I get less agitated looking at the daily news as too much time is spent on Donald Trump’s latest idiotic utterance. Most of what he says is to get people cranked up. What’s scarier are the behind the scenes actions like filling cabinet posts with people who want to destroy the agency they’ve been put in charge of.
We can try to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions and we can vote. I think the Democratic Party has to let go of the fringe social issues and focus on bread and butter issues facing Americans like the cost of living and not further eroding the safety net. Democrats also need to crank up the social media presence on what the current administration is doing and how there’s a better alternative.
Sadly, as a nation we’ll get dissatisfied with whoever is in charge and demand change. We need younger leaders to take over with a different approach to communicating with people. It’s time for the gerontocracy to retire. We’ll survive as a nation, though not necessarily for the better as long as we don’t give up.
30-40 years ago news would have reported something like Trump's Greenland Panama blah blah blah comments and then with lifted eyebrow gone on to the next page of news. Now it's an entire segment. We cry that we need better news, but how can we demand it to get what we want? From the WaPo and Meta news today it seems like the news will just go along the path of least resistance to allow money to flow in.
We can follow Independent Media but eventually we will have to pay them to be able to provide the breadth and reporting depth we require. Perhaps we should start thinking about real news no longer being free news.
Good point about maybe "real news no longer being free news" -- but it never was really "free." It was heavily subsidized by advertisers and, to some extent at least in some places, by subscribers.
Another great essay, David, and just what I needed to read this morning as I beheld my email newsfeed, trying to decide which to read, and which to discard. After sinking into a black hole yesterday while reading the endless really good essays on the Jan 6 anniversary, I resolved this morning to cull my newsfeed in advance of the inauguration because I don't want to sit here every morning being saturated with the endless examples of Trump's grifting and the AI dudes writing tax deductible cheques to the non-profit inauguration committee, the biggest grift in town at the moment, but not the last. I will take your advice very seriously, to give real thought to what I CAN do, in my own life, to make things better not just for myself and my family, but for my community. I'm going to unsubscribe to a few of the news sites that are too repetitive and too shrill (eg, I LOVE what Meidas is doing to build a viable independent news network, but I am growing tired of the hyperbole). Same with Raw Story -- too much adrenaline, not enough thoughtful analysis. Is it inappropriate to name names? Maybe, since we are all busy on this side modelling civility, or at least trying to, in contrast to the rage-baiting that the other side fuels itself with. But maybe others feel the same way I do -- I want to stay very well-informed by news and analysis that motivates me to keep showing up in my everyday life, not crap that pushes me down further into the despair that I've been fighting every day since the election. We know what's coming -- they've told us, and we should believe them. No one is coming to save us. We are on our own, and by this I mean the institutions we had blind faith in to function as guardrails of democracy (respect for the rule of law, the integrity of the courts especially SCOTUS, the civility and good intentions of our elected officials) are not functioning as such any longer. So I will keep reading this Substack, and a small number of others (HCR, Joyce Vance, Jeff Teidrich for much-needed snark, Marc Elias, Jay Kuo) but the rest of it I'm stepping away from, including Bluesky, which has been good, but it looks like a lot of effort is going to have to go into policing it to keep the trolls out. Thanks for this opportunity to think out loud here -- I'm clearer in my mind after reading this essay about what I need to do moving forward. Great community here, by the way -- I always read the comments.
David, I am with you on this 100%, and you remind me that fear is the most demanding of all the emotions. Trump exploited fear in our electorate. That said, I know that courage is what overcomes fear. Courage makes us step forward into the danger zone, and step forward we must. We will turn this around by building something for which people will vote: a solid, broadly beneficial platform that is sold by a charismatic candidate. We have approached it as candidate only. The platform became a meaningless afterthought. I would leave it there for 2024. Talk about sucks. We had a charismatic candidate sans platform. We must turn this around. We must build a platform that lifts, fires up, and arms the strongest movement of our lives. Otherwise YOU bequeath your children and grandchildren their inherited, voiceless servitude to a dictatorship. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/start-our-movement?r=3m1bs
Thanks for this thoughtful article. It has made me put on my thinking cap yet again. As Joyce Vance says “we are in this together” and that is true. While we may have different opinions on policy and differing opinions of who to blame at some point we need to focus on how we get through this dangerous time and I truly believe many do not understand just how dangerous it is. We need to speak up by calling our representatives and senators and flood them with calls about issues that are going to come before them. We cannot be silent anymore.
On this site under the leadership of Scott Dworken and his group they rallied. People to send letters to Congress and the last I Heard over 80,000 letters were sent. If we could do that on other issues we could have a real impact. Maybe I am a dreamer but I do think we need to speak loud and often and together.
Seems to me that Bill McKibben published a book along these lines more than 30 years ago: THE AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION. In it he contrasted 24 hours of nonstop media output in (IIRC) Northern Virginia with what he experienced walking in the woods: attentiveness to the world around him. Mind you, this was before advent of the World Wide Web, before social media, before cell phones, and already the overload was real and hard to get away from.
I guess there were billionaires in 1992, the year AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION was published, but no one was singling them out as a cause of our malaise. Some of us were, however, focused on the ever-more-obvious shortcomings of supply-side economics (aka Reaganomics) and what was happening because of the Reagan tax cuts. When Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall in 1998, things got worse and worser, eventually culminating in the crash of 2007-2008 and the Obama administration's bailing out of the "too big to fail" financial institutions that brought it about.
All of which is to suggest that we focus less on the billionaires than on the conditions that contributed to their proliferation. Lady MacB may be right when she says that what's done cannot be undone, but what's broken *can* often be repaired if we have the will and knowledge to do the work.
Centrism is dead. Bring on the progressivism that could have spared us this moment in time. Let Bernie's message live again, otherwise, people are going to eat the bears (oligarchs) with pitchforks.
I don't know. Right now I can't think of anything we could do. Or at least I could do? Yes, I get triggered even if I'm doing my best not to. I've seen this screenplay played out ad nauseam. I'm already battle weary and PTSD' from 12 yrs (of the 25 and counting) under the Venezuelan Dictatorship🇻🇪 and for what? 000 nada, zilch, the void. Once you gut Democracy, it's very hard to recover.
I can't believe I'm reliving the same ole same ole Groundhog day movie: waking up in a Gringo Autocracy.
So, David, if you ask me tonite, I would answer: If my beloved K wasn't suffering from vascular dementia, I would be packing and moving out from my adopted country. Where?
Thank you, it’s first time I read your post you’re right. You give me hope. I am 69 lost Daughter, sister in law, 2 close friends in 2024. I have been angry all year Nov 5 made me so disappointed at Americans that thought it would be a joke to vote for DJT he will never win! Or pay back Joe Biden for price groceries I say to those people you were uneducated did not bother to research one thing that Joe Biden did which was all a plus or the things that the con man lied about all year long, his equity buddies bought dozens of grocery stores raised the prices. musk and all these newspapers owners want something so they all donated to keep Trump from fighting with their companies. Don’t think it’s anything deep-seated they want regulations recalled so they can fly in space & cause other Problems but they’re kissing his ass what’s a million to them? Whatever you wanna call it I have never been so disappointed in Americans as I have been this year, I thought January 6 was the lowest we could go, nope voting him in was a joke. Now you have a sitting Putin in the United States White House. I hope they’re happy because the prices will go up & you can blame Trump for it.
Please elliott oberman, since you are so impressed with Mamala Kamala and today you miss her dearly as the bear does his bid-net in the woods do tell US what she said her policy priorities were back during the media frenzy campaign with no corporate-captured accredited news reporting person willing to break the POLICY SILENCE. What was Mamala Kamala's POLICY PRIORITIES? Can you link us to a single speech in which she laid them out? Any televised debate she clearly expressed and prioritized her political party's priorities? Was there a tea shirt much less a policy manifesto making her Working Class default and de-faulty priorities known whether or not our Princes n' Princesesses of the Press asked her or her predecessor White House holders or not.....
Thanks from a non-aligned voter who was given no voice or venue to ask these questions despite mass media saturation coverage.
This illuminating Swedish produced yet English language and US property class focused policy centered documentary of national and global concern for the LEAST OF US (non-property owning working class wage stagnated non represented source of nutrition for our class and party betters) went another year without a single US Movie Theater booking or Cable TV Plutocracy streaming regular access to programming choices for consumers; a small percentage of whom are engaged citizens.
All after drawing at the time of its release from International Film Fest circuit glowing reviews posted all over Cyberia on the pressing Global Crisis of Affordable Housing and the intentional policies priveleging Property Speculation concentrating wealth ever more even under self-described liberal and progressive political leadership, much less or moreso under right wing big C as in CONswervative paid-for political representation of, by and for the LLP benefit of our fellow\fellawnt Wealth Concentrators.
Some excerpts from the documentary "PUSH" (2019) (full doc @ "Push | TVO Docs" on YouTube)
"Exploring why people cannot be allowed to live in cities... The high cost of housing and global investment funds that push people to poverty and strip them of a fundamental human right."
Producers: Fredrik Gertten, Margarete Jangard
Director: Fredrik Gertten
From Knowledge Network Aired Feb. 2, 2021
Full documentary can be seen here "Push | TVO Docs" on YouTube:
• Push | TVO Docs
Thanks for viewing!
Transcript
Health and balance and affordable housing to US and global community all!
Say NO to Normalization of Homelessness as Cost of doing Bid-Net in our plutocracy!
I used to think I would suffer from brain fog for the rest of my life..."𝐛𝐮𝐭" this changed everything.... https://t.co/6pjlMHglTG
I get less agitated looking at the daily news as too much time is spent on Donald Trump’s latest idiotic utterance. Most of what he says is to get people cranked up. What’s scarier are the behind the scenes actions like filling cabinet posts with people who want to destroy the agency they’ve been put in charge of.
We can try to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions and we can vote. I think the Democratic Party has to let go of the fringe social issues and focus on bread and butter issues facing Americans like the cost of living and not further eroding the safety net. Democrats also need to crank up the social media presence on what the current administration is doing and how there’s a better alternative.
Sadly, as a nation we’ll get dissatisfied with whoever is in charge and demand change. We need younger leaders to take over with a different approach to communicating with people. It’s time for the gerontocracy to retire. We’ll survive as a nation, though not necessarily for the better as long as we don’t give up.
30-40 years ago news would have reported something like Trump's Greenland Panama blah blah blah comments and then with lifted eyebrow gone on to the next page of news. Now it's an entire segment. We cry that we need better news, but how can we demand it to get what we want? From the WaPo and Meta news today it seems like the news will just go along the path of least resistance to allow money to flow in.
We can follow Independent Media but eventually we will have to pay them to be able to provide the breadth and reporting depth we require. Perhaps we should start thinking about real news no longer being free news.
Good point about maybe "real news no longer being free news" -- but it never was really "free." It was heavily subsidized by advertisers and, to some extent at least in some places, by subscribers.
Excellent piece of writing. I am with you.
Another great essay, David, and just what I needed to read this morning as I beheld my email newsfeed, trying to decide which to read, and which to discard. After sinking into a black hole yesterday while reading the endless really good essays on the Jan 6 anniversary, I resolved this morning to cull my newsfeed in advance of the inauguration because I don't want to sit here every morning being saturated with the endless examples of Trump's grifting and the AI dudes writing tax deductible cheques to the non-profit inauguration committee, the biggest grift in town at the moment, but not the last. I will take your advice very seriously, to give real thought to what I CAN do, in my own life, to make things better not just for myself and my family, but for my community. I'm going to unsubscribe to a few of the news sites that are too repetitive and too shrill (eg, I LOVE what Meidas is doing to build a viable independent news network, but I am growing tired of the hyperbole). Same with Raw Story -- too much adrenaline, not enough thoughtful analysis. Is it inappropriate to name names? Maybe, since we are all busy on this side modelling civility, or at least trying to, in contrast to the rage-baiting that the other side fuels itself with. But maybe others feel the same way I do -- I want to stay very well-informed by news and analysis that motivates me to keep showing up in my everyday life, not crap that pushes me down further into the despair that I've been fighting every day since the election. We know what's coming -- they've told us, and we should believe them. No one is coming to save us. We are on our own, and by this I mean the institutions we had blind faith in to function as guardrails of democracy (respect for the rule of law, the integrity of the courts especially SCOTUS, the civility and good intentions of our elected officials) are not functioning as such any longer. So I will keep reading this Substack, and a small number of others (HCR, Joyce Vance, Jeff Teidrich for much-needed snark, Marc Elias, Jay Kuo) but the rest of it I'm stepping away from, including Bluesky, which has been good, but it looks like a lot of effort is going to have to go into policing it to keep the trolls out. Thanks for this opportunity to think out loud here -- I'm clearer in my mind after reading this essay about what I need to do moving forward. Great community here, by the way -- I always read the comments.
Crimes of Big Money in Politics
🔸Endless war in every country for endless profit
🔸Endless destruction of the environment for endless profit
🔸Endlessly pit society against itself to hide in plain sight for endless profit
"Consequences of Capitalism", Noam Chomsky, Preface
https://wolf-pac.com/
Great writing. Thank you for this piece. Will help me keep a bit of perspective in my angry moments….The bear is not behind!
David, I am with you on this 100%, and you remind me that fear is the most demanding of all the emotions. Trump exploited fear in our electorate. That said, I know that courage is what overcomes fear. Courage makes us step forward into the danger zone, and step forward we must. We will turn this around by building something for which people will vote: a solid, broadly beneficial platform that is sold by a charismatic candidate. We have approached it as candidate only. The platform became a meaningless afterthought. I would leave it there for 2024. Talk about sucks. We had a charismatic candidate sans platform. We must turn this around. We must build a platform that lifts, fires up, and arms the strongest movement of our lives. Otherwise YOU bequeath your children and grandchildren their inherited, voiceless servitude to a dictatorship. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/start-our-movement?r=3m1bs
Thank you… spot on, as usual.
Thanks for this thoughtful article. It has made me put on my thinking cap yet again. As Joyce Vance says “we are in this together” and that is true. While we may have different opinions on policy and differing opinions of who to blame at some point we need to focus on how we get through this dangerous time and I truly believe many do not understand just how dangerous it is. We need to speak up by calling our representatives and senators and flood them with calls about issues that are going to come before them. We cannot be silent anymore.
On this site under the leadership of Scott Dworken and his group they rallied. People to send letters to Congress and the last I Heard over 80,000 letters were sent. If we could do that on other issues we could have a real impact. Maybe I am a dreamer but I do think we need to speak loud and often and together.
Yes.
And then- where to from here? I guess we shall all find out afterwards. Self protection then?
Seems to me that Bill McKibben published a book along these lines more than 30 years ago: THE AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION. In it he contrasted 24 hours of nonstop media output in (IIRC) Northern Virginia with what he experienced walking in the woods: attentiveness to the world around him. Mind you, this was before advent of the World Wide Web, before social media, before cell phones, and already the overload was real and hard to get away from.
I guess there were billionaires in 1992, the year AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION was published, but no one was singling them out as a cause of our malaise. Some of us were, however, focused on the ever-more-obvious shortcomings of supply-side economics (aka Reaganomics) and what was happening because of the Reagan tax cuts. When Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall in 1998, things got worse and worser, eventually culminating in the crash of 2007-2008 and the Obama administration's bailing out of the "too big to fail" financial institutions that brought it about.
All of which is to suggest that we focus less on the billionaires than on the conditions that contributed to their proliferation. Lady MacB may be right when she says that what's done cannot be undone, but what's broken *can* often be repaired if we have the will and knowledge to do the work.
Centrism is dead. Bring on the progressivism that could have spared us this moment in time. Let Bernie's message live again, otherwise, people are going to eat the bears (oligarchs) with pitchforks.
I don't know. Right now I can't think of anything we could do. Or at least I could do? Yes, I get triggered even if I'm doing my best not to. I've seen this screenplay played out ad nauseam. I'm already battle weary and PTSD' from 12 yrs (of the 25 and counting) under the Venezuelan Dictatorship🇻🇪 and for what? 000 nada, zilch, the void. Once you gut Democracy, it's very hard to recover.
I can't believe I'm reliving the same ole same ole Groundhog day movie: waking up in a Gringo Autocracy.
So, David, if you ask me tonite, I would answer: If my beloved K wasn't suffering from vascular dementia, I would be packing and moving out from my adopted country. Where?
My choice would be Bhutan.
Thank you, it’s first time I read your post you’re right. You give me hope. I am 69 lost Daughter, sister in law, 2 close friends in 2024. I have been angry all year Nov 5 made me so disappointed at Americans that thought it would be a joke to vote for DJT he will never win! Or pay back Joe Biden for price groceries I say to those people you were uneducated did not bother to research one thing that Joe Biden did which was all a plus or the things that the con man lied about all year long, his equity buddies bought dozens of grocery stores raised the prices. musk and all these newspapers owners want something so they all donated to keep Trump from fighting with their companies. Don’t think it’s anything deep-seated they want regulations recalled so they can fly in space & cause other Problems but they’re kissing his ass what’s a million to them? Whatever you wanna call it I have never been so disappointed in Americans as I have been this year, I thought January 6 was the lowest we could go, nope voting him in was a joke. Now you have a sitting Putin in the United States White House. I hope they’re happy because the prices will go up & you can blame Trump for it.
I'm so impressed with Mamala Kamala, today, miss her dearly, but that bear really sheets in the woods
Please elliott oberman, since you are so impressed with Mamala Kamala and today you miss her dearly as the bear does his bid-net in the woods do tell US what she said her policy priorities were back during the media frenzy campaign with no corporate-captured accredited news reporting person willing to break the POLICY SILENCE. What was Mamala Kamala's POLICY PRIORITIES? Can you link us to a single speech in which she laid them out? Any televised debate she clearly expressed and prioritized her political party's priorities? Was there a tea shirt much less a policy manifesto making her Working Class default and de-faulty priorities known whether or not our Princes n' Princesesses of the Press asked her or her predecessor White House holders or not.....
Thanks from a non-aligned voter who was given no voice or venue to ask these questions despite mass media saturation coverage.
This illuminating Swedish produced yet English language and US property class focused policy centered documentary of national and global concern for the LEAST OF US (non-property owning working class wage stagnated non represented source of nutrition for our class and party betters) went another year without a single US Movie Theater booking or Cable TV Plutocracy streaming regular access to programming choices for consumers; a small percentage of whom are engaged citizens.
All after drawing at the time of its release from International Film Fest circuit glowing reviews posted all over Cyberia on the pressing Global Crisis of Affordable Housing and the intentional policies priveleging Property Speculation concentrating wealth ever more even under self-described liberal and progressive political leadership, much less or moreso under right wing big C as in CONswervative paid-for political representation of, by and for the LLP benefit of our fellow\fellawnt Wealth Concentrators.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6juSABUfnUg&t=155s
PUSH - ( some excerpts from the documentary )
Tiktaks Point of View
484 subscribers
2697 views since posting Sep 1, 2021
Some excerpts from the documentary "PUSH" (2019) (full doc @ "Push | TVO Docs" on YouTube)
"Exploring why people cannot be allowed to live in cities... The high cost of housing and global investment funds that push people to poverty and strip them of a fundamental human right."
Producers: Fredrik Gertten, Margarete Jangard
Director: Fredrik Gertten
From Knowledge Network Aired Feb. 2, 2021
Full documentary can be seen here "Push | TVO Docs" on YouTube:
• Push | TVO Docs
Thanks for viewing!
Transcript
Health and balance and affordable housing to US and global community all!
Say NO to Normalization of Homelessness as Cost of doing Bid-Net in our plutocracy!
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee