Thank you for this essay, and detailing the urgency of fighting back the oppression of this regime. We need voices of encouragement to keep up the pressure, on the fact that we have a fascist coup to overcome.
First, thank you for the work you're doing. Too many are either complacent or cowed - we need more like you, Greg Olear, Marc Elias, and Glenn Kirschner.
This article is another good one. I have one quibble - this seems like a small thing but it's important. As George Lakoff has written about, we shouldn't let our opponents frame the vocabulary of the issues on which we fight them.
With that in mind, please don't call Social Security, Medicare, and the VA "entitlements." They are earned benefits.
My wife and I have both been paying into Social Security for nearly fifty years, and since my military retirement pension is taxed for Social Security along with federal and state income tax, I will be paying into Social Security until the day I die. We both started working and paying into the system as teenagers, and now we're seniors.
Likewise, I earned my VA benefits - I enlisted as a healthy teenager and retired after twenty years on active duty in the Marine Corps with PTSD and a body an orthopedic surgeon told me looked like it had fifty years of wear and tear rather than twenty. I've had five orthopedic surgeries, courtesy of the VA, and will have a sixth next month - that's not an entitlement. It's a benefit I earned.
My wife is also disabled, a senior and a cancer survivor with multiple surgeries in her chart, and she earned her Social Security disability benefits. Howard Luttnick said that if we didn't get our Social Security payments and chose to complain rather than passively wait and hope they'd just catch up later, that would mean we were "fraudsters." We aren't fraudsters. We're just Americans who don't want to default on our mortgage and be unable to buy groceries.
The human rights violations of targeted minorities, the contempt for the courts, the heavyhanded persecution of lawyers and journalists who dare to criticize - I've also been studying history for fifty years, and I believe it's no hyperbole to say this country is looking more like Germany in the 1930s every week. But we need to keep raising our voices. As we used to say when I was in the Marine Corps, they can kill us but they can't eat us.
Krome detention facility in Miami…severe overcrowding of immigrant detainees. 4000 being held in a space that is only supposed to hold 500…this sounds like a 2nd Middle Passage! Please look into this to verify veracity. It’s all over TikTok.
It's not really rational, but right now I'm angriest at the Democratic Party and the white liberals and progressives who didn't realize that "our (so-called) democracy" was in big trouble till Trump was elected the first time. Yes, for the record, I'm white. I came of political age in 1968 and I've been flying the U.S. flag upside down ever since when I fly it at all, which isn't often. The Reagan administration didn't wake up the ones who were sentient adults at the time. The appointment of Clarence Thomas to SCOTUS (replacing *Thurgood Marshall*??!!??) in 1991 didn't wake them up. The mass incarceration of people of color didn't wake them up, or the repeal of Glass-Steagall. 9/11 and the U.S. freakout didn't wake them up. Neither did the appointment of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to SCOTUS, or the financial crash of 2007–2008. I mean, how many wake-up calls did they need?
Well, we the people are going to do our best to deal with what they apparently didn't see coming and I sure as hell hope we can manage to eject them from the driver's seat because they can't drive worth a damn.
Thank you for this essay, and detailing the urgency of fighting back the oppression of this regime. We need voices of encouragement to keep up the pressure, on the fact that we have a fascist coup to overcome.
First, thank you for the work you're doing. Too many are either complacent or cowed - we need more like you, Greg Olear, Marc Elias, and Glenn Kirschner.
This article is another good one. I have one quibble - this seems like a small thing but it's important. As George Lakoff has written about, we shouldn't let our opponents frame the vocabulary of the issues on which we fight them.
With that in mind, please don't call Social Security, Medicare, and the VA "entitlements." They are earned benefits.
My wife and I have both been paying into Social Security for nearly fifty years, and since my military retirement pension is taxed for Social Security along with federal and state income tax, I will be paying into Social Security until the day I die. We both started working and paying into the system as teenagers, and now we're seniors.
Likewise, I earned my VA benefits - I enlisted as a healthy teenager and retired after twenty years on active duty in the Marine Corps with PTSD and a body an orthopedic surgeon told me looked like it had fifty years of wear and tear rather than twenty. I've had five orthopedic surgeries, courtesy of the VA, and will have a sixth next month - that's not an entitlement. It's a benefit I earned.
My wife is also disabled, a senior and a cancer survivor with multiple surgeries in her chart, and she earned her Social Security disability benefits. Howard Luttnick said that if we didn't get our Social Security payments and chose to complain rather than passively wait and hope they'd just catch up later, that would mean we were "fraudsters." We aren't fraudsters. We're just Americans who don't want to default on our mortgage and be unable to buy groceries.
The human rights violations of targeted minorities, the contempt for the courts, the heavyhanded persecution of lawyers and journalists who dare to criticize - I've also been studying history for fifty years, and I believe it's no hyperbole to say this country is looking more like Germany in the 1930s every week. But we need to keep raising our voices. As we used to say when I was in the Marine Corps, they can kill us but they can't eat us.
Semper Fidelis, and keep up the good work!
Jim Finley
Captain, USMC, Retired
Krome detention facility in Miami…severe overcrowding of immigrant detainees. 4000 being held in a space that is only supposed to hold 500…this sounds like a 2nd Middle Passage! Please look into this to verify veracity. It’s all over TikTok.
It's not really rational, but right now I'm angriest at the Democratic Party and the white liberals and progressives who didn't realize that "our (so-called) democracy" was in big trouble till Trump was elected the first time. Yes, for the record, I'm white. I came of political age in 1968 and I've been flying the U.S. flag upside down ever since when I fly it at all, which isn't often. The Reagan administration didn't wake up the ones who were sentient adults at the time. The appointment of Clarence Thomas to SCOTUS (replacing *Thurgood Marshall*??!!??) in 1991 didn't wake them up. The mass incarceration of people of color didn't wake them up, or the repeal of Glass-Steagall. 9/11 and the U.S. freakout didn't wake them up. Neither did the appointment of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to SCOTUS, or the financial crash of 2007–2008. I mean, how many wake-up calls did they need?
Well, we the people are going to do our best to deal with what they apparently didn't see coming and I sure as hell hope we can manage to eject them from the driver's seat because they can't drive worth a damn.
The neo-reactionaries are the most driven of the arsonists.
https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-plot-against-america
https://thucydidesii.substack.com/p/who-got-disappeared-to-where-the
https://kellihere.substack.com/p/the-billionaire-bros-are-tearing
Oh I know. https://www.altrightdelete.news/p/vance-thiel-yarvin-2024-the-neoreactionary