This Is It! This is the Day, the Week of Our Nightmares and Dreams. Our Opportunity

This is it! The day we’ve been thinking about and hoping for, dreaming about and dreading. This is also our chance, our opportunity for a possibly grand day. A day that could begin a gradual climb out of malignant chaos to a more democratic, just, stable government and future. A day—or days we will remember; because it’s possible it might take a few days or dreadfully, take weeks to get the results, accurately. But we just don’t know what will happen. We must be ready.

 

We’ve been suffering from a leader who is more a threat to us than someone who cares for us. Who talks crazy talk; who operates by creating chaos, creating an image that he’d do anything to get what he desperately lusted for. This is all we can be sure of; we know his history of racism and misogyny, his cruelty, spite, and envy. We also know he can spontaneously lash out, especially at reporters, but dreads confrontation unless he has total control. How stable can anyone be who needs to lead by making those he leads distrustful and afraid of him? Whose character is one that usually lives in nightmares? And in his case, maybe “crazy like a fox” is still crazy.

 

Images of Jan. 6, 2020 explode in my mind. Images of violence against Congress people, threats against poll workers and vote counters and state Attorneys General. Will DT interfere in the 2026 elections, order the DOJ to seize ballot boxes? Or force state legislatures to fake results? He’s done such things before. What will happen? Our televisions and other news outlets will be getting a workout. What a week awaits us.

 

If you need reasons to vote, or information on who to vote for, or against, please ask yourself: Who started a war on a whim, or maybe to distract from the Epstein Files, that he’s losing, and is costing each and every one of us more than we even know? The war is raising the costs of living, depleting resources, threatening the loss of positive standing and allies in the world. Who is it that talks of “America First,” but is creating “America Alone”—Except possibly for Putin and other autocrats.

 

Who, as reported by The Hill, had his Secretary of War/Defense, Pete Hegseth, recently fire another key general, Army Lt. General Brett Sylvia, for meeting with journalists in the Pentagon. This despite the fact we’re in a war that’s costing us greatly. The firing took place not only just before the midterms, but concurrently with the U. S. Central Command drawing up plans for more attacks on Iran. Hegseth has pushed out more than two dozen military officers. Why? And why now?

 

He’s trying to take away our constitutional right to speak freely and won’t tolerate any opposition. His attempts to seize dictatorial power run the full spectrum of our lives; for instance, there are his media bans and his use of the FCC to pressure and threaten broadcast networks and other media companies to bury any content that hints at opposition. Have the generals also been voicing opposition to or spreading the truth about how badly the war in Iran is going?

 

In the same vein, on 10/26 we learned DT’s DOJ had for the third time filed charges against James Comey. The case goes back to 2016 and was previously investigated two times and dismissed by the courts. Several commentators, like Chris Bowers, have written about how all 3 cases are, at best, flimsy, and clear examples of vindictive prosecution. DT is continually undermining the rule of law and has turned the former Justice Department into a Revenge Department.

 

Also recently, he once again acted to undermine our constitutional right to vote and has been interfering in another election. One example: according to an investigation reported by MSNOW, his DOJ claimed over 20,000 cases of election fraud in California. But from September to mid-October his DOJ brought charges against only 28 of them, which constitutes .0001% of California voters. 5 were dismissed almost immediately. The charge against the others mirrors a similar case in Nevada, when DT claimed there were 16,000 cases of election fraud. Then the DOJ published a list of only 185 cases; and when the state investigated, it found zero had voted illegally. The intent here is intimidation, particularly of people of color. Even if all the charges get dropped, they create fear in these communities.

 

He’s continuously been trying to force states to turn over voter records and information to the DOJ. After the courts continued to block and deem these orders illegal, on October 28, he requested subpoenas, more than 100 of them, demanding the records. Voting is in the hands of states, not the President, but he doesn’t seem to care what the constitution says.

 

Ask yourself: who is undermining the healthcare system and health insurance? Who is undermining the economy with tariffs that just raise our cost of living, undermine businesses, and fail to decrease the national debt? And according to the Congressional Budget Office, his one legislative victory, the Big Ugly/Beautiful Bill, is costing the poorest Americans on average $1200 while boosting the income of the richest by $13,600….

 

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

Being Aware of the Models of Masculinity and Humanity, We Favor, and the Pain They Can Cause: Who Do We Want to Lead This Nation and Model to the World What It Means To Be A Human Being?

The world today is certainly screwy and frightening. I keep getting shocked, so many people keep getting shocked, and asking ourselves, “what is going on here beyond the obvious?” What is going on in me? What more can I do to make things better?  It would be easy to just dull the shock of this administration’s politics of hate, cruelty, and corruption and lose ourselves in games, streaming shows, or whatever. But many of us honestly can’t do that. And the models of humanity provided by the men leading the nation today, of what it is to be a male human being, are malignant, frightening, painful to listen to. And insulting.

 

On 9/30 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave a State of the Force speech at the Pentagon. If you didn’t hear it, or didn’t hear quotes from it, he spoke about how he’s transforming the military. “We are no longer the woke department, or the weak department. Simple translation of that, no fanny—no fatties, no trannies, no beardoes, no weirdoes, no wimps, no radicals, just warriors… The war Department is color-blind, gender-neutral, and merit-based. The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in with testosterone testing on top.” Is he looking in the mirror when he speaks about “ideological clowns”?

 

As Nicolle Wallace pointed out on MSNBC Deadline White House, he announced a 20% cut in senior military officers, including generals and admirals, when we’re in a war that drags on and on. And which he, and his boss, Mr. DT, started with no clear, justifiable reason or plan, and have no idea how to end. He’s cutting the very people who might have the true expertise to get us out of the crisis, and it seems advised them never to get into it.

 

What also stood out from the speech was not just the disturbing content; it was the beauty pageant that he demanded for his audience. According to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, not the home of radicals of the progressive sort, the troops nominated to attend the speech had to meet certain “physical standards” including “waist-to-height ratios, [and] be impeccably groomed…” —so, as Wallace said, the ones who didn’t measure up, “literally, the less attractive or fit ones stay on the battlefield” to fight the war without end while, according to Hegseth’s standards, the more fit perform for the media?

 

And earlier, on September 18th, near the time that Pete Hegseth was calling for the shaping of a MAGA, male beauty pageant of a military, a lawsuit was filed in Ithaca, NY, detailing allegations from 2024 of a gang rape of a woman by fraternity brothers. As reported by the Cornell Sun, a woman described being raped by seven men after being coerced into consuming drugs at a Chi Phi frat house on the Cornell University campus. She is suing the University, several Chi Phi fraternity organizations, sorority organizations, the men who allegedly raped her, etc. The defendants deny the allegations.

 

The plaintiff reported the rape to Cornell Police almost 3 weeks after it occurred. She was later deeply disappointed in the initial lack of support by the student community. The local district attorney declined to file charges, saying there wasn’t sufficient evidence to do so. Cornell’s Office of Civil Rights and Student Conduct and Community Standards held a title IX investigation. They suspended the Chi Phi fraternity chapter and expelled two students, suspended others. That’s it.

 

What do we do with these events? Especially viewed through the lens of the Epstein files and a president continuously talking in demeaning, dismissive, even predatory ways about women? A president talking, in the Hollywood tapes, about “grab[bing] them by the pussie.” A secretary of the Defense Department who was investigated for sexual assault in California.

 

There’s been a great outcry against Hegseth and Cornell and the Ithaca District Attorney.  But will the outcries result in any real and substantive action? Will the demonstrations and outcry about the Rape at Cornell and lack of an appropriate, just, and compassionate response lead to change? Change not just at Cornell, but nationally, and at the ballot booths? We need changes in how institutions treat rape, change in national leadership, and changes in models of and understanding of how we should be with each other.

 

The New York Times published an article detailing how Jane Doe went from a shamed victim to a powerful, courageous actor. What will we do? What will we learn from these events?

 

Sometimes, a negative model can be helpful, if it’s short term….

 

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

Are We Seeing What Happens When the 7 Deadly Sins Rule a Government? Are they Fighting a War Mostly to Distract from Epstein Revelations?

Would anyone be so self-centered they’d start a war, de-stabilize international relations and the world economy, and kill thousands mainly to distract from potentially devastating revelations and raise his poll numbers? Is that what DT is doing in Iran? And before in Venezuela? And maybe soon with Cuba? Greenland? Is this Greed? Envy? Wrath? Is it self-Indulgence, trying to appear strong, superior to cover a fear of being inferior? Certainly, it’s creating Discord. Are the Seven Deadly Sins aiming to rule America?

 

Others have written about this before me: DT acts as if he was taught the deadly sins as his catechism. I was a little unclear on the history and religious doctrine, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, the early version listed the sins as: Lust, Idolatry, Avarice, Discord, Indulgence, Wrath, and Pride. In 590 AD, Pope Gregory I changed this to: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Wrath, and Pride.

 

The changes are interesting. Greed for Avarice, Sloth for Indulgence—easy to understand.

But Gluttony for Idolatry, and Envy for Indulgence are more complex. Of course, a growing church would be interested in stopping idolatry, or the worshipping of false gods, idols of power instead of the one true God, or truth, maybe? Or today, worshipping the idols of cherished beliefs, easy answers, social media rumors instead of science, or reliable facts?

 

So, I’d add ignorance to the list, willfully ig-noring or not seeing what’s there in front of us? And Envy? The Lust for what others possess; the anger over what others have and we do not? The rage for vengeance.

 

And Lust: Have too many of bus forgotten that just months ago, it was reported that DT’s DOJ was scrubbing all the Epstein files to destroy links to the President? Then, after the scrub was mostly lost in the shock and chaos of headlines, news outlets reported there was no evidence in the files of malfeasance on DT’s part, except for bad judgment befriending a pedophile and child trafficker.

 

For months in 2025, DT claimed the Epstein Files were a hoax perpetuated by Democrats and there was nothing worth our attention in the material. He ordered his followers to stop being weaklings and wasting time on the files. But thanks in large part to the courage and persistence of a group of survivors of the crimes, the testimony and other evidence of possible participation by DT and other powerful men in Epstein’s crimes are now being revealed. According to reporting by the New York Times,  DT’s name was mentioned more than 38,000 times in 5,300 of the files. A woman gave testimony saying when she was 13, DT tried to force her to have sex. She wasn’t the only woman to make such claims.

 

In November, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act which aimed to force the release of all the files. But recently NPR came out with a report showing the DOJ is still withholding evidence. The DOJ claimed to only redact and withhold files to protect the survivors, as directed in the legislation. But victims’ names and personal information were left available to the public while the names of the rich and powerful who made use of Epstein and Maxwell’s services were hidden.

 

And back on May 7, 2024 Stormy Daniels’ gave testimony about having sex with the married DT and his payment to her to be quiet about it. We remember an earlier conviction of DT on charges of defamation and sexual assault of the writer E. Jean Carroll. We might remember Judge Lewis A. Kaplan later clarifying that although the jury did not convict DT of rape according to NY State Penal Law, the trial did show that as people commonly understand the word, he did indeed rape her.

 

And there’s Greed, lots of it. And maybe Envy of what others have? Selfishness. Narcissism? The New York Times reports he has monetized the presidency to a degree never seen before. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, he has taken in at least 3 billion dollars over the last year from linking government policy to his business profits, real estate and microchip deals, selling pardons to drug criminals, etc. Gluttony is not just about food.

 

For Wrath there’s his vindictive attacks, his DOJ going after anyone who opposes, or speaks out against him.

 

And then, the wars. Venezuela and Iran, especially. Certainly, we have here the sowing of Discord. He started a war with no plan or consistent justification….

 

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