Der Untergang

I've thought about what Krugman is writing here. How much damage is Trump going to do in his time remaining as president?  I doubt he will try to run for president again in 2028, especially since the Constitution specifically prohibits it. But he can destroy a lot between now and then, and he has shown a willingness to fuck anything and everything up. The only way Trump has made America "great" again is found in all the lies he has told. This putz seems to think he is the greatest president ever, which is an amazing crock of shit. Whatever he says, assume the opposite.

Der Untergang

How badly will Trump punish America?

PAUL KRUGMAN

AUG 26

Note: After I recorded this it was reported that Trump officials are threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center if it can’t be renovated to Trump’s taste (and presumably with his name added). Matches my argument exactly.

Der Untergang naht.

Pardon my German pronunciation. I’m going to take a break today from wonky economic analysis and talk about, well, Donald Trump, but in a slightly different way from what I think most people are saying. Not positive, obviously.

Just before recording this, I saw that Trump wants to rename Lake Ontario Lake America. Which is silly, would be funny, except that this guy is the President of the United States. And it’s really kind of troublesome that someone in that position is that out of it, that petty, disconnected from reality.

And look, it’s not news to anybody that Trump is ego-driven, disconnected from reality, and at the same time, somehow commands a level of deference and obedience from the entire machinery of the federal government that no president has ever had before. So this is really quite serious.

What I don’t think people are fully aware of is just how bad it can get, given that Trump is so obviously dissociating, decompensating, that he’s not all there.

Obviously, he was already a very problematic personality, which was doing a great deal of damage to the United States. I don’t think even now people fully appreciate the amount of damage that has been done. Even before the Iran War, Trump’s provocations, insults, his trade wars, really destroyed the world’s trust in America.

America became a country that could not be trusted to honor agreements. It was a country that constantly tried to bully other countries. Our word was worth nothing. Our sanity was not to be taken for granted. And then, of course, along comes Iran, where in addition to showing that we’re not to be trusted, that we’re not going to be relied upon., we also showed that we were far weaker than people imagined.

If there’s one thing people thought it was, well, America has a powerful military. It turns out, well, not as powerful and not nearly as competent as people thought. How much of that is the result of Trump and Hegseth degrading it and how much of it was there to begin with is an interesting question. But anyway, at this point, we are not loved, we are not respected, and we aren’t even feared.

And we’re not getting that back. Even if Trump is succeeded by someone decent —God help us if he isn’t— but even if we have a more or less rational, well-intentioned government that follows, the world now knows that we are capable of putting someone like Trump in a position of unprecedented, almost absolute power and that it can happen again.

And the world also knows that we’re just not as fearsome as we seem to be. That we can be defied much more successfully even by smallish countries than anyone really imagined.

And we’re not getting that back. I anxiously wait for the days when we’re no longer a Trump-ruled country, but this is my country, and what will be left of us, what will be left of our role in the world, even once he’s gone?

Okay, the title I gave, the way that I opened this talk was Der Untergang, which is the German title of the movie Downfall, about the last days of Adolf Hitler. I hope that nobody is going to complain about my using the German, right? We’re long past the point where it’s considered unthinkable and incredibly rude to make Nazi parallels. There’s a lot of people in this administration or close to this administration who are effectively Nazis, in some cases explicitly Nazis. America is not yet Germany under Hitler. But the reason we don’t have a functioning Gestapo in this country is not for lack of desire to have one. It’s because these people, at least so far, don’t have the juice. So all of the stuff, all of the parallels seem appropriate.

And the parallels are there. I mean, the parallels are there even in seemingly small things. Hitler was obsessed with building a gigantic gaudy ballroom. So there’s just a lot of parallels in there.

Now the main message of the movie Der Untergang is that it’s about Hitler in his final days who knew that he was losing. He knew that defeat was looming. He knew that his power was collapsing. And his reaction was, among other things, to take it out on his own country.

Hitler never accepted that he had failed Germany. He felt that Germany had failed him. And so he had a plan, often called the Nero Decree, which was to destroy as much as possible of Germany’s infrastructure. Supposedly to deny it to the victorious allies, but in large part to punish Germany.

Well, Trump knows. He may deny it, he may have his moments when he actually believes that the polls are all fake and all of that, but in many ways he is behaving like somebody who knows that his days of supreme power are about to end. He, of course, is not going to accept that it’s his fault. It’s the fault, obviously, of the Democrats, who are all communists. It’s the fault of the Republicans, who didn’t live up to his leadership. The fault of everybody but him.

What does he do in the position of losing? Probably not committing suicide in the Fuhrerbunker, but still in the position of losing all of his power. Well, what you do in that position, if you are somebody like Trump, who is an empty vessel: there’s nothing in there, the only pleasure he appears to take in life comes from dominating other people.

Well, one thing you do is you try to stick your name everywhere, or leave your imprint everywhere. So Trump, according to reporting by Swan and Haberman, spends most of his time thinking about his construction projects and trying to leave his mark on everything in Washington.

What I don’t think we’re fully appreciating even about those projects is that there isn’t a whole lot of actual construction. There’s a lot of starting of stuff, but so far it’s been mostly destruction, mostly tearing stuff down. We don’t have a triumphal arch, but we have a hole where the ballroom is supposed to be. We have just a lot of damage having been done to our nation’s capital and to the iconic structures that were supposed to define, symbolize who we are as a country. The scale of the destruction is really quite amazing.

So I’m not going to try fancy video editing here. I’m just going to show you a picture of what the environs of the White House look like right now. There you go. That bare area is the South Lawn, ripped up because of Trump’s cage match. You can see in the corner there the hole in the ground, which is where the east wing of the White House used to be. Basically, Trump has left, so far, wreckage in his wake.

Even the things which have not involved tearing stuff down, the gilding of statues, the horrific redecoration of the White House, is surpassingly ugly. That’s partly because Trump has terrible taste, but it’s also, I think, a clear sign of aggression. He’s saying, oh yeah, you’re going to give me a 33% approval rating? Well, I’m going to make the nation’s capital as ugly as I can in this little time as I possibly can.

Now, this is all superficial. This is stuff that can and will be repaired. It’ll cost a lot of money, but OK. So we’ll rebuild the White House. We’ll reseed the South Lawn. We’ll strip the gilding off the statues. We’ll make the White House a dignified place again.

But how much more will be coming? When we talk about Hitler’s last days, as I said, one of his last attempted acts was what’s called the Nero Decree, which was an attempt to destroy as much of Germany’s infrastructure as possible, supposedly to deny it to the victorious allies. But clearly, and even there’s some evidence that he actually he clearly thought this as a way of punishing the German people for failing him.

Now, historiography is a little more complicated than that, as it usually is, but that’s clearly the gist of it. That Hitler’s final acts were to basically try to bring everyone else down with him.

Do you really want to say that that’s not what’s going to happen with Trump? Assuming that he loses much, if not all, of his power to shape events this November, and of course we’re all worried about how he may try to disrupt or overturn the election, but assuming he doesn’t manage to do that, he will find himself much diminished. How much damage will he do basically taking revenge on America?

Because always you want to bear in mind that Trump hates America. He hates the values on which America was built. He hates democracy. He hates rule of law. He hates all of the things that are what we’re supposed to be about as a nation.

But increasingly it looks as if he just plain hates this country because it doesn’t love him. How much damage will he do? How much damage can he do? I don’t want to make a specific prediction, but I’m worried.

And don’t say that he won’t do that or he can’t do that. Those have been famous last words again and again over the past decade. So this is going to be even worse, even uglier, I think than most people imagine.

Have a great rest of your day.

malingering

Another guest post from a friend. Doctor in retirement, but still plugged in. 

Malingering

If you are not already familiar with this term, you may have heard it recently in the news regarding the Abraham Lincoln carrier serviceman who jumped overboard in what, to all intents and purposes, appears to be a suicide attempt. The Navy, at the direction of Pete Smegbreath, no doubt, has filed charges against the seaman accusing him of "malingering" - faking an illness, injury, or disability in order to avoid his duties.

I first encountered this word as a first-year medical student attending a required lecture in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) - a medical discipline born of war. PM&R evolved from the management of injuries and consequent disabilities sustained in the theaters of combat. So did much of surgery, for that matter. The amputation of injured and/or infected limbs, management of chest wounds, and so on emerged from war. PM&R dealt with the aftermath. That discipline involves the assessment of physical impairments, the design and fitting of prosthetics and devices that ameliorate disabilites, and so forth. Much of the VA's work is PM&R.

So, back to "malingering." Our lecturer, a Houston VA PM&R physician, wanted to give us some insight into how people deal with impairments - resourcefulness, resilience, and the lack thereof. Half in jest, he said, "If I ask a determined individual who has no arms to open a door, he will do it using his mouth." You have probably seen images of people with thalidomide-related birth defects who eat dinner with their feet, dress themselves without hands, and invest all of their abilities to eke out as normal a life as any of us do. So, there was more than a pearl of truth in our lecturer's words.

"Others, will simply look at the closed door and accept defeat," he added. That's not malingering. Malingering is faking illness or disability - not merely refusing to attempt a task.

Malingering is "bone spurs."

I practiced Internal Medicine for three decades and change. I never diagnosed a patient with "malingering." It's really hard to fake sepsis, heart failure, a stroke, end-stage renal or liver disease, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, etc. If a patient is going to fake something, it is going to be something easier like seizures, intractable headaches, bowel or bladder incontinence, or perhaps bone spurs. Fakers don't often come to the attention of Internists.

I am brooding about malingering this evening because I know that a 19yr old brain, especially a male 19yr old brain, is not fully developed. In particular, the frontal lobes where problem solving, planning, and execution are done, have not matured and will not be mature for another six years. I think this young serviceman was overwhelmed by circumstances beyond his control and even further beyond his ability to endure.

You see, endurance requires very advanced cognitive abilities. It requires the ability to formulate and evaluate alternatives. It requires the ability to mentally "see" beyond tomorrow, next week, next month, and to peer into an uncertain future where the misery of the "present" fades into a distant "past."

You do it all the time. So do I. Most 19yr olds cannot do it. It isn't malingering, it is biological immaturity. It isn't bone spurs.

Alas.

Texas in education

In 1993, Democrats were in charge of Texas and had been for several years. That was the last year  Democrats were in charge. Then the Group of Pedophiles (GOP) took over and have been running Texas ever since. And look at the results in education. You can click the pic to make it more easily readable.

Denmark

I do wish the United States would join much of the rest of the world and offer a universal health care system, but we have allowed private health insurance companies to weasel their way into our health care and now they are so entrenched it will be hard to uproot them. Seems like a no-brainer to me to create a universal system here and hire most of the employees in private health insurance to work in the public sector. We've done hard things before, and we can do this too.

High taxes are pure bliss!

Alright, here we go again!

Every single time a stray, freedom-obsessed fundamentalist from Texas stumbles into our little corner of the internet, we have to endure the exact same endless lamentation:

"B-but Denmark is a socialist hellhole where the government steals 50 percent of your cash, leaving you only able to afford a rusty bicycle!"

Now listen up, crazy friends across the pond. Take a deep breath, gently set down your assault rifles for just a moment, and let’s spell this out in crayon so even a Wall Street broker can wrap his head around it:

Our sky-high taxes are not a communist assault. It is, in fact, the single most brilliant capitalist business model on Earth!

First and foremost:

The marginal propensity to consume!

Yes, we know it sounds like something you need a PhD to pronounce without choking on your Pinot Noir, but the logic is embarrassingly simple.

How many flat screens do you genuinely think Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos buy for their living rooms? One. Maybe two. Or hell, let’s say fifty, if they have an exceptionally vulgar guest bathroom in every single guest suite.

A multibillionaire does not buy 500,000 flat screens, no matter how much gold he hoards in his cave like Smaug the dragon.

An economy does not thrive on a handful of oligarchs; it thrives on a massive, solvent middle class with actual purchasing power to buy flat screens, hit the cafés, hire contractors, and buy designer lamps, bicycles, EVs, groceries, and so on and so forth.

When we redistribute wealth, it gets pumped straight back into the economic bloodstream as pure consumer demand.

Second:

We don’t let half our talent pool rot away in poverty.

Instead of forcing a gifted girl from a trailer park to pawn her kidneys just to afford medical school...

...our government covers tuition for everyone, regardless of background.

We even pay students about $1,000 a month in what critics love to call "coffee money" simply for showing up to get educated.

And when that doctor has a baby, we provide tax-subsidized daycare so she can get right back to the hospital and save lives, instead of being chained to a kitchen.

We have quite simply mobilized our entire workforce to generate massive wealth for everyone’s benefit.

And the absolute best part? It creates trust!

We don’t need private security details, razor wire around our suburban subdivisions, or an army of corporate lawyers every time we make a simple handshake deal. We have quite literally bought ourselves freedom.

Taxes in Denmark are not theft; they are an exclusive VIP subscription to a fully functional, civilized society!

So, dear foreigners:

We don’t pay taxes because we are self-effacing saints in Birkenstocks.

We do it because we are hard-nosed pragmatists who figured out a long time ago that a society where everyone can afford to live is, funny enough, a society where we all end up vastly, undeniably richer.

Feel free to share

#DSA

#democracy

#DemocraticSocialism

#NordicModel

Mike Nellis

Mike Nellis is a Democratic strategist and entrepreneur who has raised over $1 billion for Democratic campaigns and causes. He’s the founder of Authentic.org, an award-winning fundraising and advertising agency, and a former Senior Advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris. This Substack is where he writes with endless urgency about the issues of the day—and how we can save the Democratic Party and our democracy.

Trump’s Latest Temper Tantrum Tells You Everything

Because this was never just about the Kennedy Center.

MIKE NELLIS AUG 26

Hey folks,

I want to spend a minute talking about what a petulant child the president of the United States is. This is a man who simply has no self-control and throws wild tantrums whenever he doesn’t get his way.

That’s not news, of course. But I was struck yesterday by the sheer absurdity of Trump’s legal team telling a federal court that if they don’t get their way on renaming the Kennedy Center after Donald Trump, they intend to tear it down and replace it with an outdoor amphitheater.

Read that again. Trump’s plan is to hold the Kennedy Center hostage unless he gets to rename it and remake it after himself. 

And I think that’s a great preview of what happens to basically every public institution in America that Trump can’t put his name on or twist into whatever bizarre shape he and his people want. It’s how he took over the Republican Party, too. He promised he’d burn the whole thing to the ground unless they remade themselves in his image, and now they’re virtually gone as a party. The once-great Republican Party of states’ rights and personal freedom has become a big-government party shoving a scammy, radical Christian nationalist agenda down our throats while letting Big Tech and corrupt billionaires do whatever the hell they want with this country.

The other piece of news that struck me yesterday, is that Trump’s administration is trying to make it actively harder for you to know when and where they’re planning to build AI data centers. The EPA wants to strip the public’s right to give feedback. No notice. No comment period. Nothing. You don’t get a say in what’s best for your community and your kids. That might sound like a completely different story from the Kennedy Center. It's not. It's the same instinct: if something stands between them and what they want, it either bends or it breaks.

That’s what’s amazing to me. If they don’t pass that rule, if this community won’t take an AI data center, if they don’t get to rename this thing after Trump, if the MAGA movement doesn’t get exactly what it wants, they promise to just burn it all down. At this point you’re basically negotiating with terrorists. These are not people governed by a core set of fundamental values and beliefs beyond self-enrichment, accumulating power, owning their political enemies, and most of all, winning. And once winning becomes the only value, there is basically nothing you can't justify.

It’s not too dissimilar from what I told you yesterday about Pennsylvania Republicans suddenly having a positive opinion of John Fetterman. The only reason they like Fetterman is that people like me hate him. It’s not because his politics have changed that much. He still votes with Democrats 85 percent of the time. They like him more than they like Dave McCormick, their own Republican senator who votes with Trump 100 percent of the time. It just flows on down.

Trump is very much a symptom of broader diseases in American society today: the lack of accountability for a very wealthy class of people, our broken campaign finance laws, an institutional rot and malaise that has allowed people to get lazy and refuse to modernize and recognize that we are living in a very different time, where the way people operate is very different. He didn’t create all of this. But he figured out how to exploit it, and he accelerates it. And he’s also somebody who corrupts everything and everyone around him just by the way he acts. People get enamored by his glow and corrupted by the access to power and opportunity it brings.

I mean, those lawyers arguing in court right now that they’ll tear the Kennedy Center down if they can’t rename it after him? Those people probably didn’t go to law school intending to argue for shit like that. I simply can’t believe anybody begins a career that way. So how does somebody become so worn down and characterless over time that they end up trapped in a movement like this? Are they so thirsty for power and money and access that they’ll argue and say whatever? I think that’s probably the answer. Occam’s razor. The simplest answer is usually the correct one. You compromise one thing, then another, then another, until eventually you’re standing in federal court, arguing that the president should be allowed tear down a national cultural institution that has belonged to the American people for generations, all because he can’t put his name on it. It’s disgusting.

I’ll end this rant with this: We have to fight like hell to make sure the Democratic Party does not become a mirror-image reverse of what the Republican Party has become. There are a lot of people in the party right now propagating slop and trying to convince you that we should give up and abandon our values, the people we fight for, and the country we want to build together, all in order to beat these guys. But winning cannot be the only value. That’s exactly how people end up where Trump’s Republican Party is today. It needs to be deeper than that. If we beat the MAGA movement in November, if we beat Donald Trump and his handpicked successor in 2028, but we do it in a way that abandons our core Democratic Party values, we’re not going to build a government that can actually solve the fundamental crises we have in this country. We won’t get real accountability. We won’t fix a broken economy. We won’t clean up our broken campaign finance laws. We won’t remake this country in the way I believe we really can.

And we have such an opportunity. Every crisis is an opportunity. I’d rather we weren’t in this crisis right now. I’d rather Kamala Harris had won the 2024 election. I was proud to support her. But let’s take this for the opportunity it is. Trump has shined a light on everything that’s broken in American politics today. The brazenness of the Epstein class, these corrupt billionaires, these failed politicians on both sides, frankly, have given us an opening to turn this country around and remake it the same way both Roosevelts did, the way Lincoln did. Not just to defeat something. To build something better in its place. To win in service of something greater than ones self or party. That’s a generational opportunity. It comes along maybe once, maybe twice in a lifetime. And it’s right in front of us.

So my advice to everybody: find the thing you’re good at. Find the way you can be useful, to your community, to your family, to your friends. Let’s take this moment and turn it around. Because I think we can take the darkness of this moment and the petulant nature of our president and build something pretty goddamn special, something we can all look back on and be proud of, the way past generations turned around rampant corruption and economic calamity and stupid foreign wars. We can do that again.

The pendulum swings, my friends.

Let’s fucking go.

With urgency, 

—Mike Nellis

Kennedy Center

Trump is so pissed about having his name removed from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (and it should never have been there in the first place, duh) that he is threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center unless he is allowed to renovate it, AND put his name back up there. This kind of childish behavior has become typical of Trump. What a fucking spoiled brat. His end cannot come soon enough.

Now Donald Trump is threatening to "demolish" the Kennedy Center — and that's not a joke — unless he's allowed to continue with the renovations and put his name on the building, which he's trying to force through.

All because this man-baby was forced to remove his name from the building after he disgraced a memorial dedicated to the late John F. Kennedy.

The Trump administration is now claiming that the facility might need to be torn down because it won't be "structurally safe" without these renovations — which Trump now wants to use as a way to get his name on the center by adding "Renovations by Donald Trump."

This is how f*cking pathetic, insecure, weak, petty, and mentally unhinged this lowlife piece of crap is.

Trump is now threatening to tear down this memorial because he's not getting his way when it comes to putting his name on the building.

He's such a loser.

There really aren't words to adequately describe how pathetic Trump is. He's an 80-year-old who literally has the mindset of a toddler who would throw themselves on the dirty ground and have a cataclysmic-style hissy fit because they didn't get a piece of candy at the grocery store.

And what he wants here is to desecrate a memorial dedicated to a president who was killed while in office.

He's such a disgusting creature. I'm counting down every day because each day we move forward is one less day this orange diaper stain is president — and his last day in office can't come soon enough.

Anyone continuing to defend this bottom-feeder really is the lowest of the low. Willfully ignorant, brainwashed fools with no principles or morals other than blind worship of one of the worst, most detestable human beings to have ever lived.

History will not be kind to Donald Trump or the people who've supported and enabled his disgusting behavior.

I cannot wait until 2028, when we hopefully elect a Democrat and they erase everything this piece of crap has tarnished with his name. Every building, statue, piece of granite — everything, gone.

That day can't come soon enough.

Allen Clifton

climate terror

John Scheve has a few things to say about our current climate chaos. We were making some progress (not much, but some) towards lessening the climate chaos, until the orange egomaniac started reversing our progress.

No one wants to say this but the Mediterranean and even the Bay of Biscay will soon be mostly dead marine biomes as well as enhanced catalysts for severe thunderstorms, torrential flooding rains, tornadoes, stronger mid latitude cyclones, heavier winter snowfall and even Medicanes in late summer.

Marine Heat Waves (MHWs) are becoming perpetual though annually oscillating in intensity and are generally amplifying year to year. The more sheltered and shallow the body of water the more rapid the heating in calm sunny conditions. When the uppermost ocean is highly stratified as it is increasingly, MHWs can intensify stunningly fast even in the open deep Pacific. The North Pacific marine heatwave which is worst in the NW Pacific now, has recently warmed at a staggering 1 to 2 degrees C per week under calm sunny conditions with sinking air under an atmospheric high pressure dome. These conditions are increasing over the oceans in tandem with MHWs in an amplifying mutual feedback.

Generally speaking, climate and marine feedbacks and mutual amplifications are kicking in with ferocious speed now as global atmospheric warming accelerates - both far faster than modeling predicted. Climate models ignore many feedbacks and amplifications and use linear extrapolations for others which has rendered them useless. Plus climate sensitivity is likely 2 to 3 times greater than modeled due to the accelerating Earth Energy Imbalance caused by our increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the surprising relative reduction of outgoing long wave energy from the upper atmosphere associated with cloud reduction and cloud dimming over warmer ocean surfaces and higher levels of water vapor (the most powerful greenhouse gas).

If we don’t find a way to stop the accelerating heat absorption of the world ocean we will not stop the trajectory towards extinction we are now in.

Image: Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies (SSTAs) showing an SSTA for the date of + 5.2 degrees C (+ 9.4 degrees F) in the open Mediterranean Sea as of yesterday from earth.nullschool.net

John Scheve

RU liberal?

Are you a liberal? Douglas Wood has a metric.

YOU’RE A LIBERAL IF: Perhaps you were raised, as I was, in a Republican household. You may have even, in years and decades past, voted for Republican candidates, even for President. And you may have thought yourself a somewhat ‘moderate,’ middle-of-the-road, plain-old-vanilla good citizen.

If so, then it may come as quite a shock to learn that you have become, in the age of MAGA, a lib’rul. Or, worse than that a f—ing lib’rul. Or a r—tard. Or a f—-ing r—tard. Or a f—tard. Or a socialist, or a commie, or scum or vermin or an ‘enemy of the people.’

Well. Be not confused, my friends. It’s alright. Turns out that it’s not that hard, in the world of MAGA, (which has the intellectual depth of a rain puddle) to identify what a liberal is now. (Yeah, we’ll just stack all those other names under the same liberal category.) So here we go. YOU are now a liberal if…..

If you read.

Books.

If you think.

If you believe in the Constitution.

If you are somewhere ‘left’ of fascist.

If you don’t beat Capitol Police with ball-bats.

Or spear them with flagsticks.

Or spray them with mace.

Or try to hang a vice-president.

If you believe in elections.

And don’t try to overturn them.

If you don’t believe in pardoning—and paying off—violent insurrectionists.

If you think black people and brown people and any people who aren’t *president should still have the same voting rights.

If you believe voting actually IS a right.

If you think immigrants are human beings.

If you think the United States of America should not be building concentration camps.

If you think that public lands should be in public hands.

If you believe in education.

If you realize that vaccinations have saved approximately 154 million human lives, with a 40% global decline in infant mortality.

If you have a trans friend or member of the family.

If you think that women—like men—should have control of their own bodies.

If you think that Christianity (like others) is a fine religion—but is to be found in the Bible and in the hearts of believers, not coming out of the braggart mouths of idiots and bigots and a former Fox talking head now renamed the ‘Secretary of War.’

Good God.

If you think that war is a deadly serious business.

And not a game.

Or a propaganda exercise.

If you think for yourself and don’t let a cult leader do your ‘thinking’ for you.

If you have a spine and a brain.

If you honor the memories, lives, deaths, and sacrifices of generations before—many of whom fought fascism, and who the current ‘commander in chief’ labels as losers.

If you believe that bone spurs are not the same as military medals.

If you think that governmental corruption on an industrial scale is a bad thing.

Along with nepotism.

And galactic stupidity.

If you think that Air Force One should be an American plane and not a ‘gift’ from Qatar.

If you think reporters and cabinet members are not ‘decoys.’

If you think that democratic South Korea is a better ally than communist dictatorship North Korea.

If you value clean air, clean water, wild things and wild spaces for future generations.

If you think our United States protected wilderness areas should not be handed over to multi-national, corrupt corporations.

If you think that Abraham Lincoln was a better President than the Creature currently in the White House.

If you know who you are.

And don’t need a cult leader to tell you.

Yeah, there’s more. Lots more. But that’s probably enough to tell you if, in this strange new world, you are now a proud, flag-waving liberal. So, my advice… embrace it. Own it. Wear it like a badge of honor. Get a button. Write it on your hat. Or a lawn sign. And don’t let anybody—any mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, Fox-watching, election-denying, fascist-loving, civics-flunking, America-destroying ‘conservative’ tell you otherwise. And, Oh! Remember. There was a time when the name/label Conservative also meant something as well. Something good and decent and intelligent and patriotic. No more. But maybe, someday.

Someday….

(This is my latest Substack post. You can support/subscribe to me there at Notes From The Campfire@douglaswoodauthor. Thanks!)

Douglas Wood is an American author, speaker, musician, and wilderness guide.