POST 1198
What Are We Missing?
On top of the furies of indignation, betrayal and the immoralities of the bitter cake that is every day Trumpism lies the Epstein icing on top. It has oddly joined MAGAmites with 90% of the population to call for the release of the Epstein list of sexual predators who abused and sex trafficked underage girls and perhaps others.
The MAGAmites wanted and were promised by Trump that once President he would let it all fly and the anticipated list of degenerate Democrats, Hollywood big shots and various coastal elites would be exposed. Then Republicans could splash about in moral superiority over the decadence and depravity of woke hypocrites. There would be no more hiding the truth, no more protecting the rich and powerful. Trump would uncork the drain of the DC swamp and all the bad guys would drown on the way down.
Except that’s not what happened. Trump is hiding the facts, the evidence. He’s doing exactly what MAGAmites were furious over when they dribbled conspiracy crazy on Dems, whom they were sure were getting away with horrible stuff, but they couldn’t prove it because facts were withheld. But this isn’t about Dems. Turns out MAGAmites are a lot like you: they don’t like being betrayed, even by their cult leader.
Trump is a master of distraction, the King of Bright Shiny Objects to direct your attention away from something damaging to him. His withholding of the Epstein list is widely believed to be his effort to prevent information incriminating to Trump from becoming public, but it does far more than that. Refusing to make the information public has transfixed public attention on the sordid Epstein mess, leaving us to wonder what Trump is doing that we aren’t focusing on, terrible things that are cruel, criminal and destructive.
Like:
Hiring thousands of additional ICE agents to act as his private, masked army, his Gestapo.
Putting thousands of immigrants into inhumane cages and holding them incommunicado
Arresting and incarcerating American citizens solely because they didn’t have citizenship papers in their possession and look Hispanic (read: Brown, not White)
Renditioning thousands of prisoners to various countries around the world
Setting the stage in Los Angeles for us to accept our military being deployed in our own country.
That last may be the key to what we are missing.
“Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition where the veins in the legs have difficulty drawing attention from the fact that the Epstein Files still haven’t been released.” anonymous source. Getty image
The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act prohibits deployment of our military on U.S. soil except for the most unusual circumstances, like an invasion from another country. No invasion has happened to the U.S. since the War of 1812.
Trump’s many horribles are at least as bad as you think they are, but the Epstein distraction may be hiding something far worse. We may be missing a looming final lurch into crushing authoritarianism.
Reference my post about that very thing. The Epstein distraction may be the preparation for some terrible event which Trump will use to declare martial law and become de facto dictator. Such actions are what dictators do and Trump is clearly a megalomaniac eager to burn our Constitution and aggregate all power and gobs of money for himself alone.
Yeah, we’re missing something critically important, for sure.
Who Will Lead?
Regular readers have likely recognized my discontent with the Democratic National Committee, a supposed leader of the right values and against the wrong values, We look there and to members of that tribe’s muck-a-mucks to do valiant and effective battle against those who would violate our values and do us and our nation harm. We expect them to vigorously promote our general welfare. My discontent boils for the lack of all that.
Who will lead us out of the morass of today to avoid the far worse morass of tomorrow? I’ve asked this question many times and we see some capable people speaking out (sometimes) against the cruel and the outrageous. Nevertheless, it remains opaque as to who will stand and declare, “THAT way – Follow me!” in such a compelling way that We The People will follow with our passion, our wisdom and our patriotism.
Truth be told, we Boomers made this horrid mess. George W. Bush lied us into two “forever wars” that killed and displaced millions, leaving brutality in its wake. Now Trump is clawing and scraping away our Constitution to institute dictatorial control and eliminate our rights and our freedom.
Both of these elected ones are charter members of the Boomer generation, each wholly unfit to lead a nation. Each enlisted many other Boomers and others into their perfidy, all to create their version of destruction and abandonment of facts and reality. Many in Congress and the courts are Boomers, too.
Here’s the key:
- We cannot find our way out of this morass
- using the same thinking and the same tools that got us into it.
The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, recently announced that they will conduct a postmortem of the 2024 election. It took them 8 months to decide to do that. His examination won’t focus on the campaign, he said, as though the Committee’s lack of relevance to over 77 million voters and 90 million who didn’t bother to vote can be explained by an arcane partial study.
But that won’t help. Not for a party that dumped David Hogg from their leadership. Hogg is an established voice of Gen Zs. They listen to him. They sure as hell don’t listen to Boomers and X-ers, the very people who have made it next to impossible for them to find a path to the American dream. And the DNC dumped the very guy who can help to enlist the people who can clean up the mess. Suicidal.
I rest my hopes on our Gen Zs. There are enough of them, they are educated, packed with energy and more accepting of others than any other generation. Plus, they don’t want to live in the mess we’ve made.
We Boomers, Xers and Millennials aren’t off the hook. We, too, must continue to fight the good fight. And we must continuously invite our Gen Zs to join and to lead.
Here’s a quotation courtesy of friend Mardy Grothe, author of Deconstructing Trump*:
- Upon the profound discontent of the young in every country
- do I set my faith. I beg you, the young, to be discontented.
- I pray that you may rebel against what is wrong,
- not with feeble negative complaining
- but with strong positive assertion of what is right for all humanity. — Pearl S. Buck
- Pass that along to the Zs you know.
- Let’s be clear about missing. It seems we are missing Democratic leadership. Demand nothing less.
-
The Deconstructing Trump* Corner
.
- A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger
- is prepared for a master, and deserves one.
- Alexander Hamilton,1797
- It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion
- will legislate its creed into law
- if it acquires the political power to do so.
- Robert A. Heinlein, 1953
- _________________________________________
* Deconstructing Trump by Mardy Grothe explores The Trump phenomenon through the lens of quotation history.
Mid-Term Election
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4 Responses to Missing
Dominick Palella July 23, 2025
You wrote Jack: Here’s the key: We cannot find our way out of this morass using the same thinking and the same tools that got us into it. That’s true. However, our lifelong indoctrination for following the same behavior is extremely difficult to break. We continue to elect people as our rulers. Once they take office we have virtually no control over their decisions.
Most of us still can’t understand why our current political parties are autocratic and should be circumvented, as they regularly make decisions that give one of their politicians unchallengeable authority to block beneficial legislation or pass harmful legislation. These people have positions where 99 percent of our electorate can’t vote them into office, or vote them out of office.
If you want to learn new tools that we can use in this 21st century, please visit my website. DirectDemocracy21.org
Jim Altschuler July 23, 2025
I fervently hope that your readers will re-read repeatedly the bolded items in the foregoing post and their sources, then seriously consider their meaning and its impact on their lives and All American residents.
Frank Levy July 23, 2025
Jack – It always pisses me off when we Boomers get blamed for the crap we are living through today. This age conversation is one of those times when two opposing ideas can be true at the same time. Yes, it is true that Ronald Reagan, both Shrubs, and 47 are Boomers. It is also true that Boomers were the heart and soul of the Civil Rights and Votings Act, the 1970’s Peace Movement, the Marriage Equality Act, the Roe decision. Boomers created Planned Parenthood, SNCC, and made the Democratic Party a truly big tent.
Here’s an irony for you, most of 47’s cabinet is under the age of 60 – not Boomers at all.
I do agree with you, the Dems will not save us. Sadly, I don’t think groups like Indivisible will save us either. They focus on the 2026 House election which may or may not even happen, and even if it does will change nothing. 47 has made it clear that he alone decides what happens in America, and he is building his own private ICEstapo to enforce his power grab. And let’s be honest for just a moment, the feckless one day marches that We the People get so excited about and which 47 lets happen have changed nothing. 47 lets those one day events happen because he knows that letting us think we live in freedom helps him, and changes nothing. At this moment in time most of America is sitting on its hands doing pretty much nothing that makes any difference. We are living out our lives like nothing too terrible is happening – especially if we are white and middle class. I suspect 47 and his closest gang members are absolutely astonished at how easy it has been for them to take over America, deport thousands of immigrants to anywhere in the world they want, to thumb their noses at the legal system, to run roughshod over Congress. to build the first of many concentration camps, and to violate the rights of Brown people whether they are migrants or American citizens.
You started off this post asking what is 47 hiding, what are we missing? I am not sure 47 is hiding anything. We the People are simply and very dangerously NOT PAYING ATTENTION. 47 wants to be king. He has no interest in governing, only in having all the power and all the money, and getting revenge. If we are missing something it is because we are choosing NOT to pay attention. 47 is a inveterate liar, except when he is telling us what evil he will rain down on us so he can get what he wants.
47 and his gang of vile, evil, homophobic, racist, antisemitic, xenophobic, authoritarian Christian nationalist thugs are destroying the America of our dreams and we are standing idly by, hoping a leader will emerge to save us, and pretending our outrage is making a difference.
The only thing that will make a difference is well organized, sustained and prolonged non-violent work stoppages and boycotts of companies that support 47’s plans or have caved to his threats. And right now, it is clear that We the People neither have the willingness nor the courage to do what is necessary to take back our country, our Constitution, or our rights as citizens.
Jack Altschuler July 23, 2025
Good points, especially the victories Boomers had in the 60s and 70s. But Reagan and Bush I were not Boomers. They were a generation older and they showed Boomers the way, what with Reagan’s voodoo economics that, strangely enough, demonic pinheads in DC are promoting yet again. They just got their BBB bill passed to make such greed and domination come true.
As for 47’s under 60 cabinet thugs, he chooses not for generation, but for TV appeal. Remember that he’s a (un)reality show creep and a beauty pageant creep. Knowledge, intelligence and moral courage aren’t required to participate in those. Only a pretty face and superlative suck up skills.
You wrote, “The only thing that will make a difference is well organized, sustained and prolonged non-violent work stoppages and boycotts of companies that support 47’s plans or have caved to his threats,” and that’s spot on. Think: Montgomery bus boycott. Nothing else moved the city council, and so it will be with the federal government.
Countering that is 47’s enthusiasm for ignoring the welfare of working people. Think: Covid 19 and meat packers, when he ordered those people to work and a huge percentage of them got sick. I assume some died. What will a tyrant such as that do when there are general work stoppages?
We’ve had millions of angry Americans in the streets and, at the very least, that has served several valuable functions. But it will take people feeling the suffocation of the loss of freedoms, rising prices and stagnant wages to motivate for work stoppages.