Jack…I’ve been waiting for this to happen, he’s been demonising socialism for a while now, conflating it with communism, also using these words as triggers. So, here we go, it appears this demagogue, this ignorant man is working to provoke another “red scare,” McCarthyism redux, a horrific time in this country, which destroyed so many lives. This cannot happen again and we’ve got to do whatever we can to “nip it in the bud” immediately!
Actually this proclaiming that communism is the enemy and needs to be eradicated is bizarre considering the pathetically subservient relationship he has with former KGB and communist, Vladimir Putin…and the many allegations that he, himself, has been a Russian asset for many years. I actually suspect this is not coming from Trump, but from Miller’s twisted mind, in the desperate need to find an “enemy” and rally the troops, as their poll numbers decline, the disgruntled murmurs are growing from their once devoted cult.
This attack on the Democratic Socialist is extremely worrying and I am quite fearful that this may catch fire and burn what’s left of our country down!
Christie...you saw it coming...because you know the catalog.
This IS McCarthyism redux...but...notice what you did in your OWN comment...because it matters: you spotted the tell.
A man...crusading against communism...while curtsying to a former KGB officer...isn't running an ideology. He's running an INVENTORY.
Fear is a product line...and "red menace" is the oldest SKU on the shelf...dusted off whenever the poll numbers SAG...and the murmurs get loud. You nailed the timing EXACTLY.
Which is why I'll offer one adjustment...and ONLY one: you wrote that you're "quite fearful this may catch fire." Christie...that fear is the product working. Don't buy it in advance.
So...run the funeral on it. Sit with the WORST version...the new blacklists...the ruined lives...ALL of it. Feel it FULLY. Then...come back and ask what STILL stands.
Here's a preview of what you'll find: McCarthy fell. He fell...because people got UN-scared BEFORE they got organized; Welch...Murrow...ordinary citizens...who'd stopped flinching. "Have you no sense of decency" only worked because the man saying it was NOT trembling.
The first Red Scare was beaten by the UN-spookable. Be one of them. That's how you nip it in the bud...not with dread...but with a steady hand and a TO-DO list.
Thank you Jack…that remark made by Welch shook this conscience of this country awake all those years ago. I am hoping people will wake up again…and believe me I am not afraid…I worry, but will not be afraid for myself…I will not be moved by this fraud and his nasty henchmen!
The irony is that having the US government by shares of stock in companies like Intel and Microsoft fits the definition of communism far better than anything that the Democrats (even the most progressive of them) are proposing!
dlnevins...you just spotted the pickpocket's oldest move: accuse the crowd of exactly what your hands are doing.
State ownership of the means of production; that's not a Democrat's wish list... that's the LITERAL textbook definition...and it's happening via government stakes in Intel while the word "communist" gets hurled at people proposing...wait for it...SCHOOL LUNCHES.
The label isn't analysis. It's a smoke bomb. And..you didn't cough! Well done.
I agree. US government shares In major companies sounds suspicously like the doings of a command economy, a hallmark of Communism. In other words this is another Trump projection.
Ellen Zucker...two of you have now landed on the SAME spot...which tells me the readership is wide awake.
PROJECTION...is the tell that never lies.
Donald's accusations are his autobiography; watch what he screams about... and you'll learn what he's doing. Command-economy moves at home "communist menace" speeches on the Mall.
The LOUDER the label...the busier the HANDS.
You can't be fooled if you're watching the hands...instead of the MOUTH.
Jack is correct that “vermin” is not a word democracies use about their own citizens. It is a word for insects, for infestations, for things you exterminate rather than persuade. Trump used it in November 2023, describing political opponents as people who “live like vermin within the confines of our country.” He did not walk it back. He has had three years to walk it back.
File the date: July 4, 2026, Mount Rushmore, the 250th anniversary of a document that begins by declaring all men created equal. The same man who called half the country vermin stood beneath the mountain and pledged that “the citizens of the United States of America will vanquish communism shortly,” folding newcomers and democratic socialists into a single threat category ranked alongside World War II and September 11th.
Note what connects the two moments across three years. Vermin is an extermination word. Vanquish is a conquest word. Both remove the target from the category of fellow citizen and place it in the category of enemy. This is not two separate outbursts. It is one project, refined: first strip the opposition of its humanity, then declare war on what’s left. The vocabulary escalates so gradually that each new insult sounds almost reasonable next to the one before it.
File the date once more: 1950 through 1954, when a senator from Wisconsin built a national panic on the word “communist,” applying it to State Department officials, Hollywood writers, and labor organizers whose actual positions rarely matched the label. Historians do not remember Joseph McCarthy as a man who uncovered real spies. They remember him as a man who discovered that a single word could end a career faster than any evidence could, until the Senate finally censured him in 1954 and the country had to count what the panic had cost. Note the shape of it: the label was never really about the people it named. It was about excusing the man doing the naming from having to debate them.
That is the tell to watch for now. The people being called communists in 2026 are proposing rent stabilization and higher taxes on billionaires, not state ownership of production. The word does not fit the policy, because it was never chosen to fit the policy. It was chosen because it still detonates in the same place in the American mind that it detonated in 1952, and a population mid-detonation does not ask for accuracy.
File the date once more, further back still: 1933 through 1935, when a government that had spent years calling its opposition “vermin” and “parasites” moved from name-calling to the Nuremberg Laws with barely a ripple of public shock, because the public had already been trained, word by word, to expect it. Language softens the ground before policy ever breaks it.
Jack is correct twice over, then: once that the word “vermin” was never a slip, and once that “communist” applied to rent control and billionaire taxes is the same trick McCarthy ran, dressed in 2026 clothes. History does not record the president’s rhetoric as separate outbursts spread across a term. It records it as a single, patient argument for who counts as American — delivered in installments, so that no single day feels like the day it happened.
Jane...there you are AGAIN, the historian with the filing cabinet...and once more you've done the thing I most respect: you refused to let the installments stay separate.
That's the whole con, isn't it?
Deliver the argument in pieces...spaced far enough APART... that no single day feels like the day. "Vermin" in 2023. "Vanquish" in 2026. Each one calibrated...to sound ALMOST reasonable...next to the last.
You stapled them together...and made the project visible...and a project you can SEE is a project that's already half BEATEN.
Your McCarthy line deserves framing: the label was never about the people it named.
It was about excusing the namer...from having to debate them. That's the mechanism in one sentence. You don't argue with an infestation. You don't negotiate with a menace. The vocabulary does the work...the arguments CAN'T.
And...your 1933 point lands where it should: language softens the ground before policy...BREAKS IT.
Which is EXACTLY why the counter-move isn't panic; it's refusing to let the words... pass UNEXAMINED. Every time someone like you stops...mid-detonation...and asks "wait, does that label actually fit rent control?"...the trick LOSES a customer.
McCarthy wasn't beaten by people more frightened...than he was loud. He was beaten...by people who'd stopped flinching LONG ENOUGH...to ask one accurate question in public.
Keep filing the dates. Somebody has to keep the ledger...and you keep it better than most.
He hijacked the entire 250th Birthday of our country to make it about himself. It was a disaster. I am not surprised that he used eradicate in his speech. It reeks of a man that is growing desperate. He has to vilify the democratic socialists because the progressive side is coming on strong. I feel deep in my core that the country is ready for a change. We can't be middle of the road, business as usual. The few guardrails that are left need to be rebuilt and fortified. This country deserve far more than the gold plated grifter in chief that we have now! I feel your anger Jack! Now #Holdfast
Kristine...you caught something most people miss in all the noise: desperation has a smell...and "eradicate" REEKS of it.
Confident men don't need extermination vocabulary. A man winning the argument DEBATES his opponents...he doesn't reclassify them as PESTS. The escalation isn't strength. It's a TELL.
The LOUDER the language gets...the more it says about which direction the ground is SHIFTING under him.
You're right that anger has its place; mine's real...and so is yours. Just remember the house rule: anger is FUEL...not a destination. Burn it in the engine...not in the living room.
Yours already sounds like engine-anger; "rebuilt and fortified" is a BUILDER'S phrase... not a spectator's.
Doesn't get 100% due to one SLIGHT correction I need to make -
I AM the "old man" they tried to sell it to in the 1970's! ;)
I arrived in Chicago for college - Northwestern - in September 1968, just a couple weeks after the infamous Democratic Convention and Daley Sr's "police riot". I was there through the 70's and Nixon (undergrad and med school). I KNOW and EXPERIENCED of what you speak!
And my mother's cousin had been a victim of the McCarthy HUAC. I only met him a couple of times, but I read articles about him in the NYT (which was reasonably reliable back then).
It was a challenge to maintain composure and #HoldFast, even back then. An outlet was needed after a day dealing with real life and the news - esp during med school. I kept myself sane by getting a job at night at the Chicago Harness Racetracks. Il earned to gamble wisely (with smarts, you could beat the horses) - the job, at $5/hour working in the press box, and my gambling winnings, paid my rent and tuition. I left med school with no debts. (Couldn't do it now - I would have to fight the computerized/AI algorithms; I WAS the algorithm in those days, I could do calculations from Racing Form data that few others understood. Those days are gone.)
The absurdity of being concerned about horses running in circles was a good antidote to the "real life" of being in undergrad and then med school, working in hospitals during the day - during the Vietnam and Nixon years.
Some day, I'll write about the corruption I saw under Daley Sr - several of his close aids (all well connected) frequented the racetrack press box. I med 4 Governors of IL who came to the track to present trophies - only 3 of whom later served time... And my father had been friends in the Army during WWII with the guy who built the NJ Garden State Freeway & Garden State Performance Center, and ran in the dem primary for NJ Governor. Just slightly "connected" - ended up convicted on over 50 counts of bribery. (I'll provide names upon request. They can still be Googled.) I have stories to tell...
But that was all penny-ante NOTHING compared to today's level of corruption.
Very seriously, having seen what I saw, having been through what I went through back then (but of course, not tweeting about it - altho I could speak to someone over a pay phone if they were at home) - gives me a perspective on the current atrocities that is indeed frightening and clearly indicates that what is required are very steady and intelligent hands to counter the dark forces. What we were then seeing unfold over weeks/months now unfolds over milliseconds. You had to get a newspaper and find the right page; or watch the evening news, to understand what was going on. Now, you can't avoid seeing it, hearing it - and seeing and hearing all sorts of distortions - from social media that is in-your-face on a constant basis.
It's a new world. New challenges. But in essence, the same old f'n stories.
I’m the same age as you. My first demonstration was after Kent State. Didn’t buy it then. Don’t but it now. I check sources for many things I see online. But I trust Jack because he gives us the sources up front and encourages the calm determination needed. Physicians and nurses (me-MSN from Penn) develop from working where we have to learn this early on. Glad to make your acquaintance 👹-my personal support emoji-👹 Stay Fierce
Yes. First demonstration - being with the crowd blocking off Sheridan Road down the middle of Northwestern campus after Kent State. The reason for protesting was there. The solid leadership steering the way - meager. And within medicine - esp psychiatry - I got my education early. A lot of good people. A couple of sociopaths screwing up everything. 2 shrinks who rose to chair the San Diego "ethics committee" who I KNEW - but it was confidential patient info - were anything BUT ethical. I learned to stand my ground, even if - esp if - I was by myself. I've walked out of 4 hospitals where i was consulting because of the level of care I saw (between 2015 and 2018). But documented everything in the charts. There's are differences between honest mistakes, stupidity, passivity and sociopathy. They have to be recognized. No one said Staying Fierce would be easy.
I’ve refused to listen to a word he said today so what I accidentally stumble across with my volume unfortunately up… and this trash… will be all I know. He’s called them vermin before. It made me sick then and it makes me sick now.
I’m 100% not buying anything he’s selling and I don’t think an awful lot of other Americans are either. At least, not anymore. I hope not because if they are we’re in an awful lot of trouble.
On another note. I didn’t watch his disgraceful performance. I really don’t want to hear his blah blah blah in my home! If the Republican congress accepts the crap of eradication of more than half the country, I don’t know what else would move them to remove him from office. I don’t think that they know that they are part of his eradication plan as well.
John, you're better off for NOT watching. I only subject myself to it...so I can write about it. And, in. truth...I don't even subject myself to it, then.
When I watch anything Trump, MAGA related...as part of researching for an article...I do so in a very detached way...like a curious anthropologist...studying a never before discovered tribe...from some deep jungle.
Otherwise, I'd be too emotionally involved to notice what I need to...and risk it influencing me in ways...I'm NOT willing to allow.
So the white nationalists proudly paraded their masked faces in D.C. today. Their courage is so impressive. Then Trump tells them that communists should be eradicated. He does not mean real communists. He means all of us who do not agree with him should be eradicated. We know what to expect. Shades of Jan. 6 on a grander scale? I did not watch his disgusting diatribe. I have spent the day in mourning for the country I love and am losing. Tomorrow I will awake to fight anew.
I'm definitely an independent democratic socialist... to boringly coin an oft repeated cliche tho'... I'm voting Blue No Matter Who. We have to get the House and Senate secured... We must get a D in the Oval... THEN we can work on the sticking points.. otherwise we'll have nothing.
I purposely refused to watch anything that Sackey shit says tonight. I lived in Boston for 20 years downtown. I love Boston and I miss Boston and I especially love Boston on Independence Day. I live two doors away from the Allstate house and at 10:30 in the morning, every single Fourth of July, as a guy dressed up in revolutionary garb who stands on the balcony of the old state house and reads the declaration and the Fife and drum band, always shows up at the steakhouse as well. And after the declaration is red confetti is shot all over the place and the band marches in their garb revolutionary garb to fanuiel hall. That was a tradition for me imposed and I love our country and so today I decided I was just gonna watch what was going on in Boston and I was proud of my Citi even though I don’t live there anymore even though I miss it terribly, I wasn’t gonna have my day run by that orange piece of shit. You know I’ve been watching a lot of history World War II revolutionary war all about the Roosevelts I’ve been doing a Ken Burns marathon and what I’ve discovered and doing that is giving me perspective. I also watched this incredible series called the decades and in the decades they have the 60s the 70s the 80s the 90s 2000 2010 Tom Hanks is the producer for all of them and watch that as well and I saw that we’ve gone through a lot as a country I think about Vietnam Watergate 911 and we’ve gotten through it all so I’m where I’m standing right now is we will get through this and he and his cronies will all go to jail was very hopeful when I saw Jack Smith interviewed by Nicole Wallis the other day I think things will turn out I just think it’s gonna be ugly getting there. I really appreciate your perspective Jack thank you so much and I hope you had a great Fourth of July.
The only vermin in need of eradication in this nation is found in the White House, the Cabinet, and Congress. We need to get out our ballots and use our votes to swat them like the cockroaches they are!
We think alike. I've been saying pretty much the same things in different words. Here's the communist thing AGAIN... they can't even conjure up anything original. The division tactics.. Those are a problem because they unfortunately have always worked... this time more is at stake than ever. There is a chronic division problem in the Democratic party. They need to get their priorities straight or this entire "grand experiment" is going over a cliff.
I’ll see your sober sincere speaking and raise you some democratic socialism. Not scared.
#HoldFast
Rae...that's the spirit!
#HoldFast
-Jack
Jack…I’ve been waiting for this to happen, he’s been demonising socialism for a while now, conflating it with communism, also using these words as triggers. So, here we go, it appears this demagogue, this ignorant man is working to provoke another “red scare,” McCarthyism redux, a horrific time in this country, which destroyed so many lives. This cannot happen again and we’ve got to do whatever we can to “nip it in the bud” immediately!
Actually this proclaiming that communism is the enemy and needs to be eradicated is bizarre considering the pathetically subservient relationship he has with former KGB and communist, Vladimir Putin…and the many allegations that he, himself, has been a Russian asset for many years. I actually suspect this is not coming from Trump, but from Miller’s twisted mind, in the desperate need to find an “enemy” and rally the troops, as their poll numbers decline, the disgruntled murmurs are growing from their once devoted cult.
This attack on the Democratic Socialist is extremely worrying and I am quite fearful that this may catch fire and burn what’s left of our country down!
Christie...you saw it coming...because you know the catalog.
This IS McCarthyism redux...but...notice what you did in your OWN comment...because it matters: you spotted the tell.
A man...crusading against communism...while curtsying to a former KGB officer...isn't running an ideology. He's running an INVENTORY.
Fear is a product line...and "red menace" is the oldest SKU on the shelf...dusted off whenever the poll numbers SAG...and the murmurs get loud. You nailed the timing EXACTLY.
Which is why I'll offer one adjustment...and ONLY one: you wrote that you're "quite fearful this may catch fire." Christie...that fear is the product working. Don't buy it in advance.
So...run the funeral on it. Sit with the WORST version...the new blacklists...the ruined lives...ALL of it. Feel it FULLY. Then...come back and ask what STILL stands.
Here's a preview of what you'll find: McCarthy fell. He fell...because people got UN-scared BEFORE they got organized; Welch...Murrow...ordinary citizens...who'd stopped flinching. "Have you no sense of decency" only worked because the man saying it was NOT trembling.
The first Red Scare was beaten by the UN-spookable. Be one of them. That's how you nip it in the bud...not with dread...but with a steady hand and a TO-DO list.
You're ON IT!
-Jack
Thank you Jack…that remark made by Welch shook this conscience of this country awake all those years ago. I am hoping people will wake up again…and believe me I am not afraid…I worry, but will not be afraid for myself…I will not be moved by this fraud and his nasty henchmen!
The irony is that having the US government by shares of stock in companies like Intel and Microsoft fits the definition of communism far better than anything that the Democrats (even the most progressive of them) are proposing!
dlnevins...you just spotted the pickpocket's oldest move: accuse the crowd of exactly what your hands are doing.
State ownership of the means of production; that's not a Democrat's wish list... that's the LITERAL textbook definition...and it's happening via government stakes in Intel while the word "communist" gets hurled at people proposing...wait for it...SCHOOL LUNCHES.
The label isn't analysis. It's a smoke bomb. And..you didn't cough! Well done.
-Jack
I agree. US government shares In major companies sounds suspicously like the doings of a command economy, a hallmark of Communism. In other words this is another Trump projection.
Ellen Zucker...two of you have now landed on the SAME spot...which tells me the readership is wide awake.
PROJECTION...is the tell that never lies.
Donald's accusations are his autobiography; watch what he screams about... and you'll learn what he's doing. Command-economy moves at home "communist menace" speeches on the Mall.
The LOUDER the label...the busier the HANDS.
You can't be fooled if you're watching the hands...instead of the MOUTH.
-Jack
Right on, right on!!!
Jack is correct that “vermin” is not a word democracies use about their own citizens. It is a word for insects, for infestations, for things you exterminate rather than persuade. Trump used it in November 2023, describing political opponents as people who “live like vermin within the confines of our country.” He did not walk it back. He has had three years to walk it back.
File the date: July 4, 2026, Mount Rushmore, the 250th anniversary of a document that begins by declaring all men created equal. The same man who called half the country vermin stood beneath the mountain and pledged that “the citizens of the United States of America will vanquish communism shortly,” folding newcomers and democratic socialists into a single threat category ranked alongside World War II and September 11th.
Note what connects the two moments across three years. Vermin is an extermination word. Vanquish is a conquest word. Both remove the target from the category of fellow citizen and place it in the category of enemy. This is not two separate outbursts. It is one project, refined: first strip the opposition of its humanity, then declare war on what’s left. The vocabulary escalates so gradually that each new insult sounds almost reasonable next to the one before it.
File the date once more: 1950 through 1954, when a senator from Wisconsin built a national panic on the word “communist,” applying it to State Department officials, Hollywood writers, and labor organizers whose actual positions rarely matched the label. Historians do not remember Joseph McCarthy as a man who uncovered real spies. They remember him as a man who discovered that a single word could end a career faster than any evidence could, until the Senate finally censured him in 1954 and the country had to count what the panic had cost. Note the shape of it: the label was never really about the people it named. It was about excusing the man doing the naming from having to debate them.
That is the tell to watch for now. The people being called communists in 2026 are proposing rent stabilization and higher taxes on billionaires, not state ownership of production. The word does not fit the policy, because it was never chosen to fit the policy. It was chosen because it still detonates in the same place in the American mind that it detonated in 1952, and a population mid-detonation does not ask for accuracy.
File the date once more, further back still: 1933 through 1935, when a government that had spent years calling its opposition “vermin” and “parasites” moved from name-calling to the Nuremberg Laws with barely a ripple of public shock, because the public had already been trained, word by word, to expect it. Language softens the ground before policy ever breaks it.
Jack is correct twice over, then: once that the word “vermin” was never a slip, and once that “communist” applied to rent control and billionaire taxes is the same trick McCarthy ran, dressed in 2026 clothes. History does not record the president’s rhetoric as separate outbursts spread across a term. It records it as a single, patient argument for who counts as American — delivered in installments, so that no single day feels like the day it happened.
#HOLDFAST
Jane...there you are AGAIN, the historian with the filing cabinet...and once more you've done the thing I most respect: you refused to let the installments stay separate.
That's the whole con, isn't it?
Deliver the argument in pieces...spaced far enough APART... that no single day feels like the day. "Vermin" in 2023. "Vanquish" in 2026. Each one calibrated...to sound ALMOST reasonable...next to the last.
You stapled them together...and made the project visible...and a project you can SEE is a project that's already half BEATEN.
Your McCarthy line deserves framing: the label was never about the people it named.
It was about excusing the namer...from having to debate them. That's the mechanism in one sentence. You don't argue with an infestation. You don't negotiate with a menace. The vocabulary does the work...the arguments CAN'T.
And...your 1933 point lands where it should: language softens the ground before policy...BREAKS IT.
Which is EXACTLY why the counter-move isn't panic; it's refusing to let the words... pass UNEXAMINED. Every time someone like you stops...mid-detonation...and asks "wait, does that label actually fit rent control?"...the trick LOSES a customer.
McCarthy wasn't beaten by people more frightened...than he was loud. He was beaten...by people who'd stopped flinching LONG ENOUGH...to ask one accurate question in public.
Keep filing the dates. Somebody has to keep the ledger...and you keep it better than most.
#HOLDFAST
-Jack
He hijacked the entire 250th Birthday of our country to make it about himself. It was a disaster. I am not surprised that he used eradicate in his speech. It reeks of a man that is growing desperate. He has to vilify the democratic socialists because the progressive side is coming on strong. I feel deep in my core that the country is ready for a change. We can't be middle of the road, business as usual. The few guardrails that are left need to be rebuilt and fortified. This country deserve far more than the gold plated grifter in chief that we have now! I feel your anger Jack! Now #Holdfast
Kristine...you caught something most people miss in all the noise: desperation has a smell...and "eradicate" REEKS of it.
Confident men don't need extermination vocabulary. A man winning the argument DEBATES his opponents...he doesn't reclassify them as PESTS. The escalation isn't strength. It's a TELL.
The LOUDER the language gets...the more it says about which direction the ground is SHIFTING under him.
You're right that anger has its place; mine's real...and so is yours. Just remember the house rule: anger is FUEL...not a destination. Burn it in the engine...not in the living room.
Yours already sounds like engine-anger; "rebuilt and fortified" is a BUILDER'S phrase... not a spectator's.
#Holdfast...indeed.
-Jack
99%!
Doesn't get 100% due to one SLIGHT correction I need to make -
I AM the "old man" they tried to sell it to in the 1970's! ;)
I arrived in Chicago for college - Northwestern - in September 1968, just a couple weeks after the infamous Democratic Convention and Daley Sr's "police riot". I was there through the 70's and Nixon (undergrad and med school). I KNOW and EXPERIENCED of what you speak!
And my mother's cousin had been a victim of the McCarthy HUAC. I only met him a couple of times, but I read articles about him in the NYT (which was reasonably reliable back then).
It was a challenge to maintain composure and #HoldFast, even back then. An outlet was needed after a day dealing with real life and the news - esp during med school. I kept myself sane by getting a job at night at the Chicago Harness Racetracks. Il earned to gamble wisely (with smarts, you could beat the horses) - the job, at $5/hour working in the press box, and my gambling winnings, paid my rent and tuition. I left med school with no debts. (Couldn't do it now - I would have to fight the computerized/AI algorithms; I WAS the algorithm in those days, I could do calculations from Racing Form data that few others understood. Those days are gone.)
The absurdity of being concerned about horses running in circles was a good antidote to the "real life" of being in undergrad and then med school, working in hospitals during the day - during the Vietnam and Nixon years.
Some day, I'll write about the corruption I saw under Daley Sr - several of his close aids (all well connected) frequented the racetrack press box. I med 4 Governors of IL who came to the track to present trophies - only 3 of whom later served time... And my father had been friends in the Army during WWII with the guy who built the NJ Garden State Freeway & Garden State Performance Center, and ran in the dem primary for NJ Governor. Just slightly "connected" - ended up convicted on over 50 counts of bribery. (I'll provide names upon request. They can still be Googled.) I have stories to tell...
But that was all penny-ante NOTHING compared to today's level of corruption.
Very seriously, having seen what I saw, having been through what I went through back then (but of course, not tweeting about it - altho I could speak to someone over a pay phone if they were at home) - gives me a perspective on the current atrocities that is indeed frightening and clearly indicates that what is required are very steady and intelligent hands to counter the dark forces. What we were then seeing unfold over weeks/months now unfolds over milliseconds. You had to get a newspaper and find the right page; or watch the evening news, to understand what was going on. Now, you can't avoid seeing it, hearing it - and seeing and hearing all sorts of distortions - from social media that is in-your-face on a constant basis.
It's a new world. New challenges. But in essence, the same old f'n stories.
Dave
#HoldFast
I’m the same age as you. My first demonstration was after Kent State. Didn’t buy it then. Don’t but it now. I check sources for many things I see online. But I trust Jack because he gives us the sources up front and encourages the calm determination needed. Physicians and nurses (me-MSN from Penn) develop from working where we have to learn this early on. Glad to make your acquaintance 👹-my personal support emoji-👹 Stay Fierce
Yes. First demonstration - being with the crowd blocking off Sheridan Road down the middle of Northwestern campus after Kent State. The reason for protesting was there. The solid leadership steering the way - meager. And within medicine - esp psychiatry - I got my education early. A lot of good people. A couple of sociopaths screwing up everything. 2 shrinks who rose to chair the San Diego "ethics committee" who I KNEW - but it was confidential patient info - were anything BUT ethical. I learned to stand my ground, even if - esp if - I was by myself. I've walked out of 4 hospitals where i was consulting because of the level of care I saw (between 2015 and 2018). But documented everything in the charts. There's are differences between honest mistakes, stupidity, passivity and sociopathy. They have to be recognized. No one said Staying Fierce would be easy.
I like how you think 👹
I’ve refused to listen to a word he said today so what I accidentally stumble across with my volume unfortunately up… and this trash… will be all I know. He’s called them vermin before. It made me sick then and it makes me sick now.
I’m 100% not buying anything he’s selling and I don’t think an awful lot of other Americans are either. At least, not anymore. I hope not because if they are we’re in an awful lot of trouble.
He won’t win.. We won’t allow it.. We just can’t.
#Holdfast
~Susan
"the most shopworn piece of fear-merchandise in American history"—brilliant. Thank you for your faithfulness to your readers and the ideals we share.
Kari...you are welcome. ALWAYS!
-Jack
A lame sack of money shit is too polite. He’s gearing up for another January 6th. Can’t believe that people buy into his bullshit
I agree that it was too polite, John. I was holding back, believe me. The sailor in me almost got loose...all the way.
I also agree...that he IS gearing up...for another J6. One on steroids.
-Jack
On another note. I didn’t watch his disgraceful performance. I really don’t want to hear his blah blah blah in my home! If the Republican congress accepts the crap of eradication of more than half the country, I don’t know what else would move them to remove him from office. I don’t think that they know that they are part of his eradication plan as well.
John, you're better off for NOT watching. I only subject myself to it...so I can write about it. And, in. truth...I don't even subject myself to it, then.
When I watch anything Trump, MAGA related...as part of researching for an article...I do so in a very detached way...like a curious anthropologist...studying a never before discovered tribe...from some deep jungle.
Otherwise, I'd be too emotionally involved to notice what I need to...and risk it influencing me in ways...I'm NOT willing to allow.
-Jack
His voice and jesters are like nails on a chalkboard to me. Keep up the great work, it’s much appreciated on my end.
Thanks
He is incapable of being human.
Truth. Fact. TELL IT, Aleece!
-Jack
So the white nationalists proudly paraded their masked faces in D.C. today. Their courage is so impressive. Then Trump tells them that communists should be eradicated. He does not mean real communists. He means all of us who do not agree with him should be eradicated. We know what to expect. Shades of Jan. 6 on a grander scale? I did not watch his disgusting diatribe. I have spent the day in mourning for the country I love and am losing. Tomorrow I will awake to fight anew.
I'm definitely an independent democratic socialist... to boringly coin an oft repeated cliche tho'... I'm voting Blue No Matter Who. We have to get the House and Senate secured... We must get a D in the Oval... THEN we can work on the sticking points.. otherwise we'll have nothing.
I purposely refused to watch anything that Sackey shit says tonight. I lived in Boston for 20 years downtown. I love Boston and I miss Boston and I especially love Boston on Independence Day. I live two doors away from the Allstate house and at 10:30 in the morning, every single Fourth of July, as a guy dressed up in revolutionary garb who stands on the balcony of the old state house and reads the declaration and the Fife and drum band, always shows up at the steakhouse as well. And after the declaration is red confetti is shot all over the place and the band marches in their garb revolutionary garb to fanuiel hall. That was a tradition for me imposed and I love our country and so today I decided I was just gonna watch what was going on in Boston and I was proud of my Citi even though I don’t live there anymore even though I miss it terribly, I wasn’t gonna have my day run by that orange piece of shit. You know I’ve been watching a lot of history World War II revolutionary war all about the Roosevelts I’ve been doing a Ken Burns marathon and what I’ve discovered and doing that is giving me perspective. I also watched this incredible series called the decades and in the decades they have the 60s the 70s the 80s the 90s 2000 2010 Tom Hanks is the producer for all of them and watch that as well and I saw that we’ve gone through a lot as a country I think about Vietnam Watergate 911 and we’ve gotten through it all so I’m where I’m standing right now is we will get through this and he and his cronies will all go to jail was very hopeful when I saw Jack Smith interviewed by Nicole Wallis the other day I think things will turn out I just think it’s gonna be ugly getting there. I really appreciate your perspective Jack thank you so much and I hope you had a great Fourth of July.
He is revolting.
Beth...in the most disgusting way. Absolutely.
-Jack
The only vermin in need of eradication in this nation is found in the White House, the Cabinet, and Congress. We need to get out our ballots and use our votes to swat them like the cockroaches they are!
We think alike. I've been saying pretty much the same things in different words. Here's the communist thing AGAIN... they can't even conjure up anything original. The division tactics.. Those are a problem because they unfortunately have always worked... this time more is at stake than ever. There is a chronic division problem in the Democratic party. They need to get their priorities straight or this entire "grand experiment" is going over a cliff.