I think your research and premises are sound, but I'm concerned that the average person will get lost in the 'inside baseball of it all' for agencies. So for me, this is where your organization really stands out in knowing the play at hand and able to decipher to citizens. Bravo
Thank you, Amanda! I love how analytical, systematic and strategic your commentary is. We can see exactly what is happening and where we need to fight.
The hope is that Donnie's ability to influence anything still depends on his ability to sucker voters into doing what he wants them to. Clearly, this reliance on their cooperation erodes with things like gerrymandering and manipulative vote-counting. But if that doesn't set in fast enough, the voters Donnie has relied on suckering will themselves get hurt by his policies, and will, in fact, throw the bum, and his imagined preferred successors, out. It will be up to Dems and whatever news Reps expose themselves to to remind Reps that just as they were lied to by Cheney/W, they were lied to by Donnie. And those who told themselves they voted for Donnie because the cost of living was too high, and he promised to lower it, will watch it get higher. He's already walked back his reassurance. How that hasn't been breathtakingly obvious to them so far is a mystery. But Donnie has always used smoke and mirrors to redirect attention. As he corrodes the lives of most Americans more, he may well not be able successfully to do that any more.
And maybe just as Donnie's first term unraveled while it was happening, this one might well, too. Ramaswamy has already been ejected. Many of Donnie's first term staff have been sounding the alarm, or were convicted and imprisoned, and a possibly healthy number of current Rep Congress members had made resistance noises, only to toe the line when they were threatened. They may not have forgotten their objections.
Unfortunately, as great as are many Substack accounts and posts, they amount to preaching to the converted. I've heard mention of Substack on NPR, which is sort of a cousin, but maybe the news will spread.
The last point here us probably the most important: likely everyone reading this is in agreement. We need to figure out how to get the message to persuadables who aren't reading this.
News... on paper? Coincidentally, last evening a friend & I were trading stories of our small town paperboy childhoods!
I also write (typically email/webform) to my congress people. I understand the actual wording matters little, they just count the +/- on whatever topic. But I AM gonna be counted.
Ah, you delivered the newspaper. I delivered the "Saturday Evening Post." On my bicycle.
Many petitions I sign encourage the signers to make changes: change the title; add something in your own words. So I thought, perhaps mistakenly, as you seem to know, that it's more than the +/-.
I know what I read in the paper 🙂 plus on web & some books by political operatives as we see in The Bulwark. My take from that is the constituent letters & calls are mainly tabulated for pro/con count on whatever topic. Also, Dem reps sort out & refer the death threats as appropriate. But the staffer or intern doing the counting isn’t likely to pass along my brilliant analysis & recommendations on an issue since I’m Joe Rando. They mainly take input from advisors they employ or solicit themselves. From ranking Party powers. Or written on dollar bills (figuratively) sent by funders who put enough zeroes after the digit to get their attention.
Of course there are some exceptional pols or moments. In person contacts might be successful for a constituent to really be heard. I’m to far to from DC to catch them in that office, and even locally they usually keep a schedule that makes it difficult to see them. But maybe! College try can’t hurt
You're even farther from me (south Florida; Miami area) than you are from DC. But I have to say I've been tempted to go up there. I want to explain to them what they can't otherwise know about the American medical industry, which they have to figure out how to regulate (but can't, if they don't know how it works). I don't believe in private money in politics, so I normally never donate to candidates. I panicked last year, though, and I donated and offered to donate. I responded to two donation request e-mails (Ocasio-Cortez and someone else) by saying I don't believe in donating, but I would make an exception for them if they would call me, or, better yet, let me meet them and as many of their colleagues as possible in DC, so I could explain to them what they have no way of knowing. I never got a response from those two (the e-mails are for the sole purpose of having recipients press the "Donate" button, and no one reads my response), so I didn't go forward with those two. Ocasio-Cortez doesn't need my $3, or $25, and she'll get re-elected anyway. And since I don't live in NYC, and can't vote for her...
Fred - a couple things, amigo: much media are so easily SQUIRREL-ed by Trump's fountain of absurdity. His letting slip that he's not gonna be able quickly to lower prices got lost in discussions about who really handles naming bodies of water. Thus the recognition of how they were lied to is delayed (by the time we're all living in tents in the cold & dark post-apocalypse we MIGHT catch on) 😉
As for preaching & choirs - on Sundays when I hear a particularly rousing sermon, the pastor generally leaves with a benediction to take that message (be it awareness, inspiration, and/or specific steps) and bring it into our world in the week ahead. I think I can get similarly geared up for action here. Also to your point, YES, absolutely, we all can participate in spreading the truth.
J, I'm not sure what you mean by SQUIRREL-ed, but I think the so-called media or "news" media are mostly intimidated. It's their job not to be intimidated, but they have surrendered their mission. Curiously, they haven't figured out that they lose more by failing to inform than they would be "speaking truth to power," so to speak. Or even dispassionately stating what "is."
I agree with you, at least in part, that Donnie's walking back of his reassurance that he would lower prices was somehow not sustained as a point of focus for the public. You remember that he reneged. And I remember it. (It's sort of like JD's admission that he invented the story of Ohio Haitians' eating their neighbors' pets, but his adherents continued to make this accusation anyway.) Somehow, he manages to terrorize and intimidate everyone, and succeed in urging them to believe his (blatant) lies, and not their "lying eyes." I regret to conclude that his ability to do that seems to have become a well-developed skill. He can still get people to work for him, even though he has a broad reputation for stiffing them once the work is done. Or, more recently, to appeal to his followers to send him the money to pay them. (People who can afford to send in $5 or $25 bail out an alleged billionaire?) I know people who are persuaded that he's the real thing and the Answer, and it's a total head-scratcher that they listen to what he says, and seem to miss the screaming nonsense, dishonesty, and totally vain self-focus of it. And I'm talking about people whom I would in every other sense consider very intelligent.
Fred - yes. It’s NOT mainly an intelligence issue, except maybe emotional iq. To me it’s moral and/or psychological. A lot of us like being lied to, pretending/lying to ourselves that’s not what’s happening.
Pop culture illuminates the world for me. SQUIRREL is the exclamation of a very distractible talking dog in the animated film UP. We enjoyed it even more than our grandkids did; the curmudgeon voiced by Ed Asner felt like looking in the mirror for me 😁
J, what's intriguing to me is the people who consider themselves highly moral, and not infrequently very religious, who go along with this flagrant immorality. They can't see it. I don't know how they miss it. Most of us watch videos of Donnie for two minutes, and we find the outrageousness unbearable. Other people seem to say not only that they don't detect it all, but that you and I are completely wrong, and will eventually find out how wrong we were.
In terms of "lik[ing] being lied to," I would take the liberty to disagree with you, if you mean that as you state it. I myself am a medical doctor, and my specialty is psychiatry. And I know for a glaring fact that people want answers. The more stark and easy is the answer, the better they like it. They are easy fodder to lie to. In a sense, the medical industry in this country lies to people a lot (for its own benefit, and not for the benefit of the patients), and politicians commonly do little else than lying to the public. You and I would agree about which politicians, or group of them, or who attach themselves to which party, are far more likely to lie to the public than are others.
I'm of the age to have grandchildren, too (I have two of them), but I do not live near them, and I have no personal interest in pop culture. I did hear about some cartoon movie in which Asner voiced a character, but I've never seen it. So I still don't know anything about your SQUIRREL reference, except what you said. I assume from the context of your comment that "SQUIRREL" distracts the talking dog in the way that we otherwise reference "shiny objects." It misroutes the attention of people or the dog voiced by Asner.
Nice summary Amanda. Will amplify. We are also closely tracking the resistamce to this implementation of the Orban model at Resisting Project 2025 substack — and how the new EOs mirror Project 2025. - ac
I am not convinced that these distinctions matter. Trump is motivated by pure power and the only thing he understands is power. He is rigging or destroying institutions that act on these legal distinctions so I don’t see how this strategy can be effective.
Maybe we stop calling them Republicans. And what they are. Trumplicans, or Trumplodites. MAGAstanians works too. But everytime we refer to them as Republicans, it harkens to times past and the reality of the moment. It kinda smoothes over who they are now...memory holes their abasement to Dear Leader.
As a political scientist specializing in democratic research, I applaud your efforts. Your summary is sound. Keep up the good work.
I think your research and premises are sound, but I'm concerned that the average person will get lost in the 'inside baseball of it all' for agencies. So for me, this is where your organization really stands out in knowing the play at hand and able to decipher to citizens. Bravo
Thank you, Amanda! I love how analytical, systematic and strategic your commentary is. We can see exactly what is happening and where we need to fight.
The hope is that Donnie's ability to influence anything still depends on his ability to sucker voters into doing what he wants them to. Clearly, this reliance on their cooperation erodes with things like gerrymandering and manipulative vote-counting. But if that doesn't set in fast enough, the voters Donnie has relied on suckering will themselves get hurt by his policies, and will, in fact, throw the bum, and his imagined preferred successors, out. It will be up to Dems and whatever news Reps expose themselves to to remind Reps that just as they were lied to by Cheney/W, they were lied to by Donnie. And those who told themselves they voted for Donnie because the cost of living was too high, and he promised to lower it, will watch it get higher. He's already walked back his reassurance. How that hasn't been breathtakingly obvious to them so far is a mystery. But Donnie has always used smoke and mirrors to redirect attention. As he corrodes the lives of most Americans more, he may well not be able successfully to do that any more.
And maybe just as Donnie's first term unraveled while it was happening, this one might well, too. Ramaswamy has already been ejected. Many of Donnie's first term staff have been sounding the alarm, or were convicted and imprisoned, and a possibly healthy number of current Rep Congress members had made resistance noises, only to toe the line when they were threatened. They may not have forgotten their objections.
Unfortunately, as great as are many Substack accounts and posts, they amount to preaching to the converted. I've heard mention of Substack on NPR, which is sort of a cousin, but maybe the news will spread.
The last point here us probably the most important: likely everyone reading this is in agreement. We need to figure out how to get the message to persuadables who aren't reading this.
Not that "letters to the editor [of newspapers]" is much of a thing any more, but it's a way to get out somewhat of the clubhouse.
News... on paper? Coincidentally, last evening a friend & I were trading stories of our small town paperboy childhoods!
I also write (typically email/webform) to my congress people. I understand the actual wording matters little, they just count the +/- on whatever topic. But I AM gonna be counted.
Let's do it!
Ah, you delivered the newspaper. I delivered the "Saturday Evening Post." On my bicycle.
Many petitions I sign encourage the signers to make changes: change the title; add something in your own words. So I thought, perhaps mistakenly, as you seem to know, that it's more than the +/-.
I know what I read in the paper 🙂 plus on web & some books by political operatives as we see in The Bulwark. My take from that is the constituent letters & calls are mainly tabulated for pro/con count on whatever topic. Also, Dem reps sort out & refer the death threats as appropriate. But the staffer or intern doing the counting isn’t likely to pass along my brilliant analysis & recommendations on an issue since I’m Joe Rando. They mainly take input from advisors they employ or solicit themselves. From ranking Party powers. Or written on dollar bills (figuratively) sent by funders who put enough zeroes after the digit to get their attention.
Of course there are some exceptional pols or moments. In person contacts might be successful for a constituent to really be heard. I’m to far to from DC to catch them in that office, and even locally they usually keep a schedule that makes it difficult to see them. But maybe! College try can’t hurt
It's been really nice to meet you, Joe.
You're even farther from me (south Florida; Miami area) than you are from DC. But I have to say I've been tempted to go up there. I want to explain to them what they can't otherwise know about the American medical industry, which they have to figure out how to regulate (but can't, if they don't know how it works). I don't believe in private money in politics, so I normally never donate to candidates. I panicked last year, though, and I donated and offered to donate. I responded to two donation request e-mails (Ocasio-Cortez and someone else) by saying I don't believe in donating, but I would make an exception for them if they would call me, or, better yet, let me meet them and as many of their colleagues as possible in DC, so I could explain to them what they have no way of knowing. I never got a response from those two (the e-mails are for the sole purpose of having recipients press the "Donate" button, and no one reads my response), so I didn't go forward with those two. Ocasio-Cortez doesn't need my $3, or $25, and she'll get re-elected anyway. And since I don't live in NYC, and can't vote for her...
Fred - a couple things, amigo: much media are so easily SQUIRREL-ed by Trump's fountain of absurdity. His letting slip that he's not gonna be able quickly to lower prices got lost in discussions about who really handles naming bodies of water. Thus the recognition of how they were lied to is delayed (by the time we're all living in tents in the cold & dark post-apocalypse we MIGHT catch on) 😉
As for preaching & choirs - on Sundays when I hear a particularly rousing sermon, the pastor generally leaves with a benediction to take that message (be it awareness, inspiration, and/or specific steps) and bring it into our world in the week ahead. I think I can get similarly geared up for action here. Also to your point, YES, absolutely, we all can participate in spreading the truth.
J, I'm not sure what you mean by SQUIRREL-ed, but I think the so-called media or "news" media are mostly intimidated. It's their job not to be intimidated, but they have surrendered their mission. Curiously, they haven't figured out that they lose more by failing to inform than they would be "speaking truth to power," so to speak. Or even dispassionately stating what "is."
I agree with you, at least in part, that Donnie's walking back of his reassurance that he would lower prices was somehow not sustained as a point of focus for the public. You remember that he reneged. And I remember it. (It's sort of like JD's admission that he invented the story of Ohio Haitians' eating their neighbors' pets, but his adherents continued to make this accusation anyway.) Somehow, he manages to terrorize and intimidate everyone, and succeed in urging them to believe his (blatant) lies, and not their "lying eyes." I regret to conclude that his ability to do that seems to have become a well-developed skill. He can still get people to work for him, even though he has a broad reputation for stiffing them once the work is done. Or, more recently, to appeal to his followers to send him the money to pay them. (People who can afford to send in $5 or $25 bail out an alleged billionaire?) I know people who are persuaded that he's the real thing and the Answer, and it's a total head-scratcher that they listen to what he says, and seem to miss the screaming nonsense, dishonesty, and totally vain self-focus of it. And I'm talking about people whom I would in every other sense consider very intelligent.
Fred - yes. It’s NOT mainly an intelligence issue, except maybe emotional iq. To me it’s moral and/or psychological. A lot of us like being lied to, pretending/lying to ourselves that’s not what’s happening.
Pop culture illuminates the world for me. SQUIRREL is the exclamation of a very distractible talking dog in the animated film UP. We enjoyed it even more than our grandkids did; the curmudgeon voiced by Ed Asner felt like looking in the mirror for me 😁
J, what's intriguing to me is the people who consider themselves highly moral, and not infrequently very religious, who go along with this flagrant immorality. They can't see it. I don't know how they miss it. Most of us watch videos of Donnie for two minutes, and we find the outrageousness unbearable. Other people seem to say not only that they don't detect it all, but that you and I are completely wrong, and will eventually find out how wrong we were.
In terms of "lik[ing] being lied to," I would take the liberty to disagree with you, if you mean that as you state it. I myself am a medical doctor, and my specialty is psychiatry. And I know for a glaring fact that people want answers. The more stark and easy is the answer, the better they like it. They are easy fodder to lie to. In a sense, the medical industry in this country lies to people a lot (for its own benefit, and not for the benefit of the patients), and politicians commonly do little else than lying to the public. You and I would agree about which politicians, or group of them, or who attach themselves to which party, are far more likely to lie to the public than are others.
I'm of the age to have grandchildren, too (I have two of them), but I do not live near them, and I have no personal interest in pop culture. I did hear about some cartoon movie in which Asner voiced a character, but I've never seen it. So I still don't know anything about your SQUIRREL reference, except what you said. I assume from the context of your comment that "SQUIRREL" distracts the talking dog in the way that we otherwise reference "shiny objects." It misroutes the attention of people or the dog voiced by Asner.
This looks to be a valuable resource to educate us and equip us us for resistance. Thank you
Don't neglect Erdogan's mastery of entrenchment. That's what I studied as it unfolded, and it ticks all the boxes.
Defining a problem is the first step in solving it. This article does that and more.
Nice summary Amanda. Will amplify. We are also closely tracking the resistamce to this implementation of the Orban model at Resisting Project 2025 substack — and how the new EOs mirror Project 2025. - ac
Project 2025 is already being used by Trump and remedial efforts must start asap.
I am not convinced that these distinctions matter. Trump is motivated by pure power and the only thing he understands is power. He is rigging or destroying institutions that act on these legal distinctions so I don’t see how this strategy can be effective.
Very helpful for me, a lawyer, in focusing on where I can best help out in this moment of history. Answer: defending “enemies” of the state in court.
Impeach on emoluments, Impeach on Espionage,Impeach on Ibstruction of Justice, Impeach on aiding and giving comfort to seditious conspirators.
Keep his crimes in the public eye until Democrats regain the house so at that moment the impeachment can begin.
Keep his crimes in the public eye at all times. Do not let one day pass that does not include a mention or more if his crimes.
Maybe we stop calling them Republicans. And what they are. Trumplicans, or Trumplodites. MAGAstanians works too. But everytime we refer to them as Republicans, it harkens to times past and the reality of the moment. It kinda smoothes over who they are now...memory holes their abasement to Dear Leader.
Now I'm really scared. MAGAts will run roughshod over us; then, use an Article 5 convention to overturn the Constitution. We are in trouble.
Very pertinent information & worthwhile! Thanks again!
If ai is a reflection of us or a very small part of the builders who deploy ai, What does that entrenched factor mean for us?