32 Comments
Oct 9, 2021Liked by Steven Beschloss

It’s almost like you’ve been reading my mind. Nearly everything you said resonates with me.

I also used to be more moderate, and in fact conservative until I saw the Gingrich/Reagan trickle down voodoo economics for the lie that it is. As the Republican Party slid ever further to the right, finally careening off the tracks in 2016, I have necessarily leaned more liberal. The Republican definition of bipartisanship now means Democrats must cave in to whatever extreme right wing policies the Rs want.

In 2018 I entered law school 3 months shy of my 65th birthday, in large part because of the abuses from the right, the disinformation, corruption, attacks on the press, gerrymandering, and other election and legislative abuses. During my 3 years in law school I learned a lot about election law and administration, and realize that the Republican abuses are even worse than I thought.

I am now looking to get involved directly in the effort to save our nation from this assault against democracy, particularly in the areas of election law and disinformation.

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Oct 9, 2021Liked by Steven Beschloss

I too am far less optimistic that America will still be here in 2040, or even 2030. We all probably should have realized that the projections that whites would soon become a minority population in the U.S. would engender a paroxysm of violence and racism as the worst among us fought to resist that eventuality. I was stupid enough to believe that the election of President Obama meant we were a post-racial society; I no longer believe that.

I was also stupid enough to believe that the majority of our elected officials would never conspire with foreign governments; I now believe that the Republican Party is so desperate to maintain power, that it is willing to conspire with Moscow on a daily basis.

I also believed that we had moved beyond electing the Joseph McCarthys and Huey Longs of the world to elected office, that Americans were too sophisticated to still be taken in by con men and fraudsters. Obviously, Donald Trump proved that assumption ridiculous.

Finally, I believed that Americans would support whatever actions were necessary to maintain and further public health ... particularly in a public health emergency. ... Wrong again.

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Oct 9, 2021Liked by Steven Beschloss

As a retired government teacher, I watched Trump get away with so many violations of the Constitution. The last 5 years have been mostly depressing. Biden’s win helped, but I am impatient. TFG needs to be brought to justice sooner than later, along with his sycophants, especially Bannon.

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Bill Doolittle

I worked the South on newspapers when I was in college, so i never believed the race situation was improving. I covered anti war and racial riots in the 60s and came to believe less in our democracy and our government's ability to achieve a responsive and thoroughly decent society for all of our peoples. I'm 85 and understand more fully the deeply warlike nature of Americans and their apparent need to force their will and beliefs on other peoples, often by violence and with manufactured and arrogant reasons. Now in the winter of my years it has become clear that too many of our countrymen yearn to push others people around. Now the cracks are widening and gradual collapse is likely. The myth of American Exceptionalism is revealed. I'm too old to flee, but there are only a handful of states left in which I will live, or even enjoy visiting. I won't be here to endure the decline, but my kids may. I am hopeful by nature but not a fool.

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Oct 9, 2021Liked by Steven Beschloss

I have changed in a number of ways. One, I'm still idealistic; I look much more deeply into people to decide who I want as my friends and who I want to be around; I've learned I can remove people from my life without regrets. I'm far less likely to trust in politicians who have special interest campaign contributors to act in our country's best interest -- the vast majority of those particular members of Congress have shown they only have their own interests at heart. I am much more aware of the need to actively support the rights of women and racial minorities. I value facts and fact-checkers more highly than in the past, when I took truth more for granted. I won't vote for anyone without knowing their political experience, stand on issues, and goals if elected. I've learned that an entire political party can be corrupted. I've learned we must protect our democracy every single day. My appreciation for wisdom and compassion and courage has always been strong but now it's a force in my life.

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I have become aware and upset by the disconnect between my daily life - safe, secure, healthy, white, male, and privileged- and the harsh reality, both currently and historically, for so many in this country. My political activism and financial support for the progressive movement feels fragile compared to a tsunami of racist, right-wing, hostile energy. “Hopelessness is not an option”, and yet the gulf between my reality and the country’s politics is a dissonance I’m struggling to reconcile.

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Oct 9, 2021Liked by Steven Beschloss

I vary between abject terror and wanting to flee to another Country, and heartbreak. We cannot agree on facts. If not, we are lost.

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I have become very pessimistic. I don't see hope around very much. I was excited when Joe Biden won the presidency, but nine months after January 6th, I don't see much happening to protect and defend our democracy. Like you, I keep wondering where Merrick Garland and the Justice Department are.

Time is running out for bold action. The Republicans are foaming at the mouth at the prospects of winning in 2022 and 2024. And, if they do, our democracy is done and the Democrats will never hold office again. I'm 76 years old and don't care about MY future. I've lived through Nixon, I've lived through Reagan, I've lived through George W. But I have six teenage grandchildren whom I fear desperately for.

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Oct 10, 2021Liked by Steven Beschloss

I am deeply pessimistic about America's future. I often think about leaving. It occurred to me recently that I have never read a word anywhere about any celebration of our 250th anniversary (remember 1976?). . . honestly I do not feel we will be celebrating at that point. Even though I am an agnostic and not a mystic, sometimes I find myself wishing for a breakthrough from another dimension (i.e. discovering that humans are an experiment from some advanced alien life form, and that entity will soon arrive to wrap things up in some way). I don't share those views with others (except for this blog). I am very happy that I decided to remain childless.

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Oct 11, 2021Liked by Steven Beschloss

It has seemed to me that"America" was always just a new playing field for corporations -from the 1500s onward.

Another colonization opportunity for extraction and plunder. On and on. more and bigger.

Top-down expropriation and control.

For a time, there was an effort to form "A More Perfect Union", then, to reform; a blooming of the best impulses of the Progressive movement. A sort of a Camelot-like time period when

the smart and the good and well connected strove to do the best things.

There is evidence the corporate pushback since the 1920s has been relentlessly dispatched with cunning, evil, and ruthlessness.

Especially egregious was the planned purpose-based degradation of public education.

The dumbing down of a large part of the population, by design, beginning in the 1960s.

The devastating blow, - "harvesting" that manufactured stupidity by weaponizing the internet to assassinate the truth at every turn. That heinous act has poisoned the well that makes our communion possible. I can not think of a blacker more depraved sin from any period of "civilization".

Greed, that behavior driver courtesy of the reptilian brain, will run on to its ultimate exhaustion. It was ever thus.

Now, to use the metaphor of musical chairs, there are way fewer chairs and the music has been sped up to a frantic pace.

It was always about extraction, exponential growth and the unavoidable destruction of the health of the planet by extractive and polluting industries, now grown to into rouge monster entities.

(That musical chairs game at a 7-year-old's birthday party was an epiphany.)

I opted to abstain from procreation and became an activist of sorts.

Everyone can make a little bit of difference every day.

As a senior and a late-stage cancer survivor, I believe that hope, like nature, springs eternal and I cast my lot with being part of the solution.

Pessimism is a luxury I can not afford.

I believe optimism is a political act. Optimism is also how I beat cancer,.. for now.

Optimistically striving to do my best in fighting for the nature of the world I love is a good hill to die on and the best way to honor those responsible for saving my life.

My way of saying thank you for the sheer beauty, grace, and joy of being here.

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Oct 11, 2021Liked by Steven Beschloss

I have never been an optimist, but then again I’m a Black woman in America. It’s very hard to be optimistic in this place.

America was born in racism, remains thoroughly steeped in and corrupted by racism, and will disintegrate largely because white men cannot purge themselves of racism. White women are not much better since they are the ones who raise these racist children to grow up and perpetuate a racist society.

So when trump was running I realized that his candidacy was an existential threat.

It was the second coming of the anti-Reconstructionists: those who tore down everything that post Civil War Reconstruction tried to establish were now going to tear down everything that the Civil Rights era established.

All because they were triggered by the country’s decision to elect a Black President - twice.

That very fact so outraged a majority of white people that many of them showed up to vote for the anti-Obama. For that’s really what trump signified for whites: he was everything Obama was not.

He was racist.

He was hateful.

He was a traitor.

He was a conman.

He was filled with venom towards anything remotely called “liberal.”

Most of all he was a white nationalist who told them they had a right to rule over a county in spite of their shrinking majority, in spite of demographics and in spite of the rights of minorities.

The majority of white men and women voted for trump over Hillary largely because trump hated the same people they hated. He feared the same things they feared.

Nothing that has happened since has surprised me. Nothing.

And if these people have their way they will deprive Black Americans (and Brown, Indigenous & Asian Americans) of our voting rights just as the anti-Reconstructionists did in the late 1800’s.

And people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will stand by and let it happen in order to line their own pockets with money from the same donors who fund trump and his white nationalism.

I knew trump was an existential threat.

And what he has incited will destroy this country.

I thought about leaving in 2016. Now my children and extended family finally agree with me. My best hope now is that we escape what America is becoming before it gets any worse. I’m old now (69) and widowed, but for the sake of my children and grandchildren we are researching the best places to go because the race war that white nationalists have long threatened is coming in the next four years.

And there are not enough white people of good will - like you and your followers - to stop it.

Hell, even some Democratic senators won’t try to stop it.

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I lost all respect for the founding fathers after the 2000 election (they were horrible racists and it’s left an indelible stain on our entire existence), then a brief flash of hope after 2008, but Lieberman and the antebellum Senate quickly disabused me of that notion. Sadly the Senate and the EC are here to stay. Nothing political has surprised me this century, although I will say Trump would not have won without Russia and Comey. I retired at the end of 2015 and it’s taken me a few years to get used to no longer having my job define me. As far as the pandemic all the anti-everything around it seems preordained. One thing that has changed for me is my wanderlust has been curtailed, hopefully I’ll find it again when this is finally over.

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How have I changed? I am voraciously reading the news, blogs, research studies. I suppose I can thank TFG for that lol

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I have always been interested in politics. I followed Joe Biden’s career since 1972. I was always willing to discuss solutions to major problems. In the last 5 years & knowing Trump the way I do, it has been extremely hard for me to digest exactly what this country has allowed him to do. It wasn’t only the GOP, it was white nationalists, it was the racists, it was the angry men and women who were allowed to bring all their hate to the forefront. America has always been a very divided country. After moving to Georgia, I realized just how hateful people really are especially If you don’t agree with them politically. I live in rural Georgia where the GOP rules, the confederate flag flies and the KKK still have parades.

I hate the fact that most of the GOP are willing to turn our democracy into an authoritarian rule all for Donald John Trump. A man who has never told the truth. A man who learned to hate from his father. A man who would throw his entire family under the bus to save his own butt. Yet people are pledging allegiance to him and trust me, he loves every single moment his name is in the spotlight. This country is in sad shape. Trump has formed a cult. This cult will be hard to break Bc he has all his supporters believing he is the truest form of government there will ever be. The saddest part, the GOP in its entirety play this dangerous game and in the end, innocence will hurt.

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I have read what others have responded and find wisdom and truth in each. Over the past 5 years I have become increasingly more fearful, afraid of the unknown that lies ahead. I’m not afraid for myself, as we are in our retirement years with enough resources for a content future. We are physically and financially comfortable, in good health with a strong extended support system. But I am scared to death for my children and grandchildren, and the fear extends to so many areas that can impact their future. I don’t have to list those here, I’m sure you know what they are. I’ve lost all element of trust in the political system that is charged with leading us. Because very few feel a responsibility to be true leaders - most are only leading for self-serving gain. It didn’t start with Trump, he is just the full embodiment of this. The only glimmer of hope I see is that my children and grandchildren’s generations tend to be more open and accepting of diversity. Hopefully they will be the ones to move us in a different direction. If not, I truly believe this experiment in democracy and the world as we know it is forever doomed to failure. Sometimes the helplessness and the fear hold me breathless, and I consider myself a very positive, optimistic and strong woman. I don’t give up easily and am willing to fight for what I believe. I just don’t know how to fight this.

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I am optimistic. I am optimistic that our US AG is quietly weaving a net of impervious/unimpeachable proofs that will cover the entire trump cabal, tie them up with ribbons of justice and then put them all away so we can keep our Republic. It has to be so. Has to.

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I have spent time being more of an activist than I have ever been. I have also spent time looking internally, using a magnifying glass at the dark places with in me to try to understand how I am being a part of the problem, and then working to identify what it means to be part of the solution and implement that. I am also spending time, both alone and with community, envisioning what a better America would look like; I mean REALLY envisioning it. I am looking into my better angels and sending up wisps of hope with every breath as I analyze, and then feel into what we might become for the betterment of all Americans. I anchor that vision every morning, and then I live my day accordingly. I have become more disciplined. I have taken up meditation, and I have worked to heal my own trauma with the hope and belief that the my pebble of that hard work is making ripples in the larger pond for the betterment of all.

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I am more cynical unfortunately but keep hoping that those who can, will.

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I’ve retired from my career of 30 years, discovered I was diabetic, lost about 70 lbs, and eat far better now than before. Try to spend more times doing the things I like, fishing, reading, gardening, theatre, opera, though the pandemic has put a wrench in a lot of that. Hopefully, the division and divisiveness in the world will soon part and we all can continue to build a better future for everyone.

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