What Would Great Actually Look Like?

Posted on by Tim

For years now Donald Trump and his loyalists have been talking about “Making America Great Again.”

It is a phrase adopted from White Supremacy groups of the 1940s and 1950s. The meaning is the same now as it was then.

Trump’s idea of a great America is a White Nationalist America which would also be an America returned to the Corporate Feudalism of the Robber Baron era along with the complete erasure of the achievements resulting from both the Civil Rights and Women’s Suffrage movements.

So, what would “Great” actually look like if women, People of Color, and non-Cisgender people weren’t completely, or even partially, excluded from the benefits of it.

An exploration of the answer touches on more things than one might imagine at first.

As an example lets discuss the intersectionality of several issues.

Guns are now the leading cause of death in the United States for those in the age range of 1 year old to 19 years old. This can be attributed to a number of factors including, but not limited to, toddlers and young children accidently discharging poorly secured loaded weapons found in their homes, teen suicide especially among the oft attacked members of the LGBTQIAA+++ community or just those that haven’t yet come to terms with who they will become as they mature into their sense of self and those whose families are unsupportive, and racial and religious hate crimes

American gun rights advocates argue against any and all efforts to address any of these issues, most often by claiming that American gun violence is not a gun issue but a mental health issue.

At the same time, they refuse to do anything to help those in need of mental heath care. That alone would be bad enough, but they are regularly enacting laws and stoking the hatreds that push the mental health issues of both potential perpetrators and victims of violence further into the danger zone.

There is more intersectionality between each of these items and affordable health care, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, reproductive rights, voters’ rights, policing, disparity in justice, and every other aspect of our society than any one article could possibly properly address.

Instead, we’ll turn back to our original question:

What would “Great” actually look like if women, People of Color, and non-Cisgender people weren’t completely, or even partially, excluded from the benefits of it.

It could begin, not with a doomed attempt to eliminate bigotries, but to eliminate the ability to weaponize bigotries through our various societal systems, programs, and institutions.

It would begin not by asking everyone to be nice to each other, but to simply stop going out of their way to be mean and hostile to anyone and being swift to address and correct it when they do.

It would continue by electing officials who prioritize the welfare of the nation’s citizenry over the welfare of stock market investors and the war machine economy. They could then begin the work of not just restoring, but establishing, a true democracy. As the HBO show ‘Succession’ just stated in its most recent episode: America has only had a real democracy for about 50 or 60 years, “unless you don’t count Black people,” and the last few years have proven even that is still remarkably tenuous.

Those elected officials could begin by working to take the best aspects of our society and its potentials and build upon them while weeding out and discarding the worst. This would require abandoning a Constitutional Originalism view which requires holding our society to a standard set by a group of men who couldn’t possibly predict the evolution of the country, or the world, two or three centuries beyond their lifespan and allowing for either a string of Amendments to update the the social contract they created. Or better yet, developing a whole new one to lead us into a better future for all.

The early steps toward accomplishing these lofty goals would require a revamping of our policing, sentencing, and incarceration practices to end the militarization of community police forces and the war mentality their current training instills. Also, it would be necessary to end inequitable justice in favor of rehabilitation instead of punishment for non-violent offenses through a means that was fair and just to all regardless of their societal status or means.

In turn, those things would require the establishment of universal health care and a universal basic income, along with public education. That health care must include mental health care and protective services for children and adults at risk of domestic violence due to their gender or sexual identities. These steps would dramatically reduce the frequency of violent crimes.

All of that would allow for companies to automate far more jobs without detriment to the economy supporting those companies. It would also require a return to much higher corporate and excess wealth taxes to offset the expenses. With companies no longer burdened with responsibility to provide health insurance, and workers no longer trapped with a specific employer to maintain access to health care or basic survivability, companies would be free to find other benefits to attract works to positions that could not be automated. Those workers would be motivated by something other than a simple paycheck to do the work they have chosen to do out of desire instead of necessity. Those not working would be free to pursue their passions without risk of financial ruin if it doesn’t work out; if they excel at those things they may even be able to monetize them for additional income if they were to chose to do so.

None of this will be easy. It will take require the strength and determination to break free of outdated beliefs and traditions that have become entrenched within our #Culturalinertia. It will take the fortitude to oust those in power that would resist it.

This is not something that will be achievable overnight. It is however, something that will never be achieved, if we aren’t aggressively striving to accomplish it.

Nobody ever becomes truly great at anything without putting in the time, resources, hard work, and effort to achieve and maintain it. Countries are no different.

If we want a great society, a great nation, or a great world, we have to build it.

Then we have to maintain it.

Just For the Sake of Argument, Let’s Take the Bait.

Posted on by Tim

On Saturday, December 6th, the 199th mass shooter of 2023 attacked an outlet mall in a Dallas, TX suburb. For our purposes, we will use the same criteria to define a mass shooting as the Gun Violence Archive: A shooting incident in which 4 or more victims are injured or killed by firearms, not including the perpetrator of the event.

Along with his tactical gear, AR-15 style rifle, and other weapons, he was wearing an insignia that authorities believe may be associated with extremist groups.

Investigators have unearthed an extensive social media presence, including neo-Nazi and White supremacist-related posts and images that authorities believe Garcia shared online.

The state Governor, Greg Abbott, fresh off attempting to victim blame those killed in the state’s previous mass shooting with a false accusation that they were undocumented immigrants, now says America doesn’t have a gun issue, it has a mental health issue.

“People want a quick solution. The long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue.” 

That’s a statement that deserves unpacking and exploration, because taken at face value, he’s not actually wrong. At least not until you add the context of the rest of his statement.

“What Texas is doing in a big-time way, we are working to address that anger and violence but going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it,” Abbott said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

The Republican governor also called for increasing penalties for stricter laws “to get guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals and to increase penalties for criminals who possess guns.”

So, what is Texas doing “in a big-time way” to address this issue? What are the specifics?

Here is a rundown of some of the laws signed by Abbott that took affect as of Sept 1st, 2021, in the wake of that year’s school shootings. His primary solution then, eliminate the requirements for gun permits, background checks, and training:

  • House Bill 1927: Known as permitless or constitutional carry, it allows Texans to carry handguns in public without a license and the background check and training that a license requires.
  • House Bill 2622: Known as the “Second Amendment Sanctuary State Act,” it prohibits state agencies and local governments from enforcing new federal gun rules.
  • House Bill 1500: Prevents government entities from banning the sale or transportation of firearms or ammunition during a declared disaster or emergency.
  • House Bill 957: Exempts firearm suppressors that are made and remain in Texas from federal laws and regulations.
  • House Bill 1407: Allows license holders to carry visible, holstered handguns anywhere in a motor vehicle, rather than having to wear the handgun in a shoulder or belt holster.
  • House Bill 1387: Allows certain foster homes to store guns and ammunition together in the same locked location, rather than requiring the items to be stored separately.
  • House Bill 1069: Allows certain first responders to carry handguns.
  • House Bill 2112: Removes the requirement that handguns must be carried in a “shoulder or belt” holster, expanding what kinds of holsters are legal.
  • House Bill 103: Creates a statewide active shooter alert system.
  • House Bill 4346: Prohibits certain firearm restrictions on a property during the use of an easement.
  • House Bill 29: Allows state-owned public buildings to provide self-service weapon lockers.
  • House Bill 1920: Expands and clarifies what constitutes a secured area of an airport in relation to possessing a firearm.
  • House Bill 2675: Requires the Texas Department of Public Safety to expedite the handgun license process for individuals “who are at increased risk of becoming victims of violence.”
  • House Bill 918: Makes young adults between the ages of 18-20 eligible for a license to carry a handgun if they are protected under certain court orders related to family violence.
  • House Bill 781: Allows junior college school marshals to carry concealed handguns rather than storing them.
  • Senate Bill 741: Allows school marshals in public school districts, open-enrollment charters, and private schools to carry concealed handguns rather than storing them.
  • Senate Bill 20: Allows hotel guests to carry and store firearms and ammunition in their rooms.
  • Senate Bill 19: Prohibits government entities from contracting with businesses that “discriminate against the firearm or ammunition industries.”
  • Senate Bill 162: Known as the “lie and try” bill, makes it a state crime to lie on a background check in order to illegally purchase a firearm.
  • Senate Bill 550: Removes the requirement that handguns must be carried in a “shoulder or belt” holster, expanding what kinds of holsters are legal.
  • Senate Bill 313: Creates a sales and use tax exemption for firearm safety equipment.
  • Senate Bill 168: Requires schools to use best practices when conducting active shooter drills, so they’re less harmful to students’ mental health and wellbeing; went into effect immediately.


At the time those bills were passed into law, Texas became the 20th U.S. state to adopt permitless carry. As of this writing, there are now 26, with Florida becoming the most recent.

What, then, is Governor Abbott; Texas; other Republican-led states; other national Republicans; even attempting to do to reduce gun violence? To improve any health care access, let alone mental health care? To remove the societal stigma, especially from a Republican view point of needing mental health care? Or, any health care?

A 2022 ABC News analysis shows Texas has the highest number of counties with no providers.

Texas Health and Human Services Public Information Officer Kelli Weldon explained that the state has a mere 39 local mental and behavioral health authorities providing care to residents.

Of the state’s 254 counties, 172 are considered rural, according to Weldon.

Further, “Seventy-five percent of rural counties across the country have no mental health providers or fewer than 50 per 100,000 people, according to an ABC News analysis of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data.“

This is all following the 2019 creation of “All Access Texas” a largely underfunded and mostly hidden program in the state of Texas that was supposed to address the very issue of the state’s many Mental Health Care deserts. It’s primary purpose seems to be to help those that have already committed crimes seek recovery, more than to help prevent such crimes from being committed or keeping the tools of efficient mass murder out of the hands of those most likely to commit it.

Realistically, if it were completely up to Republicans, even the care for gun violence victims would be only available to those rich enough to survive in a fully privatized health care system. For decades, they attempted to prevent the CDC from even compiling certain gun violence data or the use of any such data from being considered when debating changes to the law.

If mental health care is indeed the long-term solution to America’s gun violence what specific mental health care initiatives and improvements are gun rights advocates willing to embrace right now, today, to begin that process?

What short term milestones are they willing to enact immediately to set us on the path to a societal recovery by addressing the mental health symptoms of our gun violence #Culturalinertia?

Are we in agreement that feeling the need to carry a semi-automatic long gun to feel safe grocery shopping, for example, is itself a mental health issue that needs to be addressed.

Can we agree that the same mental health issue that leads to domestic violence is very likely to lead to gun violence if untreated?

Can we agree that if better availability of better mental health care is indeed the long-term solution to gun violence, then thorough, free, periodic, non-partisan mental health care screening must become a short term element for obtaining that long-term goal?

Or, are their collective cries of “mental health” just another tool to attempt to district us that the leading cause of American gun violence is that nothing about modern America’s gun rights are “well-regulated.”

I challenge you to find any Republican led piece of legislation, or even one a majority of Republicans support, from any state in the U.S. that addresses this by attempting to prevent those predisposed to such violence due to a lack of mental health care from obtaining guns.

What you will find, instead, is an abundance of issues of their offering of empty “thoughts and prayers,” their efforts to use their power and influence to increase the number of guns available and the ease with which they may be obtained, their efforts to use their power and influence to make the enforcement of any existing gun regulations — if not impossible — far more difficult, and their incessant knowingly smug embrace of Stochastic Terrorism to increase the usage of them as a primary tool in everyday conflict resolution and identity based politics.

It bears repeating, here, that if gun advocates don’t want the solution to be a Constitutional Amendment revoking the 2nd Amendment, then they must start contributing in good faith to real alternative solutions. Otherwise, they’re going to find themselves without a seat at the table for the discussion at all.

Manufactured Chaos

Posted on by Tim

The Republican party appears to be in turmoil.

Trump, his entire inner circle, and his fellow insurrectionists at FOX News are all caught up in criminal and civil court battles that aren’t going well for them. However, they have no intention of giving up their efforts to get Trump re-elected, in large part because an active campaign is continuing to shield them from those cases being permitted to advance properly.

Republicans in control of the House appear to be obstructing each other as much as they are their opposition.

At least twice this year, Speaker McCarthy has turned over the entire House to insurrection spokesperson Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as Speaker Pro Tempore.

Republicans in the Senate have mostly gone quiet in the halls of Congress.

None of them are giving any appearance of being willing to actually govern. None of them are making any effort to work with Democrats or the Biden administration on any meaningful legislation.

Their one cohesive policy stance seems to be a willingness to force the nation into default by refusing to raise the debt ceiling to ensure the government continues to pay off the debt it has already accrued.

Meanwhile, all these Republican leaders have pretty much stopped appearing on any news networks other than FOX News and that network is choosing to give the majority of its air time to the most extremist Trump loyalists.

When they do speak publicly, on air or online, they’re rhetoric feeds the hatred of violent extremists embracing fascism through White Nationalism, patriarchal misogyny, and religious bigotry.

It is not only easy, but extremely tempting and extremely dangerous, to dismiss all this as disorganized and incohesive chaos. Don’t fall into that trap. It becomes far more terrifying when you allow pattern recognition to settle in.

Since the beginning of our country, regardless of the party name they chose, America’s political conservatives have had the same agenda that they currently have:

To establish a society of multinational corporate feudalism with most of the populace serving as serfs enriching the corporate ownership both as consumers and servants using racism, bigotry, lies, misinformation, and any other tools they can get their hands on in order to accomplish it, and insure that the populace does not have the resources or willpower to do anything about it.

If you accept that premise, then their ongoing efforts against health care, birth control and abortion, living wages, food and housing assistance, social services, social safety nets, and more all make sense. If you accept that premise, their constant efforts to divide us over race, religion, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexuality, age, and more make perfect sense as tools to keep us from uniting. If you accept that premise, then all their efforts to discredit and dismantle the federal government, especially its regulatory enforcement, make perfect sense. If you accept that premise, all their lies and misinformation make perfect sense.

If you accept that premise the appearance of constant infighting, incompetence, and outright stupidity make perfect sense as a tool to get us to dismiss the underlying patterns as well as from what the damage they are doing nationwide in the state level governments they’ve managed to gain control of.

If you can see beyond the smoke and mirrors and all the bluff and bluster, taking a look at where we are right now in relation to the 2024 election cycle makes far more sense.

Trump is currently the front runner for the Republican party’s presidential nomination, and will likely win it barring any unforeseen health issues or sudden movement in any of the several criminal cases pending against him. Despite CPAC attendees deciding that they want Kari Lake as their VP nominee, Trump is more likely to pick Marjorie Taylor Greene. She both idolizes him and looks enough like his daughter Ivanka to be too enticing for him to pass up. The news that she and her husband are finally divorcing after staying together through the last 8 years of very public disagreement about Trump does nothing but add to this possibility.

This is why McCarthy has given her control of the House twice already despite having many more experienced and slightly less crazy options available. They’re trying to get you used to seeing her at the podium.

Meanwhile, the “traditional republicans” — a term which merely means they prefer to be more subversive with their efforts toward obtaining their party’s long term goals than overt — are currently pushing for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to be their nominee. Ron is far more dangerous than Trump. He shares all the same petty, vindictive temperament, the same quirks, biases, and more, he’s just a more skilled politician who knows how to get his hatreds built into legislation proposals that he can get passed into law.

Honestly, all the Republicans would be perfectly fine with either of these candidates winning. Either continues them full speed ahead toward the goals they’ve been laying the ground work for across the nation with there recent slate of “state’s rights” bills that are nothing more than a rehashing of the original secession letters of the Articles of the Confederacy that led to the Civil War.

I think; however, that Republicans will find that if Trump gets too hard to elect, the Trump voter base won’t rally behind DeSantis after they’ve torn each other apart in a primary. So they’ll opt for a more “traditional” member of their party. They’ll rally behind someone more like Sens. Richard Burr or John Thune who have mostly kept themselves out of the national spotlight and present them as their “moderate and rational” candidate to lure back in the party’s disenfranchised conservative moderates.

But, know this, even if they were to choose someone more like Adam Kinzinger or Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney, they’d still be putting forth a candidate that was 100% behind the modern Republican party’s long established policy platform and goals. The ones behind the smoke and mirrors and bluff and bluster.

Pay attention to what they are actually doing and what they are actually accomplishing by working so hard to make you believe they’re not successfully working together to achieve their goals on a nationwide scale.

Because they are.

And that is far more important than anything they say that they are or are not doing, or will or will not do.

Understanding History is the Key to a Better Future.

Posted on by Tim

I am told that there is a proverbial phrase among the Inuit: ‘A long time ago, in the future.’ Let the children see our history and maybe it will help to shape the future.

~Romeo LeBlanc

If you’ve been following my public social media pages on Facebook or my semi-private companion discussion group, over the last decade or so, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been increasingly sharing more and more information from historians. These range from the profanity laced lessons of James Fell to the almost daily deep dives of Professor Heather Cox Richardson to guide us as we discuss our #Culturalinertia and how to change it where necessary.

It is vital to understand our history to understand what we have experienced, overcome, endured, or accepted in order to get to where we are today.

How else can we recognize whether the problems we are facing now are a new trend, a resurgence of an old problem we believed conquered and forgotten, or something so deeply entrenched in the inertia of our culture that we barely even recognize it as a problem anymore unless it directly affects us or someone we care deeply enough about to wake up and take notice.

Today, on NPR’s Fresh Air, host Terry Gross interviewed the leader of one of the best deep-dive investigative journalism teams of this era, Rachel Maddow.

If you can find the time for nothing else this week, please, I implore you, set aside the 43 minutes to listen to this important interview.

The purpose of the interview is a discussion revolving around Ms. Maddow’s 9 part podcast entitled “Ultra.” It is an Apple podcast available on iTunes. The historical story Ms. Maddow weaves together in the series has already had its movie rights optioned by Steven Spielberg.

In the podcast’s 9 episodes, Ms. Maddow explores a period of American history between World War I and World War II. “The all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power. When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to… to cover their tracks.” It documents the history of sitting members of Congress conspiring with a known Nazi agent to implement Hitler’s plot to overthrow the American government before we could enter World War II. Insurrectionists criminally charged with plotting to end American democracy for good. Justice Department prosecutors under crushing political pressure. 

If you do find the time to listen to the whole podcast series, when it is over, it will be impossible not to see all the direct links and parallels of the “America First” efforts of those sitting congress members and their most famous spokesman Charles Lindbergh with the modern “America First” movement and its most famous spokesman Donald Trump.

Whether you listen to the whole series or not, after you listen to the interview, please, I implore you, join me in a resolution for the coming year and then forever after.

Let us resolve to stop using words like “unprecedented” and “unbelievable” for things that have already happened, are still happening, and will keep happening until we put an end to them.

Refuse to allow the normalization of things that must be corrected by dismissing them as one-off anomalies that will self-correct if we just have enough patience and blind-faith trust in the centuries old systems that allow them to keep recurring.

Let us fully embrace the most important tool we have for making a better future, a true deep understanding of the history that has lead to our present.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

~Benjamin Cardozo

The #Culturalinertia of Social Media

Posted on by Tim

Title graphic created with DALL-E-2 AI text to image creator

On October 29, 1969, ARPAnet delivered its first message; a “node-to-node” communication from one computer to another, and the internet as we know it was born.

In 1976, Ward Christensen invented the XModem file transfer protocol. It was released to the public in 1977 and the world as we knew it would never be the same again.

Social Media didn’t begin with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok.

It is not going to end there either, regardless of what happens with those services over the next few months or years.

Long before Facebook and Twitter were created, those of us who pioneered online social media were doing so on CompuServe, GEnie, and then Prodigy, AOL, and Myspace.  Before Spotify and YouTube there was Napster.  Before Napster we had FidoNet and others like it.

Before all of those we had dial-up BBS systems with messages boards, text chat rooms, and slow as hell file sharing.

I have been a part of all of it since I obtained an Apple IIe and 300 baud modem in the late 1970s.

In the mid-to-late-80s, I worked as a customer service and tech support representative, content moderator, content creator, design advisor, and alpha/beta tester for the General Electric Network for Information Exchange (GEnie), which General Electric created in 1985 in partnership with Ameritech.   During my time there, I also served as the Technical Editor and content contributor for John C. Dvorak’s (now out of print) public user’s guide to the service.

I present this information here to show that on the subject of electronic social media, I have been not just a user, but helped build and shape it through its early stages, and have been involved with using it, through all of its iterations and evolutions since the very beginning.

On this subject, I can legitimately claim a bit of expertise.

BBS Systems

CBBS, the first computer- based bulletin board system on record, was established in 1978.

Originally, the service served as a space for scientists and engineers to share and brainstorm ideas and knowledge. 

However, it didn’t take more than about two years for the spin-offs to start; presumably, by many of those same people looking to use them for more leisure based and, in some cases, illegal communications.   ISCABBS, the largest BBS in the world was created by the University of Iowa and was still up and running in 2019.

As computers started allowing other computers to connect to them, online hacking immediately began.  Hackers migrated to services like Demon Roach Underground, OSUNY, and Plover-NET.  What you know now as the “Dark-Web” had its origins here.

The porn industry also found its space on these services in the early days.  First as text stories, then ASCII art, and finally image sharing.  Rusty n Edie’s BBS was raided in 1993 by the FBI and sued by Playboy in 1997.

Terrorist groups and criminal organizations also created and maintained BBS systems to communicate with each other before law enforcement found ways to tap in and decipher the communications.

And yet, while all that was going on, great leaps in both science and engineering began to happen specifically because the people pushing those fields forward now had a way to communicate almost instantaneously across borders, continents, and oceans with a method that was far more substantial and productive than a one-on-one telephone call, or even a conference call.

Hobby and gaming groups formed as well, connecting people with similar personal interests but different national, ethnic, and professional backgrounds, from all over the world in a way we had never seen before.

This interactivity and blind connection fostered two things.

It removed the barriers of race, religion, gender, and political differences from personal interactions.  We had no way of knowing those things about someone unless they told us, and most didn’t bother telling anyone until a strong enough bond had been built that the relationship itself would challenge those innate beliefs about those differences in ways people would never otherwise experience.

I am a firm believer that this ever-burgeoning electronic global community was a massive, but generally unrecognized and/or unacknowledged, part of the fall of the U.S.S.R. and the destruction of the Berlin Wall.  It also provided many with the information they needed to continue anti-war protests because the information being exchanged between individuals was exposing the misinformation and disinformation rhetoric governments were putting forth in the media to justify those war efforts.

However, just like there have always been criminals, there have always been Internet trolls. The Internet also gave some people a shield of anonymity to begin freely putting forth hateful beliefs, rhetoric, and false information without personal recourse or recompense.

Social media, in all its forms, has reshaped every aspect of our lives both online and off.  It has changed how we communicate with family and friends, as well as complete strangers.  It has changed how we do business.  It has changed our global socioeconomics and our geopolitical views and policies.

Anyone telling you not to talk about the things that are important or interesting to you on social media because “No one can change anything by whining online” is full of shit and just trying to get you to stop pushing the boundaries of their own personal comfort zone.

~Tim Shehane

All of this still continues across every social media platform that ever was, or will be, invented.

Generational Differences in Usage

The Baby Boomers created the Internet as a long-distance information sharing tool.  Gen-X created social media as we know it currently as a connectivity method in a quickly expanding world of rapid international business growth and development.  Millennials, or Gen-Y, were the first generation raised with that connectivity being a major part of their personal social, educational, and professional development.  Members of Gen-Z live their lives out loud on social media as it – and its associated technology — serves as an integral part of every aspect of their lives. 

In the early stages, the old principles of public decorum ruled the public spaces on the Internet.  Most people conducted themselves online the same way they did offline, by avoiding the taboo subjects of politics, religion, and personal bigotries and biases except in small groups that had already proved themselves to be like-minded on any particular issue.  The Baby Boomer era mentality of “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” was the primary content moderation guideline.

As Gen-X became more casual with the usage of the Internet for non-job related communication and tasks, the moderation guidelines changed, and the echo chambers we have now began to develop through self-segregation of users with others who shared their beliefs.  But they were still leery of putting too much personal information online for potential employers and business contacts to see if that information could be used against them in any way.

Gen-Y (I am not using the term Millennial here because it is too often used as a derogatory slur) threw caution to the wind and started posting all kinds of personal information and private thoughts online for the world to see.   This gave birth to a new profession:  the Social Media Influencer.  These social media influencers achieved celebrity status as they monetized their audience reach by stealth endorsements of products and services for others to buy.

Gen-Z has been raised almost as much by these influencers as they have been by their friends and families.  Their lives are akin to the Truman Show, lived as much online for the entertainment of others as they are offline for personal growth and satisfaction. Just this week it was reported that a young woman in France is allowing her subscribers on OnlyFans to dictate all of her personal life decisions. As a result, she has quit her internship and ended a toxic relationship, among other things. 

Understanding these generational differences in social media usage helps both businesses and cultural influencers to better serve their audience and also to weaponize the knowledge with their marketing algorithms to better manipulate their targets.

Social Media and Celebrity

Maintaining a celebrity status in our modern culture almost requires a person to become a social media influencer to hype projects and endorsement products. Going viral on social media can make or break a celebrity overnight.

Even those few celebrities who maintain no social media presence cannot avoid the affects on their personal and professional lives due to other members of their industry, allies, rivals, fans, and haters posting about them on social media.

After making a music industry connection at a Holiday Inn party, singer Halsey was able to get access to a studio to record her first song — “Ghost.” She posted it to her SoundCloud account once it was finished. Within an hour, she said she logged onto her Twitter account only to discover her account was blowing up. The next morning she had multiple record labels begging to sign her.

Late-night talk show host James Cordon recently found out just how much damage social media can do to a well curated public persona.

Actors Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, who each have a massive online following, recently had to post pictures of their newborn child to social media so the paparazzi would stop swarming their house and spying on them in an attempt to get the first photos for the public.

Business Use and Misuse

Businesses have entire departments, actually entire industries, dedicated to social media data harvesting and evaluation.  This information is collected at every single level of interaction and collated in every possible way that can be imagined.  Once collated, it is analyzed and sold to anyone that wants to leverage it.  Nearly every business wants to take advantage of collected data, whether to reach and engage their target audience or influence and manipulate each target audience for their own purposes.

Businesses have been monitoring employees’ social media postings for years and will quickly use personal postings made away from work as a reason to fire someone for cause if they post anything negative about the company itself or harmful to the company’s reputation for a known employee to be saying or doing.

Coca-Cola famously fired an employee whose photo was taken while he was drinking a Pepsi while wearing his delivery uniform back in 2003.  This was just the excuse the company needed to fire a pro-union worker.

Today, nearly everyone knows that they can get a person fired from their job by filing complaints with their employers about that person’s misconduct, both online and off, even when away from work if it can be posted to social media.

While this is a valid and powerful way to disempower those racists, bigots, and fascists that shouldn’t have any power or influence over the lives of those they hate and/or fear, it also means that people cannot have a single bad/off day anywhere without fear of long-term repercussions.

Government Use and Misuse

Obviously, governments – and those that want to control them – could not overlook the power and influence of the growing Internet, but it was growing faster than they could regulate or restrict its usage and availability.  By the time they could pass any laws to do so, the World Wide Web interface was developed making it and all its information more available to nearly everyone with access to electricity, a computer, and a phone line.  Just as they started to get a handle on that, the social media platforms and their BBS message boards, chatrooms, and encrypted file exchanges changed it all again.   Then smartphones came along and disconnected many of the users from the traceable landlines law enforcement could easily monitor.   With few exceptions, the changes and advancements in how we use technology are nearly always at least a decade ahead of the governments’ ability to regulate and monitor that technology.

Not surprisingly, those in government, or those that wanted to seize governmental power, quickly become adept at using that technology as well for propaganda distribution, misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and illicit surveillance to their advantage.

We have seen firsthand in recent years how social media can be used to plan and coordinate a massive non-violent political protest to affect change as well as coordinate and plan an armed and murderous insurrection siege attempt upon the United States capital during a joint session of the full Congress.

We have seen firsthand how one state or national government can use social media to socially engineer influence over the international and domestic governmental policies and procedures of other states or nations.   We have also seen how they can create public animosity or distress for each other.

Donald Trump would have never been able to successfully become President without social media. The vast majority of the damage he created while President may not have ever been fully known or understood without social media cutting through the official press narratives.

We have seen firsthand how social media can be used to spread the truth about important events to those that might not otherwise ever hear it and how it can be used to convince others that those events either never happened or were something else entirely.

Where Do We Go from Here?

The Internet, especially social media, is the most powerful and influential tool of cultural change ever put into the hands of the general populace, and with the invention of smartphones, it is literally in our hands all the time.

How we use that power, and allow it to be misused, is entirely up to us.

I am doing my best to weaponize it in my ongoing lifelong battle against willful ignorance, racism, religious bigotry, toxic misogyny, fascism, and the gradual slide toward Corporate Feudalism that seems to be driving our economic policies.

What Will You Do with It?

It is up to you what kind of influence you will let the Internet, social media, and those adept at wielding them as weapons, have over your life.

It is also up to you how you will use them as vital tools in making your life, and the lives of others, better.

What kind of citizen will you choose to be?

What kind of person will you choose to be?

Whatever choice you make; social media is creating a real time record of your involvement in our society and culture through this period of time for future historians.

How will you choose to be remembered?

50 Days

Posted on by Tim

In 50 days the members of the 2022 to 2024 congress will be determined.

As a result of Trump’s efforts with the 2020 census to undercount minority and immigrant communities, Republican states have greatly increased their gerrymandering efforts, and the Trump tainted Supreme Court bench has allowed those efforts to remain in place for this midterm election cycle, even while declaring many of them unconstitutional.

This means the House is likely to flip back to a Republican majority led by Kevin McCarthy as speaker, if the Republicans don’t go completely nuts and give it to someone like Marjorie Taylor Green or Matt Gaetz.

The Senate is a different story.

Democrats currently hold a tie breaking majority, on paper. But that majority is greatly hindered by Senators Manchin and Sinema. Both of whom will remain in place until after the 2024 elections.

This means they actually need to win at least 2 seats to hold a real, effective majority.

Meanwhile, the Republicans only need to gain a single seat to reinstate Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader. I guarantee that one of his first steps as leader will be to eliminate the ability for Democrats to filibuster any bill he wants to pass.

If Republicans, due to that gerrymandering that will likely secure the House for them, also gain a supermajority then they will be able to override any veto Biden attempts

There are also more than 35 gubernatorial seats up for election this cycle, along with an equally staggering number of Lt. Governorship, states’ Attorneys General, and Secretaries of State, and school board seats.  The importance of these offices cannot be overstated with the recent Supreme Court rulings on “States’ Rights” to religious oppression, election gerrymandering, denial of womens’ rights, and limiting/restricting health care access.

Do not let any of the hype about a “Blue Wave,” or “Roevember,” or insurrection backlash creating an enhanced turnout lull you into a sense of overconfident complacency.

Make a plan now.

Make sure you are registered. Make sure you cast and submit your ballot properly, whether in person or absentee. Make sure to help at least one other person do the same.

The Republicans have made it clear that the future of our democracy, all of our rights, all of our health, all of our education, many of our marriages, and quite a few of our lives are actually on the ballot this year.

Act accordingly.

You have 50 days.

When Failed Insurrectionists Rewrite Laws

Posted on by Tim

There are several important things to note regarding the sweeping 6-3 party line ruling of the Trump tainted Supreme Court on New York’s concealed carry law (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen) today.

The single most important one being that the majority opinion was penned by the Justice whose wife just helped plan, fund, and carry out — with multiple seditious domestic terrorism militias — an armed and murderous attempt to overthrow our halls of Congress and assassinate the Vice President and Speaker of the House along with other members of Congress.

As justification his ruling states that we must honor America’s long history of unrestricted gun access while disregarding the fact that the NY law being challenged has been on the books for nearly 120 years and has been upheld by the SCOTUS bench before. It also disregards the long history of American cities and states attempting to curb gun violence stretching all the way back into the “old west” when visitors to many towns had to turn their guns in at the Sheriff’s Office upon arrival.

As such this will overturn similar laws in at least 6 other states, and will lead to Red Flag laws being challenged and more perpetrators of domestic violence attacks being allowed to obtain firearms again.

But wait, there’s more.

The ruling actually contains this sentence:

“After reviewing the Anglo-American history of public carry, the court concludes that respondents have not met their burden to identify an American tradition justifying New York’s proper-cause requirement,” meaning that a review of American history (where British law holds influence and English is the primary language) says we cannot put a law in place that requires a person to explain why they need to carry a concealed firearm in public to be permitted to do so.

The ruling was issued the same day that the federal Congress prepares to vote on its first major (although weak) bipartisan gun restriction bill in decades, signaling to members that the court will likely strike down any law they pass regardless of how they vote, giving Republicans an easy excuse to back out of their pathetic attempt at compromise.

More importantly though, the ruling will negate many public safety laws and protocols that have been or may be introduced by federal, state, or local authorities throughout the nation by placing a new and ridiculous bar that must be hurdled before safety restrictions can be implemented. If this ruling had been made 3 years earlier it is likely an additional million people would have been lost to the COVID pandemic.

The end result is that this ruling will make all of America less safe, and do so in ways for which a gun in your purse or holstered to your side won’t provide any viable protection.

And that is exactly what Ginny Thomas and her co-conspirators wanted.

Clarence and Ginny Thomas putting the coup back in couple.

Shocking Revelations?

Posted on by Tim

For a moment, let us set aside the few new revelations that were given to us as part of the House Select Committee’s first public hearing on the insurrection attempt led by Donald Trump and his coterie of sycophants, and engage in some real talk about the primary underlying issue.

Based on the reporting and social media commentary following the hearing, everyone seems remarkably shocked at the extent of the conspiracy aspect behind all of this.

I cannot fathom why.

We knew it was a conspiracy all along, long before Donald J. Trump became a part of it.

How did we know?

The short answer for the “TL:DR” (Too Long: Didn’t Read) folks is simply:

History has shown us time and time again that it is impossible for a single person to gaslight hundreds of millions of people into intentionally harming others and themselves for what appears to be the personal benefit of only that one person. Doing this requires a massive support group engaged in coordinated implementation of a well organized, thorough plan. In this case, that plan was generarions in the making. Trump wasn’t its architect, he was just the newest face of the movement.

If you’ve been reading the books and articles of people like Timothy Snyder and following people like Dr. Heather Cox Richardson on social media, you should already have a good idea of what the long answer is going to be. If you’ve been following me on social media at all since 2011, the same should be true. But most people haven’t been putting the pieces together.

Here is a detailed look at what helped get us here.

After the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln wanted to “heal” the divide between what at the time were the Northern Republicans and the Southern Democrats. So, he made several concessions to those southern land owners and former slave owners who had led a treasonous insurrection against our own government. They took every opportunity to systemically entrench support of their “Lost Cause.” It went beyond just putting the failed treasonous military generals in high government positions, which was bad enough.

The 13th Amendment which made the freedom of the slaves a Constitutional Right was itself amended to allow that slavery could legally continue as long as people were convicted and imprisoned first.

This immediately led to the creation of laws that criminalized being Black and started the racial disparity in our justice system. When the 14th Amendment gave them the right to citizenship, many states went further making it illegal for former prisoners to exercise their consitutional right to vote or hold office, so once they managed to get out of prison they’d have no means of working within the system to enact necessary changes.

Thus began the Dredd Scott and Jim Crow eras.

This continued until well into the 20th Century and the Civil Rights Movement.

Then in 1964, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson dared to sign the Civil Rights Act. The bill enraged and disenfranchised the southern White “DixieCrats” so much that they abandoned the party.

Richard Nixon saw this as a path to power. He would bring Roger Stone along with him.

He immediately began recruiting them to the Republican party by pandering to their racism and Evangelical religious bigotries. This movement of the southern White elite essentially forced both the Republican and Democrat parties to completely swap their social and political ideologies and policy platforms. The sudden Evangelical embrace of anti-abortion politics as a wedge issue was part of Nixon’s courting of the racist White religious right.

Nixon began the dismantling of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal which had helped end the Great Depression and for the previous 50 years ensured that America would become the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world by taxing corporations and elevating the middle class.

It was during the Nixon era when Congress separated the minimum wage from the inflation rate so employers no longer had to provide cost of living wage increases when necessary.

However, Nixon got caught committing illegal acts from the highest public office in our nation, a position commonly revered as the “Leader of the Free World.” When the coverup failed to keep those acts from reaching the public eye, his party members knew the only way to save themselves was to force him to resign before the impeachment trial exposed them too. So they did. His condition for that resignation was a full pardon, which was granted by his VP and successor to the presidency, allowing him to avoid any and all legal repercussions for his actions. And also preventing him from testifying as to whom in his party, and the government, helped him commit those crimes and helped him try to cover them up.

Then Ronald Reagan came along. As Carter successfully negotiated the release of the American Hostages being held in Iran, Reagan was working through back channels to ensure that release didn’t happen until after his inauguration so it would appear his administration secured it rather than Carter’s. This was the foundation of the Iran-Contra hearings that came later, that led to Oliver North’s immunity deal on three federal charges in exchange for his congressional testimony.

While in office Reagan spent a few years intentionally ignoring the HIV/AIDS epidemic because the primary victims seemed to be intravenous drug users and people who were labeled at the time as homosexual. It wasn’t until powerful and influential people, who were formerly closeted members of what is now the LGBTQQIP2SAA community, began announcing their own diagnoses that he could no longer ignore it. Countless people needlessly suffered and died because of his administration’s intentional mismanagement of the early years of that epidemic and the false narratives about how the disease could be transmitted.

He also enacted the nationalization of Trickle-Down economics that has disempowered much of the middle class created by FDR’s New Deal.

And, this will be important later, he vetoed journalism’s Fairness Doctrine Bill. Organizations like FOX News, Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, and Alex Jones’ InfoWars, couldn’t exist today if he had allowed it to pass.

But the worst thing that came from Reagan’s tenure was pushing the public narrative of individual American exceptionalism and the belief that everyone who was successful became successful on their own through nothing but hard work and determination instead of through the help of supportive friends, family, and community. This became even more destructive with the conflation of all social service programs as “SOCIALISM” and just to be sure they managed to lump all the varying types of socialism as well as communism together under that one “evil” label. This had been going on for quite some time, but dismantling the fairness doctrine really accelerated the way conservative media outlets could package their propaganda.

Then came the the first of two Bush Presidents. The first was pretty much just an extension of Reagan. He did appoint Justice Thomas to the Supreme Court, although it wouldn’t be until decades later that we would learn that Clarence was only serving as his wife’s proxy on the bench.

Before the second Bush came Bill Clinton, who after playing the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show embraced being called America’s “First Black President,” despite not being Black. His entire campaign was about embracing Corporatism in compromise with the modern Republicans and forcing all of American politics just a little bit further right with each of his political compromises as he tried getting conservative independents to support him.

Clinton and his administration became embroiled in multiple personal and professional scandals, including Bill’s workplace infidelity with interns which led to an impeachment hearing that would teach American teens that committing sexual acts without intercourse doesn’t legally count as sex, the Whitewater scandal, and the fact that they used Black prison labor [see 13th Amendment’s continued legalization of imprisoned slaves reference above] to staff the Arkansas Governor’s mansion while in residence there. That last might well explain why he was so willing to push the center right while compromising with the former DixieCrats.

During Clinton’s tenure, House Speaker Newt Gingrich would take full advantage of both Clinton’s desire to compromise with Republicans and the various scandals to further the only Republican policy platform agenda that had been in place since Nixon. That was to subversively support White Nationalism, Toxic Misogyny, and Religious Discrimination to keep the people divided, to use the War On Drugs and the War on Poverty to wage war on all marginalized people suffering from drug addiction and poverty in the world’s wealthiest nation instead of providing them the resources they needed to improve their lives; because doing so made them easier to control under the guise of maintaining “Law and Order,” “The Rule Of Law” and protecting “Family values.”

It was at this point FOX News was founded by Australia’s Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch weaved White Nationalism and misogyny into everything he did at the network and everything the network put on the air. He created a 24/7 entertainment empire that would serve as a recruiting and indoctrination service for violently angry White men in exactly the same way that other multinational terrorist organizations recruited and indoctrinated their own terrorist cells.

Following Clinton was the second Bush administration.  Which would capitalize on the American media’s conflation of all Muslim ethnicities into one giant anti-democracy terrorist organization.

“W.” would use the well established Republican relationship with American Evangelicalism to stoke the religious bigotry of our nation’s militant right after the 9/11 attacks of 2001 and unleash the world’s greatest military power on the wrong country so we could secure the oil reserves of that nation.   Considering his family’s fortune and power was built upon the oil industry, this was no doubt a remarkably self serving action that cost millions of lives of all those involved and entagled us in a war that would span decades.

He would also use the incident to justify creation of Department of Homeland Security and issue executive orders that would later be codified into law by Congress to bypass the 4th amendment rights of any and all citizens it wanted if it could meet the lowest possible standards of suspicion of a national security threat.   This would be used by increasingly militarized police departments around the nation to wage war on increasingly marginalized communities of color.  It was at this time, that privatized White Nationalist militias really began to see a surge in their membership as angry White men took up arms to protect our country from Black and Brown people attempting to immigrate here both legally and illegally.

Meanwhile, Roger Ailes became CEO of FOX News, Fox Television stations, and 20th Television.  Ailes had served as media consultant for Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush as well as for the first mayoral campaign of Rudy Giuliani.  He would maintain Murdoch’s history of racism, religious bigotry, and misogyny in every aspect of the business, but he was also instrumental in turning the outlet into nothing more than a Republican propaganda machine.   The company’s own legal team would argue in court, against slander and libel lawsuits, that the outlet was nothing more than sensationalist entertainment and could not seriously be considered a legitimate news source.

It was the George W. Bush administration that appointed John Roberts to the Supreme Court as Chief Justice.   The Roberts’ court would almost immediately begin stripping away the political power and civil rights protections of the populace and relocating it into the hands of the world’s wealthiest people and corporations.

Then a mostly unknown Black freshman Senator did the unthinkable.  

He galvanized the nation’s people of color, most especially the women of color, to overcome the centuries of efforts to prevent them from having any political power to not only show up, but to do so in such numbers that those efforts would be rendered meaningless.   Even more miraculously, he did so without disenfranchising the White moderates and liberals who embraced his message of cooperative hope for the future.   And even more miraculously than that, he did it with a decidedly “Muslim sounding” name in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq wars.

Barack Obama was the greatest societal unifying force of a generation.   He pushed social services.  He pushed for getting as many Americans as possible health care knowing he’d never get Republican support for Universal heath care.

The only people who saw him as divisive were the racists who were never going to accept him because of his name and/or skin color.  Many people think he didn’t do enough, but what he and his team accomplished against the most aggressively obstructive Congress was nothing short of astounding.

Prominent Republicans looked at his success and said “never again,” and — probably for the first time — meant it.

The Senate Majority Leader at the time vowed, literally at the inauguration, to do everything possible to ensure Obama would be an ineffectual one term president.  Authoritarian and fascist leaders of foreign governments lined his pockets and that of other Republicans to help him, as did quite a few major corporations and organizations, not the least of which were Russia and the NRA.  

To Obama’s credit, he accomplished much, including getting re-elected to accomplish more.

McConnell and the Republicans fought him every step.   And their biggest complaint, even as he offered them exactly what they demanded in their compromise negotiations always boiled down to “But he’s a Black Muslim,” even though he was Christian.

This is where Donald Trump finally officially enters the picture in August of 2015 to announce the presidential campaign he had been threatening for years. At this point in his life, his one true skill is simply self-promotion.   Russia’s former superspy and current president, Putin, had been grooming him for years.

They funneled money to him and other Republicans through the NRA and his money laundering real estate businesses whose primary clientele was the Russian mafia.  His behind the scenes campaign advisors included Roger Stone, Roger Ailes (and several of his fake news network’s superstars), Newt Gingrich, and media shock jocks Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones.

Publicly, during the campaign, Republicans put up a pretense of hating Donald J. Trump and everything about him.   He had a tendency to talk too much and “say the quiet parts out loud” exposing motives and plans before they could be snuck passed the general populace until it was too late.  He was also at constant risk for sex, ethics, discriminatory, and other legal scandals popping up from his past and present.

However, his donors had much deeper pockets (being mostly adversarial foreign governments) and his advisory team had much more power, experience, reach, and political clout than any of his opponents.

Angry, racist, White Americans loved the fact that he was unabashedly racist and willing to say what they wanted to hear even when everyone knew he shouldn’t be saying it.

Ultimately, when he won the primary, the Republican party agreed to support him for President.  They would protect him from accountability if he would sign off on their desire to stack every federal bench with judges who would be willing to put party platform before their duty to their office.   All three RNC finance chairs from this period were subsequently convicted on various felonies.

The son of a sitting Supreme Court Justice would use his position at a bank to funnel a billion dollars of funding to Trump with a loan no other bank would have made.   The loan appears to have been a funnel of Russian money, not the bank’s own assets.

That Justice would later take early retirement for Trump to seat an additional member on the bench for at least another two generations of furthering the Robert’s court agenda.

McConnell, with the help of all Republicans, literally broke American parliamentary procedures to steal a Supreme Court bench seat from the Obama administration.   Conservative media helped them justify it.

The death of civil and women’s rights champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg would make a third seat available to entrench the Republican agenda on the bench for those generations.

During his presidency, Trump would intentionally damage long standing national alliances, destroy treaties, and court authoritarian regimes as he attempted to remove any and all trace of Obama’s successes from the White House history.   To help accomplish this, nearly every administrative appointment he made was to put in place a person who had already publicly stated that the department they would be heading should be completely dismantled and eradicated.  He immediately began dismantling agencies that performed ethics oversite and civil rights protections.

To further his efforts he would stoke and then dismiss as unimportant White Nationalist hatred and violence toward People of Color and non-Christians.  Drive up the recruitment for White Nationalist domestic terrorism cells (militias) and weaponize them against communities of color along with using ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the Border Patrol to do the same.  He would also openly encourage more racial policing and police brutality against people of color.

With the help of the entire Republican party and their well established media propaganda machine, he would borrow a page from Reagan’s HIV/AIDS playbook and allow over a million Americans to die as he intentionally mismanaged our government’s response to a global pandemic because at the early stages of that crisis the most effected communities were the ones that weren’t among his support demographic.   They would convince their followers to put themselves and their own families at great risk in an attempt to kill off as many of their opposition voters as possible.

He would be twice impeached, once for attempting to blackmail Ukraine’s president for his own personal reelection efforts and to benefit Putin’s efforts to rebuild the U.S.S.R. and again for leading a violent murderous insurrection against the American government to prevent the transition of power to his rightful successor in the office.   Both times the Republican party did everything they possibly could to protect him from consequence and accountability.

All of this is a matter of public record. 

None of it is part of a big investigative reveal discovered at the Select Committee hearings.

We’ve known all of it all along.

History has shown us time and time again that it is impossible for a single person to gaslight hundreds of millions of people into intentionally harming others and themselves for what appears to be the personal benefit of only that one person.   Doing this requires a massive support group engaged in coordinated implementation of a well organized, thorough plan.  In this case, that plan was generations in the making.   Trump wasn’t its architect, he was just the newest face of the movement.

What we have been up against all along is a small group of kleptocrats enabled by adversarial foreign governments to undermine democracy, dismantle the US government, and erode our international influence to create a society of multinational Corporate Feudalism.  And they have weaponized uninformed outrage, racism, religious bigotry, and misogyny to accomplish it.

If you look at it with that in mind, every single decision they have made over the years makes perfect sense.

Trump wasn’t the mad scientist brains behind the whole thing, he was the monster those mad scientists created and unleashed.

Of course it’s a conspiracy. 

It’s a conspiracy that has been fully entrenched within the #Culturalinertia of our nation’s history.

It will continue until we put an end to it, or it succeeds.

It’s All So Simple; Really, But Simple Ain’t Always Easy.

Posted on by Tim

Over the past few weeks a lot of different news has been breaking, and the press and the people responsible for it want us all to view each instance as a separate, isolated, and unrelated occurrence, they are not. We have to put some pieces together to put them all in context with each other. If we do that, Things get pretty clear, and the solutions present themselves.

First, lets review a bit of well documented history, that is undisputed by anyone reputable enough to put forth any dispute of merit.

Several years back, multiple foreign interests saw a celebrity conman as a useful idiot they could put in power to serve their interests. They pursued several methods of doing so, ego stoking, funneling money through the NRA, employing a social media troll farm for influence, using hackers to attack our political party offices and election systems, and more. The son of a Supreme Court Justice Antony Kennedy funneled roughly a billion dollars of their money through Deutsche Bank loans that no legitimate bank officer would approve. And, they were successful beyond their wildest dreams.

Their useful idiot became the President of the United States, despite losing the general election by a considerable margin. He spent the next four years stoking racial hatred and political violence. He filled three seats on the Supreme Court with religious zealot personal loyalists with a combination of multiple ethics complaints and inexperience on the bench. One of those seats belonged to Justice Kennedy, who retired early just so this man could appoint his replacement while the Republican party controlled the approval process. He then went on to become personal responsible for more the deaths of more than half a million Americans by seizing on an opportunity to weaponize a global pandemic he thought would be limited to more urban, liberal areas, and controlled before it could spread. His inner circle of kleptrocrats used that opportunity to make a ton of money in illegal and/or unethical investments as they mishandled the national response and created an economic crises. Eventually, though, their misinformation efforts and anti-science, anti-knowledge campaigns backfired, and the virus started taking an even heavier toll on their own support base as vaccines became available. Then when it became clear he wasn’t going to be re-elected, he attempted to lead a violent overthrow of our Congressional system, and seize power for himself. He failed, but he succeeded in further dividing the country with violence, racism, and bigotry. In the process, the Republican senate made a mockery of not just one, but two impeachment trials to protect him.

Now we have a Supreme Court, one third of which was appointed by a violent insurrectionist, rewriting long established and settled law, starting with abortion rights.

During his tenure, the Republicans in state governments around the country have been passing hundreds of voter suppression laws and laws rolling back civil rights, social services, and more.

Republicans are hoping the compromised Supreme Court will uphold their efforts.

Then, after winning back the Presidency, as well as the House and Senate majorities, Democrats wasted nearly a year before pursing real investigations of those that planned and instigated the insurrection attempt, especially those still serving as Congressional peers. They held off on the trials of insurrectionists and cut deals that allowed them to plead out to non-felony charges to avoid more serious punishment, including the, at least temporary, loss of their own voting rights.

Worse yet, the allowed two of their own Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, to hold the ability to achieve justice and make good on promises of progress hostage for their own personal gain.

The real solutions are simple, and should be bipartisan, if one party wasn’t actively trying to weaponize willful ignorance and hateful bigotry in order to entrench us all in corporate feudalism.

But, simple isn’t always easy.

Here are the things that need to be done now:

Close Ranks and Unify

The Democrat Party leadership needs to steamroll Manchin and Sinema, by taking some lessons of the Republicans to heart.

Schumer and Durbin need to tell them to get in line and do away with the filibuster in order to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For The People Act.

If the two refuse, then Schumer should strip them of all their Committee seats, severely hindering their power to influence legislation in development. They should eliminate all party support for their re-elections and divert it to candidates who will primary them and vote with the party on these vital issues.

Many people think that the threat of doing so will force them to switch parties, but this won’t happen. Neither of them will switch because doing so puts McConnell back in the Majority Leadership seat and eliminates both or their personal gain leverage as they become the 51st or 52nd member of the Republican majority and of no use at all to McConnell in passing or obstructing anything. They are two self centered and self serving to willingly render themselves irrelevant.

Get them in line and pass the bills required to make sure everything else being accomplished right now remains a lasting accomplishment, and not just a brief respite in the eye of the storm.

Fix The Court

Biden assembled nearly 3 dozen experts to form a commission in response to demands from Democrats to restore what they called ideological “balance” on the currently tainted court. They offered him a 300 page research paper that offers no specific recommendations.

So, here are my recommendations for what must be done:

Change the number of Supreme Court Justices is so there is a one to one ratio of Justices to US Appellate Court Districts.

That number is currently 13. Set term limits to be two times the number of judges, so 26 years.

Appoint one new judge every two years to replace the longest serving judge. If a judge dies or retires early, the President would then nominate, with Congressional approval, a temporary replacement to fill the seat until it would have come up in rotation, at which time the temporary nominee could be reconfirmed for their own term or replaced as scheduled.

This would prevent any one administration from being able to hold an imbalanced sway over the court for generations to follow.

Achieve Accountability

Censure and eject all those who participated in the planning and execution of the January 6th insurrection from both the House and Senate, and any governmental/state agency that they are currently working within.

Hold trials for all those who participated in the planning and execution of that insurrection, on the proper felony charges. Expedite the trials.

Disqualify all of them that are currently running for state and federal offices across the nation from ever holding political office again.

There is established legal precedent for all of the above.

Move On

For years now, we have been fighting against a small group of kleptocrats put in power by an adversarial foreign government to undermine democracy, dismantle the US government, and erode our international influence. And they have weaponized uninformed outrage, racism, religious bigotry, and misogyny to accomplish it.

If you take the time to look at all they have done, with that in mind, every single decision they have made over the last several years makes perfect sense.

Only by accomplishing the things outlined above can we begin to address our collective moral injury as a nation and society and begin to heal from the damage they have caused.

This is how we address the ongoing #StochasticTerrorism of the Republican party and begin to course correct our #Culturalinertia.

It’s Been A Busy Week

Posted on by Tim

Four days ago, for a variety of reasons, I posted a farewell message to my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/timsnews) after nine years of dedicating my blood, sweat, and tears to keeping it going well, and doing so with no real compensation.

There were several private personal issues that played into the decision of how I need to allocate my time and effort going forward, but those were all secondary to the fact that at the beginning of 2016, this page was reaching nearly half a million individual users a day.   Now, with nearly twice as many followers as then, it barely reaches 5,000 a week.  This is a direct result of Facebook’s (now Meta’s) algorithms intentionally quashing the voice of progressive and/or humanist advocates.

As a result of all of this, and other changes to how the Facebook user interface works, the page has evolved a few times over the years, going from a place of user engaged discussion and debate of meaningful issues, to me just posting brief commentary on specific news links, and the few people that still engaged doing so simply by clicking a generalized emoticon reaction button instead of processing their thoughts on the issue for a meaningful response.

Since posting that message, quite a few people who have never openly engaged before let me know publicly and privately how much the page has meant to them, that meant a lot.

Also, several extremely major news stories broke each validating much of my efforts here over the last few years.

Trump’s Chief of Staff published a new book exposing that Trump tested positive for COVID 3 days prior to his live debate with Biden in 2020.  Meaning that he was “patient zero” for the Super Spreader event celebrating his appointment of Amy Cohen Barrett to the Supreme Court and several other events that week, all of which he attended unmasked while hugging the guests.  It also shows that his crowding Biden’s personal space during the debate was an intentional and malicious effort attempting to infect Biden.  And every one of his immediate family members and staff, unmasked in the audience, were doing something similar.   After backlash from Trump, the author, said in a news interview that his own book was “Fake News.”

A former ranking member of the DOJ choose to plead the 5th in front of a Congressional committee rather than answer questions that would expose his own criminal involvement in the January 6th insurrection.   This has been handed over to the current AG for Contempt of Congress charges.

Meanwhile a Supreme Court bench sent the signal that it fully intends to strip women of what remaining personal health autonomy they already have, and in the process set the new precedent for states to completely disregard any and all federal laws and regulations they choose.

You might remember Trump in his debate with Hillary Clinton declaring that he would fill the bench with judges that would overturn Roe v. Wade.   And here we are.

Despite the fact that during his confirmation to the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh convinced Sen. Susan Collins that he thought a woman’s right to an abortion was “settled law” calling the court cases affirming it “precedent on precedent” that could not be casually overturned.  And during her own confirmation, Amy Coney Barrett told senators that laws could not be undone simply by personal beliefs, including her own.

In both cases Senators like Susan Collins choose to believe their lies under oath, rather than see the reality of their previous rulings and opinions and op-ed papers, and Trump’s stated intent and confirm them anyway.

As a result, we now have a Supreme Court bench, one third of which, was appointed by a man who attempted to lead a violent overthrow of our government, actively reinterpreting Constitutional law and legal precedent from a fascist White Nationalist perspective.

The legal team Trump assembled to wage his “Stop the Steal” court battles has turned on each other so deeply that they’re publicly exposing each others crimes, and all are now under investigation.  They also lost a major ruling in Michigan as a result of these frivolous lawsuits.   And outlets like Fox News and NewsMax are tearing themselves apart trying to figure out who they’re supposed to support and who they’re supposed to attack.

During this brief four day span, we also learned that the mother of the latest school shooting wrote an open later in 2016 to Trump thanking him for giving her the right to bear arms.  The weapon the boy used was only purchased by the father four days before the methodical and deliberate massacre.   This was a direct result of the incessant #StochasticTerrorism efforts from Trump and his supporters.  The young man is now being charged as an adult with murder and terrorism charges.  His parents are both being charged with involuntary manslaughter as well.

And over the years, each and every one of those things was predicted by the posts on this page, and then discussed again as they were happening in real time.   This, along with your heartfelt responses, further validated my work and effort here and helped me come to a realization.

I started the Facebook page and this blog site for me, they were a place for me to process my thoughts on important and difficult issues, which over the years evolved into an attempt to combat willful ignorance by keeping myself and others informed.   One of the key ways I found to do that was to expose the aspects of our #culturalinertia that were holding us back as a society offering suggestions on how we need to shift them in the proper direction.   At the same time writing about it and informing others became a form of personal therapy to work through my own “Moral Injury.”  If you don’t know what that is, you should.   I strongly believe that we as a collective society are all suffering from this shared PTSD.   Learn more here:  https://www.ptsd.va.gov/…/cooccurring/moral_injury.asp=

So, I realize now, I need to keep doing my writing and sharing it with anyone that I can reach, which means instead of shutting the page down, it is time for it to evolve once again.

I will keep this page open, along with my Twitter page @timelytopics.  Of late, I have been over-posting to Facebook and under-posting to Twitter.  To solve both those issues, instead of posting so many different news articles with their own separate lead in comments, I will be writing a couple cumulative blog entries on this WordPress page https://tims-news.com/ and posting the links to these social media accounts, you can follow on whichever of the three platforms you prefer.

These blog entries will be more similar in structure to the postings I have shared with you recently from Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, and I will allow more of my personal writing voice to be present in my commentary on the issues (as all of my blog posts have done) than my postings here normally have contained.  Expect to find a lot more humor and sarcasm embedded that those of you that don’t know me personally are accustomed to from me.

If you appreciate the work and effort, and are willing to make a donation to cover the expenses of the news subscriptions I use to keep the information here flowing, you can do so at either PayPal: paypal.me/timelytopics or Venmo: timelytopics@gmail.com