Capitalizing Rage

 

Capitalizing Rage

It is interesting that most society-shifting major thought is emanating from the extreme right, and liberal America, standing for justice under the Constitution, is viewed simply as the same old/same old. As the House of Representatives embraces a vote against “socialism,” a slap at Zohran Mamdani the new “democratic socialist” mayor of New York City whom MAGA is attempting to paint as the new face of the Democratic Party, I am fairly confident that the majority of “yes” voters actually do not know what “socialism” even means. If you believe that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act – even universal healthcare – represent “creeping socialism,” you are one of many that needs a quick trip to the dictionary.

The encyclopedia Britannica defines socialism this way: “Socialism is a form of government in which most forms of property, including at least the major means of production and natural resources, are owned or controlled by the state.” So, as Donald Trump moves the nation to take increasing stakes in corporate America (e.g., Intel), isn’t that more of a move towards socialism than universal healthcare? It does come down to the root word “social,” which is easily conflated by ignorant or manipulative politicians with “socialism.” But if “social media” isn’t socialism, then why should Social Security be defined as socialism? Governmental “social” programs have existed in virtually every form of government in history. It’s hard to believe that the world’s most expensive luxury cars (symbols of extreme capitalism) – Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Bentley, Ferrari, etc. – are the product of European “socialism.” The bugaboo against socialism is a vestige of the post-WWII cold war, obsessed against the rise of a communist Soviet Union, an ideological rift that carries little emotional weight with today’s young.

So aside from manipulative politicians, who benefits from amping up “rage” and internal divisions? Who makes money by misusing and redefining our vocabulary to stir up anger, perhaps setting the tone where death threats and political violence against garden variety political rhetoric are normalized? Eric Schwartzman, a strategic advisor specializing in generative engine optimization and brand journalism, writing for the November 25th FastCompany.com, surveyed the landscape and looked for the underlying “who” and the “why,” perhaps redefining the real threat of artificial intelligence without guardrails:

“Media personalities and online influencers who sow social division for a living, blame the rise of assassination culture on Antifa [whatever that is] and MAGA. Meanwhile, tech CEOs gin up fears of an AI apocalypse. But they’re both smokescreens hiding a bigger problem. Algorithms decide what we see, and in trying to win their approval, we’re changing how we behave… Increasingly, that behavior is violent. The radicalization of young men on social networks isn’t new. But modern algorithms are accelerating it.

“Before Facebook and Twitter (X) switched from displaying the latest post from one of your friends at the top of your feed with crazy, outrageous posts from people you don’t know, Al Qaeda operatives were quietly recruiting isolated and disillusioned young men to join the Caliphate one by one. But the days of man-to-man proselytizing have long since been replaced by opaque algorithms that display whatever content gets the most likes, comments, and shares… Enrage to engage is a business model. Algorithmic design amplifies the most hysterical content, normalizing extremist views to the point where outrage feels like civic participation. It’s a kind of shell game… Here’s how it works:

• Politicians and CEOs spin apocalyptic narratives
• Online influencers chime in
• Algorithms spread the most outrageous content
• Public sentiment hardens
• Violence gains legitimacy
• Our democracy erodes

“The algorithms don’t just amplify—they also decide who sees what, creating parallel worlds that make it harder for us to understand our opposing tribe members. For example, Facebook’s News Feed algorithm prioritizes posts that generate emotional reactions. YouTube’s recommendation system steers viewers toward similar content that keeps them watching. And it’s a total mystery how TikTok’s For You Page keeps users glued to the app.

“You search for a yoga mat on your phone, and the ranking algorithms decide you’re a liberal. Your neighbor searches for trucks, and the system tags them as a conservative. Before long, your feed fills with mindfulness podcasts and climate headlines, while your neighbor’s features off-roading videos and political commentary about overregulation. Each of you thinks you’re just seeing ‘what’s out there,’ but you’re actually looking at customized realities…

“According to a report from safety research nonprofit FAR.AI, with artificial intelligence already more persuasive than humans, and frontier LLMs guiding political manipulation, disinformation, and terrorism recruitment efforts, the risks are already multiplying exponentially. Predictions of a dystopian, jobless AI future pale by comparison… The real threat is the erosion of human judgment itself. The existential risk of AI—first raised in 1975 by computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum in his prescient book Computer Power and the Human Reason—is not joblessness or humanity suspended in Matrix-style bio-pods. The danger isn’t sentient machines. It’s algorithms engineered to keep us engaged, enraged, and endlessly divided. The apocalypse won’t come from code, but from our surrender to it.” Eyeballs = money. Greed trumps morality.

The messages of tolerance, inclusion, kindness and charity – the hallmarks of liberalism – don’t do much to amp up emotional force and generate “sticky” viewership. Like this new “war on woke” that makes people’s blood boil, PBS reports (November 25th): “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies will reportedly result in the Pentagon turning its back on Scouting America, once known as the Boy Scouts or Scouting.. According to a leaked proposal obtained by NPR, Hegseth is unhappy with the organization and wants his Department of War to end a 100-year relationship, which would leave officials running the annual National Jamboree scrambling to fill the void.” Boy Scouts?!

Indeed, there is a new underlying philosophical rightwing tidal wave with no countervailing liberal reaction, as Lesley Abravanel, writing for the November 23rd Newsbreak.com, observes: “‘For the past decade or more, the intellectual energy in American politics has been on the right,’ writes George Packer [journalist for The Atlantic]… ‘The MAGA ideologues who provide America’s new ruling elite with any claim to having a world view should be understood as offspring of a shared parentage, not unlike the Lovestoneites, Trotskyites, and Shachtmanites of 1930s and ’40s communism,’ he continues.

“‘More reactionary than conservative, their political ancestry is in the underground of the American right — Strom Thurmond, Joseph McCarthy, Patrick Buchanan — rather than the forward-looking Reaganite libertarians who dominated the Republican Party for four decades,’ he adds… MAGA's modern hero, Packer says, aren't philosophers or even a Nazi theorist of authoritarianism… ‘They share a revulsion toward liberalism and pluralism, which, they believe, have corroded the moral and spiritual fiber of America by accommodating false ideologies and harmful groups. Their modern hero is Viktor Orbán,’ he writes, of the authoritarian Hungarian president.” With the unwavering, double-down leadership of Donald Trump, this new illiberalism has captured enough hearts and minds to take over the governance of the United States itself.

I’m Peter Dekom, and with the extreme and negative divisive state of the nation finally generating poll numbers reflecting a general rising rejection of this philosophy, will liberal America finally restate a new powerful counter definition that will resonate change?

Redistricting to Eliminate Blacks & Browns? – Oh No! – or to Eliminate Democrats? – Yes Please!

 

Redistricting to Eliminate Blacks & Browns? – Oh No! – or to Eliminate Democrats? – Yes Please!

Let’s start with the fact that those who rely mainly on social media, AI searches and/or the correct-thinking opinion of biased politicians are, you should pardon the expression, “losing their minds.” Quite literally. As Brian Chen, citing a University of Pennsylvania study supervised by Professor Shiri Melumad over how these variables impact the quality of perception (vs those who did some research on their own), explains some of these results in the November 6th New York Times:

“The tech industry tells us that chatbots and new A.I. search tools will supercharge the way we learn and thrive, and that anyone who ignores the technology risks being left behind. But Dr. Melumad’s experiment, like other academic studies published so far on A.I.’s effects on the brain, found that people who rely heavily on chatbots and A.I. search tools for tasks like writing essays and research are generally performing worse than people who don’t use them…. I’m pretty frightened, to be frank,’ Dr. Melumad said. ‘I’m worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a traditional Google search.’”

The “outsourcing opinions” habit does seem to rot brains. We are increasingly giving up our independence to pre-programmed “correct thought,” redefining even our most basic vocabulary so that simple, purportedly objective words are either created (“woke”) or given an entirely new meaning not found in any dictionary (“socialism”). To give voters the option to accept or reject these toxic trends requires undistorted facts and full and fair elections. In today’s world, we have neither… and today, our three branches of government (legislative, executive and judicial, federal and most red states), combined with their big money “donors,” are working overtime to make sure that does not change.

With completely unjustified tax cuts for the mega-rich at stake, necessarily funded by illegal revenue generators that pass the costs on to everyone else (e.g., a massive, global tariff scheme that functions exactly like a regressive sales tax) and deep cuts to “social programs” that benefit those Americans who need those the most, Republicans, touting horribly unpopular Trump-economics, must ensure that elections be redesigned to exclude Democratic votes. After a lower federal court found that the recent Trump incented (“Find me more Republican seats” Texas Governor Abbott) Texas Trump-puppet gerrymander – one that cancelled 5 traditionally-Democratic House districts to reconfigure the Texas map (see above) to add 5 new, almost certainly Republican seats – was a direct and obvious effort to push Black and Latino voters out of representation.

In 2013, the Supreme Court vitiated most of the specific provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (as amended) in Shelby vs Holder, pretty much leaving the racial discrimination provisions of Section 2 of that statute intact… until the Court’s 2021 decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (DNC), which severely limited how vote-depriving racial discrimination needed to be determined. And the Trump administration, arguing that protecting Black and Brown voters’ election rights was a form of illegal affirmative action, continues to press for the de factor repeal of that Section 2.

The case now before the Supreme Court – League of United Latin American Citizens vs Abbott, where the mid-term redistricting map was found by Texas lower federal courts to be objectively racially and intentionally racially motivated – is currently under a stay issued by Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito… temporally reinstating the discriminatory map. We know that California voters approved a rejiggering of its congressional districts to do a

reverse-Texas creation of 5 new Democratic districts to offset Abbott’s efforts. This too is before the federal judiciary.

The case could leave the biased Texas redistricting intact based on the so-called Purcell Rule (from the 2006 Supreme Court case of Purcell vs. Gonzalez), which has been applied, despite a lack of explanation from the Court, to stand for the proposition that decisions impacting an election can’t be issued too soon before an election. This unwillingness to rule, even in outrageous cases, defies the very relevance of the Court itself. But there are additional troublesome elements.

Writing for the November 25th Los Angeles Times, David Savage adds: ““The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,’ wrote U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown in the opening of a 160-page opinion. ‘To be sure, politics played a role‘ but “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.’… He said the strongest evidence came from Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump administration’s top civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department. She had sent Abbott a letter on July 7 threatening legal action if the state did not dismantle four ‘coalition districts.’

“This term, which was unfamiliar to many, referred to districts where no racial or ethnic group had a majority. In one Houston district that was targeted, 45% of the eligible voters were Black and 25% were Latino. In a nearby district, 38% of voters were Black and 30% were Latino…. She said the Trump administration views these as ‘unconstitutional racial gerrymanders,’ citing a recent ruling by the conservative 5th Circuit Court.”

Given the difficulty of showing racial intent, an issue begging for clarification before a rightwing Supreme Court, Governor Greg Abbott is probably smiling in smug arrogance. Texas Republicans claim the redistricting effort was motivated by partisan politics, a practice which the Supreme Court has said cannot be reviewed in federal court. Despite ample proof to the contrary (starting with Trump’s call to Governor Abbott), Alito seems to be sticking to his “We start with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith,” as he expressed in a 6-3 majority in a 2024 South Carolina case. Continuing this stay reinforces the right to gerrymander… if you use the correct wording.

Notwithstanding recent setbacks to Trump’s agenda, even given his growing disapproval levels in virtually every poll, the MAGA base does not seem to be paying much attention to this case, even though a GOP-rigged midterm almost certainly means continuing rising consumer prices and an increase in healthcare insurance costs, and to many MAGA voters, exclusion from access to genuine medical care or SNAP benefits. If you wonder why, please reread the opening three paragraphs of this blog.

I’m Peter Dekom and rising trends seem to accelerate the acceptance by a growing number of Americans of whatever distortions and manipulations have been built into our media… even if it costs them dearly.

Embracing the Moral Low Ground for Fun, Distraction & Profit

 

Embracing the Moral Low Ground for Fun, Distraction & Profit

“A lot of people didn’t like that [‘extremely controversial,’ as Trump falsely stated] gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but he knew nothing about it.” Trump, pointing to the crown prince after a reporter asked the about the Khashoggi assassination.

As much as Trump tells the world that his former business operations are controlled by his relevant family members and never by him, you would have to be brain-dead fool to believe any of this. You think the above Saudi real estate deal, the family’s crypto empire or Jared Kushner’s multi-billion-dollar Saudi investment fund would have happened if Donald Trump weren’t President? Do you think Trump’s agreement to sell Saudi Arabia our national-security-essential advanced microchips and F-35 fighters that are seldom provided to non-NATO is good for the USA? In case you missed it, and as the above pictures show, MBS has really excellent ties with Xi and Putin. Wonder how much of our classified technical information will be reviewed by China and Russia.

Perhaps you choose to ignore a flood of clear evidence from our national intelligence agencies that the 2018 assassination and dismemberment of Washington Post reporter, Jamal Khashoggi (top right above), in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was ordered directly by the Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi head of state… or the MBS greenwashing his tarnished image with unenforceable pledges of US investment, as he has attempted to do with his funding of a very obvious slathering of money to seduce PGA Golfers with the Saudi-funded LIV league. Look at this all from the perspective of LA Times writer (November 22nd), Nabih Bulos:

“Seven years ago, he was virtually persona non grata, any link to him considered kryptonite among U.S. political and business elite for his alleged role in the killing of a Washington Post columnist and Saudi critic… But when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman came to Washington [on November 18th], he cemented a remarkable comeback, positioning himself as the linchpin of a new regional order in the Middle East, and his country as an essential partner in America’s AI-driven future.

“During what amounted to a state visit, the crown prince — Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader — was given the literal red carpet treatment: A Marine band, flag-bearing horsemen and a squadron of F-35s in the skies above; a black-tie dinner attended by a raft of business leaders in the prince’s honor; a U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center the next day.

“Throughout, Bin Salman (or MBS, as many call him) proved himself a keen practitioner of the brand of transactional politics favored by President Trump…He fulfilled Trump’s ask, first floated back in May during the Riyadh edition of the U.S.-Saudi Forum, to up the kingdom’s U.S. investment commitments from $600 million to almost $1 trillion.” Indeed, the only place you are likely to encounter as many garish gold fixtures and architectural embellishments in a modern building as have become Trump signature pieces at the White House, his former Trump Tower residence and Mar-a-Lago, would have to be the Saudi royal palaces all over their Kingdom.

Trump hopes that his relationship with MBS will generate a lasting peace with Israel and a complete and permanent peace between Palestinians (in Gaza and the West bank) and that Jewish state. But Netanyahu has pledged never to recognize an independent Palestinian state, and Hamas has refused to disarm, as the killing and devastation in Gaza seems to have resumed notwithstanding propaganda statements to the contrary from both sides.

Add these failures to Trump short-fuse demand that Ukraine surrender to Russia even land not occupied by Russian forces and vastly cut back their military, as Putin has consistently demanded, or else he will stop supplying weapons (already stalled) to Kyiv. Someone should tell Trump that it’s not the Nobel Surrender Prize or the Nobel Propose an Impossible Peace Prize… and right now my cat is a more likely candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize than Donald “blow boats out of Caribbean waters without proof” Trump.

And’s not as if MBS has performed on past deals as he had pledged, bringing his recent promises into question as well: “His White House visit seemed to cement his comeback, but little of what was promised is a done deal… For one, whether Saudi Arabia can pony up $1 trillion — a figure amounting to 80% of its annual GDP and more than twice its foreign exchange reserves — is an open question.

“Crucially, the prince didn’t specify when the money would be invested… Though the investment pledge is big, ‘how much and over what period of time is completely unclear,’ said Tim Callen, an economist and former International Monetary Fund mission chief to Saudi Arabia… Saudi Arabia is also pulling back on its government spending, with deflated oil prices forcing it to downsize many of its gigaprojects, Callen added… ‘The pot of money available to push out all these projects and investments has shrunk, relative to 2022 and 2023,’ he said.” LA Times.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while “things happen,” all Trump really cares about is his own wealth and power, as Majorie Taylor Greene seemed to realize way too late.

Teaching an Old Dog Even Older Tricks… That Still Don’t Work

 

Teaching an Old Dog Even Older Tricks… That Still Don’t Work

The above pie-chart represents the pre-AI explosion of job categories in the United States. It shows approximately 11% dedicated to manufacturing, reflecting massive reduction from 26% in 1970. Year by year, the number of manufacturing jobs has contracted, and the number of financial, STEM and other service jobs has soared. Estimates for 2025 suggest that the manufacturing slice has fallen to 8% of the total job market. Over the years, manufacturing has contracted because of rising labor costs in this country, and as you can see in the above pictures, large-scale manufacturing has almost entirely shifted to automation, mostly in the form of robots. Except for highly skilled, custom manufacturing, much of the remaining domestic labor in manufacturing has shifted to low-wage, undocumented workers.

In an effort to justify tariffs, we are told that countries that manufacture durables at lower cost and sell us those products below what we can make those products for domestically are ripping us off. Really? So, when big retailers have sales, reducing prices significantly, they are also ripping us off? We need to pay more to maintain industries where the United States can no longer manufacture consumer products efficiently? We are great at inventing, and with a few rare exceptions, we are not so good at making. Reality. I’d say that’s sad except those new sectors generate so much more value and, obviously, more money. And when we fight like hell and pay through the nose to support higher tariffs, are we reshoring to protect old world jobs or moving that work to the fully automated factories where that manufacturing will obviously take place?

The Department of Commerce has emphasized the value of applying higher tariffs to manufacturing basics like steel and aluminum. Indeed, the extraction/processing of these metals from raw ore into usable industrial basics (like extracting iron from ore and then converting that into steel) is almost uniformly much less expensive in Asia than here. So, let’s say we save 1000 steelworker jobs and keep those workers here in the United States… resulting in steel at a much higher cost per ton. Since those metals are necessary components in other manufacturing jobs (like cars and trucks), the resulting products cost more and generate lower sales numbers. Higher prices… less demand. And instead of incenting more sales of new US vehicles, people keep cars longer, and the used car market is soaring. Government statistics show that protecting those 1000 metal workers will result in 70,000 American workers in other US manufacturing segments losing their jobs.

For a political party that has championed economic laissez faire for decades, the GOP, and for a party that likes to incent and direct business sectors, Dems, both parties have pretty much made a mess of our targeted growth industries. Even once anti-socialist MAGA Republicans are having the government take significant stakes in big, targeted companies, granting these same entities fat government contracts and tariff their foreign competitors out the door. Even Italian pasta is facing tariffs over 100%! Who pays for this? YOU DO!!! LA Times (November 22nd) Contributing writer, Veronique de Rugy, explains how this meddling backfires:

“American industry has been getting a lot of hands-on direction from Democrats and Republicans for quite some time now. Every few years, someone looks at the underwhelming results of this economic maneuvering and insists that real ‘industrial policy’ has never been tried. Truth is that the left’s call for a ‘mission-oriented’ state and the right’s yearning for a nationalist industrial revival may sound different, but they share the same conceit: that their own intentions can finally succeed where decades of intervention have failed…

“Back in the days of President Biden’s industrial policy, when subsidies, tax credits and loans were flowing, an emerging Republican faction had a similar refrain, claiming that to revive American manufacturing, restore communities and put men back to work, industrial policy simply had to be done right. We now know that this meant increasingly erratic tariffs, price controls and government taking shares in companies.

“Hope for both sides rests on quite a premise: that Washington can guide trillions of dollars to the right industries, produce a manufacturing boom and maybe even heal America’s social fabric… The problem isn’t that industrial policy has been done badly. It’s just bad economics.

“Dreams of reviving manufacturing jobs face the reality that modern manufacturing is capital-intensive and largely automated. Even if subsidies or government loan guarantees spur a factory boom — and history suggests otherwise — it won’t bring back 1950s-style armies of industrial workers unless we somehow outlaw productivity. Today’s factories run on robots and engineers.

“Nor will tariffs bring a manufacturing revival. Taxing inputs and components only raises costs, weakens U.S. competitiveness and ultimately punishes the firms’ protectionists claim to support. True American industrial strength rests on productivity, innovation, competition and access to global supply chains, not on coddling producers behind walls of higher prices.” And you really do not have to wonder why so many CEOs no longer criticize Donald Trump and “donate” to his campaign, his ballroom and donated to his inauguration… or invest in his crypto world. Since Trump and his administration have the discretionary right to waive or exempt specific tariffs, it seems that favored CEOs and their companies are not remotely hampered by tariffs as most Americans believe. Remember, the fundamental ethos of the Trump administration is to reward “winners” (generally the rich as long as they side with him) and punish the rest as “losers.”

Let’s look at more objectively government regulation; it does have a place. For example, a corporation won’t adopt environmental controls if none of its competitors is required to adopt such measures… that always cost more. Full disclosure and honesty can hurt sales, and adhesion contracts and hidden costs can be huge profit centers… unless government makes rules that attack “marginal” fraud and pernicious dumping or emitting of toxins and waste. And sure, when an old industry is creating massive harm, incentives might be needed to shift into less toxic forces. But if you look at the period of growth that made us the richest and most powerful country in the world, most of that was based on free trade market competition. Are we really getting new policies that make us richer, better and more productive?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the United States has become a nation of powerful special interests who find “buying politicians” far less expensive than doing what’s right.

 

Trump’s Greatest Strength – Alienating the Most People with the Fewest Words

 

Trump’s Greatest Strength – Alienating the Most People with the Fewest Words

Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene finally wised up – Trump now only represents his tech bros, mega-rich “donors” and foreign “dignitaries” with lots of money for massive greenwashing – Trump has long since abandoned the movement he named and the people who trustingly followed him. Trump has become the polar opposite of what drove him to office in 2016 and 2024. His policies have flipflopped more than a fish out of water, almost none of his once immovable average constituents is better off today than they were during the Biden administration. Healthcare for millions, including a huge segment of MAGA adherents, is wobbling.

And still during a comparable period during his administration, Barack Obama deported more undocumented aliens than Trump… without the cruelty, spending billions and billions of extra dollars to build embarrassingly horrible “detention” facilities, a personal police force (the expansion of ICE) that can operate masked and anonymously without warrants or constitutional limitation and a hollowing out of those essential undocumented workers that support our economy. He has demanded that his miliary obey all his orders without question, that they must assume that his edicts are legal (the Richard Nixon argument that ultimately forced him to resign) and that even members of Congress, who insist that his military orders must legal to be followed (as set forth in the Uniform Code of Military Justice), are seditionist traitors who should be hanged.

As Trump wakes up to his unpopularity, as DOGE has finally closed its toxic offices, as the Epstein debacle continues to drag on, Trump will most likely rearrange his cabinet in the new year. I would have to say that some cabinet and subcabinet officers are the most likely to be forced out, including the military lightweight, DOD/W Secretary Pete Hegseth, puppy-killer Homeland Security Secretary and cover-girl-wannabe, Kristi Noem, FBI jet-setter Kash Patel, and if she cannot placate Trump on Epstein and shift the blame to Democrats, even DOJ Secretary Pam Bondi might have to go. Will Project 2025 implementer/advisors Stephen Miller and Russell Vought be given the boot? How about medical research-killer RFK, Jr.? They should, but their hold on essential conspiracy theory MAGA extremists is pretty solid. And I suspect nothing will stop Trump from continuing to issue his effective-death-threat fatwahs to anyone who opposes him (Trump knows how his minions will react) .

MAGA is fractured, but the schisms might not be what you think. One growing Trump constituency, angry young men, is flocking to organized religions (from Greek Orthodox and Catholicism to the more expected evangelical movement) and the extreme edges of Trump policies. “Republicans are facing a generational rift as younger members of the party move further to the right of politics… While older members of the GOP favor establishment principles and are more willing to engage in international issues, there is evidence that newer generations have adopted more populist and isolationist views and have more radical takes on a number of issues including immigration.” Kate Plummer, Newsweek, November 22nd. And it is precisely this angry, younger constituency that is most drawn to political violence.

Trump’s efforts to generate an enduring peace accord between Israel and the Palestinian people are unraveling: Hamas continues to refuse to disarm, Israel is allowing West Bank settlers to confiscate Palestinian properties, continues to launch attacks that are generating continuing massive destruction in Gaza and pledges never ever to allow an independent Palestinian state. According to Sam Sifton, writing for the November 24th The Morning (New York Times news feed), Trump Thanksgiving deadline for Ukraine to accept his “peace proposal” – which, except for the lack of Cyrillic lettering, appeared to be Vladimir Putin’s unchanged wish list – explains how off-base that demand was:

“The peace proposal… would require Kyiv to relinquish captured terrain and shrink its army. It would bar Ukraine from joining NATO and also prohibit foreign troops from coming to its rescue in a future conflict… ‘Right now the American plan is devastating for Ukraine, weakening its ability to defend itself and providing few guarantees of its future,’ Julian Barnes, a Times reporter who covers international security, told me yesterday… The Ukrainians have been outraged, and Volodymyr Zelensky said the proposal was a choice between ‘losing our dignity and freedom’ and losing U.S. support.

“That could be changing. American and Ukrainian officials met in Geneva this weekend and began reviewing the plan point by point. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said they were ‘narrowing the differences and getting closer to something’ that both Kyiv and Washington would be ‘comfortable with.’ The head of Ukraine’s delegation said the officials had made ‘very good progress.’ … While the diplomats in Geneva have been seeking compromise, Trump has been lashing out. He posted that Ukraine’s leadership had ‘EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE’ for American military aid and support. (Zelensky posted his own message hours later, expressing thanks ‘for everything that America and President Trump are doing for security.)… One Republican senator, Mitch McConnell, said yesterday [11/23] that ‘pressuring the victim and appeasing the aggressor’ would not bring peace.”

Recently profoundly anti-Putin after the recent embarrassing Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage, where Trump purported to speak for Ukraine and Europe, Trump just did another 180. Indeed, elements that would have limited European choices (without European input) have been removed, and issues around security guarantees and territorial concessions (the Ukraine constitution requires a plebiscite to permit that request) are the focus. Yet Moscow hardliners are pushing Putin to continue until Ukraine totally surrenders, a very unlikely possibility.

As Trump’s mental and physical health are increasingly called into question, as his flipflop and abrasive personality are losing traction with an increasing number of his once loyal followers, is Trump even capable of shifting his violent rhetoric to reflect the cliff towards which he pushing his entire party… and are the GOP faithful in Congress prepared to accept a new path or do their best lemming imitation in the upcoming midterms? Can those vital independents send that message to the GOP?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I truly wonder if Trump can change his personal tactics, which no longer herd his sheep, or if he has already begun an earlier-then-expected presidency into a full-on lame duck reality.