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.

Has the Shock Doctrine Won? “If my love does not cause me to protect those I love, is it love?”

Part of me wants to just put this election and the unbelievable loss by Kamala Harris behind me, or at least until I know I can or must do something. Maybe I’ll take a vacation from news media. Focus on doing things I love, be with those who love me. It’s just so much to accept, too much to bear.

 

But his actions so far, in choosing his cabinet, administrative, and advisory positions and proposing policies might be too disturbing to ignore, hopefully too disturbing to come to fruition. He’s chosen a cabinet aimed to give him total power and undermine legitimate agency functions. People like:

Matt Gaetz, who is a subject of a House Ethics Investigation, for sex-trafficking and other accused crimes, for Attorney General.

Stephen Miller a white nationalist and creator of the policy to take young children from their immigrant parents during DT’s first term of office, as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.

Lee Zeldin, who questions the reality of climate change and promises to favor big oil and big business over environmental protection, to head the EPA.

Elon Musk, world’s richest man, a megadonor to DT’s campaign, and as Public Citizen reports, a beneficiary of government contracts while 3 of his companies are under investigation for civil and criminal charges, was picked to co-lead a proposed Department of Government Efficiency, to gut federal regulations and slash spending. His partner would be Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech billionaire. Shocking.

 

Heather Cox Richardson reported the DT transition team floated the idea that he could sign an executive order creating a board of retired senior military personnel to review high-ranking officers and recommend removing any they deemed unfit for leadership. Vivian Salama, Nancy A. Youssef, and Lara Seligman reported in the Wall Street Journal that such a board would enable Trump to purge the military of the generals whom he considered insufficiently loyal to him, so he would have total control over the military.

 

Thankfully, the GOP in the House of Representatives just failed to pass, for now, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act which would have granted the secretary of the Treasury Department unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a “terrorist supporting organization.” It would have enabled the DT administration to revoke the non-profit status of any organization deemed to be supporting terrorism, even without proof, and stifle dissent in the US. That’s a relief. I will still have to take some time for vacations from the news.

 

Remember the Shock Doctrine, the economic and political strategy observed by Naomi Klein in her groundbreaking book published in 2008? The doctrine explained what she called “disaster capitalism,” or the exploitation and manipulation of disasters, natural and human-made, so people misperceive their own interests and accept policies they never would have accepted otherwise. It feels like the Shock Doctrine has won⎼ for the moment.

 

DT has constantly shocked us, by repeatedly inciting fear of illegal immigrants, of crime on the streets when the reality was an historic reduction in crime. Of an economy supposedly in freefall that was actually in recovery. Shocked too many of us to believe those delivering the message, reporting on or trying to prosecute him for his crimes, were the criminals. He accused Democrats of weaponizing the DOJ in order to free up a lane for him to weaponize it, as he tried to do multiple times in his first term, and promises to do in his second⎼ by imprisoning all those who oppose him. He shocked us with outrageous, even bizarre, often misogynist or racist, demented tirades and threats. It appears his motive, besides simply spreading his crazy hate, was to keep us off balance and fearful….

 

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

Worried About Your Finances and Your Future? He’s Just So Incoherent, So Racist, and So Weird

This question can give me nightmares: how can people follow him? Economic matters, high costs, have been of such concern for so many of us. But which Presidential candidate might best help reduce these burdens? And which candidate would protect our vote, our power and rights so we could influence government policies to serve our needs? Wouldn’t that take someone who cares about the quality of regular people’s lives?

 

DT said the following on 7/26/24: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore…. [For in] four more years it will be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore…” In other words, vote for me now, and you’ll never be able to vote again?

 

He said of V.P. Kamala Harris “She was Indian all the way, and then she became black.” And “She is a DEI hire.” As if a woman, or someone black just isn’t talented enough to earn on her own merit any important position, for example as a prosecutor, Senator, Vice President or President?

 

He even told his own nephew, whose son has a physical disability, “these people (with disabilities), all the expenses…they should just die.” And a few years later he literally told his nephew he should just let HIS OWN SON die because of his physical disabilities. Would this person care at all about the majority of us except to get our votes?

 

Commentator Brian Tyler Cohen added⎼ DT threw his own VP candidate under the bus by saying: You’re not voting for a VP candidate—you’re voting for me. This reminds me of how he treated his former VP, when he stood by watching the Jan. 6 insurrectionist mob chant “hang Mike Pence”? Only I am important. And maybe DT’s right to dismiss his new VP choice, who said in 2021, the nation is run by a bunch of “childless cat ladies,” who have no stake in America and are miserable at their own lives. America must go to war against the idea that women don’t have to have children. And: people without children are “psychotic,” “deranged.”

 

Over the last 5 years, many people have had to face awful choices due to high prices for purchasing a home, food, or other goods. But: Will a person who cares only for himself improve the economic situation for most of us if he ever became President again? Or: Would we be better off now if he had lost his influence once he had lost the 2020 election?

 

DT boasts about his great economy. From the distance of 4 years, the past might seem better than the present. We might forget the harmful chaos of the DT administration. And who really benefitted, especially in the long run, from his economic policies? Did his economy help cause the pain many of us now feel?

 

The only big economic legislation he helped pass was the 2017 tax act, which heavily favored the rich. “As a share of after-tax income, tax cuts at the top — for both households in the top 1 percent and the top 5 percent — are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent.[2]” Most of us had a temporary tax cut; corporations (and thus rich executives) had a permanent one, from 35% to 21%. As a result, government income was greatly reduced, and a heavily increasing debt was created.

 

In testimony to The Senate Committee on Budget and Policy Priorities, Samantha Jacoby, a tax and legal analyst, said:

Cutting corporate taxes costs significant revenue, and evidence is sorely lacking that the benefits have trickled down. Executives, disproportionately wealthy corporate shareholders, and highly paid employees have reaped virtually all the economic gains from the corporate rate cuts, research suggests.

With less money going from the rich to the government, the rest of us pay more, for schooling, to maintain infrastructure, to finance health and science organizations, for the military, etc. By 2019, DT was leading the nation into a total downfall that had begun even before the pandemic….

 

 

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