2024 Archives

From Jefferson’s era to today, history proves democracy’s defenders can still win… It’s probably, politically and spiritually, the darkest Thanksgiving for our nation in my lifetime. So how about a quick story out of America’s earliest history that somewhat echoes this moment and may give us some hope? Donald Trump has told us he’s going to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to declare a state of emergency, which will allow him to round up not only undocumented immigrants but also his political opponents, who he refers to as “the enemy within.” He came to power using Willie Horton-like ads trashing trans people and is happy to demonize anybody else who stands up to his hunger for absolute power. In an age-old technique usually employed during wartime, Trump regularly uses the rhetoric America has employed against foreign enemies to characterize Americans who disagree with him and his policies. Remember the “raghead” slurs against Arabs from the Afghan and Iraqi wars? Or politicians referring to Vietnamese in the 1970s as “slants” and “gooks”? My dad, who volunteered to fight in WWII straight out of high school, called Germans and Japanese “krauts” and “Japs” to his dying days; American propaganda during wartime encouraged popular usage of these racist characterizations. In this regard, Trump’s trying to lie us into a war. But not an external war; this time he’s pushing for something very much like a 21st century version of a second civil war. A war by Americans against Americans.

Democrats have a long and illustrious history of strong leadership: FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Clinton, Obama. Where is this generation's leader? So much for American democracy and the concept that "no man is above the law." There is no law and not a word in the Constitution that requires Attorney General Merrick Garland to order Jack Smith to drop charges against Trump. It's merely a policy written in a letter by Richard Nixon's corrupt Justice Department (whose director, Attorney General John Mitchell, went to prison for his corruption) when Nixon was being investigated…and doubled down on by Bill Clinton's Justice Department when Clinton was being investigated for lying under oath. It has no force of law. It's merely policy. Written by an agency lawyer who was never elected by anybody to anything.

Most of the corruption of our federal and state governments by big money track back to two central pillars of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. They are: “Money is the same thing as speech” and “corporations are persons entitled to rights under the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.” Both are based on lies. I’ll deal with the “free speech” lie in a separate chapter, but first let’s take a deep dive into the history of corporate personhood.

Private equity, billionaire agendas, and GOP-funded attacks are driving a stake through the heart of American media diversity… Have you heard that Comcast is planning to sell MSNBC? Is Rupert Murdoch planning to buy it? Will America's media landscape soon resemble those of Hungary and Russia? Without the rightwing media juggernaut, Donald Trump probably wouldn't be president next year and wouldn't have won in 2016. That said, the progressive media landscape looks like it might be about to get a whole lot worse. Comcast, which owns NBC and its subsidiaries CNBC and MSNBC (among other media outlets) announced this week that they'll be spinning off MSNBC (among others) next year. And the consequences are already showing up. It was reported this week that Rachel Maddow just took a substantial annual pay-cut because of the uncertain future of the network.