I have learned that it never goes away.

It is an ongoing fight.

And it is the media owned/managed by evil-hearted people who blur the distinction to further their causes.

American troops came home exhausted and traumatized.
They just wanted to raise their families in peace and stability.

We were fooled into thinking this was the norm.
When it fact it is probably not the norm.

Oh yes, we have learned evil is quite good at pretending to be good.
And leading us off the cliff.

along the same lines.......

Have you ever read Vonneguts: JAILBIRD ??????????? OMG.....It is a PRICELESS RIP on corporations and wealth......funny as hell....

Some old girlfriend gave a copy to me 50 years ago?????? I was leaving the Corporate world forever, I could no longer stomach the way I saw them treating employees and customers. And the top executive's cut throat personalities, to get as high as they could, by any means, and make as much money as possible, which was never enough......When she gave it to me, she said.....You are gonna love this, and laughed.....

Anyways, I think you would enjoy it, I re-read it every five years or so. It starts in the Gilded Age, with the Robber Barrons and ends in modern day U.S.
It's a real easy read........classic Vonnegut.......

Love Vonnegut.

I think the sci fi writers have been the most politically astute predictors of the future than
any other group of authors.

that you will love it.....

I get so many good recommendations here for good books and movies.
We should spread it around.

but many Vonnegut readers I have run into don't know about his: JAILBIRD........and they find it is one of his best.....

But I do not recall that one.

on both counts.

You haven’t won anything if they can just take it away.

The problem is capitalism, it’s always been the problem, it’ll always be the the problem until we get rid of this greedy, individualistic, me first society.

I'm 76 years old and watched the decline of what used to be a country with some aspirations turn into a shit hole based on highest bidder. The little gains we fought for were an illusion because they can be taken away by a manipulative system. I don't really have an answer. I think when I was young we underestimated the power of the media to shape the public into what they want: obedient consumers who are happy as long as they get their sports and other entertainment. I've watched democracy fail with the "imperial" presidency and legislators who are captured by the big money. The Gilens and Page Study of public opinion versus legislation is depressing enough. It shows very little corelation between public opinion and legislative action, but I urge people to actually look it over and come to their own conclusion. What's really scary to me is the ability of the media to shape public opinion to the liking of the corporate masters. I grew up in the 1960's civil rights and anti war movement and have watched the public apathy as we marched off to war as a political stunt under the Shrub. We need to face the reality that our system is broken and it probably always has been under a system devised by the well off and poweful to keep their wealth and power.
I think one useful thing to do would be to inrease the size of the House of representatives which was set in 1911 when the population was at 92 million. if there 1500 seats it might give some room for a third party and it would be a lot ougher to buy elections and also harder to gerry mander. The other thing that is necessary is to do away with the Supreme Court. Having nine political hacks in charge of everything had to be ultimate bar to a true democracy. But then the founing fathers didn't want a democracy.

That's kinda how i see it. Now the only thing i'm wondering about is, after the 2026 midterms, will we witness a civil war? By this i mean will THIS supreme court get involved, and destrou our midterm victory? I'm thinking we WILL win, but these rethugs will cause it to be tied up in court system somehow, and then look out! I just want to live long enough to see TSF die. I feel we lived through some good times, and are witnessing some really bad times coming. Time will tell. Happy to have found this site and people like you, and all others here!!

More and more wealth and power is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, until eventually, almost everything is owned or controlled by a miniscule few.

Inevitably, there's a great turmoil as the downtrodden rise up against the few. It isn't always pretty, and it isn't always just. Often, it leaves the downtrodden even worse off than before, at least in the short run (witness the Reign of Terror in France or the Cultural Revolution in China).

Eventually, things more or less level out, and the cycle begins again.

Like the OP, I'm in my late sixties and have come to understand that this is the story of human civilization. I don't know the solution, but I think I see the problem.

We are like bee or ant colonies. Hierarchical - pyramids - for organizational purposes. Unless there are extremely low populations and wide areas, this is the structure.

The top of the pyramid has had pharoahs, kings, zealots, religious leaders, rich people, potentates, enlightened despots, and dictators.

Our current war seems to be between the richest ever and the poor, but there is also the religious vs. secular mind control artists.

The US Constitution was the Enlightenment's way of flattening the power structure. Is it dead? Perhaps, but not so fast. Power of the people is always there, in various forms around the world. We, scholars, citizens understand so much more about human political and economic structure than ever before. So maybe there's hope.

Benevolent Trillionaires Unite! or Unf^ck the court system! No outcome is final. Unless you ask the dinosaurs.

You can deploy an army in 24 hours now, not 3 months. House was supposed to be representative of the popular mood, not a money solicitation device. Senate was supposed to be older, wiser, men of property, not controlled by corporate cash donations. SCOTUS was supposed to act with wisdom not partisanship. The ship of state has run aground.

We have speed now. Instant communications. SCOTUS could be a rotating mix of senior judges from around the country. Elections could be every year for the House, every 2 for Senate. President 4 years is about right, though 4 and 3 has some merit, and no term limits on President. They're automatic, by voter fatigue or popularity. Reagan would never had been elected 3 times, Obama could run today and likely win. FDR had 4 terms for a reason - global war, and even Republicans of the day - Landon and Wilkie didn't dare tinker too much with the war effort as issues.

But what you'd get from a Constitutional Convention is noise and bluster and anti-woke. It would be the anti-Enlightenment.

Fair and just? Winner take all of everything, the conservative way. We are so cooked.

I keep asking myself when they will emerge from their bubbles and realize that a few of them could do more good for humanity with their great wealth than the governments of most countries. They could make the world a better place once they realized they had enough. And they might even be praised rather than vilified by the poor. But too many still see greed as good and fail to evolve beyond primitive impulses. But they must also know that such great wealth is not sustainable in a civilized society since the masses who remain in poverty will revolt.

For example, how many Americans know how a boycott is supposed to work? Not enough, clearly. I see calls for "boycotts" that have no demands; they are done only to punish certain people or companies but have no end goal that advances rights or struggles.

CW is that Rosa Parks was just tired or fed up one day -- not true. That whole boycott was well designed and executed. We are encouraged to get it wrong so we will remain ineffective. There was almost zero coverage of the Gilets Jaunes protests in 2018 likely because to do so would educate Americans about what works.

John Brown is portrayed in history books as simply "crazy" because that characterization undercuts what his story really shows. It undercuts the difference that committed people can make.

David Boies warned that corporations increasingly want the rest of us to be simply "spectators to our own culture."

Gene Sharp said:
https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/

We fought against fascism in WW2 and here we are living under fascism in America.

Our governing system allows our hard won rights to be taken away way too easily.

Slavery, Jim Crow, Internment camps, segregation, wars for the profit of the richest people and so on.

What is that if not fascism?

Prosperity Gospel; 101

Last edited Tue Nov 11, 2025, 11:28 PM - Edit history (3)

I follow this tech writer Yasha Levine who gets it. My friend and I were discussing yesterday how, the oligarchy aside, spooks have way too much influence in American society and how that cripples the left. Those sleazy industrial data miners-Google, Facebook, Palantir, MuskRubbish Inc are also defense contractors now. To make things even worse, a bunch of little known, small, creepy defense contractors are also in the woodwork, exploiting these dubious AI and big data booms. E.g.: the NSO group (Pegasus, Paragon etc are their way of saying “fu” to civilized society ), BlackCube all of which churn out spyware with few checks as is.

The influence of the national security state is palpable at elite institutions which are already corrupted by even the civilian side of the sleazy ass tech industry.
And via these worthless, trashy and criminal tech companies, that junk and these atrociously creepy methods are spread everywhere. It’s as though every place is to be like PRC or Russia or the worst parts of any democracy.

It’s corrupting medicine (especially psychiatry) since there are too few rules and laws regulating medical use of data scraped from the net and chatbots. And attacking someone’s sanity is a sure fire way to see that their credibility is damaged. Any whistleblower can expect to be harassed and to lead a shitty life.
Who the hell would trust a creep like Zuckerberg with anything medical? Shady Googlers like Thomas Insel, Andy Ng, that Woebot person whose name I forget - these are such awful people to have mucking around in brain science or psychiatry. The failed narcotics war could be used as an excuse by hucksters like these to peddle a totally bogus “psychiatric alternative” to the police, when the question is who said that systems filled with data mining creeps have the right to implicitly threaten people with coercive psychiatry or the police when they spill over into regular academics sans any IRB or informed consent?

Police reform itself is perverted by the corrupting influence of billionaires like Clare Wu or tech “critics” from the sleazy MIT Media Lab like Joy Buolamwini. This Prof I respected David Golumbia called it out. The Epstein connected MIT Media is itself tied to so many sleazy people: Alex Pentland, Neri Oxman (that’s that asshole Bill Ackman’s wife). Evgeny Morozow (one of the few respectable people associated with Stanford) pointed out how bad an influence the MIT Media lab is on academia. It’s not schizophrenic to note how sleazy this type of cross-pollination is. People like this awful edtech shill Sebastian Thrun are ruining education as fast as they can. These people are a cancer on society.

I had some shitty experiences and I am too much of a curmudgeon to trust anyone irl outside the most routine and mainstream things.

It has weighed on my mind. I find it alarming how tech and worse medicine is encroached into by these sleazy industrial types who are more overtly spooks now. Further, they implement totally useless and needless security theatre and other shit.

This is not stuff that should spread into civilian life and its influence outside its narrow use for any genuine fighting of terrorism or crime is not at all appropriate. My own dad is a military vet in my country. But he is an honest person. He gets that military psych studies and defense contracting are creepy and dubious.

Catherine Liu wrote in Unherd about how the guy who introduced this super annoying version of woke to universities was actually an FBI informant. Which totally makes sense. Any damn way they can trash the real left works for them. Even those counterculture movements (Dadaism, Surrealism etc) were infiltrated by those horrible creepy spooks.

It’s not Trumps bs about the deep state. This is more like this culture of deregulation and misogyny that leads to real holes in every area of life. Are we supposed to tacitly now be okay with more spooks and get resigned to a creepy, privacy free life? And a second rate “metaverse” growing around us?

The press is another corrupted area. Substack has a few good writers and journalists, but at the end of the day it’s sourced to the same sleazy Si Valley networks-Andreessen Horowitz etc.

I was just reading about Operation Mockingbird yesterday. I am not in the US. But the stuff you guys do over there can spread. The sort of sleazy Stalinists/the various brands of religious right/the blah corrupt left we have here would all be easily bought out by the industrialists, defense contracting etc.

That leaves the courts, the constitution and genuine community solidarity as the sole hope in most democracies at this point. That’s the point of democracy - not to permit a creeping police state bought to you by PRC/Russia/Si Valley and spooks the world over.

This piece Aziz Huq wrote earlier this year really stuck with me on that head.

Things have gotten so bad that I finally hope change is around the corner. Even if it isn’t, I’ll at least not feel as hopeless as I have since about 2011 when I first noticed that all is not right with the world. I realized that Si Valley was a far worse force than was obvious (though at the time I just went..”wait wtf?”). I came back to my home country and saw the same trash grow here, but intangibly enough that it’s hard to report or file complaints over without coming off as a crazy person.

Doesn’t help that I am a childfree catlady and a lot of these people are just misogynists.

The problem is that a lame worldview which pegs the bar for what is considered “paranoid or conspiratorial” this low is totally corrupt. It is justifiable to object to the bending of all sorts of rules because of these sleazy tech cos.
And the reason I like Levine is that I don’t buy astroturf tech criticism either. He is grumpy enough that I believe him.

AstroTurf exists to make a splash and make it seem as if “people are getting serious”. Bollocks- it’s all performative except for say Lina Khan. Splashy stories just numb the public and make people accept more and more bs over time. Real change is what Khan was doing and it’s coming.

We need a stronger defense of democracy and these tech creeps in data mining, AI, crypto etc have overplayed their hand. The internet was always a spook and corporate thing.

But there comes this breaking point..I think by the time a lame, enraged middleaged grouch like me stumbles into such things and keeps trying to exit quietly cursing it and ..lol..
I always hated cameras. Can’t live like that.

If these guys had not spread this cancer so much that now it gets to the point where some contract that very blah and irritating people work out spills over into the space of people like me who only required that people stay away and annoy just about anyone else ..

I am very progressive in my instincts but I get more and more strained and short tempered around theatrical bs.
And it is tied to what is destroying democracy and everything is just lame and awful and exasperating.

I vent on DU since it’s one of the few places I trust...

all of the rich fucks swept into the dust heap of history. Think the revolution FDR wrought. One four year presidency with the right person and a truly progressive Congress can repair the damage to all of the things you list. Recovery and healing will take a little more time. That can all happen in a single decade. I'm counting on being here for that. So hang in there dude.

for visibility

I've seen enough to know racism is real whether or not it's dead to Chief Justice Roberts! They're going down with the Shitship. Get ready to too.

Quite a few of them need to be tried for crimes against humanity too, and thrown in prison for life if found guilty.

None of them should be celebrated.

or big 'wealth tax'

…that company’s lowest wage earner. If a company can only afford $16/hr for instance, the CEO should be paid a max of $320/hr. That’s $620,000/yr. Want to double the CEO’s compensation? Make him/her work to afford $32/hr for the company’s lowest paid employees.

That's the crux of the problem. These very rich people can never have enough, no matter how much they have.
I wouldn't mind their striving to be rich, but they do it in such a selfish way; taking from people who have very little so that they can have more.
I know this sounds weird in a society that worships wealth, but, for me, there comes a point where wealth becomes a burden; where love of money replaces love of family and friends; where happiness is tied to how many things you own; where wealth becomes a separation point between people.
One thing I know for certain is that money corrupts people. It's resulted in government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy. That's what we have now.
Greed
Over
People.

It shifts from "improving your life style" to "keeping score."

You see it sports player salaries as well as Corporate executive compensation. In sports it's more visible but it's there, where players and agents negotiate to be the biggest salary over other players.

His desire is to be the world's richest man. But, you don't get there by caring about anyone other than yourself.
Bill Gates said it best about him when Musk helped Trump destroy USAID:

"The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one".

It takes a particularly callous person to have done this. The score is everything. People are nothing.

It can never be sated. The more of it you get, the more it consumes you. It continues to grow and gobble up everything inside of someone until it kills its host.

for decades...

it is now time to formally eat the rich

Of female engineering interns. The conversation shifted to politics. They explained to me the young generation do not see a war being left vs right. They see a war with the haves and have nots. Yikes 😳.

I’ve read that story often and never tire of reading it again and again. It says it all

And at 77 I’m so lucky to have enough.

.... depoliticizing the electorate?

Not saying give up but I see people thinking the bigger issue is money vs power.

Grass roots people sentiment wil always is the root of any economic or governing system.

They do none of the work and pay none of the taxes. Yet they make all of the money. We do all of the work and pay all of the taxes, and they are the ones who get the luxury yachts, private jets, and watches and jewelry that cost more than my car.

And since the 1980s, they've set up a system where they can get away with doing whatever they want while stealing all of our money, and the TV news propaganda keeps us fighting with each other over pointless bullshit while they get away with it all.

4 people in this country have more than $1.5 TRILLION dollars between them. And that's just what we know about. 4. 4. That kind of wealth is absolutely unfathomable. And these greedy fuckers just want more. Yeah we'll never have an equitable and just society as long as the billionaire criminal cabal has no accountability.

all the humongous Corporations, and directly or indirectly they are in control of them.

Orwell had it mostly right, but one thing he missed was that it isn't the government per se that we needed to look out for it is the Corporations !!
The simplest definition of Fascism is the merging of Corporations and Government......and here we are......
Our beloved United States of America, is soon to be re-named: .........The Corporate States of America......
OR........The Fascist Corporations of America........

We are already on the threshold, and mostly there already.......it is the corporations that are leading the way in all the destruction, and the psychopaths running them.........

The Republicans have the absolute best Politicians that the corporations can buy, and "Citizens United" was all they needed....

Media consolidation is a huge factor as well. Just a handful of people control all of the news and information that we see and hear, and thanks to some mega mergers that are about to happen, it's going to get even more consolidated.

So many of our problems can be traced back to news media propaganda and Citizens United. We must overturn that decision, no matter what it takes.

the fact is,......that 95% of All U.S. Media is owned/operated by the Uber Rich Republicans......

One of Hitler's first moves was to have his henchmen take complete control of the German Media that existed at that time....

The Republicans already took care of that one, early on...................It started with Ronnie, when he gave the media free reign, with no more regulations to monopolize as they had wanted to do since FDR......

Sounds like a certain politician before they became a millionaire. It seems they have since dropped that and now only go after the billionaires.

Regardless, to say "they do none of the work and pay none of the taxes" is not close to being accurate. In 2023, there were 24 million 'millionaire households' in the U.S., or 18% of the total number of households. In 2022, the top 5% of earners paid 61% of the federal income taxes collected. The bottom 50% paid 3%.

You might not care for the M's and B's, but it's best to use actual facts when attacking them.

Last edited Tue Nov 11, 2025, 10:45 PM - Edit history (2)

1. People show up and vote their economic interests
2. People stop letting "enthusiasm" for the candidate that best represents their interests determine whether or not they will vote
3. People vote in every election, in every place, at every level

But 3x23 doesn’t sound as bad in terms of age!

ABSOLUTELY verified (not verifiable, but verified) vote counts, we are going to be in total danger of what we know has happened in the past.

I'm so glad we won all those races this past week, but I'm sorry! I don't trust that it was not manipulated. It looked too much like the flip side of the 2024 election.

Now that the internet has started amplifying voices of we, the people, the corporate republican owned news/propaganda media can go to hell. And that is a good thing, IMHO.

But now we need to GUARANTEE a stop to ANY treachery with vote counting. Gerrymandering is the cousin of the vote counting treachery, and punishment of voters at the precinct is one of the evil siblings.

Our lives are short, so we look to short term gains. It's a mistake. We're human. We'll make mistakes.

Ideals like justice and forming a more perfect union fall behind those short term goals and gains sometimes.

Sometimes they should fall behind. Excuse me, I gotta pee.

..

But it's no reason to quit.

And it's plenty of reason to keep on fighting.

--Fellow 69er

It is one of my favorites from my favorite American writer.

Until we stop with the favoritism and greed, nothing will change.

Nothing.

Pretty much sums up how I feel too. Never thought I would get to retire in a fascist state.

All I can say is I am honored to have lived during the best years this country has ever seen. When I was a kid in the 60's and 70, no one locked their car up, nor their front doors. Watching and experiencing improvements in technology and medicine has been astounding. Remember rotary phones? Hell. I would leave every day in the summer and never returned til supper. I lived in a small town then.

If you compare those days, to our current situation, there is no comparison. NONE! This country has done a 180, and I personally don't see it getting much better for the next decade. I may still be here then. Who knows. Trump will do what he can to destroy democracy and make fascism our choice of governing.

I wake up every day, thankful I'm still here, and still have hope we will survive.

God help us all.

He was real. I met him through correspondence in 1978 when I asked People magazine to forward a letter to him.
He was trying to recover from Guillain Bare Syndrome
Which I survived after months in ICU.
I shared so much in our letters.
He was a brilliant writer and person.

He then went on to write his story of his experience
with Guillain Barre

I think of him often and his bigger than life personality
and heart.

That has to be one of the 1st things that needs undone as soon as democrats take back control.

We will have greedy, evil people using it to make others suffer.

We have to take away the power of capital and the greedy, evil folks won't have such excessive control. There will always be greedy, evil people but we don't have to make it soooo easy for them to grab up power. And capitalism makes it very easy for them to succeed. It's a psychopath's perfect economy.