Social Insecurity – Disaembly and Full-Frontal Attack

 

Social Insecurity – Disaembly and Full-Frontal Attack

How the MAGA GOP is continuing to assess how to continue benefits for the richest, cutting benefits for the rest

It’s no secret that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is slamming into Medicaid and the sustainability of small rural hospitals, with the most dire cuts conveniently slated to kick in after the midterm elections… if these elections occur and if they are not sufficiently gerrymandered into a GOP rubber stamp. But today’s blog is focusing on Social Security, and how Republicans want to destroy it or replace it with tax incented private investment alternatives.

So first, I will examine the underlying funding assumptions, when FDR signed Social Security into law in 1935. The structure envisioned a shared contribution between employee and employer, based upon an assumption that there would be vastly more active workers than retirees, an essential basis for how Social Security would be funded. While those assumptions were most valid for the time the program was established, the economic/labor world of 1935 compare to today are as different as Mars and Jupiter. Here is how the ratio of workers to retirees has changed:

“The historical ratio of workers to Social Security retirees in the United States has significantly declined over the decades. In 1940, there were approximately 159 workers for every retiree, which drastically decreased over time. By 1960, this ratio was around 5.1 workers for each retiree. However, as of 2023, the ratio has fallen to approximately 2.3 workers per retiree, and it is projected to decrease to about 2 workers per retiree by 2050. This decline indicates an increasing financial burden on those contributing to the Social Security system as the number of beneficiaries rises relative to the number of workers.” SocialFactCheck.com, January 3rd. Logically, with these profound changes in that critical change, using the original ratio of workers to retirees under current realities is a recipe for ultimate insolvency.

Meanwhile, as the above Pew Research chart illustrates, the rich have gotten wildly richer while the middle class generated a decreasing share of income… and the poorest levels have been decimated into stagnation. Thus, in the modern Western world, the United States has both the widest income and wealth gaps. To make matters worse, the difference between CEO and average worker pay has become absurd.

“Back in 1965, CEOs earned 21 times more than the average worker; by 2023, this ratio had escalated to 290 times. The situation is even worse for 100 out of the S&P 500 corporations, where in 2022 this ratio was 603 times. As a result, real (inflation-adjusted) CEO compensation in large firms increased by 878% from 1978 to 2022, while real worker compensation rose by 4.5% during this period.” Fortune Magazine, April 15, 2025. Common sense tells you both that using the current shared employee/employer Social Security deduction to fund this social program (read: social program, not “socialism”) does not work, and that the vast increase in wealth and pay at the top illustrates the most obvious source of financial support to keep Social Security fully funded and able to fulfill its mandate to support elder Americans in retirement.

But the Republican Party has been dreaming and scheming about how to annihilate Social Security since it was passed. During his term, President George W Bush argued passionately for a plan that would push Social Security into the stock market, which would work… until there was a plunge in the marketplace. It was his most cherished program, but it crashed and burned in a sea of outrage. From the March 22, 2005, Slate: “In the months since the president first presented the idea as his top domestic priority, Democrats in Congress have unexpectedly unified in opposition to any reform based on private accounts. Several Republican senators whose votes would be needed for passage are resisting private accounts as well. And public opinion, which has never favored any form of privatization, is trending even more strongly against Bush’s scheme. At this point, there’s just no way that the president can finagle enough votes to win.” But the GOP just keeps on trying, clinging to an argument that Social Security is unsustainable… not mentioning why that is so.

But as Los Angeles Times business correspondent, Michael Hiltzik tells us (in his September 17th contribution, the source of the second chart above), based upon a new report by Kathleen Romig and Devin O’Connor, Social Security experts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Trump 2.0 is embracing restructuring that may appear to be cost efficiencies but are in fact policies that, if not reversed, will slowly erode the entire Social Security structure from top to bottom: “[T]he Social Security Administration’s regional office staff ‘have been mostly eliminated, robbing front-line staff of key supports.’ Headquarters staffing has been cut by nearly half, including technology experts. Field office and call center staff also have been eviscerated.

Few departments within SSA have been spared — not even the office tasked with helping members of Congress assist their constituents with Social Security issues and helping to develop legislation… The so-called Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs was cut to three employees from 50. Constituent caseworkers in congressional offices have been receiving ‘bounce-back emails and no-replies from legislative liaison offices that were previously responsive to congressional inquiries,’ according to a letter sent by 50 Democratic House members to the SSA in July.

“Even Republicans, who generally have been willing to go along with the administration’s rampage through agency budgets, raised the alarm about customer service failures at SSA, noting in a legislative markup that ‘there are significant service delivery challenges at SSA that are impacting critical services that millions of Americans count on’… ‘Because there aren’t enough workers in SSA’s local offices, applicants wait over a month on average for an appointment. Because there aren’t enough people answering the agency’s 800 number, most callers wait over two hours on average for an answer, as of early August,’ [the authors] write. ‘Because there aren’t enough disability examiners, applicants wait eight months for an initial decision on their eligibility for disability benefits, with an additional seven-month wait for those who appeal.’

“Meanwhile, more information has emerged about the incursion of untrained representatives of Elon Musk’s budget-cutting DOGE service into Social Security’s most carefully guarded databases. The outcome has been the exposure of workers’ and beneficiaries’ private personal information to outsiders, all without adequate oversight.” In a sea of executive orders, massive, rubber-stamped budget bills and an untamed assault on Social Security that began with Elon Musk and DOGE, it is easy to see why most people have missed both the big picture and unmistakable trends to eat away at Social Security program until it implodes in oblivion… so that the rich can ger richer.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I never cease to be amazed at the new right-wing effort to make the richest in this nation vastly richer by reducing or eliminating programs meant for the rest of us.

Mutually Exclusive Public-School Goals: Education or Cultural/Religious Indoctrination?

Mutually Exclusive Public-School Goals: Education or Cultural/Religious Indoctrination?

“The Bible is indispensable in understanding the development of Western civilization and American history. To ensure our students are equipped to understand and contextualize our nation, its culture, and its founding, every student in Oklahoma will be taught the Bible in its historical, cultural, and literary context.” 

Oklahoma State Superintendent of Instruction Ryan Walters

We live in an increasingly competitive world, but we are downsizing or eliminating the necessary components of training and educating the rising generation to engage in that economic battle. After the Eisenhower response to the 1957 Soviet “first-in-space” orbital satellite launch (Sputnik), education, technology and infrastructure became our national priorities. The educational opportunities provided by the post-WWII GI bill invested billions into preparing our war veterans to rebuild America into the fully super-competent nation it was and soon became again. Soon, US public education led the world in reading, math and science. Our space program prospered – we were able land men on the Moon by 1969 – and, applying global testing to our high school-level performance, we remained first in those educational standards.

Reallocating our federal resources to fighting a litany of wars (from Vietnam all the way to Afghanistan), pushing “austerity” while exploding our deficit, the emphasis on the big three drivers of solidifying and growing our economy – education, technology and infrastructure – faded. By the 1990s and beyond, comparative international testing in reading, math and science – standardized under the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) – had pushed the US between 19th and 38th, depending on subject matter.

Defying economic ground rules, the “guns or butter” paradigm, the United States cut taxes for the rich while expanding benefit programs (SNAP, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, Veterans’ benefits, etc.), massively upping our military budget to compete with the Soviet Union (and soon China) and to fund those never-ending conflicts, most of which addressed armed challenges in the Middle East and adjacent Central Asia. Economic orthodoxy maintained that because waging war is so expensive (the “guns”), nations engaged in major conflicts need to tighten their fiscal belts (no “butter” programs or tax cuts). We didn’t. We borrowed instead.

Our deficit exploded (it is north of $37 trillion today), and the global marketplace has extracted increasing interest rates from our resulting borrowings (on so-called “treasury” bonds). GOP/MAGA priorities still run on the notion that cutting taxes for the rich (labeling them the “job creators” sounded good) is an economic growth amplifier (so-called “trickle down”/supply-side economics), even though that cause and effect has NEVER happened. The Big Beautiful Bill repeats that proven falsehood, but except for military expansion, self-defeating austerity is now the definition of the United States today.

Biden-era infrastructure programs have been cut or reduced, federal support for education has been dramatically reduced (higher education, which teetered on the “unaffordable” edge of the proverbial cliff, has been given a good, hard shove towards the bottom) to the point where the Department of Education itself is being phased out. Although it existed as a wobbly, ill-defined government agency earlier, the modern U.S. Department of Education was established by President Jimmy Carter, who signed it into law in October 1979. As other nations, notably China, expand their entire educational systems, from early education to graduate PhD programs in plasma physics, we are defunding what matters, leaving educational priorities to the states. The Trump administration is defunding research at the most well-established American universities, under a misstated and exaggerated effort to root out DEI and antisemitism, literally throwing the baby our with the bathwater.

We may have thought that the Supreme Court (Stone vs Graham, 1980) made the notion of religious instruction in public schools unconstitutional (vs a generic, non-advocacy examination of “religion” in an historical context). The Courted noted that a Kentucky requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms "had no secular legislative purpose" and was "plainly religious in nature" – a rather clear statement of the separation of church and state. Nevertheless, the notion of making Christianity our “official” faith and actually teaching bible studies, under an unambiguous advocacy perspective, is still alive and well.

Like the Kentucky effort, the recent Louisiana “ten commandments” in every public classroom mandate may have been struck down by a federal trial court, although appeals are rising, but the willingness to challenge that “separation” doctrine seems to be accelerating in red state America, with hints of support from the reconfigured Supreme Court. Subsequent rulings and realities are roiling with controversy. Even House Speaker Mike Johnson (R/LA) believes the US can name Christianity as our official religion without violating the Constitution. He is a lawyer?

In May, after the recusal of Associate Justice, Amy Coney Barrett, a 4-4 split US Supreme Court let stand an Oklahoma Supreme Court’s holding that by chartering a religious school, the state would “evangelize” a particular faith which violated state legislation as well as the Oklahoma and federal constitutions (St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Gentner Drummond, Attorney General of Oklahoma). The Supreme Court has yet to affirm that particular result, however. In June, the Supreme Court delivered a 6-3 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, affirming that parents have the constitutional right to protect their children from classroom instruction that conflicts with their deeply held religious beliefs.

Religious zeal keeps pounding and testing that First Amendment (the “Establishment Clause”), finding more ways to bring the evangelical version of the Bible into the classroom. With a World Population Review of American public schools placing Oklahoma a dismal 48th, amid an ongoing teacher shortage in his state, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters “has declared… in an unprecedented move, that educators coming to Oklahoma from a handful of more liberal states would have to take a test to ensure that they’re not too ‘woke.’

“‘If you’re coming from these states, you will take a test through the state department to show you’re aligned to our standards,’ Walters said in a press conference in late July. ‘You’re not going to come here and teach that there’s 27 genders ... you’re not going to undermine American exceptionalism by teaching anti-American and anti-semitic hate.’

“Though [website] Scary Mommy is unaware of any state that teaches anti-semitism, anti-Americanism, or the specifics of 27 genders, Walters specifically called out educators from New York and California as needing to pass the test. He also mentioned ‘seven or eight’ other states officials were ‘look[ing] at’ that may also be subjected to the new test… While Walter’s predicted roll-out has not occurred in the two weeks he predicted in July, and he has not disclosed the content of the test itself, he did share that it was being developed by PragerU, a conservative media company that has been pushing (sometimes successfully) to have its ideologically-rooted curricula included in public school classrooms.

“Walters has not shied from political controversy. From requiring Bibles to and prayer in schools to being so against “critical race theory” that he felt ‘skin color’ should not be part of the discussion of the Tulsa Massacre, Walters has established himself as a conservative firebrand. More recently, he spearheaded new curriculum standards in Oklahoma schools that require teaching of the unproven (and likely false) ‘Lab Leak’ theory of Covid-19 and the (demonstrably false) idea that the 2020 election was subjected to rampant fraud.” Jamie Kenney for ScaryMommy.com (August 13th). With no major colleges or universities with strong academic reputation, Oklahoma has opted for indoctrination over education. I wonder how that works for a state where fossil fuel extraction defines that economy… if its rising generations want a more viable future.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I doubt our top employers will embrace Oklahoma students well-schooled in anti-woke conspiracy theories but devoid in the STEM skills that define our future.

Efficiency vs Accountability Inconvenience vs Rule of Law

 

Efficiency vs Accountability / Inconvenience vs Rule of Law

“Sorry Brittany, but with Charlie Kirk we tried the peaceful route… you’re wrong… the left HATES us, and no amount of ‘healing’ will make them not want to kill us… we’re well beyond that at this point… you CANNOT coexist with people who want you dead…” 

A post from and NFL fan reacting to this post from Brittany Mahomes, wife of KC QB Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, sharing this quote from Sharon McMahon: 

“Hate will not get us out of this mess. Your feelings might lie and try to tell you otherwise, but hate doesn’t know how to heal or build, only how to harm and destroy.”

“For years, those on the radical Left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now…. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.” 

Donald Trump on the Kirk assassination.

"If you’re trying to pretzel yourself into painting Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old, into a 'fascist' or 'leftist' model based on your rabid ideology, maybe you’re not seeing the bigger picture of what online radicalization is— because 'you' are the radicalized," 

 Former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA)

“It is this authoritarian cosplay. It's like they're putting on costumes and they want to seem tough as part of this slow-rolling authoritarian takeover. That's what this is all about… It is not about crime. It’s important to say, clearly, this is not about solving crime… If you want to solve crime and you believe that more law enforcement is needed in these cities — and surely there's some cities where that's the case — the federal government and Congress could fund a COPS bill and community engagement programs… They could fund a bunch of stuff. They have a budget coming up here in two weeks. They control the House and the Senate. They control the White House. They want to act as if they have no agency when it comes to the actual policies of these cities.” 

Republican Journalist Tim Miller. Side

“[At] some point we have to find an off-ramp, or it's going to get much, much worse… I hear all the time that words are violence, words are not violence… Violence is violence.” 

Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox.

Somewhere between 650 and 850 thousand American soldiers died during our Civil War (1861-1865), more than perished in all of our wars from founding to today. But now, there is a new “war” beginning, against political opponents and “crime.” I don’t think voters would vote for crime, and criminal statistics are showing a rapid decline in all levels of criminal activity. Trump is all about fighting imaginary statistics about the level of crime in America. He is flooding cities or threatening to flood cities (Governor approved in red states, Governor opposed in blue ones), to fight crime, is easily proven to be a power move to put Trump loyal paramilitary forces anywhere there may be cluster of voters who oppose him.

He's sending serious criminal investigators from places like the FBI and ATF, untrained in street policing, as his Big Beautiful Bill cut large budgetary allocations to reduce violent crime and fund better suited and more local police, who are the real bulwark against most crime. Instead, seeking private police force loyal to him, Trump has laid the groundwork for a personal paramilitary police force: “The offers are part of a supercharged recruitment campaign that will take years to meet its goal. Republicans in Congress just allocated $30 billion to ICE to hire 10,000 new officers so it can ramp up deportations.

“But the Administration’s interest in boosting ICE’s headcount from 20,000 to 30,000 is bumping up against multiple challenges, including finding applicants who are both qualified and willing to live in parts of the country where ICE is intent on deploying more agents.

“‘You’re talking three years before you see a significant increase of ICE agents on the street, which is the end of the administration,’ predicts John Sandweg, who was the acting director of ICE during the Obama administration.” Time, August 12th. Big ICE money is in fact luring local cops to defect to this Trump corps. As unpopular as Trump is, he does seem to foment violence, as long as it for him and his causes, as his massive pardon clearly evidence… of violent and convicted January 6, 2021 Capitol attackers, which he personally invited to move on that building,. Well, instead of dousing the flames of violence in too many of his followers, as the above Trump quote illustrates, he seems to invite his followers to use their long guns in a civil war of vengeance and retribution.

“Some [more than a few] supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump blamed the political left, casting Kirk’s murder as the culmination of years of hostility toward Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. On social media, they pointed to posts that appeared to celebrate Kirk’s death as evidence of conservatives increasingly being targeted.

“The killing of Kirk has become a potent symbol for a segment of the American right that increasingly views the political left not merely as ideological opponents but as existential threats to conservative identity and power. Fueled by years of rhetoric, amplified by social media echo chambers, this anger reflects a broader narrative in which Trump's allies often portray themselves as besieged patriots facing a lawless and hostile opposition… ‘They couldn’t beat him in a debate, so they assassinated him,’ Isabella Maria DeLuca, a pardoned January 6 rioter and conservative activist, wrote on X.” Reuters, September 12th.

Some have directed strong negative barbs at the efforts of Utah Governor Spencer Cox (a Republican) to find an off-ramp for this escalating violence. We are nation of major civil rights laws, embedded in the Constitution, where although a majority rules, it is never at the expense of basic individual rights.

I’m Peter Dekom, and with this growing rage on both sides of the political divide exploding across the nation, in a nation of over 320 million firearms, I am afraid the violence is destined to escalate, killing politicians and their respective supporters under the false flag of “patriotism.”

Trump’s Quick-Step Accelerated March Towards On-Man Rule

Trump’s Quick-Step Accelerated March Towards One-Man Rule

“And I’m really good at predicting things, you know? They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat, the best-selling hat: ‘Trump was right about everything.’ And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true.”

Donald Trump’s addressing the UN General Assembly, September 23rd.

“I’m going to be meeting with generals and with admirals and with leaders, and if I don’t like somebody, I’m going to fire him right on the spot."

Trump leaving the White House for Quantico, VA to address waiting Generals/Admirals assembled to listen to a planned harangue from DOW head, Pete Hegseth, September 30th.

“It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon leading commands around the country, in the world, it’s a bad look… It all starts with physical fitness and appearance… If the Secretary of War can do regular, hard PT [physical training], so can every member of our joint force…. Today at my direction, every member of the joint force, at every rank, is required … [to] meet height and weight requirements twice a year every year.” 

 Hegseth addressing the above flag rank officers at Quantico, September 30th.

Trump’s control of the government is personal, completely under his individual control, as he derides, demonizes, fires and even criminally prosecutes his critics (as “radical leftwing extremists”), stating that the danger is not foreign threats but the “invasion” and destruction of American values “from within.” As federal military personnel rolled into “war ravaged” Portland, Oregon (actually extremely peaceful), a description and effort decried by Portland mayor and Oregon’s governor as completely false and unwanted, Trump amped up his attack on Democrats.

To Trump, every part of the federal government is directly under his personal control, and loyalty to him “trumps” any other factors, including the Constitution. He has converted the MAGA majority in Congress into a lockstep implementation of his demands, and a pliable, Trump-stacked Supreme Court has set aside precedents and the plain wording of the Constitution, becoming nothing more than a rubber stamp to his authoritarian agenda.

Trumps tools: meritless criminal prosecutions, deep fake online postings like the above showing Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing AI-impose sombrero and a fake Emiliano Zapata mustache and executive orders including his National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, signed September 25, 2025, which transforms the basic political positions of roughly half the country into pre-terrorism indicators requiring federal monitoring of groups, individuals and sponsors, at all levels. Effectively, under that order, the federal government officially considers “hostility towards traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” as warranting investigation by 4,000 Joint Terrorism Task Force members across 200 offices. To Trump, this means Democrats, labeling his opposition directly as “antifa” (short for antifascist), even though no such group formally exists.

Trump’s recent online post, directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi, seemed to be a direct order to seek and indictment against former FBI director, James Comey, came only a few days before his newly appointed acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in fact secured that indictment, notwithstanding a uniform analysis from her former, Trump-appointed predecessor and his senior staff that this was an unwinnable prosecution. His unambiguous online excoriation of Comey, his assertion of guilt and his online statements against other state and federal officials who opposed or investigated him as the appropriate “next” targets of similar federal indictments, became an effective intimidation of dissent. His “freedom of speech” campaign pledged morphed rapidly into a definition of unprotected “hate speech” that seemed only to apply to Democrats. Instead, his “I am your retribution” autocratic mandate prevailed.

Every facet of Trump’s rule is based on personal whim, from posting tariffs, refusing to honor congressional budget allocations to whim-directed control of the military. Per the above quote: “Trump’s open threat to fire military leaders based on personal preference rather than performance metrics or protocol reflects a growing emphasis on loyalty and ideological alignment within his administration. The comments come as his administration pursues an aggressive reorientation of Pentagon priorities, including public efforts to sideline what officials call ‘woke’ policies in favor of a more rigid and martial ethos.” Newsweek, September 30th.

Trump’s speech at Quantico (post-Hegseth’s ego laced harangue) was just another rant, perhaps the speech of a man struggling with dementia. It was a political rally – railing at Biden, the use of the “autopen,” that the 2020 election was rigged, suggesting that old world battleships should perhaps be built for the future – just the embarrassing and mendacious face of a rising autocrat. Not what you would expect from a president addressing his highest military command.

What is particularly disturbing is the rapidity of our transition to full-on autocracy, occurring at a pace that blows away the incremental processes in other, modern elected autocrats. Nicholas Riccardi, writing for the Associated Press, September 30th, explains: “In 2007, eight years after becoming Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez revoked the license of the country’s oldest private television station. Eight months into his second term, President Trump suggested revoking the licenses of U.S. television stations he believes are overly critical of him.

Since he returned to office in January, Trump’s remaking of the federal government into an instrument of his personal will has drawn comparisons to elected strongmen in other countries who used the levers of government to consolidate power, punish their enemies and stifle dissent… But those familiar with other countries where that has happened, including Hungary and Turkey, say there is one striking difference: Trump appears to be moving more rapidly, and more overtly, than others did… ‘The only difference is the speed with which it is happening,’ said David Smilde, who lived in Venezuela during Chavez’s rise and is now a professor at Tulane University…

“Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book ‘How Democracies Die,’ said he is constantly asked by foreign journalists how the U.S. can let Trump take such actions… ‘If you talk to Brazilians, South Koreans, Germans, they have better antennae for authoritarians,’ he said. ‘They experienced, or were taught by their parents, or the schools, the danger of losing a democracy.’… Of the United States, he said: ‘This is not a society that is prepared for authoritarianism.’… U.S. ‘has become little Turkey’… Eroding democracy was slower abroad… Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has often been cited as a model for Trump. Orbán has become an icon to some U.S. conservatives for cracking down on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. Like Trump, he lost an election and spent his years out of office planning his return.”

And still the entire elected Republican Party enforces this exploding autocracy, empowered by a deer-in-the-headlights Democratic Party, only recently figuring out what is happening… and… most of all… a complacent general public that is so used to living in a democracy that they focus mostly on kitchen table issues, even though those kitchen table issues will soon explode… as the quality of their lives is sacrificed to Trump’s donor oligarchy… unless they take these events as an existential threat to their hopes, dreams, and well-being.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am still bewildered by the lemming-like march of too many Americans off the cliffs at the edge of democracy down to the deadly rocky shoals of autocracy below.

An Uncivil War: This Ain’t like Vietnam War Protests

 

Alabama Pro-Segregation Rally

Vietnam War Protest

White Christian nationalists in Charlottesville

BLM movement

 Charlie Krik Rally              

              

An Uncivil War: This Ain’t like Vietnam War Protests

American dumbs down and turns on itself

The protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s against American involvement in the civil war in Vietnam – a communist north battling a pro-American corrupt south – was the beginning of the question about the staunch American belief of the domino theory and the US’ need to throw American bodies in an effort to stop the spread of “communism.” Like a row of falling dominoes, the reasoning stated, if you don’t erase communism where it appears, it will take down nation after nation. But it was as much a confrontation between younger Americans, now questioning the government’s stated goals, against older Americans raised in the red scare “duck and cover” era where containing Communist Russia and China nuclear power was their focus. Over time, “socialism” – misdefined and misused – became a meme that ultimately was lost in an ill-defined sea of lables, with the right’s embracing a litany of memes from “radical leftists,” “invasion of violent alien criminals,” “wokism,” the “enemy,” and “only I can fix it.”

As we face the unforgivable assassination of 31-year-old wildly successful white Christian nationalist, Charlie Kirk, who was able to steer vast cadres of the rising younger generation into what he perceived was a MAGA destination controlled by his messianic mission. Unafraid openly to debate his foes, Kirk became the single most important connection between Trump and young voters. But until Trump’s assumption to the presidency in 2017, Kirk was a passionate “never Trumper.” As one of his young recruits, Caroline Stout recalls, Kirk’s shift to back Trump was a betrayal to some, but it represented an opportunistic path to growth and power. Kirk capitalized brilliantly on the Zeitgeist of that slice of the nation.

Even as the nation was unequivocally tethered, economically and politically, to the rest of the world, the notion of American isolationism exploded as the Trump’s “America First” mantra that introduced a notion is isolationism and the “possible” erasure of history to return the country to its rewritten glorious past, represented by the “vision” of the 1950s and 60s, hardly a time of American glory. But time erases the tough time of transition. A rich post-WII America began to address civil and voting rights. It was sometimes violent, confusing, but even the leaders of retaining segregation, like Alabama Governor George Wallace – later a presidential candidate who survived an assassination attempt – wound up become a champion of expanding civil and voting rights to Black voters. That has changed.

The Vietnam War protests may have embraced racism, but the heart and soul of that movement lay on college campuses across the nation. There was no campaign against education, science or academic elites. Corporations were charged with feeding the revenue-producing war, their rampant pollution and pushing tobacco and pretending it was not toxic. But whatever was happening, the optimistic Democratic days of Clinton came crashing down on 9/11/2001 during the Bush administration, Republicans borrowed money to support the resulting wars while lowering taxes to support the rich (which was anchored in the profoundly false narrative of “incent the job creators). Deficits soared, and still the nation prospered.

But Democrats ignored workers and embraced globalism. Republicans veered into conservative, religious voters, supporting every major evangelical platform they could (anti-gay, anti-abortion, blind patriotism and increasing anti-liberal) as long as tax cuts and deregulation were advanced. Universities, the source of most of the new technology that did create jobs, were lambasted as out-of-touch left-leaning houses of indoctrination. Workers joined evangelicals as the GOP sprouted Tea Party-to-MAGA values… and the underlying enemy was a “culture” that needed to die, because it was fostering a Godless nation lost in global commerce proselytizing world that minimized and “replaced” white Christian national values with unpatriotic multiculturalism that was destroying America.

What Americans believed, read, thought, watched, and practiced had to be redirected if America were to survive. Social media spread the word… and repealed facts and educated elites by any means possible. This wasn’t a movement against an unjust foreign war; it was a fight to reinvent American culture into one, uniform, acceptable mold, ordained by God, inevitable and unstoppable. Though this perspective represented a sizeable faction, it was a minority view. With its roots in a system of government generated in a young nation that was 95% agricultural and rural at inception, this minority was given disproportionate representation in Congress, and the rest was driven by religious zeal against most of the population that was largely uninvolved.

Parallel with this movement was a steady decline in math and reading scores, as the rest of the world was going otherwise, to our lowest recorded level in decades. Elites and science were vilified, and the value of college eroded: “Americans are increasingly skeptical about the value and cost of college, with most saying they feel the US higher education system is headed in the ‘wrong direction,’ according to a [recent] poll… Overall, only 36% of adults say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to the report released Monday by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation. That confidence level has declined steadily from 57% in 2015.

Some of the same opinions have been reflected in declining enrollment as colleges contend with the effects of the student debt crisis, concerns about the high cost of tuition and political debates over how they teach about race and other topics… The dimming view of whether college is worth the time and money cuts across all demographics — including gender, age and political affiliation. Among Republicans, the number of respondents with high confidence in higher education has dropped 36 percentage points over the last decade — far more than it dropped for Democrats or independents…

“The June 2024 [Gallup and the Lumina Foundation] survey’s overall finding — that 36% of adults feel strong confidence in higher education — is unchanged from the year before. But what concerns researchers is shifting opinion on the bottom end, with fewer Americans saying they have “some” confidence and more reporting ‘very little’ and ‘none.’ This year’s [2024] findings show almost as many people have little or no confidence, 32%, as those with high confidence.

“Experts say fewer college graduates could worsen labor shortages in fields from health care to information technology. For those who forgo college, it often means lower lifetime earnings — 75% less compared with those who get bachelor’s degrees, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. And during an economic downturn, those without degrees are more likely to lose jobs.” CNN.com, September 15th.

This powerful demographic segment believes strong leadership, not limited by “archaic” laws, it necessary to right this ship. They must rewrite history, purge culture and science that contradict this vector, and control each and every one of us in thought, culture and body. That is the huge change from past, much more narrowly focused protest movements… and is completely antithetical to true democracy. The growth of artificial intelligence increases the level of fear and desperation. What’s next? The possible answers terrify me.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless and until each and every American selects a hate/anger off-ramp, this uncivil war will undo America to the delight of China, Russia, Iran and N Korea.

Is Trump a President for All Americans?

Is Trump a President for All Americans?

“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less… the radicals on the left are the problem… The radicals on the right, oftentimes, are radical because they don’t want to see crime… They don’t want to see crime. … They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street’… [T]he radicals on the left are the problem… they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.” 

Donald Trump, September 12th on Fox & Friends

“[Self-made US billionaire] George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America… We’re not going to allow these lunatics to rip apart America any more, never giving it so much as a chance to ‘BREATHE,’ and be FREE. Soros, and his group of psychopaths, have caused great damage to our Country! That includes his Crazy, West Coast friends.” 

Trump, NBC News, September 13th

“One thing I say is we have to have quick trials. I call it quick trials. Because in China, they do have quick trials, you know?... [We] should have a trial the following day, as far as I’m concerned.” 

Trump said on “Fox & Friends.”

“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” 

Vladimir Ilich Lenin

Even as Trump tries to explain his logic, there are way too many flies in that ointment. Once you get into the verbiage of Trump’s patterns of expression, the meanings become clear. “Radicals on the left” generally means anyone who disagrees with his position, which includes Democratic members of Congress, governors, state legislators, candidates, major creative artists and media professionals, company CEOs and investors, and even some of his own followers if they are stupid enough to disagree with him. “Woke” is any belief or practice Trump or MAGA does not like.

He governs with a commitment to vengeance and retaliation against anyone who opposes anything he embraces. Even his own followers, who often are required to do penance at any missteps they have taken. Since so many economic advantages, government contracts and exemptions from his new tariffs (if sustained) are determined personally by Trump, the President has used this neo-American kleptocracy to make him vastly richer and clearly a man who cannot see the constitutional limits around him. How do Americans feel about all this? A September 11th summary of a recent Reuters/Ipsos Poll is presented in the Palm Beach Post:

The Reuters/Ipsos poll found just 16% of Americans overall - including 2% of Democrats and 34% of Republicans - thought it would be good for the president to have power to set interest rates and tell companies where to manufacture products.

Trump’s overall approval rating remains stable at 42%, according to the poll, with nine in 10 Republicans supporting him…. “Even if citizens have concerns about urban crime or economic performance, they don’t view either issue as currently in a state of unprecedented crisis requiring unprecedented measures to resolve,” Boston College's Hopkins said.

“And while Trump certainly has a set of personal admirers who would happily grant him whatever powers he might seek, there are also many Republican voters who supported Trump in the last three elections but who don’t agree that he should be allowed to operate without limits.”

U.S. voters overwhelmingly want their president to respect the authority of federal courts, with nine in 10 Democrats and seven in 10 Republicans saying the president should abide by judicial rulings even if he disagrees with them.

Still, Republicans are more inclined to give Trump a free hand… Asked if they were willing to give up some checks and balances in the U.S. democratic system to have a government that can take action faster, 39% of Republicans said they would take that offer, compared to 45% who rejected it. Only 17% of independents - and the same share of Democrats - liked the idea.

At the same time, voters of both parties are increasingly less likely to view the U.S. as exceptional… Some 29% of people in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll agreed with a statement that "America is the greatest country in the world," down from 38% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in November 2017, during Trump's first term in office… The share of Democrats who agreed fell to 12% from 26% and among Republicans the share dropped to 55% from 59%.

The poll, which was conducted online and nationwide, gathered responses from 1,084 U.S. adults. It had a margin of error of 3 percentage points for all respondents, and between 5 and 6 points for Republicans, Democrats and independents.

Trump invites foreign investment in the United States, but when they verifiably cannot find qualified workers here, you get this with one of our staunchest allies in Asia, S. Korea. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a major raid on an on a Hyundai electric vehicle battery plant under construction in Ellabell, Georgia. Nearly 500 workers, including over 300 South Korean nationals, who were detained for visa and immigration violation, and then flown back to Seoul. Meanwhile, tariffs are sending prices here soaring and punishing businesses at all levels, but particularly small businesses and farmers who do not have huge capital reserves.

Through a combination of raw, unchecked force, applying bully tactics that have worked for autocrats forever, inflicting retribution powerfully and instantly against anyone who dares to oppose him, he has cowed the Republicans in Congress to do his bidding without deviation or hesitation, even when it seriously undermines their own constituents, threatening judges and dismissing administration executives at even the slightest hint of challenging him. All new federal appointees are vetted for loyalty to Trump above all else. Issuing executive orders at rate that is over eight times more than any recent president, Trump uses his not-so-secret weapon: speed.

He signs an executive order, one that causes massive disruption instantly, implements that order at warp speed as widely as he can, and when the US Supreme Court is asked to stop obviously very legitimate lower court determinations of Trump’s excess, his Kangaroo Kaptive Judges reverse the lower court ruling and issue a shadow docket Trump-favorable stay… leaving the damage and devastation of those executive orders to continue to wreak havoc pen, unless and until the Court hears the full case, potentially a year or more later. Trump’s ICE recruits are becoming his secret police, sending fear way beyond undocumented residents.

With the schism of the assassination of Charlie Kirk exploding into an open American wound, Trump used this as a deflection and distraction from his obvious Epstein cover-up, to incite, to raise the level of anger, and to demonize… in effect begging for the right to rise and extinguish the “radical left” once and for all… however much it takes. The Capitol insurrection times thousand. In Brazil, they arrest and try leaders willing to incite at this level, convict them with long looming prison sentences. In America, we reelect them and give them even more power.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if Trump succeeds in his quest for absolute and permanent power for himself and his cronies, what will you do… and how will you ever explain this to your children and grandchildren….?

Will Trump Ever Stop Outsourcing Domestic & Foreign Policy to War Criminals and Autocrats

 

Will Trump Ever Stop Outsourcing Domestic & Foreign Policy to War Criminals and Autocrats?

For a man who takes credit for solving major global conflicts, his participation usually denied by the relevant combatants, Trump has been an abysmal failure at the conflicts where he probably could have effected a peaceful resolution, including Gaza and the Russian war on Ukraine (that “day one” promised settlement”). Instead, his actions and inactions have essentially prolonged both conflicts, as thousands continue to die unnecessarily. In fact, Trump has the greatest leverage of anyone to generate the desired cease fires. That he never uses that leverage against strongmen attackers, doesn’t make good on his “serious consequences” threats for those who do not comply with his ceasefire demands, Trump seems to have as much of a likelihood of a Nobel Peace Prize as my cat.

Trump August 15th summit with Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, is a classic example. Claiming he extracted serious concessions from the Russian President such that his threatened sanctions were not necessary, the succeeding weeks revealed that Putin had not budged a single inch on anything. Zippo. Trump was the clown prince of peace. Next, Trump threatened Europe that unless they all stopped buying oil from Russia, he would not support Europe’s own peace efforts, knowing that Hungary’s PM Viktor Orbán, with a Trump-like bromance with Putin, was not about to stop buying Russian fossil fuel. And sure, Trump was willing to alienate one of our most significant allies, India, for buying Russian oil, by slapping 50% tariffs on that nation, while not even making the tariff level for China rise a whit… even though China is the number one buyer of Russian oil.

Trump’s love and respect (envy?) for brutal dictators – his proclivity to favor “strongmen” over “democratic leaders” – creates a predictable result… every time. Trump has flipflopped like a fish out of water in dealing with Putin; the Russian President has not waivered an inch. Trump has excoriated Ukraine’s Zelenskyy and our European allies with very little of that hostility directed at Russia. As 19 Russian drones crossed into Poland, a NATO ally, Trump poo-pooed the findings of his EU/NATO leaders determining that these drone incursions were clearly intentional – testing Europe’s resolve. Trump has misstated more than once that Ukraine started the conflict, pushing Zelenskyy to make major concessions while liberally deeming Putin’s outrageous demands as “reasonable.”

Trump could join his European allies, who live in the same global neighborhood as does Moscow, bolstering a collective resolve in support of Ukraine. Trump could approve the sale of more longer-range missiles in addition to upgrading defensive systems needed by Ukraine, releasing the use of range limitations, but other than an occasion expression of disappointment or unhappiness at the indicted war criminal, Putin, Trump waivers and believes pledges of future economic relations are enough to force a ceasefire and a most lasting, fair solution. But his wish-washy resolve has only incented Putin to mount the most aggressive attack on Ukraine to date.

Indeed, Trump’s admiration of brutal strongmen, particularly an indicted war criminal (along with Hamas leadership) has given Isreal a cart blanche to Isreal to starve, bomb, shell and shoot

Gaza’s Palestinians, deny any potential for their own state and mount a new horrific decimation of Gaza city, as its population attempts to flee with nowhere to go. There are very few people in the Western world, including the United States, who would hold Hamas anything but brutal, immoral terrorists who initiated a hostage-taking, savage and unprovoked, murderous attack on innocent Israeli citizens near the border with Gaza. That needless slaughter, including violent rape and killing of children has no justification on any basis whatsoever.

But even as ordinary Palestinian civilians living in Gaza deeply resent the Hamas bully-soldiers in their midst, since that attack on October 7, 2023, Israel’s bombing, shelling and shooting retaliation of a Gaza, cutting off food and medical supplies, and destroying schools, hospitals and food distribution centers, has killed over an estimated 65 thousand people, a very small portion of which were Hama fighters, with thousands and thousand of children killed as well. The Israeli Defense Force always pointed to Hamas using those facilities, holding civilian Palestinians as human shields and using indiscriminate shelling to render 90% of the buildings in Gaza seriously damaged or destroyed. With no foreign journalists permitted by Israel, how would we know? The remaining Israeli hostages are held as Hamas’ lingering leverage to force a ceasefire.

The recent Israeli strike on a quiet residential district in Qatar where Hamas negotiators lived seemed to quell any hope of a negotiated ceasefire and seriously undermined US relations with a number of its regional Arab allies. Israel then mounted its greatest strike on Gaza City, pledging to level it to make it unusable. Hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans clogged roads in a desperate attempt to escape, but they literally had no place to go. As Israel’s only major ally on Earth, the United States remains the main source of weapons other than those made in Israel. So, anytime Israel makes a decision involving weapons, the US shares the blame. That most of the major European allies are slowly recognizing Palestine as an independent state, has not weakened Natanyahu’s control over Trump’s policy of letting Israel have its way with Gaza, notwithstanding an occasional statement of “disappointment” emanating from Trump.

Meanwhile, an “independent United Nations inquiry has concluded for the first time that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and that the country’s top leaders have incited genocide, in what it described as the ‘most authoritative UN finding to date.... In a 72-page report released on Tuesday [9/16], the commission, which was set up by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), found that Israel has ‘committed four genocidal acts’ in the enclave since October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out deadly attacks on Israel and Israel launched its military campaign.” Associated Press, September 17th.

On September 18th: “The United States once again vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution… that had demanded an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages after saying that the effort did not go far enough in condemning the militant group Hamas… All 14 other members of the United Nations’ most powerful body voted in favor of the resolution, which described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as ‘catastrophic’ and called on Israel to lift all restrictions on the aid delivery to the 2.1 million Palestinians in the territory.” LA Times, September 19th. This goes so far beyond Israel’s right to exist in peace and defend itself when attacked.

Even as most of my closest Jewish friends are increasingly passionately opposed to Israel’s extreme and unrelenting attack on innocent Palestinians, with children dying from starvation in droves every day, Donald Trump’s marching orders from Netanyahu and his powerful allies in the US, have pushed us into a further isolated global position as a rogue state. Trump adoration of strongmen, his open disdain for vulnerable and weak people, has resulted in the President of the United States literally outsourcing what we should be doing about the Russo-Ukraine War and our moral commitment to stop supply the weapons used to kill innocent Palestinians to strongmen Putin and Netanyahu, respectively.

And if anyone thinks this is good for either the American or Israeli people, the numbers, reported in the September 18th The Economist, might strongly suggest otherwise: “Our polling shows the mood is shifting sharply in America, not just among Democrats but also Republicans. A recent YouGov/Economist poll finds that 43% of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. In the past three years unfavourable views of Israel among Democrats over 50 rose by 23 percentage points. Among Republicans under 50, support is evenly divided, compared with 63% for Israel in 2022. If this loss of popular American support continues it will be catastrophic for a small country of 10m people in a hostile neighbourhood. Right now America is all that stands between Israel and pariah status. Optimists will call all of this scaremongering. We believe that view is dangerously complacent.” Trump does what he wants. But Gen Z is rising… and they will remember. But Trump really does not care: “The Trump administration has told Congress it plans to sell nearly $6 billion in weapons to Israel, a fresh surge of support for the U.S. ally as it faces increasing isolation over its war in Gaza.” LA Times, September 21st.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Trump’s proclivity to outsource key decisions to tyrants in obvious violation of our most basic moral code has done absolutely nothing to benefit us anywhere… and has pushed to many allies we need even farther away, with less respect for us than have ever had.