When we Run Too Long from the Truth, We Become Imprisoned by Our Attempt to Escape: The War on Truth

How long can anyone actively ignore the truth before the truth comes back at them? Certainly, anyone who was or is being abused and traumatized carries an extremely difficult reality as a burden, and need compassion and support to face it. But for those who want revenge, who strike out to disappear not only a truth they didn’t like yet heard spoken, but the person who voiced it⎼ there’s something very wrong. Attacking someone because they say something that opposes their way of thinking is simply wrong. Eventually, the reality must break through. Like in a dream, if we run from a nightmare image it pursues us even more vehemently; running from the truth can imprisons us.

 

This is DT. I don’t know if he’s just emotionally incapable of acknowledging any reality other than one he’s fashioned; or if he’s so unstable, so on edge he gets vindictive if he’s challenged. Or maybe he just uses edginess as a strategy to frighten others into giving him what he wants. No matter what, his power and actions have been scary and dangerous for so many of us.

 

Even before first taking office in 2017, he showed a repugnance for speaking, perceiving, or even allowing the truth to be spoken in his presence. The number of distortions and lies he’s uttered is incredible. And he’s attacked, spread ridiculous lies and dangerous threats against those who oppose or speak against him, so much so that now no one in the GOP will reign him in. Many of those who follow him believe he’s the very voice of truth.

 

But if no one will challenge a would-be emperor, how will he know he’s naked? The case of the Epstein Files might be one step in the truth catching him. DT continuously fueled conspiracy theories about prominent people, mostly Democrats, using Jeffrey Epstein’s services to engage in sex crimes with minors. DT promised his supporters he would release the “Epstein client list.” He promised prosecutions, to name names and reveal evidence. He promised transparency. Instead, he had the DOJ redact his name from Epstein files.

 

And for his supporters, the issue of stopping child sexual abuse and sex trafficking is deeply important and emotional; they believed DT would champion their concerns and expose the crimes. Why they would expect a person convicted of sexual abuse with a long history of twisting the truth to honestly champion their call for honesty and transparency is beyond me; but this is what occurred.

 

What will happen when the reality of DT’s actions concerning Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-predator, hits more people? Maxwell is a convicted sex trafficker, who not only recruited young girls for commercial sex but participated in their abuse, and constantly lied about it. DT had Todd Blanche talk with her instead of her victims, and then ordered her moved to a low security, resort prison. What deals did he work out with her in terms of possible future testimony?

 

So now, DT is in trouble. His own supporters can’t believe him when he and his DOJ say there is no list, or the Democrats created the list, or the issue is not worth his time⎼ and those who waste his time pushing for release of the records he promised to reveal are “weaklings,” “idiots.”

 

DT is at war with truth and with reality itself. He’s at war with anyone who reveals facts or speaks truths or shares useful information.

 

He’s at war with any news media that reveals truths, reveals the reality that opposes his fiction….

 

*To read the whole piece, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Can We Utilize Fear Instead of Fearing It? – When It’s So Real It Feels Unreal

This time in history we’re going through is not only scary and disturbing, but so difficult to understand and accept as real. Part of that difficulty comes from the almost all-pervasive reach of the threat. Part of it comes from wanting so much to know what will happen⎼ want to know “we will be all right” ⎼ but we’re in a different universe from knowing that. Part of it comes from perceiving that so much we value, that we feel is crucial to our lives is being taken away step by step. And this is so real it feels unreal.

 

Just last week, DT threatened to withhold support for or attack lawmakers who go against his wish to wipe out the independent free press in this country, including defunding NPR and PBS. And then his sycophants in Congress defunded NPR and PBS.

 

He sued the Wall Street Journal for billions for publishing a letter purportedly from DT to Jeffrey Epstein that included a lewd drawing, and apparently providing evidence that DT and Epstein were not just casual acquaintances.

 

Stephen Colbert, who was often critical of the president in his monologues, saw his contract for his late-night show terminated by CBS. This looks suspiciously like CBS acting in fear of being attacked by DT. As Steven Harper, in Common Dreams asked, was Colbert’s termination part of an implicit or explicit deal to get Federal Communications Commission approval for a merger between Paramount (parent company of CBS) and Skydance Media?

 

And was the termination of Colbert’s contract a continuation of Paramounmt’s bowing down to DT that they started earlier in the year, when they agreed to pay the President $16 million to settle a suit that he had almost no chance of winning? The suit was not just frivolous but a direct attack by DT on CBS for daring to share, during the election, an interview with DT’s opponent, Kamala Harris.

 

And these are just a small sampling of his attacks on the press. He threatened legal action against CNN for reporting on an app that warns people when ICE agents are nearby. He threatened Disney, which owns ABC News, with a suit because George Stephanopoulos, a top news anchor, shared a description of the president’s assault on writer E. Jean Carroll⎼ and Disney capitulated, paid $16 million to DT, despite the fact DT was found guilty by a court, for this case of sexual abuse.

 

And on and on. DT is quickly moving to secure the power of a dictator. He’s trying to rip away our right to free speech and to eliminate all the vehicles we could use to exercise that right. Back in 2017, during his first administration, he received criticism for calling the media, the free press, the “enemy of the people.” Now, he’s straight out attacking any media or anyone that shares views other than his own. He’s doing anything he can to shut it, or us, up.

 

We don’t know what will come of this. We don’t know if enough people will protest, or enough politicians will say “we’ve had it with him.” And then there’s the Jeffrey Epstein rebellion against DT.

 

There’s a large segment of MAGA supporters who voted for DT because he promised to reveal a list complied by Jeffrey Epstein of prominent men who utilized Epstein’s connections to engage in child sexual predation. And now DT’s saying the opposite⎼ saying, there was no list. There is nothing there. And any of you that waste my time on this are weaklings, stupid people. Will the Jeffrey Epstein rebellion against DT’s refusal to come clean build in strength and undermine his power base?

 

DT has also been showing increasing signs of cognitive decline, although there have been warnings of him being reality-challenged for years….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

DT Has One Great Ability, to Manipulate and Destroy: If He Had Set Out to Purposely Hurt Our Nation, His Actions Couldn’t Be More Destructive

In 1919, at the closing edge of the first world war, and when the waves of the flu pandemic were beginning to spread and kill millions, the poet William Butler Yeats wrote: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the land…” A time of political, social, and moral breakdown seemed at hand. The old values, old ways of thinking, were dying.

 

And today, we’re clearly facing our own time of pandemics, political, social, and moral breakdown, of old ways, maybe once reliable ways of understanding the world being ripped from us, plunging us into depths of unknowing.

 

Judd Legum wrote an article called “Making Measles Great Again.” In it he described how DT and his health secretary, Robert Kennedy, Jr, instead of making our nation great are making the measles threat great. They’re making us greatly more vulnerable to future pandemics.

 

Measles is extremely contagious. About 92% of unvaccinated people exposed to it get infected. But by the year 2000, the WHO declared the disease eradicated in the US, due to an extensive vaccination program. In 2000, there were 86 cases reported in the US. Halfway through 2025, there were already 1274 cases, 155 hospitalizations, and 3 deaths, marking the first time in a decade with a death from the illness.

 

And the cause? Increasing distrust of science itself, of reliable information. People like RFK, Jr. spreading misinformation. Despite the fact that almost all the spread of the illness is amongst the unvaccinated, RFK claimed that the vaccine caused the deaths, the illness.

 

RFK is doing the same with the deadly bird flu, saying we should let it run wild, while cancelling research into vaccines and other methods of ending its spread. The magazine Science published an article from virologists, veterinarians, and health safety experts on the inanity of this approach: “Essentially, the longer you allow a virus that has shown to be effective in infecting multiple hosts survive in an environment, the greater the chance you give it to spread, to mutate, and to try its luck at adaptation,”  said Erin Sorrell, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Worst case scenario, the virus adapts and expands its host range to become transmissible in humans … Now we have a pandemic.”

 

Undermining public health institutions is one deadly way to unravel the core of a nation and “loose the blood-dimmed tide,”  and “mere anarchy upon the world.” DT’s big beautiful/ugly bill passed just a week ago could undermine the core program that keeps our hospitals and healthcare system functioning. Although the worst effects of the bill were purposefully delayed until after the 2026 midterms, the bill could kick up to 16 million people off MEDICAID and health insurance. Yet DT and his GOP continue to lie about or try to distort how devastating these effects could be.

 

In Texas, at least 109 people have died, 173 remain missing due to the extreme floods. Concerns have arisen that cuts by DOGE in the Weather Service, and the GOP assault on climate science might have contributed to the disastrous situation there. According to Jake Johnson, writing for Common Dreams, “Though local National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters did issue warnings in the lead-up to Friday’s flooding—which killed at least 82 people, including dozens of children—key roles were reportedly vacant ahead of the downpour, prompting scrutiny of the Trump administration’s mass firings and budget cuts, in addition to years of neglect and failures by Republicans at the state level.”

 

It’s unclear how much staffing shortages at the NWS undermined the efficacy of the response, of warnings and preparations by officials in Texas. However, it’s certainly clear that climate warming is making such events more common and fearsome. What the DT administration and the GOP are doing will only assure that such tragedies continue to occur, even grow in frequency, by undermining research into climate science and by hiding information needed to mitigate the harmful effects of climate instability. The Big Ugly bill terminates many federal investments into alternative wind and solar energy thusly increasing the threat of carbon pollution and climate warming.

 

DT even plans to cut FEMA and turn disaster response to states or run the federal responses right out of the White House. Is this another way to enforce obedience to him, as he’s done in the past, by withholding aid to states that do not bend a knee to him?….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Stop the King of Lies and Rip-offs from Being the King of US: What Can I Do? Is Not an Assumption of Hopelessness but A Driver of Reflection and Action

This morning, the sky was partly cloudy, after one of the wettest springs in history, with a grey haze from Canadian fires. Still, a cardinal and a vireo were singing. Outside my office, the rhododendron flowers had turned brown and were falling off the bush, but the roses were very alive with a deep red color.

 

But in our human realm, news reports set a very threatening tone to the day. This began at a news conference earlier in the week, when Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat from California, tried to ask a question of DT’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. As he tried to take a step forward to be heard, identifying himself as a US Senator (the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee on Immigration), Noem’s security detail stopped him, shoved him to the ground, where he was handcuffed and forcibly taken from the room.

 

Later, the Senator explained he had repeatedly asked DHS for information on their increasingly extreme actions against immigrants but had not received answers. He said, “If this is how this administration… the DHS responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers, throughout the LA community and throughout California and throughout the country.”

 

Since June 6, mostly nonviolent protests continued in LA, after having been met not only with police but soldiers, National Guard troops sent in by DT against the explicit direction of California Governor Newsom. This was an even more unrestrained repeat of DT’s militarized response in 2020  to protests against the killing of George Floyd. And, as in 2020, the possibly illegal deployment of troops only served to inflame the situation further.

 

And on the morning of Saturday, June 14th, in their Minnesota home, Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state representative and her husband were assassinated, in a politically targeted killing. The assailant also shot a second Democratic lawmaker and his wife multiple times, but they both thankfully remain alive as of now.  When DT was asked by a reporter if he would call Minnesota Governor Walz, he responded with more spite than any semblance of truly caring. “Well, it’s a terrible thing. I think he’s a terrible governor,” ABC News reported Trump said. “I think he’s a grossly incompetent person. But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too.” As of Sunday, he hadn’t called the Governor.

 

Starting Saturday morning, a “Celebration” in Washington D.C., with a military parade in the evening, honoring the 250th anniversary of the US Army⎼ and the birthday of the King of Lies. But across 200 cities covering most of the country, a NO KINGS demonstration at 1:00. Also later in the day, a Gay Pride event and a Juneteenth remembrance.

 

The events presented a dramatic contrast. The military parade celebrated not only the courage and sacrifice of soldiers, but the ego and self-centeredness of DT. In anticipation and messaging, it was frightening; but it turned out to be a sad and not well attended event.

 

The NO KINGS protests were attended by millions. They were both serious and fun, concerned for the rights and future for all of us⎼ compassionate yet defiant of DT’s attempts to destroy democracy, to mistreat and remove immigrants of color, and undermine any government agencies and policies that protect the well-being of the mass of citizens, like healthcare, Social Security, SNAP, and education.

 

The protests were peaceful yet energizing.

 

*To tread the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

It’s Not When, But If: Will 2025 Be the Last Memorial Day Honoring and Mourning Those Who Died Fighting for Democracy?

This past week I wondered: will this be the last Memorial Day? With all the assaults on democracy by DT and his authoritarian party, will this be the last year the holiday is commemorated to remember and honor those who gave their lives defending democracy?

 

When he first won the election less than one year or one eternity ago, DT controlled all 3 branches of government. And many of us who opposed him said “wait until the midterms. We’ll win control of the House and maybe Senate and resurrect democracy.” But few who’re looking realistically now at recent events are still saying that. Many realize our time to act is not in a year, but now. DT is doing all he can to destroy the possibility of meaningful midterm elections. As the song says, “It’s now or [possibly] never.”

 

For example, I’ve been reading about the hidden contents of the House Reconciliation bill, or what DT calls “a big beautiful bill” and others call the Big Ugly. DT calls it “beautiful” because it gives him what no law should ever give a president in a democracy. It gives him not only more economic means to rule unopposed, to be the boss, King, Dictator, the absolute word on everything by gifting him tax cuts on the rich. And as it’s clearly developed in Project 2025, it also gives him the political power to make his dreams come true.

 

On May 22, Robert Reich wrote an article revealing details of what is hidden from most news discussions. He describes how DT has been working for years to neuter the courts. For example, several lower court justices and then the Supreme Court told  him to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of this country, illegally deported to a cruel prison in El Salvador. But DT wouldn’t comply with the orders. A federal judge ruled that the DT regime willfully disregarded a court order restraining them from such deportations. He also tries to intimidate judges with attacks on them and their families in language that could and has led to violence.

 

Courts have only one power to make their orders stick—to hold a politician or anyone in contempt. But the Big Ugly Bill has a hidden agenda. There’s a provision which says, “No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction was issued…” Translation: this provision would stop courts from enforcing contempt citations and end any power they had over DT.

 

An article in the Campaign Legal Center for Advancing Democracy Through Law news outlet, by Eric Kashdan not only gives more details on the provision described by Reich, but provides other hidden anti-democratic material in the 1000 page bill.

 

For example, in section 43201(c) is buried a provision imposing a ban of ten years on enforcing any state or local law that would regulate AI, including laws controlling its use in political campaigns and elections. This means its use to fabricate images and spread disinformation. It actually stops the enforcement of laws passed by any government bodies other than DT’s Congress, preventing any lawmakers outside Congress from protecting us, their constituents.

 

Kasdan spells out this could⎼ and would⎼ mean giving free reign to the spread of lies and disinformation that undermine our ability to make informed decisions. It would create an even more dangerous situation than what we have now, one that further debilitates any trust in the existence of truth or trust in our elections. It takes us right through the doors of the Ministry of Truth/Disinformation George Orwell described in his novel 1984.

 

This is only one part of the DT GOP assault on “we the people” of the U. S….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Science & Democracy: Anaximander and Opening the Mind Replacing a Myth of What Was with Expanding Our Understanding of What Could Be

A few years ago, I wrote an article asking Is Uncertainty A Blessing or a Curse, Or Both? It was based on a book by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli. As a result of the article, Dr. Rovelli’s publisher sent me a copy of his new book, Anaximander and the Birth of Science. This new book is as well written and intriguing as the first one I read years ago. It’s also as relevant as the older book was to this frightening moment in history that we are facing.

 

Rovelli defines science, in the introduction, as “the passionate search for ever newer ways to conceive the world.” Its strength is thus based not in what we’re certain of, but in a “radical awareness” of our ignorance, of recognizing that what we don’t know is vast. Thus, it’s fluid and constantly pushes us to learn more and more. And it constantly moves to overthrow the old ways that we ordered our world and move us into something new, something ever deeper and more comprehensive.

 

And one aspect of the threat we face today is the emphasis on certainty. To emphasize certainty in the face of a universe that’s continually changing and evolving is to deny and even hide reality. It’s to cling to the ideas, images, illusions we held of the past in order to pretend we can manufacture a future that fits those created illusions. It means to undermine learning itself in favor of indoctrination. It’s to fight for dominance for one person or group over the many; to fight for total centralized control of information, resources, and power instead of a de-centralized, interdependent, democratic sharing of perspectives, information, resources, and power. In other words, science and democracy are linked together.

 

Anaximander lived in a place and time where both political and mental realms were opening up, where gaps were emerging in the sources and institutions of both political power and intellectual ideas and belief. He was born in Miletus, a Greek city-state on the Ionian or Turkish coast, in 610 BCE. Athens was just beginning to grow in power. The Odyssey and The Iliad had been composed two centuries earlier.  Solon, the creator of the first constitution to incorporate democratic ideas, had just been born. And about 200 years later, we have Sophocles, Sappho, and Plato and the Golden Age of Greece.

 

Miletus was close to Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Black Sea, and traded with a good portion of the rest of the world. The city thrived from the introduction of ideas and products from all these different areas. Rovelli discusses how civilizations flourish when they mingle; they decline in isolation. So called cultural “purity’ closes off new ideas and understandings.

 

His was a time of secularization, where the religious or spiritual realms were not controlled by a church or religious institution. Where the ideas of the ancients, of the past, were not given divine and unquestioned status. The Homeric gods were neither fully credible nor majestic, but full of faults as well as powers. Miletus itself was an independent city-state in a league of cities where no one entity dominated the others. It was called the Ionian League, and it met in a Parliament, maybe the first in history.

 

Writing was no longer the exclusive domain of the religious elite and rulers, or to scribes, priests, and aristocrats. It was possibly the first time in history written accumulated knowledge and study were accessible to many, both to learn⎼ and to question, criticize, and debate. A large class of citizens could discuss not only intellectual issues but how to apportion power and make decisions critical to the lives of the community. And it was assumed that knowledge and truth best emerge from allowing criticism⎼ of established ideas as well as new understandings. And where open discussion replaced absolute belief. The same held true in social and political matters. Democracy in intellect and belief mirrored democracy in politics.

 

Of course, this didn’t last….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

Who Are They Coming After Next? If We Didn’t Believe It Before, We’ll Believe It Now

The volume of birdcalls increases as night slowly transforms into day. It’s spring; my wife’s flowers are painting the yard beautiful colors. The air smells sweet to breathe. On a day like this, how can we believe it can all end? How can we believe our savings can be stolen or depleted, the protections on air quality ended, so the air will no longer smell so sweet or be safely breathed. Bird habitats dangerously threatened. The safety of my home and property ended. And all by the DT government. How do we see the ferocity of such a beast when so much of what was, and so much beauty remains?

 

The Washington Post recently revealed that DT is having plans written up to weaken the independence of the nuclear safety regulators and relax rules that protect us from radiation exposure. Why? To fast track the resurrection of the nuclear power industry.

 

According to Reuters, on May 11 FEMA announced that, to align themselves with DT’s intentions, they are sharply reducing training for state and local weather and other emergency managers. This would leave all storm-prone communities more vulnerable, less prepared to handle the often-devastating effects of hurricanes and other catastrophic weather events, all of which have been happening more frequently with global warming. And they’re doing this just a few weeks before the June 1 beginning of hurricane season, a hurricane season predicted to be busier than normal this year.

 

Why? They claim their aim is to reduce waste and save money. But it’s difficult to understand how paying the people who help us prepare for storms and rebuild afterwards is wasteful—unless you’re a billionaire and think your money makes you immune from needing their services.

 

And this is happening in every aspect of government, affecting every aspect of our lives, from weakening rules that protect our water from highly dangerous, forever chemicals, firing those who fight forest fires, firing inspectors who provide food safety, healthcare, to stealing our retirement savings, habeas corpus, and even our right to speak out and vote.

 

And if that isn’t enough, this really scared me⎼ The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, was recently arrested by DHS agents and charged with trespass at an ICE detention facility. This was a private detention facility, opened despite a law prohibiting such, and without allowing legally required inspections by the state. The mayor was there in support of a congressional delegation aiming to inspect the site and was not on private land but public property. The mayor said he had been standing there for over an hour when arrested and had not been warned to move.

 

The following day, a DHS spokesperson said they were considering also arresting the 3 member Democratic Congressional delegation that was at the facility with the mayor. They accused the Democrats of assaulting ICE agents.

 

One member of the Democratic delegation, Representative Rob Menendez, said: “As Members of Congress, we have a legal right to conduct oversight at any DHS facility without prior notice, as we have already done twice this year. Throughout every step of this visit, ICE attempted to intimidate everyone involved and impede our ability to conduct oversight.” Menendez added, “This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and I am shocked and disturbed that something like this happened in our community.”

 

Another member of the delegation, Representative LaMonica McIver added that the lawmakers were met with “contempt, disrespect, and aggression from ICE.” So⎼ who is violating the law here?

 

And this comes just a few weeks after DT’s Department of Justice arrested Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan…

 

*To read the entire piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

It’s So Overwhelming: Rediscovering the Core of Our Being

DT continues to do all he can to stir up the chaos, the shock, the abuses so we can’t keep up. My e-mails are flooded with petitions, unbelievable news stories, information on protests that happened and ones to join, and requests for money to fight back against the assaults. Never before did I so anticipate and cheer on suits against the government. I used to automatically delete 95% of emails; now, 95% seem too critical to ignore.

 

This morning: Scott Dworkin, Massive Anti-DT Protests Erupt Everywhere and More Good News. And: Opinion You Don’t Want To Miss. Trump IRS Pick Just Enriched by Tax Schemers, Trump Relaunches His Tariff Corruption Game. Articles on DT’s threat to the economy and threat to our ability to afford our lives. The Supreme Court denying or sometimes affirming DT’s lust for absolute power at our expense. The illegal imprisonment of immigrants, the attempts to destroy due process and the rule of law. Articles repeatedly appear on the destruction of health care, environmental protections, and all government functions that support the well-being and the very lives of most Americans.

 

And notably, an article in the New York Times on Easter Sunday about how Americans desire and are turning to a belief in a god, soul, afterlife, a spiritual dimension to their lives. 92% of Americans claim they have some kind of spiritual belief. The article, Believing, by Lauren Jackson, appears in a section of the Times dramatically titled America Wants a God. It’s part of her now yearlong project studying a significant shift in American life, after decades of people turning away from religion. A good number of us, 40 million Americans, had left their churches, synagogues, etc. and looked to jobs, gym classes, mysticism, meditation, mostly secular replacements.

 

But since the pandemic, the environmental emergency, and DT, more and more of us have felt an “existential malaise.” Our world, our lives are threatened on so many fronts, and we want somewhere to turn for support, for reason, for care. And studies, including one by the Pew Research Center, show that people who practice a religion, or have some sort of regular spiritual practice, tend to be happier, and one from Harvard on how religion contributes to being healthier. (Yeah, Harvard.)

 

This revival of spiritual longing, or maybe desperation, rings very true to me. We see this in the great interest in mindfulness over the last 40 years. And on the other hand, we see it in the maybe one third of Americans who have declared DT their new God or savior. I don’t know how believing in the Donald’s holiness makes people happier. I mean, he sells bibles for extra cash and seems to sell access to power to evangelicals for votes.

 

If godly means moral, caring about the well-being of others, living by the Golden Rule or Ten Commandments, and knowledgeable of the content of whatever Holy teachings one says one believes in, I think DT is probably one of the last people on earth to be called godly. But he nevertheless claims the title so absolutely others seem to accept his insistence as proof. When an assassin’s bullet just grazed him, he claimed God intervened in his behalf. Maybe spreading hate has a happy edge to it, or makes people feel united in a community of shared bitterness. Or maybe people can mistake autocratic political power for power over eternity.

 

Since even before the early Middle Ages, religion was often pitted against reason. With a 20th century decrease in church membership there was an increase in trust in science, research, rationality. And, at the same time, an increase in materialism, in a commodification of every aspect of life. Our own attention, our very mind, became the biggest commodity to sell. Although maybe this effort of commodifying the human mind, of controlling the mind of others, has always been the biggest power that certain humans hungered for?…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Movement Has Begun in Earnest⎼ And Just in Time, I Hope

I joined maybe millions of others in over 1400 cities and towns across this nation in the Hands Off rally and march on Saturday, April 5th. It was both deadly serious and wonderful; a reminder of the terror we face and an awakening of the heart⎼ an awakening of a commitment to act. And an act of caring for ourselves, others, and our physical and social worlds.

 

It was deadly serious for obvious reasons and maybe some not so obvious. After about 40 minutes of speeches and songs, the rally became a march, from the downtown commons to a Community Center. It stopped at a busy intersection, where it became a “honk & wave” demonstration. So many cars honked to join in and support us, 50 times more than those that gave us a thumbs down. Many cars even had signs supporting ours.

 

At that point, I was with a good friend, standing on a busy street corner crowded with cars on the roads, and protestors for several blocks filling both sides of the sidewalks. I leaned in, giving a thumbs up to a car, and my friend grabbed me by my coat and pulled me back. He said you never know when someone opposed to our message might come by and try to push you into the street in front of cars.

 

The obvious reason of the deadly seriousness of the march, of course, was DT, EM, and their attacks on every aspect of our democracy, almost every aspect of life. They’ve attacked our rights to free speech, due process, voting; to health care, in the process destroying federal agencies and the lives of workers who’ve dedicated themselves to looking out for our health. They’ve fired, attacked, and  threatened anyone who speaks out against them or shares the truth about DOGE, illegal deportations, etc.

 

They’ve attacked our children in so many ways, but one major attack was the dismantling of the Education Department, making it more difficult for our future generations to get food, get the support many need, and receive a good education. They’re attacking our future economic security, dismantling Social Security.

 

They’ve increased tensions throughout the world, undermined our international standing and our national security in countless ways, from firing thousands from the defense and state departments, destroying the Voice of [Democratic] America, which formerly had enabled people in nations with censored media to get reliable facts. They cut USAID, threatening our influence over third world countries. DT even threatened to invade our closest allies, Canada and Greenland.

 

DT’s tariffs not only threaten American businesses and the pocketbooks of most of us but have started trade wars with allies! The tariffs undermine both our national security and our personal incomes. One reason for the tariffs is to pay for tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Such cuts lead to an increase in the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands, and a loss of power for the majority. And it means the rest of us will have to cover more of the costs for government functions, for so many things, from repairing roads, to researching cures for illnesses, and protecting our food system from contamination and us from criminals and terrorists both foreign and domestic.

 

They’ve undermined our environment by dismantling whole sections of the EPA and transforming its mission from safeguarding the environment to increasing the huge profits corporations get from our natural resources, while destroying our heritage of forests, polluting land, air, and water. They’ve even removed bans on forever toxic chemicals.,,,

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

The U. S. We Hope and Expect to Be Here Is Almost Gone: DT and DOGE are Killing U. S.

Maybe, hopefully, we’re all realizing that the country many of us loved; that, in a variety of ways, many fought for and dreamed of, is disappearing. DT, Musk, their GOP sycophants and billionaire cheering section are doing all they can to rip away our rights and incomes to feed their own power and greed. And people are already, and increasingly, dying from this.

 

Take elementary aged children people in Reserve, La, whose school is located next to the Denka Performance Elastomer Plant. The region is called Cancer Alley, and rates of deaths, especially for children, are one of the highest in the US. The Biden administration sued to finally curb the plant’s emissions. The DT DOJ stopped the suit. DT seems to care more about profits than common people; and in this case, the majority of residents are black.

 

DT’s EPA has announced it would cut 31 climate, air, water, and emissions regulations, putting the health and lives of millions at risk. According to Health Policy Watch, under attack is a 2009 EPA finding that climate change-causing pollutants, including methane and carbon dioxide, harm human health. Without this “endangerment” clause, the EPA will clear the way for widespread dismantling of greenhouse gas emission regulations.

 

“The potential increase in health-related expenses, environmental degradation, and the stifling of innovation will lead to higher costs for consumers and impede economic growth,” said Margo Oge, former EPA director of transportation and air quality. “These actions will not make America great – they will just make Americans sicker,” she said in a LinkedIn post.

 

The safety of the food we eat is being drastically threatened by DOGE’s cuts to the US Department of Agriculture. According to interviews taken by WIRED, thousands of workers, food inspectors, disease-sniffing dog handlers and trainers fired by Musk remain unemployed, leading to food rotting and pests proliferating. Without inspectors, invasive pests and diseases can slip through inspection cracks, and wipe out an entire agricultural commodity, which can cause national security concerns and price increases. Some people thought DT would lower their food and other costs of living—not so.

 

The same is true with the bird flu killing chickens and raising the cost of eggs (15.2% increase since December)⎼ among those fired (and later re-hired) were those from the Department of Agriculture who had been working to respond to the bird flu outbreak.

 

I’ve written elsewhere about the measles epidemic increasing and spreading due to DT’s Health secretary, RFK Jr.’s history of spreading anti-vaccination misinformation. RFK Jr.’s fixation on attacking vaccinations is also interfering with research into cancer and other diseases. A senior official at the National Cancer Institute told KFF Health News that DT’s acting NIH director sent an agency-wide email directing all grants, contracts, and “collaborations involving mRNA vaccines” be reported to Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy’s office and the White House. The mRNA technology, crucial to the development of successful COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, has also exhibited promise in research on HIV/AIDS and cancer.

 

In a recent column, Heather Cox Richardson warned us that RFK, Jr. is now proposing to address the bird flu decimating US poultry and cattle farms by letting the disease free to run rampant.

 

She writes that veterinary scientists say that letting the virus sweep through flocks is “a really terrible idea,” as Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas, told Apoorva Mandavilli of the New York Times….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project. Thanks.