...and the Democrats, when they are the majority, will make all of them public.

I really hope that after the 2028 election, that the next president appoints Jack Smith to serve as Attorney General.

Jack Smith is one of those. As is Gavin Newsome and Jon Ossoff, in my opinion. Chris Murphy is another.

We will need courageous leaders in the next Administration.

There are a number of really good potential presidential candidates. While I favor Chris Murphey, no matter who wins the primaries, I will work hard to get him/her elected. The same applies in the mid-terms. We do not have the luxury of only supporting the candidates that are our personal favorites.

Now, my favorite president was JFK. I wish that republicans would read his 1956 "Profiles in Courage." However, I recognize that in most cases, they will not honor their oath of office until there are Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. Once that happens, I anticipate some republicans will -- at very least -- not go along with the coward.

inevitable, no more than the Weimar Republic did.

After all, it was normal business that got us here. And the High Road.

I'm not sure that there has ever been "normalcy" in the US, at least not in my lifetime. There were groups that had it good, even really good, and other groups that didn't, even really didn't. Democracy depends upon an informed, interested, and active population. More, we can never go back in time. Yet we do have the ability to do our best to make it a more perfect union -- which will require a lot of changes.

I agree 100% with you on how we got to this point. What we did yesterday determines what will happen today, and today will determine tomorrow. Unless we change, our final destination will not be pleasant.

My Dad did not want the dog and told me if the dog crapped in the yard, it was my responsibility to clean it up.

Of course, one day my Dad found that the dog had crapped in the yard and I had not cleaned it up.

My Dad got a hold of me, took me out in the yard, and pointed out the offending pile.

Then he told me to go in the house and get a spoon, because I was going to eat that crap.

I refused. I'm not eating that.

He said if I don't, I will get an ass-whipping.

I still refused. No way was I going to eat that.

So I got an ass-whipping.

Afterwards, as I was crying, he said "Aren't you glad you didn't eat that shit?"

I had to admit that, yes, I was glad I had not eaten that.

Then he hit me with the lesson. "Remember this. It is always better to take an ass-whipping than to eat shit, every time."

Harsh story, but for the rest of my life I refused to eat shit. From anybody.

I wish Republicans had learned that lesson.

P.S. No, my Dad and I did not have a healthy relationship.

I was never faced with dog shit for consumption, but I had a very rough relationship with my father. It included lots of ass-whippings. On a positive note, I never boxed an opponent who punched as hard as my father, perhaps in part because he didn't wear boxing gloves. My becoming a homeless teen was a direct result of my reaching a point where the outcome would have been very different if he swung at me. (Later in life, we did become good friends.)

I got to know him better in his later years and he was still a dick.

The most valuable thing I learned from him was not wanting to end up like him.

He was very Trumpian, bitter and angry and hateful, railing on and on about his grievances all the way back to getting his bike stolen when he was 8 years old.

while my step-father only slapped me open-handed; he, out-weighing my brother by a hundred pounds, beat him so badly that he left home at 14. No one ever called him 'Dad'; not even his own children from his 1st marriage. We became friends only after I left home. When I had a son of my own who called him 'Pa', he became a changed man - upon his death, he left his estate to son and me. You are so right that life changes thru the years.
We can't change the past - we can only try to change the future for the better.

I still remember my middle brother bobbing & weaving, making Dad miss literally every punch, on my maternal grandparents' porch. Thereafter, our older brother added bobbing & weaving to his style in the ring. Yet we never thanked Dad for that! (My brother liked the young Olympic champion Smokin' Joe Frazier, which may have also influenced him! But by the time decades later when Joe's son Marvis would help me train my son, the punches had caught up to my oldest brother.)

And definitely you are right about our inability to change the past. We can use history to learn from, including cycles in politics and in empires, we can't change it. Nor can we hope tomorrow brings about changes, unless we start changing today. And before we can begin to make changes today, we need an understanding of the causes of the political changes that have made it more difficult for us to win presidential and congressional elections. We are now on a playing field that is significantly different than it was in the past.

while my step-father only slapped me open-handed; he, out-weighing my brother by a hundred pounds, beat him so badly that he left home at 14. No one ever called him 'Dad'; not even his own children from his 1st marriage. We became friends only after I left home. When I had a son of my own who called him 'Pa', he became a changed man - upon his death, he left his estate to son and me. You are so right that life changes thru the years.
We can't change the past - we can only try to change the future for the better.

how well you put all that out here. Now, please, go sit in your GG Grandfather's chair and with your dog beside you; ponder upon our Supreme Court as it also presents as a clear and present danger to our country. Then, send us another report re: those thoughts.
I, personally, respect your thoughts and posts and think most DUers do also.
As an aside: Your thoughts on Congress cab wait as we are already working hard on them and mid-terms.

Not that the court has ever been perfect, for it is composed of human beings. But starting with their Bush v Gore selection of the president, there have been a series of terrible decisions.

There are, in theory, steps that starting in 2029, might resolve that situation, at least temporarily.

I am confident that many good people are working to have significant results in the mid-terms. And yet, there are others who currently experience episodes of feeling helpless and hopeless. I do understand that, as this administration is far more horrible than they anticipated a second administration could be.

I am pleased if my ideas go from my lips to the DU community's ears! Then again, in my thinking, the definition of "God" is likely different from most of the public's.

Your statement quoted above is more than just true; it can be an effective narrative for defeating cowardly Republicans in November.

A lot can happen between now and then, as the bully-in-chief continues to blunder and rage against the dying of his might. How many of his enablers holding seats in Congress will find the "courage" to stand up to him as his madness further manifests while the economic pain of his blunders afflicts more voters?

Of course, it will not be "courage" that they find, but merely a continuation of serving their own self interest rather than the oath they swore to uphold. They stick their finger in their mouth, then raise it to gauge the political winds.

If our Democratic Party proceeds with courage and truth, that wind will be the winds of change to sweep these cowardly miscreants out of Congress.

Our nation is in crisis, which has both danger and opportunity. We must sieze the day -- not to restore the former status quo, but to enact real change to build a better future for generations that will look back on this time and judge us.

WE are the authors of our own history, which is ahead of us and closing in fast. Let us prepare that palm-upward blow and sizzling left hook, not in violence but in service to our loved ones and to those future generations depending on us.

"WE are the authors of our own history, which is ahead of us and closing in fast."

I was talking with my cousin, who asked what our fathers and grandfathers would tell us that we need to do to save the United States of America. In their era, with WW2, they had to pick up the gun and deliver something akin to the palm-upward blow to our enemies. I think they would say that they fought in a violent war to protect our rights to defend democracy so that we could protect the Constitution by non-violently exercising our rights. Today it is our responsibility to do exactly that.

When issues come up in future times, I want my grandchildren and their children to look back and think of what I did to protect this countryt against its enemies, foreign and Domestic. I want their generations to look back and think that when push came to shove, we stood up to the bullies, kicked their behinds in elections, and re-established the rule of law.

Care for the less-strong, the weak, the infirm, children, the elderly, ...and the Other.

Thank you for sharing how you became one of the good guys, H2O Man!

I think that if I can change, anyone can. There was a time when I thought that looking out for others required a physical fight. While I was out weeding the garden today, after reading through responses here, I remembered my younger son telling me about what his friend's father -- from a village about 25 miles away, where teens fighting was a multi-generational event -- said when he learned I was my boy'[s father. He said that he watched me beat the hell out of three guys who were pushing a kid from my village around. Seeing that convinced him not to participate with his three buddies. That, of course, was a long, long time ago!

These days, the guy always invites my son & I to his Super Bowl parties. We love watching our grandchildren play together while the other adults are focused on the game. Yet I have enough of an Irish ego to say I don't mind when he introduces me to new people, and tells the story from the ever-increasing distant past.

Hey -- my European daughter, her husband, and my granddaughter will be visiting in about ten days.

Great news! Hope all in your family are doing well! I hope you get time together to be loved by those you've made possible.

Growing up, I took family for granted. Now that I'm old, I realize why my grandparents emphasized establishing relationships with aunts, uncles, cousins, distant great-aunts, uncle's uncles, third cousins and the rest by marriage. Families, tribes, and villages are the the bedrock on which to build good lives and civilization.

Unfortunately for too many modern generations, the role of the family has also changed, even diminished, with the times. Beleaguered by a crazy world and economic system that rewards greed and predation, no longer are most parents in a position to make life better for the young simply by working harder and longer. Nowadays, big money is needed to make more money. Labor is considered a cost to be minimized.

Speaking of devolution: My wife and I got a free month of Paramount TV and started to watch all the Yellowstone and related programs (1883, 1923, there must be more as we see commercials for new Yellowstone/Taylor Sheridan shows that we hadn't even heard of all the time). I bring it up because Harrison Ford's character explained to the younger generation about "The 500."

Ford's character, the Dutton family patriarch, was describing how in olden times, when humanity lived in familial clans or villages, everyone literally knew everyone else. If one cough teenager like myself was not acting in line with the law and custom, the parents would hear from their cousins or neighbors what was going on. Public pressure backed by parental authority would straighten out the cough teenager out PDQ.

Decision making in the tribe could be accomplished by meeting where all could express opinion and be heard -- and respected -- by everyone else before the group found consensus. When the community grew past the size of 500 people, however, things changed. It became more difficult to know everyone and know where everyone was coming from in a public discussion. Proper behavior no longer was a matter linked to public pressure.

Most importantly: The familial/social contract devolved into the rule of the jungle when the community grew past 500 individuals. Compassion, Cooperation and Consensus devolved into a dynamic of "survival of the fittest" meaning the biggest, meanest and most cruel lorded it over the flock. The strong few eventually became the aristocracy; and the royals made themselves tops by law until 1776.

Important

It's kind of ironic that it is Iran that has changed the global view of our cowardly president. I would not care to live under their religious rule, any more than under the superstitions of the very white christian nationalists in this country. And on one hand, I resent our military being forced into a no-win conflict that continues to damage the global economy. But on the other, I do kind of enjoy seeing the cowardly felon humiliated.