*** “Future historians will record the volatility of the president’s decision-making, as well as the internal struggles of a government for4ced to grapple with it. They will write that his advisors came to find him unfit for the job. He couldn’t focus on governing, and he was prone to abuses of power, from ill-conceived schemes to punish his political rivals to a propensity for undermining vital American institutions. They will document how officials considered drastic. – some might say desperate. – measures to warn the American people.” [ Anonymous: “A Warning” ]. [NOTE: this book, written in 2019, was a warning to America about Donald John Trump – and the damage he already was doing]
This post is volume two on Trump’s contributions to, and lies about, his own policies and rhetoric for the “affordability” struggles most Americans face. As post CLIV noted, Trump will likely have NO empathy for their struggles. – as he seldom has ANY empathy for ANYBODY outside a small circle [ like billionaires!!!]. He will likely spend the next 7 months trying to sell. YOU on the FRAUD. that he has no responsibility for YOUR. struggles, and, trying to convince YOU. it doesn’t exist, or – is a “hoax” made up by “the enemies of the people” – news media, economists, statisticians – all of whom look at. REAL. numbers, listen to REAL. ordinary people – like YOU.
This post examines three major “affordability” crises: health care, housing, chuld care:
Health Care
A]. “One-third of Americans – an estimated 82 million people – say they are making sacrifices, including skipping meals or driving less, to pay for care….people also said they had delayed making major changes to their lives, like hacing a child or retiring..” [Reed Abelson: “Medical costs are squeezing Americans”; New York Times; 3/13/26]
B] “Over the past five years, the price of health coverage for an employee’s family has risen 26 percent, to $27,000 annually….About 32 percent of Americans said they were “very worried” about health care bills.” [Peter Whoriskey: “Americans’ top worry is now the cost of health care”; Washington Post Weekly; 2/1/26]
C] “We don’t talk about it much, but the numbers tell the story plain: about four in 10 adults in America carry medical or dental debt, and rural folks are more likely to struggle with it than people living in urban areas. Research shows medical problems and bills are among the leading contributors to personal bankruptcy…. Other nations have made different choices about how to care for their people..” [Andrew Tate: “The Cost of Care in the Land of Plenty”; The Progressive Populist; January, 2026]
Housing
D]. “President Trump’s proposed housing policies would put hundreds of thousands of Americans out on the streets.” [Farrah Hassen: “It’s Not only the White House Getting Demolished. Trump’s Gutting Affordable Housing”; The Progressive Populist; December, 2025]
E] “Home prices have risen more than 50 percent since the start of the pandemic. About a third of American households now spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing….The core of the problem is simple: Too much money chasing too few homes.” [Note; the solution is known: built more homes]. [Ezra Klein: “Our Housing Crisis, in One Chart”; New York Times; 1/30/25]
F} “I don’t want to drive housing prices down,” ..[Trump].. said. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their own homes.”….Economists across the ideological spectrum have diagnosed the United states with an acute housing shortage ghat has raised home prices and rents. The remedy, they argue, is to focus on policies that increase the supply of housing..” [Connor Dougherty: “Trump Is Seeking To Drive Up Housing Prices”; New York Times; 2/9/26]
G] “ICE Surge Drags Down Home Construction”. [Dee Depass; Minnesota Star Tribune; 2/10/26]: “Twin Cities homebuilders are falling behind schedule as the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota has fueled a shortage of roofing, drywall and other construction workers..”
H] YOU can also rad; “Homewreckers”. [Aaron Glantz]: “a shocking investigation into America’s housing crisis and the modern day robber barons – among them Donald Trump and his inner circle – who are making a fortune off the backs of the disenfranchised working class and middle class.”
Child Care
I]. “Nationally, the cost of child care now significantly outpaces inflation, rising 8% since June 2024, compared with a 4% increase in general inflation……New York Times/Siena University polling, which found that affordability concerns are largely about the costs of family life….In most states, the average price of child care is even higher than in-state college tuition.” [Asmaa Elkeurti, Claire Cain Miller: “For Many, Child Care Seems less Affordable Than Ever”; New York Times; 3/22/26]
*** “Trump lacks the emotional stability, knowledge, critical-thinking skills, and judgment to be commander-in-chief…..Even by the standards of the incurious George W. Bush, Trump is appallingly ignorant….More surprising than Trump’s lack of knowledge of geopolitics is his ignorance of economics, the field in which he was given a bachelor’s degree..” [ Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston: “It’s Even Worse Than You Think” ]
***. “In a president, character is everything.” [ Peggy Noonan ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CLIV. – Affordability – Trump Lies About, Contributes To It, I
***. “He simply couldn’t admit that he’d done anything wrong and he had no empathy for anyone he’d offended, because he had no empathy for anyone, period. Donald Trump’s single greatest character flaw as a leader and human being is his complete and total lack of empathy.” [ Omarosa Manigault Newman: “Unhinged”
This post presents to YOU, some examples of how ‘your” president seeks to convince YOU that the increased prices YOU are paying are a figment of your imagination – and. – most especially. – those higher prices YOU ARE PAYING. – are most definitely not his fault !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Judge for YOURSELF. – by NUMBERS, not rhetoric.
A]. “In his State of the Union address on Feb. 24…the president claimed that the problem of ‘affordability” was solved.” [Bloomberg: “The affordability problem is far from solved”; 3/15/26]
B]. “Given the upheaval we may soon be facing, it would be nice if we had a president capable of leading a thoughtful national conversation about where A.I. is taking us. Suffice it to say, Donald Trump is not that kind of president.” [Michael Steinberger: “Your Job Could Be in Jeopardy Already”; New York Times; 3/8/26] {NOTE: – Read this article and find out WHY Steinberger says this. What does factual evidence show us?]
C] “This fits the economist’s notion of the nation’s post-COVID “K-shaped economy”: A small upper class is at the top, accumulating wealth and driving spending, while everyone else is at the bottom and facing a widening gap. The cost of living has outpaced the traditional definition of a middle-class life..” [Emma Nelson: “Middle earners feeling the pinch”; Minnesota Star Tribune; 1/1/26}. NOTE ******. Read this article, and others, about the “K-shaped economy” – THIS is one big clue why YOU , and others not making at least $120,000 are struggling. Get the FACTS, the NUMBERS]
D] “Even people earning six figures. – which puts them in the top 18% of wage earners. – are secretly struggling to keep afloat.” [NOTE: as an economy that can’t comfortably support even the top 18%. “doing well”????] “What Americans need is higher wages. Salaries have been stagnant or falling in real terms, failing to keep up with inflation and productivity gains since the Vietnam War.” [ Note; which ended about 1975]. [Ted Rall: “Affordability: We Need Higher Wages, Not Lower Prices”; The Progressive Populist; January, 2026]
*** “And then there are Trump’s many delusions…claims to know more…how to deal…to be the world’s foremost expert…All that is nonsense. For almost three decades I have been pointing out that Trump creates his own reality, a point on which his other leading biographers agree.” { Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston: “It’s Even Worse Than You Think” }
E]. “Days away from the anniversary of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, grocery prices are still rising, undercutting his administration’s rhetoric about how it is making life more affordable for average Americans….Yet Trump continues to falsely claim otherwise. “Grocery prices are starting to go rapidly down,’ he said Tuesday afternoon during a speech in Detroit. It’s not the first time that he has said food prices are down, even when data show they’re not.” [ Kevin Draper, Julie Creswell: “Grocery prices Rising Despite Trump’s Claims”; New York Times; 1/17/26 }
[NOTE: Read the article – find out. WHY. YOU pay more for YOUR food. – the facts]
F] “One year after the Trump administration took control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the consumer watchdog has largely retreated from enforcement and regulatory work, changes that consumer advocates and Democrats now estimate have cost Americans at least $19 billion in financial relief.” [ Ken Sweet: “CFPB changes prove costly”; Associated Press; 2/22/26] [NOTE: ask. YOURSELF; WHY would. ‘your’ president weaken an agency with a proven track record of saving. YOU. money???? Who’s president is he really….maybe his donors….his billionaire friends…because Project 2025 wants it?????- ***THIS is at the crux of YOUR search for facts. this, and many other policies. – are reasons WHY Trump is costing YOU money.]
*** “In a president, character is everything.” [ Peggy Noonan ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CLIV – Trump’s Reckless Iran War
*** “..the notion, that his team is working to protect him from himself, has since become one of the defining narratives of the Trump administration…President Trump should not be shocked that wary aides and cabinet members saved his presidency. My colleagues have done so many times. He should be worried – we should all be worried. – that these reasonable professionals are vanishing.” [ Anonymous: “A Warning.”] [NOTE: This was published in 2019, by “a senior Trump administration official.” Trump’s second administration has virtually NONE of this kind of patriotic American. Read this again – and – pray YOU have an American democracy on January 20, 2029. ]
This post presents excerpt from. “Trump’s Fantasy Is Crashing Down”. [Lydia Polgreen; New York Times; 3/8/26 ]:
1]. “in Donald Trump’s fantasy world, America in invincible and impregnable….It can slap punitive tariffs on any nation it likes, abandon longstanding alliances on a whim, bomb any country at any time and freely blow up boats it may suspect of carrying drugs. America’s awesome power means it is unfettered by any rules, untroubled by any consequences.”
2] “…after Trump plunged the United States into a war with Iran, that fantasy of omnipotence has come crashing down. Undertaken for unexplained and perhaps unexplainable reasons, the war is being waged in a central node of the global economy against a disciplined well-armed opponent with nothing to lose….Trump has clearly given little thought to what comes next.”
3] “For America, the repercussions are just beginning…..This is the world Trump tries to disavow – complex and interconnected…vulnerable to disruption…More than anything, it shows up..the fallacy of Fortress America.”
*** “Because Trump has no political philosophy and is appalling ignorant of history, military doctrine, the religious divisions in the Middle East, the different branches within Islam, and many other issues, he can cause great damage to America.” [ Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston: “The Making of Donald Trump” ] [NOTE; Written in 2017, we now see this coming true; because this second Trump administration is full of “loyalists” – who “let Trump be Trump” ]
4]. “…perhaps the most shocking thing about his cavalier approach is that he seems to have had no idea that the Gulf would be a target. In an interview with CNN on Monday, he professed that Iran’s attacks on American allies in the Gulf were “probably the biggest surprise”. – despite the fact that just about every country in the region had warned his administration that Iran would surely attack them in retaliation for an American assault.”
5] “… Trump appears strangely uncertain about where the war is heading.” [ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ]
6]. “It is unsettling how often Trump affects astonishing indifference, as though the most powerful man in the world were merely a spectator to events he himself has set in motion. – and who in any case has little investment in the outcome. But that curious passivity reveals a darker truth. Trump seems to believe that he, like his fantasy America, exists on a different plane, utterly untouchable by the swirl of global events. The devastating consequences of his actions are not just someone else’s fault. They are someone else’s problem, too.”
*** “As the pressures upon him have continued to mount over the course of the last three years, the disparity between the level of competence required for running a country and his incompetence has widened, revealing his delusions more starkly than ever before.” [ Mary L. Trump: “Too Much and Never Enough….How my family created the world’s most dangerous man” ] [NOTE: read this again – and pray]
7] “And yet, Trump presses on, declaring at one point that the war could go on “forever.” In a manic briefing on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised “death and destruction from the sky all day long” over Tehran…Aime Cesaire…wrote…”The modern barbarian. The American hour. Violence, excess, waste, mercantilism, bluff, conformism. stupidity, vulgarity, disorder.”
8] “If war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, perhaps it will also serve as a lesson to Trump. It should be a simple one: other places and other people are real, possessing their own agendas and agency. – and America’s actions have consequences it cannot control. Anything else is pure fantasy.”
***. “One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Devine Will.” [ Bertrand Russell ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CLIII – ‘Melania’ the Movie As A Bribe?
*** United States Constitution: Article II, Section 4: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, a Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
This post presents an argument that Donald John Trump should, again, be impeached; this time for Bribery. The argument by Robert Reich: “‘Melania’: The Movie. The Bribe. The Shame.” [The Progressive Populist, march, 2026]. Excerpts below:
1] “My purpose today is …to talk about its real excuse – allowing Jeff Bezos to give a big fat bribe to the president of the United States.
5] “..Ted Hope, who was instrumental in starting Amazon’s film division, wondered aloud to The New York Times, “How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe? How can that not be the case?”
*** “Corrupt influence is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; it loads us more than millions of debt; takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most vulnerable parts of our constitution.” [ Edmund Burke ]
2] “Why would Bezos bribe him? Please. Bezos…owns Amazon and many other businesses that depend on the whms of the sociopath in the Oval Office.”
3]. “Friends, when the history of this sordid period of America is written – assuming it’s not written by historians trying to curry favor with a future fascist regime – I hope the leaders of American business are condemned to the hellfire they deserve for helping destroy American democracy.”
*** “By corruption, the early generations meant excessive private interests influencing the exercise of public power. An Act was corrupt when private power was used to influence public power for private ends….A person was corrupt when they use public power for private ends. There was no way for government to work without virtue, and “no substitute for good men in office.” [ Zephyr Teachout: “Corruption in America” ]
4] “Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, will have pride in place here ..[Hell].., after spending a quarter of a billion dollars getting Trump elected….But jeff Brezos, with his $75 million bribe of Trump, will deserve a special place in the innermost ring of hell.”
6]. “If America still had a Department of Justice, Bezos would be indicted fro bribery of a public official pursuant to 18 U.S. Code @ 201, which criminalizes offering or giving anything of value to a public official with the intent to influence their official actions.”
***. “…there is no way to access infinite wealth without rigging the system. No one becomes a billionaire honestly.”
[ Sarah Chayes: “On corruption In America” ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CLIII. – Sabotaging. The. American. Economy
***. Adam Smith: Progress depends on society being “well governed.” The optimal locus of the “government” is individual ethics. An ethical person is just; plays by the rules; makes others feel secure. But in a society of less than angels, society requires an efficient, effective institutional government to police the behavior of those few who would not otherwise play by the rules. [ Ryan Patrick Hanley, editor: “Adam Smith” ]
This post presents excerpts from “When Future Historians Write About the Fall of American Economic Power, Will Trump Be the Turning Point?” [ Thom Hartmann; The Progressive Populist; March, 2026 ]:
8] “..twice in the past 12 months the value of the dollar has taken a huge hit, in both cases because the world freaked out at Trump’s insanity and started to sell dollars.”
9] “..he went to Davos and blithered through a semi-coherent speech that left international leaders wondering about his sanity, his judgment, and his reliability…the judgment and reliability of the United States itself. Trump’s own economic illiteracy and impulse-driven policies…have damaged the value of our currency and may have put the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency at risk.”
***. “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
[ Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr. ]
2]. “For more than a hundred years, the United States has been the cornerstone of international economic stability. The independence of our central bank [the “Fed”] has been a part of it, as has the strength of the dollar…And now Trump and the GOP are threatening it all. Trump has added $2 trillion to our national debt in the past 12 months, and he’s on course to do it again [or worse] this year.”
11] “The big impact..could come if international investors and other countries conclude it’s unlikely that the US will be able to repay our debts. Ever since the Bush Crash of 2008 revealed how deregulation had corrupted our banking system, foreign investors holdings of US debt have steadily declined.”
*** “The American people are a very generous people ans will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity.” [ Will Rogers ]
1] “America’s economic system has never been fair or perfect, but for more than a century it rested on basic guardrails that kept instability in check and allowed us to fight for progress and win. Those guardrails are now being stripped away by policies that favor wealth and power over accountability and long-term stability.”
*** “Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.” [ Jorge L. Borges ]
3] “When Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, our national debt was less than one trillion dollars, because every president from FDR to Truman to Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Ford to Carter had worked to pay down the roughly 140% of GDP debt we ran up fighting World War II.”
4] “Across those same presidencies, America had also built a broad and strong safety net for its citizens, primarily through the New Deal and Great Society programs. And Republicans hated it all, particularly because it’d been paid for with a 74% to 91% income tax on billionaires and a 50% income tax on corporate profits.”
5] “..over the course of the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts and two illegal wars, four Republican presidents managed to add more than $37 trillion to our national debt.”
***. “I need to pay higher taxes. I’ve paid, in absolute, more taxes over ten billion [dollars], than anyone else, but, you know, the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes.” [ Bill Gates ]
6] “The grimmest consequence of this is that we’re spending. $1.2 trillion every year on interest payments on our national debt. That’s money that could otherwise have gone to create a national healthcare system, provide free college education, or help people buy their first homes. but, instead, is going to payments to wealthy investors here and abroad who hold US Treasuries.”
7] “Up until recently, we were able to pull this off because the US Dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for the better part of a century….here’s a huge worldwide demand for our currency….that, in turn, is essentially a subsidy for Americans of all stripes: lower mortgage rates, lower car loan rates, easier credit, and US-based companies can more easily finance growth and new product development.”
***. “No society can..be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of..members are poor and miserable..It is but equity..that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have..and share of the produce of their own labor as to themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.” [ Adam Smith ]
10. “As the dollar drops in value, that’s ultimately reflected in everything imported becoming more expensive [which drives inflation],..”
12]. “Trump’s willy-nilly tariffs, often used to extort other nations into giving his family a new hotel or golf course, his constant lies on the international stage about everything from renewable energy to our “right” to invade a foreign country and capture its leader, to his killing fishermen off the coast of Venezuela and his current threats against Iran, all argue against trusting us.”
13]. “Trump’s already destroyed our soft power by gutting USAID, ruined our relationships with our allies by embracing Vladimir Putin and trash-talking NATO and the EU, and now is shaking confidence in our remaining democratic allies by imposing police-state tactics on Blue cities.”
***. “Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all…The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affections, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”
[ George Washington ]
14] “The BRICS. [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] countries are on the move, with Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the UAE having recently joined in an agreement to use their alternative currencies instead of dollars.”
15]. “India and the UAE are now trading in rupees and the dirham, and China is using yuan to buy natural gas from the UAE. China has almost entirely abandoned trhe dollar for their trade with Russia, the UAE, and Iran. Like South Africa, Brazil has increasingly been using the real and the yuan to settle bilateral trade with China, bypassing the US dollar.”
*** “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.” [George Marshall; U.S. Secretary of State, on the Marshall Plan]
{NOTE: On this critique of Trump’s economic policies – AGAIN, to be fair – ask YOURSELF does his policy satisfy the Founders” TEST: does it ‘..promote the general Welfare..”????? Will America be better off from Trump’s rhetoric and actions????? Do Trump policies contain the wisdom of the “Marshall plan”??? The wisdom of several presidents before him in reducing the national debt????? Are YOU and YOUR children and YOUR grandchildren going to be better off because of Trump policies????? Expert, world-wide, fact-based economic analysis says YOU, America, will NOT be more prosperous and fair because of Trump’s STUPIDITY and INCOMPETENCE.]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CLI. – “The Real Epstein Cover-Up”
***. “In 2016, Trump with his outsized ego, his anti-immigrant and anti-trade positions, coupled with barely disguised racism and deep-seated sexism and a willingness to lie whenever it suited him, was a near-perfect fit.: [Bob Beckel]
This post presents excerpts from “The Real Epstein Cover-Up”. [ Rachel Louise Snyder; New York Times; 11/23/25] and “The Victims Who fought Back”. [Pamela Collofff; New York Times Magazine; 3/1/26]:
A]. “The Real Epstein Cover-Up”
6] “The misogyny that is such a casual part of Mr. Trump’s entire modus operandi gives license to systems that prioritize men’s freedoms over women’s lives.”
13] “..we are entitled to demand a life free from the violence of men. We are entitled to demand more from our leaders, to demand an open investigation into the Epstein files, to demand accountability for the perpetrators regardless of political party or cultural cachet, to demand justice for children and women trafficked by Mr. Epstein, and perhaps more than anything, to demand real change in which a broken system is compelled to reinvention.”***
*** “When societies go backwards and slide into authoritarianism, nationalism, and tribalism, machismo and sexism are also emboldened.” [ Elif Safak ]
1] “But the ..[Epstein]..emails are just a piece of the larger story: the lengths this country and the systems we’ve created – from the smallest jurisdiction to the national stage – will go to maintain the power of men at the expense of women’s bodies.”
2] “..#MeToo movement, when it seemed possible to reform the male-dominated systems that kept women down. The movement led to a handful of convicted men, but also fed a colossal backlash that reminds us how our country has never adequately protected women…contributed to the second election of Mr. Trump, who has overseen an era that might be unique in its willingness to sacrifice democratic institutions and American norms to control women.”
3] “…there is a White House proposal that aims to lower the Office on Violence Against Women’s stature within the D.O.J. and cut its shoestring budget by nearly 30 percent. This would devastate shelters, advocacy programs and violence prevention measures, and escalate the danger for victims of intimate partner and familial violence in all corners of the country.”
***. “The basic premise of math is about efficiency. And when you’ve got racism, sexism, and bigotry, that’s just standing in the way of efficiency in our own progress.” [ Glen Powell ]
4]. ‘..a report on violent deaths of girls and women from 2014 to 2020 noted that laws constraining abortion providers were associated with a 3.4 percent rise in the rate of homicides related to intimate partner violence. We are being killed for our own lack of choice.”
5]. “An estimated one in 20 women in the United States gets pregnant from rape or sexual coercion…a whopping six million women with violence-initiated pregnancies.”
7] “One night in 2012..Latina Ray, and her boyfriend, Lawrence McQueen, got into a fight. She told me that he had hit her many times…On this night, ms. Ray said, mr. McQueen used the handle on a gun to assault her…he beat her so badly that he broke a bone in her face, blinding her in one eye. They wrestled over the gun and she managed to get hold of it and shoot, killing him…Our defense laws say that if you are about to be killed or suffer grievous bodily harm, you are entitled to defend yourself. not Latina Ray. She was entitled to take her beating and be quiet about it.”
***. “The misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. it is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and every woman who confront it.” [Jess Whedon]
8] “The same violence perpetrated on these real-life women is increasingly replicated across online platforms. Sora 2, the generative video tool released by OpenAI, is helping creators on TikTok and X create fake choking videos featuring teenage girls in which they are depicted as struggling, crying and falling.”
***. “I believe sexism in tech is a real problem.” [ Sam Altman ]
9] “Victims in deep fake technology are overwhelmingly women, and a 2019 study found that a shocking 96 percent of deepfake videos were were pornographic and nonconsensual.”
10] “Given that men dominate in technology companies, and as policymakers, judges, police officers and even players on gaming platforms, perhaps we ought to expect this, we women. Perhaps we ought to take out lumps and be quiet about it. Is this what we get for wanting a life beyond diapers and dinner?”
***. “Whether it’s repro rights, violence against women, or just plain old vanilla sexism, most issues affecting women have one thing in common. – they exist to keep women ‘in their place, to make sure that we’re acting ‘appropriately,’ whatever that means.” [ Jessica Valenti ]
11]. “..Helen Andrews, a recent guest on Ross Douthat’s “Interesting Times” podcast, wrote an essay in Compact magazine that claimed feminization of workplaces led to the rise of cancel culture and wokeness. That development, she said, signaled the downfall of many institutions, including our system of law….She writes this knowing, i assume, that the United states still has no federal law against marital rape, so if women are somehow running our legal system with all our messy emotion, we’ve been pretty slow to act.”
12] “Ms. Andrews ignored an inconvenient fact: Women may be attending law school in higher numbers, but their careers often stall in their 30s and early 40s, their childbearing years.”
***. “When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch.” [ Bette Davis ]
B]. “The Victims Who fought Back…An Oklahoma law was supposed to help free women convicted of killing their abusers. Why are nearly all of them still in prison?” [ Pamela Colloff; New York Times Magazine; 3/1/26 ]
1]. THis article is full of stories like this: “..Moss described a pattern of abuse that began six months after their wedding, when her husband grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the fireplace…How she was knocked unconscious…How he repeatedly punched her in the stomach when she was pregnant…How he raped her multiple times, once with a curling iron…”I bled every day for five years until i finally had a hysterectomy.”
2]. THis article is. full of stories about brutalized women NOT being set free despite the law.
3] One explanation: “I grew up in the deep South, where sexism, racism, and homophobia were and still are alive and well.” [ Pauley Perrette ]
4] Another explanation – read the rticle, see if YOU. can see certain predispositions among the local prosecutors. – they just can’t accept the law.
***. “As women gain rights, families flourish and so do societies. That connection is built on a simple truth: wherever you include a group that’s been excluded, you benefit everyone. And when you’re working globally to include women and girls, who are half the population, you’re working to benefit all members of every community. Gender equality lifts everyone, women’s rights and society’s health and wealth rise together.” [ Melinda Gates ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CL. – “A Blank Check For Brutality”
*** “Men with power have an extraordinary capacity to convince themselves that what they do conincides with what society needs done for its [own] good.” Raymond Vernon ]
This post presents excerpts from “Return of The Big Stick…..Hoe Donald Trump’s Embrace of ‘Realism’ is Becoming a Blank Check for Brutality”. [ Linda Kinstler; New York Times Magazine; 1/25/26 ]:
10] “..for Trump, the threats posed at home and abroad are seemingly the same, and so is his response. Armed government agents have arrested and killed U.S. citizens as part of Trump’s immigration policies; the federal government has strong-armed universities into accepting its agenda by withholding research funding; the Federal Communications Commission uses mergers as leverage to influence media coverage.”
11] “The second Trump administration may very well mark the start of a violent global age of Machtpolitik. “Trump is different than all of his predecessors because of his contempt for international law and international institutions,” Mearsheimer said …past presidents…correctly understood that those laws and institutions were in America’s interest..”
9] “For Porter, it is not realism that defines the Trump era but rather its “corrupt cousin,” Machtpolitik, which pursues power for its own sake and is defined by a “sort of violent exhilaration of destruction, nihilism and vengeance.” Trump’s penchant for theatrics and bombast, his obsession with status and his use of power to enrich himself and his family – all these are characteristic elements of his darker ideology….”By losing all restraints, you destroy yourself, Porter said.”
*** “Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.” [ Frank Herbert ]
1] “President Trump’s aide Stephen Miller blithely articulated the outlook that has taken hold of the White House. “We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller said. “These are iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
2] “That National Security Strategy, released in early December, gave a name to one of the organizing principles supposedly governing the administration’s foreign. policy: ‘flexible realism.”
3] “The realist school of foreign policy is rooted in the belief that the world is fundamentally ungovernable and that politics comes down to power.”
***. “Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of our own choosing.” [ George Orwell: “1984” ]
4]. “While the varied strains of realism are plentiful and sometimes contradictory, the Trump administration is channeling one of the crudest forms….By invoking realism to justify their actions abroad, Trump and his associates are treating it as an alibi for a distinctly American imperialism, a pretext for belligerence.”
5] “There are iron laws of world politics that they don’t understand,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. “Realism is all about realizing that in a competitive world, you want to be smart and go for genuine strategic advantage, not just pointless displays of power.”
6] “Critically. 20th-century realists accepted that all power is necessarily bound by constraint, hemmed in by the limitations of geography, politics and human nature. To lose sight of this is to risk slipping into much darker territory.”
*** “My power depends on my glory, and my glory on my victory. My power would fall apart were I not to support it with new glory and new victories. Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest alone can maintain me.” [Napoleon]
7]. “For Walt and other realist thinkers, Trump’s aggressive and chaotic actions on the world stage – his antagonism of U.S. allies, threats of territorial conquest and assertions that the U.S. is not afraid of putting “boots on the ground”. – undermine any claim he could make to practicing a realist foreign policy.”
8] “The incoherence of Trump’s foreign policy is explicitly memorialized in the National Security Strategy.” [Which is criticized in point #9 above]
12]. “Trump and his deputies have revealed how profoundly they disdain the norms of global governance and demonstrated their willingness to use force to get what they want. On Jan. 9, the president signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from dozens of international organizations.”
*** “In public affairs, stupidity is more dangerous than knavery.” [ Woodrow Wilson; 28th U.S. President ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXIX. – Weaponizing Government to Control Speech
***. “The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.” [ Adolf Hitler ]
This post provides excerpts from. “Screen Shot….Under Trump, the F.C.C. has used obscure regulatory powers to crack down on network TV. Some conservatives are pushing back” [ Jim Rutenberg; New York Times; 1/25/26]:
9] “The template was now set for Carr to give Trump what he had always wanted – muscle behind his previously hollow threats to punish the networks.”
13] “Cruz’s legislation could only protect the First Amendment privileges of those outside the government at the expense of those within. – an especially meaningful concern in a country where elected officials, at least in theory, speak for the people. An attack on their platform, no less than an attack on platforms like Facebook or X, could also be seen as an attack on a cornerstone of democracy.”
15] ‘…the Reagan and Bush F.C.C. commissioners, Fowler and Sikes, along with several other former F.C.C. commissioners, all represented by a group of public-interest lawyers including Schwartzman, submitted a petition to the F.C.C. calling for a end of the “news distortion” policy that Carr had used against C.B.S….The petition won the endorsement of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.””
7]. “…the Fairness Doctrine, requires stations to present all sides of important civic issues – and to grant free air time to those who could convincingly argue that their side was shut out. But it was scrapped in 1987, after a long campaign by conservatives who argued that it gave the F.C.C. undue power over speech. Its elimination set the terms for the subsequent explosion of right-wing radio and the template for Fox News.” {NOTE: and the subsequent POISONING of some American’s minds by relentless RIGHT-WING lies and propaganda; and – the statistical decline in American’s standard of living; now in the Trump DICTATORSHIP era known as “the affordability crisis”. – which, of course Trump lies and says the higher costs YOU face don’t exist!!!!!!!!!!!!]
*** ‘…in early 2009, we noticed a marked increase in politically motivated misinformation coming from Fox News…Following the 2010 election, the University of Maryland released a study finding that Fox News viewers were the most misinformed audience on any major news network…Fox..is something unprecedented in the United States: a news business that is willing to put politics above all else.” [David Brock, Ari Rabin-Havt, Media Matters: “The Fox Effect”]
1]. “..it was hard to ignore the fact that Trump’s entire second term seemed to be a grand exercise in coercive government, and in particular that the government effort to suppress free speech drew largely on the power of the government itself to speak freely.”
2] “The administration attacked network television with particular intensity.”
3] “Here was the crux of the matter. Cruz was talking about “jawboning,” a still evolving legal term. But the line between the bully pulpit and flat-out bullying was still being drawn. “Government officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills protected speech,” Cruz said.”
*** “The Republican Party is held aloft by a large, powerful and ever-growing industry of deceit. The purpose of much of conservative media is to lie to their audience.” [Stuart Stevens: “It Was All A Lie” For 25 years, Stevens was a major Republican strategist and media consultant]
4]. “In July, Suhr sent Carr a letter arguing that “the late-night shows are relentlessly left-wing” …in September, just days before the Kimmel incident, Suhr filed another formal complaint, arguing that the late-night host targeted the G.O.P. ticket consistently, which amounted to “a massive abuse of the airwaves.”
5]. “Bias, Suhr’s firm had argued, violated a long-standing. but seldom-used public-interest standard. It was a shaky legal interpretation, but it offered the F.C.C. a weapon in a much larger war to use its power to crack down on the networks, control what they broadcast and begin a new era of conservative mass media.” [NOTE: Big Brother, Joseph Goebbels, Stalin, Putin – would all love this!!!!!]
6]. “Trump, who spent more than a decade as the star of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” registers every televised knock on him as a serious political hit. Since his earliest days running for president, he has demanded that the F.C.C. punish the networks for any perceived mistreatment by stripping them of their licenses.”
***. “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” [ Hannah Arendt ]
8]. “Suhr told me he saw an opening to use the old F.C.C. rules to not only punish the networks for bias, but also …getting conservative content on the air.” [ Big Brother approves!!!]
10]. “Carr was clear about how he saw the stakes. “President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape,” he said shortly after.” [ Putin approves!!!]
11]. “Mark Fowler served as Ronald Reagan’s F.C.C. chair…led the charge to dismantle the Fairness Doctrine. Now 84 and a Trump supporter, he told me he was shocked nevertheless by the final terms the Paramount deal and the actions of the F.C.C.. he said it never occurred to him that the government would use what remained of the public-interest rules to compel broadcasters to alter their content.”
*** “When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about the big issues.” [ Thomas L. Friedman ]
12]. “Cantwell had gotten to a central challenge of any legislation against jawboning, which is that it, too, was a form of speech.”
14]. “Still, no matter how carefully written, the law could expose public officials to all kinds of lawsuits, some malicious, some justified, but all of them chilling, for better or worse.”
16]. “Suhr echoed Carr’s comments about the conservative turn from free-market orthodoxy….To him it came down to results.” [ Big Brother agrees!!!!]
*** “The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as the people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The American fascist[s].. method is to poison the channels of public information. With the fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.” [ Henry Wallace; 33rd U.S. Vice President ]
NOTE: We have now given YOU 149 posts about the monumental antidemocratic, corrupt, cruel, stupid Trump DICTATORSHIP. Please think. Please ask questions. And – refer to the Constitution’s Preamble – a statement of WHY, “We the People”. formed a new American government: “Justice..Tranquility”. – and the four magic words: ” promote the general Welfare..”
We criticize the Trump DICTATORSHIP because it FAILS to achieve those three very simple goals. WHEN, if ever, has the Trump DICTATORSHIP. intentionally acted to “promote the general Welfare”????????????
*** “Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.”
[ Justice Thurgood Marshall ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXVIII. – Trump Builds The Corporate State
*** “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
[ Benito Mussolini ]
This post takes YOU back to review the “Public citizen News” of Sept./Oct., 2025. A quick read of headlines helps YOU understand HOW the Trump DICTATORSHIP has quickly built a corporate state.
a]. “Not a Border Crisis, but a “Free Trade” Crisis” [Meena Rakasi]
1]. “…how decades of corporate-led trade agreements have displaced millions of people, stripping them of their livelihoods and forcing them to migrate to survive.”
2] “U.S. manufacturing workers have long decried free trade agreements that empty out factories and create ghost towns.”
B] “Revolving Door Trump 2.0 Officials Create Fossil Fuel Playground”. [Alan Zibel]
1] “On the first day of his second term…Trump declared a “national energy emergency,” falsely blaming the Biden administration’s push for a transition to renewables for a supposed crisis….it laid the groundwork for a sweeping attack on federal agencies and states to serve fossil fuel interests.”
***. “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentration in the hands of a few. but we can’t have both.” [ Justice Louis Brandeis ]
C] “Litigating for Democracy: Public Citizen’s Fight Against Trump’s Power Grab”. [editorial]
1] ‘..the Trump administration is unilaterally and unconstitutionally dismantling the federal government..”
2]. ‘That data base went dark after Russell Vought – one of the primary architects of the infamous Project 2025 manifesto – took charge of the Office of Management and Budget…Vought believes that Trump has virtually limitless power – including the power to ignore Congress.”
D] “How Insurance Regulators Fuel Climate Change Profiteering” [Rick morris]
1]. “Homeowners and renters across the U.S. are feeling the sting of skyrocketing insurance rates…insurance corporations are exploiting the crisis to line their pockets…most profitable year in history…record bonuses.”
2] “Regulators are supposed to stand for the public interest over corporate power. But..they’re handing the pen to the insurance industry to write the rules…This isn’t just regulatory capture – it’s regulatory surrender….”
*** “Perversely, Trump’s drain-the-swamp administration proceeded to crystallize and put into practice. – in barefaced ways unseen in the United states for a century. – exactly the type of systematic corruption Americans decry.”
[ Sarah Chayes: “On Corruption in America” ]
E] “Trump Puts Big Tech Above the Law”
1] “…Big Tech’s lavish support for Trump’s inauguration and campaign has already paid dividends in dropped federal investigations and weakened oversight.”
2]. “Many of the tech leaders represented companies under active federal investigation….has already dropped or halted a third of the tech-related federal enforcement actions inherited from the Biden administration.”
F]. “Trump Administration Aims to Shut Down Public Participation in Federal Rulemaking” {David Rosen}
1] “The Trump administration is advancing a deregulatory strategy that strikes at the heart of democratic accountability: eliminating the public’s right to weigh in on federal rules.”
2] “To advance its corrupt agenda, the Trump administration is arguing that agencies can ignore public participation requirements…when the president directs them to do so. – a position that has no basis in law.”
***. “We are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth. When you have a few people who are so wealthy they can effectively buy the political system, the political system is going to tend to serve their interests.” [ Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize Winner; Economics ]
G] “Political Games: Trump’s Rescissions Law Threatens Lives and Democracy”. [Sara Faraj]
1] “the Trump administration is playing political games with human lives. A so-called ‘rescissions bill,” permitting the Trump administration not to spend previously appropriated money..”
2] “The rescission model threatens to undermine Congress’s constitutional power of the purse and concentrate authority in the executive. if a president can rescind funding that Congress has already enacted, no public program is truly safe.”
H] “Trump and Allies Threaten to Worsen Health Care, Putting Lives at Risk”
1] ‘..Trump has disrupted, depleted, and desecrated our nation’s already fragile health care system, putting millions of lives in jeopardy.”
2] “The report highlights the threat posed by Trump’s health officials…..Kennedy….Oz…O’neill..”
3] “The report also describes the chaos Trump and his allies unleashed in the early months of his second term..”
4]. “Trump fired several inspectors general who were ensuring that agencies are accountable to the American people..”
*** “…there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the “money touch”. but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.” [ Theodore Roosevelt; Republican; 26th U.S. President ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXVII. – A Blueprint For How To KILL DEMOCRACY
*** “Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted.” [ Max Lerner ]
This post presents excerpts from. “Twelve Steps to National Collapse: A Blueprint for How Democracies Die” [Thom Hartmann; The Progressive Populist; November, 2025 ]:
Historian Kevin Kruse: “We’ve had f**kups in the White House before, but never a president who seemed so deliberately intent on being a f**kup. It’s been said before, but if these people were actual agents of an enemy power seeking to divide, dismantle and destroy the USA, they wouldn’t be ding anything different.” [NOTE: think about “The Manchurian Candidate.” With his love for Putin, is Trump the REAL “Manchurian Candidate”?????]
From the “Dictator’s Playbook,” the simple 12-step formula:
1] “The first step would be to turn Americans from E Pluribus Unum…into hate-filled warring factions. Turn us against each other. Divide us by race, religion, gender, region, education, income,…cities or rural areas.”
2]. “Next, we’d want to immiserate as many Americans as possible, creating a huge pool of mostly white men who are pissed off because they’ve been left behind economically and feel locked out of the American Dream…Destroy unions…Gut programs…Shift manufacturing overseas…Build media operations that demonize ‘the other”…Ban books…Spread hate and conspiracy theories…”
3] “Third, we’d want to destroy people’s faith in straightforward news…”left-wing bias”…”enemies of the people”…attack the media relentlessly.”
4] “Fourth, shatter people’s faith in reality itself. Challenge science and expertise. Flood the zone with conspiracy theories…”….Attack vaccinations and measures to slow climate change. “Sow confusion until they no longer know who to believe, and then offer yourself as the only source of truth.”
5] “Fifth, deconstruct international alliances that go back centuries by alienating traditional friends and embracing openly hostile foes while tearing up norms of defense, trade, and commerce.”
6]. “Sixth, fracture citizen’s faith in their elected officials and the government itself.” Legalize the rich and corporations buying legislation “by claiming that “money is speech” and “corporations are persons.” Define opposition political parties as “radical,” ‘dangerous,” and “outside the mainstream.”
7] Seventh, turn the military and police forces..against its own people. making them terrified of challenging armed, masked men..” Vilify ..”minorities like immigrants and, when they’re “under control,” turn those forces against anybody who dissents from the new single-party rule.”
8]. “Demolish faith in the nation’s currency by seizing political control of the central bank while villinizing its leadership.”
9]. “Ninth, run scams to accumulate as much wealth as possible in the hands of Dear Leader and his close cronies while refusing to raise the minimum wage so as to keep people in poverty.”
10] “Tenth, use the power of government to force institutions. – corporations, universities, law firms. – into complete submission and even explicit collaboration in the enshitification of the nation.”
11] “Eleventh, seize control of the legislative and judicial branches so your law-breaking, election-rigging, and bribe-taking is never held to account. Openly and brazenly break laws…”
12] “Twelfth, turn the nation’s premier law enforcement agencies into tools for punishing political enemies while ignoring the crimes of friends of the regime, thus destroying faith in equality under rule of law and terrorizing anybody who speaks out.”
***. “Where law ends, tyranny begins.” [ William Pitt, the Elder ]
Thom Hartman. to YOU: “History shows that any democracy can fall into tyranny if its citizens grow cynical, give up, or look away. The question. – the only question that matters now. – is whether enough of us will choose to stand up, to act, and to reclaim what generations before us fought and bled to pass along.”
The Trump DICTATORSHIP has its “Blueprint to kill a Democracy.” it’s known as. “Project 2025.” Details have, are, being carried out. Authors are IN the Trump DICTATORSHIP..
THE. QUESTION: are YOU. willing to act, speak up, protest, vote out Trump and his Republican enablers??????
With Justice For All 
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