by the Roe v Wade SCOTUS decision. But we are open to dedicated men as well, of course. *Men Welcome is a super important part of the brand. We want to unite all Americans, men and women, of course. Women United is not racist or sexist. It is a place for real patriotism to awaken from its long slumber here in America.
There are women’s groups in most cities of a decent size. College towns are also ideal. I have reached out to a few of these groups and gotten positive feedback. Indivisible is a perfect nationwide organization to deploy this strategy by next Tuesday nationwide. I will make my efforts here in Los Angeles. Swing state reader, reach out to your local Indivisible chapter with this idea.
SAVE DEMOCRACY TUESDAY NIGHT MIXERS
That’s right. Throw a party. Strewn the walls with pictures of Trump and Putin and some of his worst quotes. Sparsely add some Kamala ads on the walls. The idea is to scare people. Kid you not. That’s what they are doing for the wrong reasons. But – it is a party. Hire a band. Alcohol is a good idea if its legal. If not cater it lightly with sexy food. We need men to align with women and nothing does that like a mixer.
At some point a speaker reads for no more that two minutes. Maybe once an hour. A three to four hour event. And then invite them to come back next Tuesday. On that Tuesday you can give them some chores or assignments but still have a band or DJ and make it fun. The banner reads Women United to Save American Democracy – men welcome. The women will be the honey that attracts men voters to see the light about Trumpism. I don’t think you have to tell them what to say. They know. But they are encouraged to talk to men about why they want to preserve their bodily autonomy. Men, especially young men, could stand the education. But, keep it fun. Be joyous warriors.
nd in line.
Our Potential Allies in this War
The people we need to reach in this war of words are Republican centrists, independents, and Democratic voters who may lost their enthusiasm for Biden.
The main focus of “Women United” is to find ways to convince men, regardless of their past party affiliation, that this time they need to vote to support their local women. Since the GOP alliance can always brand truth as “fake news”, the re-orientation program must come from the mouths of their own people.
And yes, we’ll have to show the MAGA and centrist GOP voters that we are not vermin. We’ll have to be likeable to them. Is that so hard? I don’t think so. It certainly beats what the WW2 generation had to do to save this democracy.
Women* United to Save American Democracy – *Men Welcome is designed as a cannot lose project. It should function as a Green Bay sweep in its own right. Our enemies can see it coming, but they can do nothing to stop it.
Supporting Logic: All Politics is Local
We recommend the tools be created on about an 8th grade level. A historical synopsis of the miracle of American democracy in posters on the walls is a good idea too. Start with the Boston Tea Party.
Why Women United?
Women United starts with women because they have a natural bond this election season due to the GOP removing women’s rights constitutionally guaranteed for fifty years by the Roe v Wade SCOTUS decision. But we are open to dedicated men as well, of course. *Men Welcome is a super important part of the brand. We want to unite all Americans, men and women, of course. Women United is not racist or sexist. It is a place for real patriotism to awaken from its long slumber here in America.
There are women’s groups in most cities of a decent size. College towns are also ideal. We have reached out to a few of these groups and gotten positive feedback. We’d like to see if we can get a commitment from a few groups in each of the swing states.
There are 438 womens’s groups that just marched, January of 2024. They need to be contacted and asked to see if they would be okay for advocating for small d democracy this year by having three Save Democracy Mixers. The fourth one is voting day, and then those groups are united on November 5th and can do much good. Focus should be on swing states first, then red states, then purple cities in blue states.
Why the Reorientation Must Come from Local Influencers
The line between truth lies has been blurred for media. The fake news meme may have started with Russian propaganda during the 2016 election, but is still with us … and growing. AI is not making this any easier. However, it will be harder for husbands, sons, boyfriends, associates, and friends to categorize words as “fake news” when those words are coming from people they know and respect in their own towns. MAGA people are by nature followers – sycophants. They were easily influenced by right-wing media and Trump’s lies. That means they are more malleable than Democrats. We can take advantage of that.
Trump was caught on a hot mic saying “they only know what we tell them”. Finding a way to tell Republican voters something else to know or believe in may be more effective on Republican voters than Democrats and Independents.
Qualifications For Holding Office Must Be Part of the Education
A majority of GOP voters still believe Trump won the 2020 election. For that reason, Women United cannot be a Democratic or Republican endeavor. Kamala is framed as pro-Democracy , pro people first, pro country over party – even over the Democratic party.
The enemies of democracy don’t expect such creativity and energy this election season. But if this project evolves from written words and thoughts into action and it spreads through red states, they are checkmated. The fake news meme that has worked so well for “trumpism” for the last seven years will have met its match via love, education, and reorientation. It’s time teach old-fashioned civics and history to rural America and spread some real truth and light.
Branding the Struggle
*Build That Wall was nothing more than selling or branding. Branding seeks to create a vision fused with a few words that are hard to forget. Branding works like a song – words and music together are easy to remember. Words and tunes alone? They are soon forgotten. Strategic branding is something the enemies of democracy do very well. We can do better at this. Sales has been my life’s work.
Deployment Strategy – Seven Swing States
In the ideal version of democracy, the majority should have their collective will represented in Congress. We do have to contend with the Electoral College which does not function as a true democracy, and creates the space for a few key “swing states” have more power than the rest of the country. Women United can fix inequity, and many other pressing issues, but first we must save the functioning of our democracy. Without a functioning democracy nothing good will get done for any of us.
Seven states that need Women United chapters the most are in purple
Wilkes-Barre 44,000, Altoona 44,000, State College 41,000
My sense is that this list can be refocused and shortened a bit by using a filter based on preaching less to the choir. We’ll need to focus more in cities where the anticipated margin of loss to Trump is currently is between 1% and 10% and where the anticipated margin of victory by Biden is between 1% and 5%. The most important groups to enroll with be the first in each of the swing states.
The Tutorial Installation – rough draft
The walls of Women United field offices all tell the story of democracy. That story starts with the causes of the Revolutionary War, some words on King George, (who has been compared to Donald Trump) and the colonists resistance to King George’s taxes and tyranny.
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, a tax passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act believing it violated their right as Englishmen to “no taxation without representation”, that is, to be taxed only by their own elected representatives and not by a foreign parliament in which they were not represented.
The lesson of the Boston Tea Party will engage middle-of-the-road Republicans as well as Democrats. America was born with proud intentions. Ironically, Americans today still lack a Congress that truly represents their needs and not the needs of big business. The parallel to today’s times is there and worth pointing out. Women’s United seeks to restore pride in American democracy.
The next installation can be about the Constitution as it was formed and the amendments that evolved over time, highlighting the Bill of Rights and specific amendments. The National Constitution Center covers the US Constitution nicely. We can select the amendments to focus on. I think we start with the first amendment, and focus on the 14th after the Civil War. But we leave the constitution all out there for the curious. People need education on US history to become free thinkers able to recognize how poor a choice Donald Trump would be for president. Women’s United does not tell people who to vote for or against. We seek to make the right path become self-evident.
Since this is about saving democracy, focusing on amendments that concern voting rights seems proper. Since the Civil War, many constitutional amendments address voting, but there are specific amendments written to prohibit denying the vote to some people once the vote is extended to others.
Field Offices Must Remain Bipartisan
It is also important to declare this effort is neither Democratic nor Republican; it must be American. The division between the parties is what keeps the people of America feeling like we are in a cyber war with our brothers and sisters in other states. If we can undo the undercurrent of national division – fear of the other – and restore pride in American democracy there will be no inner space for Trumpism to exist within the hearts of our citizenry. Older people remember fascisim had not quarter in the American soul until the 80s. Is not that feeling of division and fear of others really the cause of our fascist Trumpism problem?
Right now, a large percentage of Republicans are okay with what Trump did on January 6th including hanging Mike Pence for not “doing his job” to end the peaceful transfer of power, according to Trump’s speech that day. The qualification for holding office in the USA 14th Amendment is that no elected official can be in an insurrection or aid or comfort those that are. So Women United is okay with Republicans as long as they renounce January 6th, the Big Lie and Stop the Steal. If that comes off as partisan, so be it.
The belief in many GOP voters that “the left” is their enemy, is what needs to change. But we can’t do it by using distant media. It’s not going to penetrate those who live in information silos. We should know this after eight years of right wing media chanting fake news. We need to re-orient Americans attitude to its government up close and personal, one person at a time, and start a sort of chain reaction – a reverse metastatic cancer -a metatstatic healing!
The idea is to help our Republican friends and neighbors find new candidates in their midst who are conservative but not insurrectionists. There are plenty. They just have no place to convene and air their thoughts because Trump, the salesaman, leaves no oxygen for their transformations. Enroll Republican centrists to convene with Women United. They will become America’s best allies in the effort to save democracy.
“It will always remain one of democracy’s best jokes that it provided its deadly enemies with the means by which it was destroyed.”
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister
The First Fascist
We are fighting a fascist organization but most people don’t know fascism’s history. A brief history of fascism is actually necessary. Mussolini is historically referred to as the first fascist. Mussolini Trailer on this page is worth a watch. Rachel Maddow’s new book, Prequel, relays some interesting American history on our US industrialists aligning with the Europe’s fascist movements. It’s worth making sure people know what Mussolini did to his own people if they protested any part of his agenda. I’d like to have movie night. There are some great WW2 movies worth group watch. The new movie Amsterdam was panned butit depicted the danger we are in today very well.
Long before Putin posed bare-chested in snow, Mussolini created this “look”.
German fascism began with Hitler trying to adapt what Mussolini had created. Hitler was a huge fan of Mussolini, even trying to get an autographed picture.
Civil Rights Era and the 1960s. It wiil be wise to cover the freedoms that were gained during the Civil Rights movement during Johnson’s presidency – and here is very okay to mention Roe v Wade. The right to vote was also very clearly defined and Jim Crow was officially a crminal action after the Civil Rights Act. . The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing.
an example of news on the walls of the installations
The Trump Era
Even though we are non-partisan, we do recognize the criminal and treasonous activity of Donald Trump. Trump is why we need to save democracy. So our stance is not that we don’t want Republicans, we just don’t want Republicans who align with a coup to overturn the will of the majority and install a fascist back into the White House.
Trump is about to make his announcement that Mexicans are bringing rapists
The installation can have snippets from videos of Trump’s campaign speeches: the Mexicans are bring rapists ( ironic advise from a known convicted serial rapist ) and including Russia if you’re listening and other gems from his rallies. There’s no shortage of material:Trump’s inauguration speech, the firing of Comey, Helsinki, two impechments and the obstruction by Bill Barr during his impeachments, the firing of Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, Helsinki, Trump’s covid vaccine success derailing when he learned covid was killing more people in Blue states. The installation culminates with January 6th, and current campaign snippets about poisoning the blood of our country and Project 2025.
Activity at the Field Offices – The Original Gripe of Conservative America
Being part of a democracy has to evolve to become more than just showing up to vote. Women’s United field offices need to be engaging and/or a bit fun to attend. Field office managers need to report to a central core group. We need to get people to start believing they can affect their governments decisions and laws. Honestly, this is the original gripe of people in flyover country, is it not? They feel abandoned by their government. Spoiler alert, so do many on the left. It does feel like nothing we can do will change how government treats us. Many Americans are resigned to sub-par treatment in many arenas of life, including quality of food and air, housing, education, healthcare, decent pay, cost of living and paying more taxes percentage-wise than billionaire overlords.( I don’t like that billionaires pay less tax percentagewise than I do. )
We have eight months to make a dent. Besides the get out the vote effort which amplifes in the last 60 days, we have six months to discuss and I think mock vote on the issues that concern all Americans. People should walk away from these reorientation courses masked as Women United For Democracy * Men Welcome feeling empowered and enthusaistic about making real changes in the next presidential term. The changes needed most are on what can be called out top ten issues.
Income Inequality and Tax Fairness. The Border. Health Care Affordability. Right to Choose. Gun Violence. Education Affordablity. Climate Science. The Electoral College. Corruption in Government, including legal corruption like corporate lobbying, voter discrimination and Gerrymandering, the Supreme Court. There’s ten right there. This list can be amended of course.
Suppose we invite experts to lecture – perhaps from a single source – like a huge zoom. The Big Zoom seems like an idea. A set time, and we all watch a 20 minute lecture or debate on any of the top subjects. Then we talk about what we heard for an hour. Then we mock vote for the solutions the way we see them on the first Tuesday of every month. Chapters record their voting as indelible records for how each chapter saw best to solve the issues facing America.
Finally, field offices ask their reps in Congress to come to a meeting and ask that they vote in Congress the way the majority in their field office ask them to vote. They present the results of their mock voting; they ask that their representatives re-present their ideas to Congress. That seems to be what represent means, to re-present what has already been presented. So let’s do some solution presenting ourselves Americans, and stop relying of representatives to tell us how to think or vote.
This way the local chapters get a feeling when their representative is in politics just for their own self interests. They can shop for a better candidate for their needs if they sense that. All politics is local underpins this entire strategy.
Maybe there has to be some music, movies and guest speakers at these field office some nights.We may be able to get some really top iconic people, like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce to address the field office members across the nation in one fell swoop.
Sounds like a dream. But this can all happen in 2024 if we just start. We need to literally enlist in this cyber war and be soldiers in this cyber war. And if we make this happen, we will have saved our democracy by ourselves, without politcians, and a great new era of American pride and acheivement will begin.
end post …
PS.
Once one allies with Putin, they must remain loyal for life. If you think otherwise, ask Prigozhin on that. Oh yeah, you can’t.
Joseph Aronesty
PPS. PS. Some new improved version of this autocracy vs democracy map, which has been at my blog since Helsinki, should be part of the “kit”. Many people don’t know what autocracy really means. But a ten-year-old with no prior knoweledge of world geography gets the struggle when they first see a RISK board.
About the author:
Joseph Aronesty is the 75-year-old son of a WW2 vet, an ecom pioneer with passion for songwriting and word history and author of a book on the history of language. “I’ve had a blessed life due to the sacrifices of those WW2 vets and I’ll be damned ( actually, we all will be damned ) if we just give it all away to con artists.”
Mr. Aronesty was classmate to Donnie Trump in 1968 at Wharton , worked in Trump’s business associate orbit from 86-99 in AC NJ. He has wriiten over 1100 pages on Trumpism starting at “Russia, if you’re listening” which he still feels should disqualify a candidate to run for president because it asks an enemy state to take a part in our sacred American elections.
I got to thinking about the most notorious leaders in today’s dictatorships: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, King and Mohammed bin Salmon of Saudi Arabia, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, and China’s Xi Jinping. Not one of them are stupid enough to be caught saying I grab women by the p*ssy because I’m a star and they let me do it. Trump’s total lack of class or dignity stands alone, even among despots. Sometimes his immature verbal potty mouth is touted by media as an attribute for his “fans”.
Access Hollywood was arguably the biggest gaff in presidential election history and it bounced off Trump like water off a duck’s back. People began to say in flyover over country they liked this locker room talk stuff – so it was a good thing for Trump. But that’s too easy. There is more to understand. Sloughing it off on Trump’s garish style truly misses the mark.
Americans have endured eight years of Republicans fighting with Democrats during our first not-pure-white president’s terms; then four years of a president who never thought a day in his life about serving anyone but his own self; then covid; then inflation, finally leaving us with high interest rates in a nation with too many debtors. Americans have gripes. Both sides. And to make matters worse, all of these crises are left to be dealt with by a seemingly intentional do-nothing Congress.
This is why the flyover country developed an appetite for a guy like Trump in the first place. It was not about trash talk and Trump’s divisive American vs. American hate speech. Many people were just weary and sick of the people in Washington DC for years of ignoring their needs and taxing them in so many ways, while giving back the bare minimum.
The vampires in DC are skimming our common wealth. It is corruption. That was the first gripe of middle America. It is still a valid gripe. The meme is: all politicians are corrupt so what is the difference? We hear of the Big Lie. Well this is the Big Gripe. It stretches back to the Reagan meme that the government is the enemy. It is why Biden does not get credit for being a better man and president than Trump.
And the corruption exists on both sides. We all know politicians – no need to mention names – whose family members reap benefits from advance knowledge of government dealings. That is corruption, and to make it legal is to day its is okay to be corrupt and that fuels an appetite for a new kind of politician – which Biden is not. Trump, in many ways, just does the quiet part of corruption out loud. In some ways, it’s less sneaky than what Biden does.
We have endured about forty years of government officials governing by the greed is good mantra. MAGA folks were unified in one thing; hating the people in our government, and the way government treats them. They wanted something that felt like change. Trump gave them that hope. But he had four years to drain the swamp, and instead it just got swampier.
Polls tell us the Democrats want change too. I do.I was one of the first to recognize Trump was allied with Russia because I knew him from AC NJ, and there was a Russian mob component active there in that “carney” town in the 80s. He fell in love with Putin during the Miss World pageants in Moscow. Everyone who knew him knew that. Atlantic City is a small town. Everyone knew what Donnie was up to.
2024 presents voters with the starkest contrast between two agendas since the Civil War. Biden is trying to preserve the functioning of the institution of free and fair elections – of people deciding who should make the laws we all must agree to live by. Trump is fighting for his life to stay out of jail, and says he will create an agenda to run America a new way. But most Americans know he is running to keep himself and his family out of jail for life.
I stand with the MAGA people on their complaint that we need a change. Most Americans do. My big gripe against the “establishment” is interest rates. Contrary to the FED, high rates will not curb inflation this time around. This is not the 70s. In the 70s people had almost no credit card debt. Credit cards were relatively new back then. Many owned their homes with VA loans post WW2.
This time, higher rates are raising financial pressure on working people by causing higher prices. The price of money, in a nation that is living week to week, causes the inflation high rates are advertised to curb. High rates favor those that have the money to lend. Landlords must raise rents to pay off their loans; and mortgages and college loan costs take up much more of a family’s income these days. It feels like a plot to destroy the middle class to me. Same thing the new American oligarchs will do if we elect Trump. Soon, banks will be foreclosing on properties due to these high rates.
SO yea, I have my gripes against the way the US government favors corporations over working people. That however does not cloud my assessment of Donald Trump. I know him too well to believe he cares about anyone but himself.
Economic justice should count as much as criminal justice; in fact more so because criminal behavior involves a small percentage of Americans, while economic justice involves us all. So, equal justice under the law is basically a lie. The word tax is a form of the word take. If a billionaire pays a lower tax rate than a working person, how is that equal justice under the law?
It’s not the institutions themselves that Americans disrespect. No one is going around saying free and fair elections is a bad idea. What we are all saying is that the people in government don’t work for us much anymore. And the the voices of the fully honest politicans are drowned out by the chorus of corruption that has existed in DC since anyone living can remember.
We know there is a better way. It starts with ending corruption. It does not start with making a president immune from criminal prosecution. The way out of this mess is to make Americans proud of the people in their government again. That begins with qualifications for holding office being upped and careful vetting of any candidates financial ties and past work ethics and experience. That cannot begin with a more authoritarian government.
We must never forget one of Trump’s first acts as president was to lower corporate taxes, which forces working people to shoulder a larger percentage of the expense to run a government.
Biden can function fine as the gateway to a new America. Unlike Trump, he knows he is mortal and takes pride in trying to turn the wheels of government over to a new generation. Then it will be up to the new generation to fix what is broken for working people in this country.
I do think Biden needs to grow a pair, as they say. Leaving Merrick Garland in as AG is something no real Americans respect. He’s done a lousy job prosecuting government corruption. Trump will not be tried for the crimes against this country before Novemeber. The biggest crime in US history was filmed live on January 6th. If the man Biden has in the position to see justice done for that crime cannot bring about a trial in three years, he needed to be fired. I ask all people who love this country to find a way to complian loudly about Merricak Garland staying on as our AG.
Trump knew how to fire people at least. Yes, for the wrong reasons, but he knew how to do it. Biden seems not to be able to fire anybody for the right reasons. All we can do now is hope the sheer unchristian ugliness of the Trump, his alies – domestic and foreign, and the spewing of their hateful, vengeful, divisive words will get Americans to wake up when it counts the most, in November.
I wish the news media would stop reporting that they are astonished or don’t understand why the GOP cannot abandon Trumpism. Yes, there is their carrers, and the cultish hate-based nationalistic base that Trump created. But there is one important piece of the puzzle they are missing. And it is important to identify because there are things that can be done about this.
First we must clearly understand how we got here. This cult was not created by Donald Trump alone. He knew nothing about politics and government when he took office. On his first week as president he was on TV trying to sell his steaks, wines and his “brand”. There was someone else who had done this before who knew political strategy from lived experience and also knew Donnie would love to be a dictator. He started schooling him on how he took over a large country and became”president for life”, something Trump said he thought was agreat thing when he spoke of Xi and China.
The GOP knows Trump is not their best candidate to go up against Biden in 2024. But they stay loyal, even as Trump makes a total fool of himself and faci charges of fraud, tax evasion, rape, insurrection and basically treason in the documents case. So, why don’t they break away? The answer is part greed, a sense of continuing the grifts they indulge in.
But what all the reporters seem to miss is that even if Republican congressmen wanted to break away – they cannot. They are in Trump’s “thick as thieves” grifters club now. Those that did not want to join it, were forced out.
This current GOPs border policy flip is no different than when McCarthy flipped on his anti-Trump stance post Jan6. People say Republicans are “afraid of Trump and his base”. I don’t think that’s close to all of it. They’d be better off without Trump and say it privately.
So, when did this begin and how we got here? Trumpism began at the Republican Convention in 2016. Who was at the GOP Convention?
Putin sent emmissaries to the 2016 Republican convention.
We know the GOP changed their stance on Russian sanctions after those meetings. In return, they got Putin’s support of Trump and the Fancy Bear media campaign that followed. The startegy worked, and there was much celebration in Russia, November 2016. Putin made 100% sure the GOP will owe him for life for that effort.
Putin was not physically at the convention, but he wanted to oversee and control for sure. So how does Putin listen in on the negotiations? Does he just take a WhatsApp from his emissaries? No way! This was way too important. World changing. Putin thinks chess moves ahead. We just react, if we do anything at all.
PUTIN SECRETLY TAPED NEGOTIATIONS, OF COURSE. Not only to listen to every word and coach and weigh in, but to use them later to keep his new American team loyal. How hard was that? Not at all. He taped Trump in Helsinki too. Hence his subserviant posture, which we’ve never saw once before from Donald Trump, or hence.
Those taped recordings would expose the entire GOP as engaging in traitorous negotiations with a known enemy. Even the MAGA base would not like that. Remember also that Trump was caught destroying his Helsinki notes and now classified documents are missing as well.
So, McCarthy goes down to Mar-a-Lago after Jan 6 – and Trump plays snippets of the damning tapes for him. Checkmate. McCarthy reverses his stance immediately. The GOP is now essentially taking orders from Vladimir Putin, through Trump, who is also suborned.
Getting dirt on people to suborn them is a staple in criminal organizations, from the Mafia, to the Russian KGB to Trump with his vengeance mentality. The National Enquirer and David Pecker operated this wayas well. This is standard operations for criminal organizations, not only now, but throughout history. It’s human nature stuff. Its why the meme “thick as thieves” exists.
Democrats no longer control the Intellgence Committe in the House. But a world-class investigative reporter could look into the 2016 Republican Convention and find out who talked to whom about what. It could spell the end of the GOP. Of course, Republicans got rid of Adam Schiff on the Intelligence committee and control that body now. They all know what went on in 2016.
Think the way Putin thinks people. This is freaking obvious. The GOP must now remain loyal to PUTIN fo rlife or they end up like Prighozin. The same is true for Trump, whose not only trying to win the presidency to stay out of jail, he’s trying to stay alive as well. Putin might as well be our president if the GOP regain total power. This cannot end well for the USA. We’ve been through seven years of hell because of this Russo-Republican alliance. We cannot quit now.
By rights and rules set out in our Constitution, the entire GOP should be declared unqualified to hold office via the 14th.
Will some investigative reporters get into the weeds on that GOP 2016 Convention and get some evidence of who talked to who? It may be impossible to get the tapes., but who talked to who about what might lead to something that leads to a Russian arrested on our soil, and some admissions and evidence. We’ve heard almost nothing about the Russians at the 2016 convention. Bob Woodward. Rachel Maddow. Ronan Farrow. Can you guys lend a hand here?
I am sending this around. You do the same if it makes sense to you. Ripples in the pond have a way of making waves.
Please BLOW THIS UP with your connections, and get an investigation of the 2016 GOP Convention going.
Joseph Aronesty
818 423 1533
The scariest part is that Trump very likely cannot win. In time, Trump will know this. He’ll then conclude there is only one sure way he can win. pay someone to assassinate Biden late in the game, RFK style so it looks like a lone wolf, and leave us with Harris as the 2024 Democratic candidate. This is why our 2024 VP candidate should be someone who can win on his or her own right.
The above is nothing I like to say. But Trump was just fine with Hang Mike Pence and we’ve seen what happens to Putin’s adversaries. There was, and therefore still is a Russo-Republican alliance. Think chess moves ahead people. The enemies of American democracy are.
Joseph Aronesty
I worked in Trump’s orbit in AC NJ from 86-99 . The 80s Russian mob operated this way too. I know from whence I speak.
Are you watching any part of this World Series of Major League Baseball? This is my 70th World Series. First Series I can recall anything about was the 1953 Dodger vs Yankees series. I remember watching Brooklyn players like Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Duke Snider and Jackie Robinson, with his exciting slides. I was a Yankee fan only because in Miami, where I lived when five, the local TV station broadcasted only Yankee games.
My family was from Brooklyn and they rooted for the “bums”, as they were called. The Yankees had a legendary dynasty during that period of time, one that traced back to the days of Babe Ruth. I recall the Yankees won, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle hit home runs, and Whitey Ford was their best pitcher. I remember baseball ended the first week in October.
Baseball is a slow game, but the final minutes of a close final game in a World Series can include some of the most dramatic and exciting moments in all of sports. The winning play is often determined by just a few inches. Imagine that. Six months of games, perhaps 175 games played – and it all comes down to a matter of inches.
This is one thing no one can remember in the last 75 years of World Series matches. Not once did a losing team challenge the results of a World Series. Sure, they may have had gripes with some of the umpire’s calls. But when the last out was recorded, the losing team always conceded defeat and their managers started planning to do a little better next season.
Without an agreement that declared winners are indeed the winners, there is no format for a sports contest, is there? There would be no defined end to a contest either. One team could go one saying they really won. There would then soon be no World Series, nor MLB as well.
So you who are inclined to believe election deniers, please know this. Without an agreement to concede defeat in US elections, – perhaps after one legal challenge, if there is hard evidence of malfeasance, – there is no democracy and there is no therefore no USA as we have known it. And those who continue to state they won an election that they lost on record are spoiled sports and a danger to the survival of the tradition of whatever contest they lost.
Be careful when considering going down the road of post-election results denial. You would not want it is baseball. So why is it okay for our USA elections?
Without adhering to pre-determined rules, no contest can end peacefully.
I am very concerned that the dictators of the world do not unite in this Israel Hamas war. Then WW3 is on the doorstep.
This seems to be the obvious best path. Posting with the hope it gets all the way to the top – to Netanyahu and the IDF. Sending to many others now.
A. Israel announces it will give the Palestinians a two-state solution, but there is a condition.
B. The Palestinians must begin to rid themselves of Hamas . They agree to be Israel’s ally in this effort.
C. Israel is going to engage Hamas in Gaza of course, but now they have allies that live there. They can help with logistics, expose hiding places, turn in names, poison their food. We all realize they dont have much in the way of weaponry. That does not mean they cannot help.
D. Once that Hamas is out of Gaza with heroics from Palestinians, a conditional Two State Solution with stated terms automatically begins.
Israel: Enroll the Palestinians on your side and this will be over much sooner than without that alliance. Give them what they want for their cooperation. .And they will deserve it, but only if they ally with Israel NOW.
ANNOUNCE THIS PLAN LOUD FOR THE WORLD TO HEAR!
Then, no one will be able to blame Israel for not trying, and that alone is a huge win for Israel and the planet.
ISRAEL’S TREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS DID NOT CAUSE THE HAMAS ATTACK, BUT FAILURE TO FIND A TWO STATE SOLUTION FACILITATED IT.
I am not going to pretend to have the solution for people who have been pushed so low in life that they find their inner strength only by hating and murdering. But ask yourself this, no matter what you do to make a living; can you imagine making the choice that the best thing you yourself can do to get by in life is to be paid to kill people ?
I hear some people saying that the Israelis “had this coming” for their poor treatment of Palestinians. Certain students at Ivy League schools like Harvard and Berkeley are on record for blaming Israel for expecting to get away with mistreating Paelstinians for decades. I get that argument to some degree. You push people down, they eventually rise up. It’s human nature. Maybe they should have expected an uprising. But the way Hamas is striking back is inhumane and not forgiveable.
However the Hamas mercenaries are not the resident Palestinians. They are rogue men who have been trodden so low in life that they are living for the glory of an afterlife they have been taught will be blessed because they kill people who do not believe as they do. They mingle among the families in the Gaza strip. It’s going to be difficult and costly to weed them all out.
Mercenaries have always existed. This is not new. Iran and Hamas are sponsoring this genocide, but they are not the good or normal people in Palestine who are also caught in the crossfire.
And as long as there are huge gaps in the powers that people may acheive in our relatively insignificant lives, there will always be people who decide that killing is the thing they can do best to fulfill a perceived purposes of their lives. We rarely see people who have paths to financial freedom and happiness in this life make the choice to be mercenaries.
To the Israelis, I get that you want to wipe all of Hamas off the face of the earth. But unless you are also into working to eliminate the vast wealth gaps that currently exist on planet earth, can’t you see their will always be people who will decide to get paid to kill and therefore eliminating all your enemies is not possible? Do you understand that the environment that allows people to decide that killing for a living might be cool will always be feasible if there a huge wealth gaps? Don’t you see that if people have a path towards a happy satisfying life they will rarely choose to become merceneries?
Income inequality drives most of the hate on the planet. Them that have versus them that don’t. We see it here in the USA as well. We have to learn to share better. I wrote a song about it. Best I can do.
And when you yourselves feel the need for vengeance for the unspeakable atrocities you have witnessed – and I am not denying or making light of that – do you not think that the very same feeling of a need for vengeance exists in the Hamas mercenaries carrying out these truly senseless murders?
So there is no military solution for this crisis. There may be temporary ceasefires, but eventually, even if it’s twenty to eighty years later, the cycle repeats.
What is the way out of this? In a world with nuclear and biological weapons, having any people, or even one person , that thinks killing for a living is the best they can do – is a recipe for Doomsday – the end of the world as we know it.
Strange as it seems to say, I wonder what percentage of people would be surprised if the planet was thrown into World War 3 by 2025. How much of a long shot is that in your mind right now? It feels like about eight to one against to me.
If there is no amount of vengeance killing that will end this cultural crisis, then why even start with vengeance killing? I get that the Israelis cannot afford to come as docile sheep; they would have been erased from the map long ago if they did not develop the best militia in the Middle East, which they have. I agree Israel must strike back on some level at least as large as Hamas struck Israel. I believe an Israeli strike should be carried out without intentional killing civilians and children. But after the vengeance killing, which I hope will be over soon, what is the next step?
The way I see it, it is deprogramming. One of the ways Middle Eastern desert people differentiate themseves is by the gods or religions they were thrust into at birth. It’s like we need a 21st century prince of peace right now, is it not? Myself, I was born into the Jewish faith, but my adult self no longer believes in anything I cannot see, hear or reason for myself. In fact, I don’t beleive in believing in things. I have a scientific brain that way.
I wish all people would find the inner strength to renounce all gods and just make life choices based on what is good for themselves and their family, and without hurting others or doing so as little as possible. There’s the golden rule right there, right? It can be done, and done easier without gods than with a struggle for whose god is real. None of them are. I don’t want to nickname this philosopy “the golden rule” or “do unto others, blah blah” because I want people to make that decision as a conscious thought for themselves, not because “their god” says it’s good, or holy, or you’ll go to heaven if you do and hell if you do not. That decision can only be sincere when it is made because one realizes that we are all the same, temporary human spirits, the progeny of a long line of fathers who have all passed on, as we will one day, sharing this earth together.
Jesus Christ is known as the Prince of Peace. His teachings, if followed, would cure the Israeli/Palestinian problem. But that’s not happening any time soon. Ironically, some of the most intolerant and racist people are self-professed followers of Christ. If only Jesus knew whay was carried out in his name over the years. If only Muhammed knew. If only the Hebrew God knew, well – that veangeful god might create a great flood again..
All these gods are all human constructs. They exist inside the minds on mortal flawed humans – and only in that space. Dogs, birds, dolphins, lions, – they see the world for what it truly is. Somehow humans, who are clearly more intellgent than all these animals, do not see the actual reality of life. Us humans live in our minds. And our minds can be twisted and ruled so easily by words, laws, customs, friends, opinions, fake news, and religions – which sort of combines all those things.
Well, let’s leave it there, with longing for a true Prince of Peace to lead us out of the eight to one shot that we self destruct as a species in the next few years. And let me close with a song I have almost finished about this situation we find ourselves in as a species. I say almost finished because I know some of the verse lyrics need to be re-wriiten – and frankly I wish someone else would help me get this right. Two constitutes reality.
On July 27th, 2016, in Doral Florida, Donald Trump said “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails … you will be mightily rewarded by our press”.
Broadcasting an invitation to a known foreign enemy state to influence America’s free and fair elections should have been dealt with as a violation of the Espionage and Sedition Act and an attack on democracy. But it was not. The thought was Donald Trump could never win. But by ignoring that dog whistle to Vladimir Putin, a fascist dictator was invited to be a large influential player in United States 2016 election. And we are still paying the price for that oversight.
That night, Putin launched a Cyber War against the USA. And it was essentially deemed fair play by Obama’s DOJ. Not shutting down “Russian if you’re listening” meant more of this traitor talk would be okay on broadcast media, Facebook, and etc. Russian was “allowed” to deploy Fancy Bear on our social media, affecting public opinion and swinging the close finish that usually describes our presidential elections for Trump.
America is more than just the sum of our communal land, people and resources. Our country is primarily our way unique way of governance. We let our citizens choose their leaders wtih free, fair, unhampered, unhacked, accurate elections. Without that, we are no different than China, Russia or Iran. Our soldiers have fought and died to protect that unique institution. Inviting a foreign enemy to affect any American election is trading with the enemy – treason vs. our Constitution. Our soldiers are not suckers, as Trump once said – they are heros.
It is now 2023, seven years after the original infection. Our government is suffering with the cancer that began when we allowed a candidate for the highest office on the planet to invite a known enemy to have a voice in our sacred elections . And though the seeds of that cancer were sown as far back as Trump’s dalliance in Russian beauty pageants, where he first learned to admire Putin, the cancer has metastasized and is much more dangerous that it was in June of 2016.
Donald Trump is not the brains behind this attack. Anyone who knows Donald personally knows he does not think chess moves ahead and he was never a student of politics or history. I was his classmate at Wharton. I know him that way. This was planned by someone who had done this before and wanted the benefit of having his own loyalist in the most powerful position on the planet, Vladimir Putin.
Evidence of VP infecting our government was also present at the 2016 GOP convention. There were Russian nationals there. That was also an act of treason. These emmisaries all report to VP. It’s logical to think there would have been tapes made by the Russians so Putin could review how his reps were doing and hear was being discussed and with whom. What would you think of our WW2 generation if they had allowed Germany or Japan to send reps to our political conventions? – They would not have allowed it, would they? And if they had, maybe this post would be in German today.
Our WW2 generation would have declared that Facebook was acting treasonously when they allowed Russian bots to masquerade as US citizens, something they could have controlled easily. The greatest generation would have shut Facebook down and/or taken away their license, and/or forced them to sell. The famous movie, Aviator, depicts the US government suing Howard Hughes just for wasting money on a huge plane, the Spruce Goose, as it was called.
A great spirit of pride in our government existed during WW2. Sadly, it has dissipated. VP knows this. He thinks of Americans as spoiled and weak. He’s a bit right on that. We are certainly weakened by the division in our politics. A country under attack cannot afford to be divided. VP and the MAGA GOP know that too.
Evidence of Trump’s treason was glaringly visible in Helsinki. If you study Trump’s posture as he walks on stage, well – he’s not that good of an actor. It wreaked of subservience, which up until that moment I dare anyone to find a moment or screen shot of Trump cowering to anyone. It does not exist. In Helsinki, VP finally showed Trump how much he had on him and the GOP from the 2016 convention, and what both Trump and the GOP owed VP for his election help. And I am sure he said things like “together we can rule the world” – which would be music to Trump’s ears.
It just now occurred to me that Prigozhin was discovered to be the architect of the misinformation campaign of 2016, and now that trail (in case it could have been used against VP) is permanently buried. VP has always been the strategist.
Women United to Save Democracy and Preserve Bodily Autonomy in 2024 * Men Welcome
I propose that field offices be opened in key cities of swing states and make civics and patriotism “sexy” again, the way it eventually became during WW2. Laying low and waiting for the election is NOT a plan.
Women is a group that does not belong to a political party. They’ve shown solidarity on resisting our new Roe vs Wade issues. These offices do not say Democrat or Republican! Neither party is popular really. The Trump movement is all about politcians being unpopular, and frankly, they earned that judgment, both sides, by not putting people over profits for the last forty years at least.
The walls should be a timeline of branded images and videos, much like a museum’s historical timeline installation. It starts with Russia if you’re listening, the firing of Comey, Helsinki, procedes to January 6th and Trump’s divisive campaign rhetoric.
But the big idea is to encourage women to get involved to get their communities united to fight the fascism of a Trump presidency. Men Welcome serves to get men involved, and perhaps attracted to the stated non-partisan movement. Yes. Non-partisan. They could be open to GOP candidates but only if they refer to January 6th for what it actually was – an attempted coup.
If we don’t understand we are at war, just as if we were being bombed, we run the unnecessary risk of putting democracy on the ballot and losing that election. I frankly think the current Republican Party should be barred from having candidates in 2024 unless those candidates openly state that Joe Biden is the duly elected president and that January 6th was an attempt to end the peaceful transfer of power. I also think organized election meddling should be treated as a crime of treason, with serious penalties.
Treating January 6th as a Gift for Curing Our Political Cancer
One unexpected present Trump gave the Democrats was January 6th. Because of the 14th amendment, any congressperson, judge or state official who even comforted insurrectionists, is disqualified to serve. That kind of event never happened before in US history, except during the Civil War. There’s really a lot of self-declared insurrection supporrters and comforters in the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. It is an opportunity to clean house and end the cancer that began in 2016. They can all be declared unfit to serve. No trial is needed. A person under 35 does not need a trial to run for president does he?
Their desks can be locked up tomorrow, and the DOJ can declare that there will be special elections to replace insurrection comforters. All they really need is what is recorded on media and the nerve to use it. I argue that the Supreme Court also has at least one insurrection comforter; Clarence Thomas comforts his wife Ginny, who has comforted insurrectionists herself.
This is how metastatic this VP/DT cancer has become. Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the GOP members they plotted with insurrections. She visited them in jail and said good things about them. That’s comforting insurrectionists. Anyone who says they would pardon Trump or insurrectionists does not belong in our government another day. Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Louie Gohmert of Texas can easily have their seats locked up by a DOJ that knows we are at war and what tools we need to use to end this scourge.
Look at the map at the top of this post. Ask yourself what chance the rest of the free world has to keep their democracies if the US succumbs to Trumpism, which is clearly fascism. If we let Trump, or someone from his MAGA GOP party become president again, democracy is dead here. And soon enough after the rest of the planet will fall to the dictators. Then, climate change will not be addressed, the wealth gap will widen, and we will enter a modern version of the Dark Ages. The human species will not survive long in a world run by dictators with the kind of weaponry we have today.
It seems the Joe Biden and the Democrats are not going to have the nerve to use the tools they have to defend democracy. I hope I am wrong. But they are proceeding slowly and not so surely. There is a good chance 2024 will be Biden vs Trump, still, which totally ignores the 14th. Lincoln would not be proud.
The smarter tactic is to declare war versus our enemies, foreign and domestic. The war is already on. Our enemies know what they are fighting for while Dems in Congress seem incapable of admitting we have Senators and Congresspeople who are aligned with Putin, and are basically fascists. Denying election results, without solid, visible, concrete proof, is a fascist act.
We have some powerful tools to fight fascism, but we have to use them. Let me list some of them. End the Filibuster. Rebalance the Supreme Court. Use the 14th to disqualify any insurrection “comforters” from holding office.
In a cyber war, which is what is being waged against us by Putin and his allies, we don’t see bombs. Putin knows he could never beat us with bombs. But with words and with allies within our Congressional halls, Putin can get his man back in the White House. And if that happens, the planet, and our children and grandchildren – will never forgive us.
It’s time for Joe Biden to rise up and realize he is a war president. He needs to declare war against anyone who attempts to silence the voice of the majority of Americans.
Kamala Harris Is Biden’s Achilles Heal and He Does Not Know It
I have nothing against Kamala Harris as a person or public servant, but she is one person even Trump can beat. Trump, Putin and the MAGA GOP know this.
Trump was okay with Hang Mike Pence. VP was okay with killing his enemy in a plane crash. If anything were to happen to Biden that stopped him from being there in the last months before November 2024, who among you think that this racist, mysogynist country would turn out in droves to elect Kamala as POTUS?
Kamala Harris as POTUS candidate is the one way the Republicans cannot lose. She probably knows this too. We are not ready for this yet as a country. We will be soon enough. We see it in the eyes of our young. But first, we have to get to soon enough. And right now, she is not the right person to be next in line to a 80-year-old man who is doing a great job, but also has enemies who would welcome and perhaps “mightily reward” harm done to him.
I’m sure you heard “Nikki” Hailey say she does not think Biden will survive. I am 100% sure that steps are being considered and dog whistled about how to make Harris the candidate at the last minute, post-convention.
The smartest thing Biden can do is to reassign Harris, right before the convention, and announce someone for that position who could get even more votes than Biden. There are plenty of people in our government who fit that bill. The other thing to watch for is Trump’s many trials. If Trump becomes inelibible or a pariah due to what is discovered, a younger GOP candidate will emerge – and then, Dems need to be free to pivot to a younger candidate.
In WW2, we all did our jobs with teamwork. If Harris wants to be president, her desire to “be potus” is currently a danger for the USA. By placing a person who could beat Trump in the VP position, it renders our enemies’ “eliminate Biden” hope, plan or plot, a non-starter tactical consideration.
Given that we are at war with Putin, who has agency and power with one political party, the GOP, we must act as if we are at war. Punishments for bad behavior that endagers Americans and American office holders, CIA or military must now be swift, since we are in a war. Does anyone think if Trump got into power he would not use his powers to silence his opponents? Trump just said General Millie should be executed! And we do nothing because we are not offically at war?
Biden Should Declare War Against the Enemies of Democracy
We are actually in a war now. There are no bombs being dropped. The weapons are words and controlling the votes. The smart solution is fast, easy and painless. Declare war against the enemies of democracy. We know who they are. Rigging an election is an act of war against democracy, is it not? So say so! People will appreciate it – on both sides.
I told my representative, Ted Lieu, these same words six years ago because I knew Trump personally and knew where this had to go. Ted thought using the word “war” would be incendiary. I know he meant well. But he did not grow up with monsters like Trump. I did. Once Biden declares war versus the enemies of democracy, his presidential war powers can be used swiftly to protect all Americans by arresting the enemies of democracy. And that means anyone who threatens a poll worker or connives to stop minorities from voting too.
I, myself, wish Kamala had been given Merrick Garland’s DOJ post. Maybe that’s not too late. That would send shivers up Trump’s spine.
I want to light upon the investigation and of Biden and Hunter and the public declaration of impeachment which the GOP has declared 9/12/23. There is a proper counter investigation which a Senate committee can start to counter this. That is the investigation of Jared Kushner and his two-billion-dollar gift from MBS. I believe this is directly tied to the documents case that Jack Smith has vs Donald Trump.
James Raskin recently announced he is investigating Kushner about why he got two billion from MBS. This has to be only one thing. Payback. Not charity; not an investment; payback for things done for MBS by Kushner/Trump.
For this we ask, what happened good for MBS during the Trump administration? NBC News -11-4-2017 | That post details that eight months into the Trump administration, the ultra-luxurious Riyadh hotel became a prison for hundreds of Saudi royals, billionaires and senior government officials were detained in a power play by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman aka MBS. The prisoners were told they had to sign away large chunks of their assets to be released. The detention involved both psychological abuse and torture.
These billionaires knew they were being hunted for years. They all had security, burner phones, WhatsApp and their own jets. Further, many were protected by our CIA. And yet they were all caught in a relatively short time and brought to one place to sign away their fortunes or die there resisting.
Our CIA kept tabs on these Saudi billionaires for our purposes here in the USA. And those connections would be listed in top secret documents that the new president Trump had access to. Trump went to MBS first chance he got to leave the USA. Is this adding up to you yet?
This is why Trump would not surrender the documents. He had already learned how to monetize them. Pinching Jared will reveal this and more – a lot more than this investigation into Hunter Biden.
Creating Order at the Border Would Greatly Lift Biden’s Popularity
I had reason to have a one on one discussion with a Republican congressperson from New Mexico, near the border. She’s one of those reps who actually focuses on her constituency. They want order at the border more than anything. And she told me a lot of her constituents would vote for Biden if he made it a priority to create what the average person would deem as order at the border. And yes, without the hate.
There was never a problem with building a wall at the border, or gates, checkpoints, and/or ways of controlling and measuring the influx of immigrants. The problem was the hate that Trump spewed and spread towards Mexicans and Muslims, and people from “sh*thole countries“. Democrats are fine with order at the border. I love that meme. Let’s amplify that to Joe Biden.
Finally, look for Russian oil prices to rise in 2024. The Fed had best make an effort to keep interest rates falling in 2024, regardless of “economic theory”.
2024 has to be approached like a war effort, or we risk losing it all.
THE ENGLISH CODE 