Jack- I'm so fucking angry. It takes every fiber of my being to stay calm, cool and non-reactive to this avalanche of cruelty. But I made you a promise to stay chill, stay alert and stay the course. Fuck.
Tom...yep. You should be angry. We all should be. While I'm not shocked, I'm no less livid.
Any decent person watching this avalanche of cruelty and lawlessness should be angry. That anger damn sure isn't weakness. It’s a healthy response to something EXTREMELY rotten. And however we choose to legally express it.... I’m with you...is warranted.
More brainwashing begins. Know any journalists in Europe? It has been reported in Paris( if true?)Many more American deaths, than our press is reporting. Hope it’s not true. I have no trouble believing, DOD, would lie.
Beverly, I hope it’s not true, too. Your skepticism is earned.
I haven’t seen credible confirmation yet that the U.S. death toll is higher than what’s been publicly reported. The strongest current reporting...still points to six American service members killed so far.
BUT...no, I do NOT think blind trust in the DOD is warranted. Not at all. In war, truth usually arrives much later than the spin.
Is it possible to hate Trump even more, I asked myself today. Answer: yes! His words concerning our troops expose his complete lack of morals and empathy. How on earth did we come to this? The Substack author of, "Alisa Writes”, by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, recently posted a great study of the psychology of “evil”. It’s a triad of personality traits that, when come together in individuals become truly evil. The surprising element though, is that although there is always a certain percentage of people in every population group with this horrid personality trait, "In Taiwan, where communal values and collective accountability are deeply embedded in the culture, the figure drops to less than 0.2 percent. In the United States, where individualism is celebrated, where winning is treated as its own moral justification, and where charm is routinely mistaken for character, the rate is twenty times higher.” We need to change our entire society to value something besides the rugged individualism that has taken us down this road to destruction.
Sara...nailed it. What makes it so sickening...is that he keeps finding new ways to strip away any last illusion of decency.
I think you put your finger on something bigger than just Trump...he didn’t create this moral rot out of thin air.
He exploited traits...that were ALREADY being rewarded in American life for a long time; cruelty...all dressed up as strength...selfishness marketed as freedom...and shamelessness...confused with confidence.
That’s why this feels deeper than one man....in this case, a man who is a clown.
It is about a culture that too often celebrates domination...over empathy...and winning ...over character. Change....has to happen at that level too. Otherwise, we just keep producing more polished versions...of the same old BS.
Also, that Taiwan comparison is chilling. It forces the question...of what kind of people and values a society is actively training every day. Every. Single. Day.
I was just saying today that chump treats people like they’re disposable. Their lives mean nothing to him. He is cold hearted & mentally ill. It is absolutely enraging.
Lori...H.R. McMaster, said of Trump: "Putin, a ruthless former KGB operator, played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery."
That is about all there is inside of Trump. I am convinced...and I have thought about this at great length, that Trump has never felt so much as a hint of grief when he lost his brother, mother, father...or anyone else he has ever known. He's simply not capable.
Malignant narcissists are hollow, insecure, self-serving people. The flattery makes them feel significant. It’s a false sense of superiority. It’s definitely a mental illness.
Thank you for this writing: hearing that foul 47-Git speaking of war & death as no big deal was atrocious & mind numbing to say the least. Reading your words helps me clarify my bouncing off the wall anger against the regime. I will surmise your article & repeat a bit of it to my do nothing House Rep Kevin Kiley CA3, very soon.
Lillian...thank you. You nailed exactly what was so sickening about it.
It wasn’t just the policy. It was the foul...casual way he talked about war and death like American lives were just background noise. That kind of language scrambles your nerves ...because some part of you instantly knows it is morally wrong. You almost know it is coming from a morally EMPTY man.
I’m glad the piece helped give some shape to that anger. That matters. A lot. A growing number of people are feeling it...but not everyone can put it into words right away.
Also...good. Kevin Kiley should hear it. He should hear that people are paying attention, that they are disgusted...and that “do nothing” is its own form of complicity...at a moment like this.
Appreciate you reading, Lillian... and even more, appreciate you taking it somewhere with force!
No worries.. a couple times a week( 1 to 4x) I call both offices or at least 1 of Kileys: I save screenshots of notes on a particular subject & let it rip!
I’ve often used the contrast between how I took reports at shift change from another oncology nurse...necessarily clinical, even a bit sterile...and how I spoke with patients, their families...and the people who loved them.
The first was for my own mental health and ability to keep going.
The second was for the people in my care...first and foremost.
I think I wrote once before that my husband and I were part of the team that knocked on the door. The pilot who was not coming home again was a father to 3 children, one of them an infant. It was not in a war, it was pilot error, but the effects were the same. A family torn apart, a squadron in grief. It was a before and after even for us. Before we knew what a bad day truly was, and after when we knew to let the small stuff go because we knew what a bad day truly was.
The fascist-in-chief will never know, will never understand, will never care. It's not in his wheelhouse. I am as enraged at the people who voted for him, who still approve of him, who still think he is what this country needs.
Will we ever recover? I no longer know. But I do know this, I will not give up. I will #HoldFast.
What you described...the knock on the door, the children, the life split into before and after...is the real... gut-wrenching cost of service.
Once you have stood that close to that kind of loss...you don't have patience for hollow little men...pretending to honor sacrifice.
That’s why your words, Roberta... carry so much weight. You KNOW what duty costs. You KNOW what grief does. You’re right...he will never understand it...because there is nothing in him built for reverence, only use. ONLY use.
But...your last line...that's the one that matters most: I WILL. NOT. GIVE. UP.
I will #HoldFast.
THAT...is the answer. Eyes open. No illusions. No surrender.
Jack Hopkins is right to stay with the language, because the language is where the decision is visible. A little detour. I guess. An easy problem. These are not gaffes — gaffes are accidents. These are three separate moments in which a president was asked directly about Americans dying in a war he started, and answered in the register of a man discussing a scheduling conflict. I recognize this pattern immediately. When commanders begin to speak about the people they are spending as though their lives are variables rather than weights, they have already made a prior decision. The words come after. The decision was made without grief. The casualness of the language is not the problem — it is the evidence. And Hopkins is right that it should enrage us.
But Jack is also doing something more important than documenting the outrage. He is modeling what fury is for. This week I watched specific people use whatever power they had — a congresswoman in court, a judge on a Friday night, a journalist who kept looking until she found the reporter ICE had moved to Alabama without telling her lawyer. None of them waited for the system to protect them. That is always how accountability survives — not from the top, not because the institutions held on their own, but because specific people refused to look away. Jack you are one of those people. Read his newsletter. Share it. And then get after it.
" and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage"...We shall live to see this abomination mouldering in his grave. That day grows close upon us. After we shall rebuild our nation upon the ideals professed in our founding documents...
The show man will clap for the Russian and turn away from all of us. The cult will defend and pay the show man for more show. We seek an exit door to this theater. It’s written in the Constitution but we need to cross that threshold once again. We need to use its strength. We will not forget our fellow Americans. Push Congress to end this war. Dear Congress people, keep bringing the War Power resolution back in play like the republicans did with the Affordable Care Act.
Jack . . . We know this. We've watched this. We've experienced this. Donald Trump does not give ONE FLYING FUCK about anything, anybody, any consequence. He is his own microcosm conceived in evil, maintained on ego, and hurtling toward hell. We must not expect any hint of humanity or empathy or identity. What we see is exactly what we get and what we have gotten since the start.
As a retired Army surgeon this very much hits close to home. I am enraged and ever more disgusted with this so called CINC. My anger is also directed to the general populace who produced / elected this orange homunculus. Everything this "man" is was on public display for the last 40 years. His disgust for the American people has been there and is now, more than ever, on full display. There is no respect for life, there is no respect for people in general, and certainly no respect for those who serve or have served in any capacity. He uses and treats people as if they were merely tools to be used and discarded. The ash heap of history is too good for this for poor excuse for humanity. Jack, I am grateful for your work as legacy news will surely not allow the full measure of clarity to the way he "works" and the distain he so clearly has for our Armed Forces. I have lived to see a President assassinated, man land on the moon, and telescopes in space that can see virtually to the beginning of the universe . But I never thought I would live to hear Taps for our country . I pray God I am wrong.
Thank you. Coming from a retired Army surgeon...that lands with real weight.
You put your finger on something a lot of people still resist admitting...this did not arrive as a surprise. It was visible. It was legible. The contempt...the vanity...the use-and-discard view of other human beings...the inability to honor service except as theater...it has been there for decades. I'm glad you stated it so clearly!
What also comes through in your comment...is that this is not abstract for you. You served. You understand duty, sacrifice...and what leadership is supposed to mean when lives are on the line. That’s EXACTLY why the degradation of those values feels so personal...and so incredibly unforgivable.
That line about never thinking you’d live to hear “Taps for our country” is devastating. It captures both the grief...and the warning...in a way very few people could.
I’m grateful for your service, and I’m grateful you took the time to write this. You said it powerfully.
I just keep thinking of the young faces on stretchers in casual receiving and the one's we could not help. But we put them in cots, cleaned them up, made sure they had no pain and held their hands. These fools should spend 1 hour in that tent and learn what they do not respect.
Jack… A few minutes before I read this I posted an article about the dead coming home.. with no president to salute them… a picture of the plane with 2 service members saluting… ALONE.. As tears filled my eyes and grief filled my heart… I imagined the loved ones.. who I couldn’t see.. waiting to receive the bodies of their loved ones. I’m angry and devastated at the way he casually speaks about the already dead… and those surely to come.. over and over. It’s clear he couldn’t care less about them. Part of war he says… without a hint of emotion. I hate him.. more now than ever.
This country isn’t angry enough about this.. about his lack of empathy and about Congress doing nothing to stop it.
I feel so helpless. The dozens of letters I send to my Senators… mostly unanswered… and one whose answer today… defending this war.. made me physically ill.
I wish there was more I could do but there doesn’t seem to be anything.. and it’s such a terrible, empty feeling.
Thank you for writing this, Jack. I knew you felt it too but reading it made it real.
Jack- I'm so fucking angry. It takes every fiber of my being to stay calm, cool and non-reactive to this avalanche of cruelty. But I made you a promise to stay chill, stay alert and stay the course. Fuck.
Tom...yep. You should be angry. We all should be. While I'm not shocked, I'm no less livid.
Any decent person watching this avalanche of cruelty and lawlessness should be angry. That anger damn sure isn't weakness. It’s a healthy response to something EXTREMELY rotten. And however we choose to legally express it.... I’m with you...is warranted.
-Jack
More brainwashing begins. Know any journalists in Europe? It has been reported in Paris( if true?)Many more American deaths, than our press is reporting. Hope it’s not true. I have no trouble believing, DOD, would lie.
Beverly, I hope it’s not true, too. Your skepticism is earned.
I haven’t seen credible confirmation yet that the U.S. death toll is higher than what’s been publicly reported. The strongest current reporting...still points to six American service members killed so far.
BUT...no, I do NOT think blind trust in the DOD is warranted. Not at all. In war, truth usually arrives much later than the spin.
-Jack
I’ve been following the BBC and Al Jazeera - I’m looking for as much of a 360 view as I can get
Is it possible to hate Trump even more, I asked myself today. Answer: yes! His words concerning our troops expose his complete lack of morals and empathy. How on earth did we come to this? The Substack author of, "Alisa Writes”, by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, recently posted a great study of the psychology of “evil”. It’s a triad of personality traits that, when come together in individuals become truly evil. The surprising element though, is that although there is always a certain percentage of people in every population group with this horrid personality trait, "In Taiwan, where communal values and collective accountability are deeply embedded in the culture, the figure drops to less than 0.2 percent. In the United States, where individualism is celebrated, where winning is treated as its own moral justification, and where charm is routinely mistaken for character, the rate is twenty times higher.” We need to change our entire society to value something besides the rugged individualism that has taken us down this road to destruction.
Sara...nailed it. What makes it so sickening...is that he keeps finding new ways to strip away any last illusion of decency.
I think you put your finger on something bigger than just Trump...he didn’t create this moral rot out of thin air.
He exploited traits...that were ALREADY being rewarded in American life for a long time; cruelty...all dressed up as strength...selfishness marketed as freedom...and shamelessness...confused with confidence.
That’s why this feels deeper than one man....in this case, a man who is a clown.
It is about a culture that too often celebrates domination...over empathy...and winning ...over character. Change....has to happen at that level too. Otherwise, we just keep producing more polished versions...of the same old BS.
Also, that Taiwan comparison is chilling. It forces the question...of what kind of people and values a society is actively training every day. Every. Single. Day.
-Jack
(large long exhale)
I loathe him so much, sometimes it takes my breath away. Then I do some grounding work, and I’m able to carry calmly on.
Same, S Lane. He's a vile human being.
-Jack
I was just saying today that chump treats people like they’re disposable. Their lives mean nothing to him. He is cold hearted & mentally ill. It is absolutely enraging.
Lori...H.R. McMaster, said of Trump: "Putin, a ruthless former KGB operator, played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery."
That is about all there is inside of Trump. I am convinced...and I have thought about this at great length, that Trump has never felt so much as a hint of grief when he lost his brother, mother, father...or anyone else he has ever known. He's simply not capable.
In short...I believe...100%...that you are right.
-Jack
Malignant narcissists are hollow, insecure, self-serving people. The flattery makes them feel significant. It’s a false sense of superiority. It’s definitely a mental illness.
He has been asking if people liked his "performance" so far.
Thank you for this writing: hearing that foul 47-Git speaking of war & death as no big deal was atrocious & mind numbing to say the least. Reading your words helps me clarify my bouncing off the wall anger against the regime. I will surmise your article & repeat a bit of it to my do nothing House Rep Kevin Kiley CA3, very soon.
Lillian...thank you. You nailed exactly what was so sickening about it.
It wasn’t just the policy. It was the foul...casual way he talked about war and death like American lives were just background noise. That kind of language scrambles your nerves ...because some part of you instantly knows it is morally wrong. You almost know it is coming from a morally EMPTY man.
I’m glad the piece helped give some shape to that anger. That matters. A lot. A growing number of people are feeling it...but not everyone can put it into words right away.
Also...good. Kevin Kiley should hear it. He should hear that people are paying attention, that they are disgusted...and that “do nothing” is its own form of complicity...at a moment like this.
Appreciate you reading, Lillian... and even more, appreciate you taking it somewhere with force!
-Jack
No worries.. a couple times a week( 1 to 4x) I call both offices or at least 1 of Kileys: I save screenshots of notes on a particular subject & let it rip!
ALL people (humans at least) will eventually die.
To that extent, he's coldly logica.
But he doesn't take the next step -
which involves morality and empathy, both of which are far beyond his capabilities -
That one should NOT be the direct, indirect or stochastic instigator of murder.
Thanks for that insight, Dr. David.
I’ve often used the contrast between how I took reports at shift change from another oncology nurse...necessarily clinical, even a bit sterile...and how I spoke with patients, their families...and the people who loved them.
The first was for my own mental health and ability to keep going.
The second was for the people in my care...first and foremost.
-Jack
Is there a stronger level than ENRAGED?
I think I wrote once before that my husband and I were part of the team that knocked on the door. The pilot who was not coming home again was a father to 3 children, one of them an infant. It was not in a war, it was pilot error, but the effects were the same. A family torn apart, a squadron in grief. It was a before and after even for us. Before we knew what a bad day truly was, and after when we knew to let the small stuff go because we knew what a bad day truly was.
The fascist-in-chief will never know, will never understand, will never care. It's not in his wheelhouse. I am as enraged at the people who voted for him, who still approve of him, who still think he is what this country needs.
Will we ever recover? I no longer know. But I do know this, I will not give up. I will #HoldFast.
Roberta...there is...and your comment reaches it.
What you described...the knock on the door, the children, the life split into before and after...is the real... gut-wrenching cost of service.
Once you have stood that close to that kind of loss...you don't have patience for hollow little men...pretending to honor sacrifice.
That’s why your words, Roberta... carry so much weight. You KNOW what duty costs. You KNOW what grief does. You’re right...he will never understand it...because there is nothing in him built for reverence, only use. ONLY use.
But...your last line...that's the one that matters most: I WILL. NOT. GIVE. UP.
I will #HoldFast.
THAT...is the answer. Eyes open. No illusions. No surrender.
Thank you for saying it so powerfully!
-Jack
Roberta, on a flight many years ago I was seated next to a woman whose son had just been killed in a training flight. Her grief etched into my soul.
HOOAH
HOOAH, indeed.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins is right to stay with the language, because the language is where the decision is visible. A little detour. I guess. An easy problem. These are not gaffes — gaffes are accidents. These are three separate moments in which a president was asked directly about Americans dying in a war he started, and answered in the register of a man discussing a scheduling conflict. I recognize this pattern immediately. When commanders begin to speak about the people they are spending as though their lives are variables rather than weights, they have already made a prior decision. The words come after. The decision was made without grief. The casualness of the language is not the problem — it is the evidence. And Hopkins is right that it should enrage us.
But Jack is also doing something more important than documenting the outrage. He is modeling what fury is for. This week I watched specific people use whatever power they had — a congresswoman in court, a judge on a Friday night, a journalist who kept looking until she found the reporter ICE had moved to Alabama without telling her lawyer. None of them waited for the system to protect them. That is always how accountability survives — not from the top, not because the institutions held on their own, but because specific people refused to look away. Jack you are one of those people. Read his newsletter. Share it. And then get after it.
#HoldFast
" and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage"...We shall live to see this abomination mouldering in his grave. That day grows close upon us. After we shall rebuild our nation upon the ideals professed in our founding documents...
The show man will clap for the Russian and turn away from all of us. The cult will defend and pay the show man for more show. We seek an exit door to this theater. It’s written in the Constitution but we need to cross that threshold once again. We need to use its strength. We will not forget our fellow Americans. Push Congress to end this war. Dear Congress people, keep bringing the War Power resolution back in play like the republicans did with the Affordable Care Act.
Jack . . . We know this. We've watched this. We've experienced this. Donald Trump does not give ONE FLYING FUCK about anything, anybody, any consequence. He is his own microcosm conceived in evil, maintained on ego, and hurtling toward hell. We must not expect any hint of humanity or empathy or identity. What we see is exactly what we get and what we have gotten since the start.
As a retired Army surgeon this very much hits close to home. I am enraged and ever more disgusted with this so called CINC. My anger is also directed to the general populace who produced / elected this orange homunculus. Everything this "man" is was on public display for the last 40 years. His disgust for the American people has been there and is now, more than ever, on full display. There is no respect for life, there is no respect for people in general, and certainly no respect for those who serve or have served in any capacity. He uses and treats people as if they were merely tools to be used and discarded. The ash heap of history is too good for this for poor excuse for humanity. Jack, I am grateful for your work as legacy news will surely not allow the full measure of clarity to the way he "works" and the distain he so clearly has for our Armed Forces. I have lived to see a President assassinated, man land on the moon, and telescopes in space that can see virtually to the beginning of the universe . But I never thought I would live to hear Taps for our country . I pray God I am wrong.
Thank you. Coming from a retired Army surgeon...that lands with real weight.
You put your finger on something a lot of people still resist admitting...this did not arrive as a surprise. It was visible. It was legible. The contempt...the vanity...the use-and-discard view of other human beings...the inability to honor service except as theater...it has been there for decades. I'm glad you stated it so clearly!
What also comes through in your comment...is that this is not abstract for you. You served. You understand duty, sacrifice...and what leadership is supposed to mean when lives are on the line. That’s EXACTLY why the degradation of those values feels so personal...and so incredibly unforgivable.
That line about never thinking you’d live to hear “Taps for our country” is devastating. It captures both the grief...and the warning...in a way very few people could.
I’m grateful for your service, and I’m grateful you took the time to write this. You said it powerfully.
-Jack
I just keep thinking of the young faces on stretchers in casual receiving and the one's we could not help. But we put them in cots, cleaned them up, made sure they had no pain and held their hands. These fools should spend 1 hour in that tent and learn what they do not respect.
Jack… A few minutes before I read this I posted an article about the dead coming home.. with no president to salute them… a picture of the plane with 2 service members saluting… ALONE.. As tears filled my eyes and grief filled my heart… I imagined the loved ones.. who I couldn’t see.. waiting to receive the bodies of their loved ones. I’m angry and devastated at the way he casually speaks about the already dead… and those surely to come.. over and over. It’s clear he couldn’t care less about them. Part of war he says… without a hint of emotion. I hate him.. more now than ever.
This country isn’t angry enough about this.. about his lack of empathy and about Congress doing nothing to stop it.
I feel so helpless. The dozens of letters I send to my Senators… mostly unanswered… and one whose answer today… defending this war.. made me physically ill.
I wish there was more I could do but there doesn’t seem to be anything.. and it’s such a terrible, empty feeling.
Thank you for writing this, Jack. I knew you felt it too but reading it made it real.
#Holdfast
~Susan