It used to be one of the easiest jobs for a president of the United States after going through Inauguration Day and all the ceremonies and balls and parades. The next day – not later in the week, but the very next morning, for most presidents, before 9 a.m. -- one of those curved doors to the Oval Office opens and your chief of staff enters accompanied by two men. One of the men is in uniform, the other in a neatly pressed suit. The younger of the two men is carrying a briefcase. They’re here to give you the first intelligence briefing of your term.

In the old days, if there was a lot going on in the world, the briefing might even take place in the Situation Room, the secure bunker-like space an elevator ride away in the White House basement, so the briefers could refer to maps they already put up on the wall. These days, the maps would be on large flatscreen TV’s. The briefers would begin by telling the president about any places where U.S. troops or even embassies might be under threat or in active danger. During the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the briefers might have recent casualty figures and reports of “kinetic” action – bombings carried out by Navy or Air Force jets, maybe a terrorist attack in Baghdad or Kandahar, firefights if they are likely to lead to action taken by more U.S. forces.

After the active military actions involving U.S. forces around the world have been reported, the briefers might run down recent actions or statements by U.S. allies and enemies. What has happened over the last few days in Ukraine, for example, or reports of Chinese naval activity near the Philippines in the South China Sea, or perhaps the results of an election in South America or an attempted coup in Africa. Maybe the president of the European Union said something newsworthy about the new U.S. president, or the Chinese announced a new trade deal in a part of the world in which the U.S. has national security interests, or Russia has shot down a commercial airliner near the border with Ukraine, or a new Russian submarine has been reported to have departed the port of Severomorsk in the Murmansk region of northern Russia. The president will be told when reports have been relayed to the Pentagon by the intelligence services of allies and what importance U.S. intelligence places on the reports.

What the president of the United States has not needed to be told, at least until now, is which countries are allies and which are enemies. Certain assumptions have been stable throughout the years since the end of World War II. European nations are our friends and allies. Nations such as Russia and China are our rivals and even economic enemies in the struggle for resources and dominance in certain regions of the world. Other nations, such as unstable autocracies in South America and Africa, or even on-the-fence countries such as Armenia and Azerbaijan or Moldova or Serbia, might enter the conversation if there are recent developments that impact U.S. interests or ongoing conflicts that might end up drawing more intense attention of U.S. intelligence or the Pentagon.

Being one of the people who delivers the president’s “daily brief” used to be a plum assignment. To get the job, you would need to pass the background check for the very highest security clearance. People who were briefers of the president have gone on to bigger things. Bob Woodward, yes that Bob Woodward, carried the briefcase when he was a young ensign in the Navy accompanying senior briefers to the White House every morning. That’s where some of his sources came from when he was a reporter for the Washington Post in later years.

Think of what it’s like today. Donald Trump doesn’t get up in the morning and go downstairs to the Oval Office to get his morning briefing. It is said when he receives a briefing at all, he likes to be shown videos and photographs and given a single page to read, if that.

This is because Donald Trump does not believe in United States interests. He believes in Donald Trump’s interests. To the extent that his interests are affected by national security information, he will listen to briefings. Trump might want to know what the chances are for new developments in parts of the world that are not on the front pages of newspapers, such as Albania or Azerbaijan.

He has remade what used to be the lists of U.S. allies and enemies. NATO nations, which were at the forefront of American national security for decades as they stood fast against Russia and the countries behind the Iron Curtain, are not necessarily considered allies under the Trump regime. He has threatened Denmark, a NATO nation, with taking over their territory of Greenland. He has threatened to turn Canada into the 51^st state. He regularly belittles national leaders of NATO countries, calling them names and posting silly memes on his social media account. Countries which have been our enemies, such as Russia, he considers friendly to his interests because he wants to develop hotels or golf courses or condos there.

It emerged last year that the way to become an ally of Donald Trump during his second term in office is to flatter him and give him things of value. Qatar, a Gulf nation, gave him what was described as a $400 million gold plated 747. Other countries have delivered gimcrackery made from gold into his hands in the Oval Office, the acceptance of which violates about 20 ethics rules. We don’t know what goes on behind the scenes in U.S. foreign relations of the Trump administration, but it is a sure thing that Trump himself and his company are being offered business opportunities all over the place. Jared Kushner, married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, has been on the receiving end of billions of so-called “investments” from Gulf nations. Trump’s real estate buddy, Steve Witkoff, is said to have been nakedly upfront about potential business deals as he has served as Trump’s special envoy here and there…mostly there.

Countries that have been long-time U.S. allies such as those in NATO and even Korea and Japan have learned that when Trump yells at you, it’s best not to yell back, but rather refer to him in grandiose terms and arrange to give him gifts that, while not as grandiose as a 747, are almost certainly worth millions of dollars. Trump, who once called the whole idea of crypto a “scam,” has changed his mind and conveniently established a way to slip him money through Liberty Financial, his crypto investment firm. We have no way of knowing what crypto “wallets” are held by the Trump sons and daughters that could be filled with crypto coins or cash or whatever dodgy form such payoffs take these days. Because the world of crypto is secret. Why do you think it’s secret? So, it can be used to shift money around without anyone seeing a thing on the table, that’s why.

You would think the United States would be standing foursquare behind Ukraine as an ally. Not only are they under attack by one of our enemies, Ukraine is the last bulwark between Russia and Europe and the countries that used to be our allies there. But nooooo. Trump doesn’t want to build hotels in Kyiv. He wants to build them in Moscow, because Russia is bigger and it has oil and it is a country that is at least potentially richer.

The question almost asks itself. What does Donald Trump believe in when it comes to the international interests of the United States? The answer is beyond imagining. There was once a notion that “what’s good for Standard Oil is good for America.” Boy, do those cutthroat times seem innocent looking back from 2026. Just look at the trash heap Trump has turned the White House into. He’s holding a mixed martial arts fight in the White House backyard put on by a company he owns stock in. Look at his recent assertion that his presidential papers belong to him, not to the United States, which paid for them, as the federal law states. Trump has had the Department of Justice prepare a challenge to that law as unconstitutional. Why? So, he and his family can profit from the record of his presidency, including from top secret materials that he will assert belong to him and that he will take with him, so he can use those secrets to his advantage in business deals after he leaves office.

It doesn’t matter if what’s good for Donald Trump is also good for America. What’s good for Donald Trump is good for Donald Trump, and to hell with the rest of it. That is now the foreign policy of the United States in a single sentence.

News from the home front: My wife, Tracy Harris, has begun her own Substack, writing about our life together in Milford and reporting on the dreams and aspirations of our many cats and dog and other goings on. Here is a link to her latest column, where you can sign up for a subscription:

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Wildlife in Milford, Part One

On our first day in Milford, a huge Bald Eagle landed in a tree across the street from our house and watched us all day as we moved in. Occasionally it would fly away and circle high above our heads for a few minutes, then return to sit and stare as the movers carried boxes from the truck into the house…

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Did you know that white identity was erased for generations by…you know…Those People? Feminists. The Lefty Intellectual Elite. Black Radicals. The LGBTQ Community. You know…Those People. Whiteness, specifically, white men, have been oppressed all this time, afraid to speak up for themselves,1 and now? Now it’s their turn!

I swear to fucking god, this is the actual premise of an article in The Atlantic:

I am not joking when I say that the author believes whiteness was rendered invisible by the left:

For most of the post-civil-rights era, a tacit consensus discouraged white Americans from thinking of themselves as avatars of a racial demographic. Race mostly belonged to other people. Many white Americans commemorated certain aspects of their ethnic background—in the case of my Baby Boomer mother, the language of her German grandparents. But honoring whiteness itself was deemed impolite, to say the least. Given the advantages that whiteness often conferred, calling attention to it was like being a sore winner.

This is not a subtle rewriting of history. This is just bullshit propaganda to justify the grievances of America’s white nationalist movement. But this paragraph reveals far more than the author intended. He tells us EXACTLY why whiteness, as a concept, was discouraged.

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It’s important to understand that whiteness NEEDED to be invisible. It was vital that it be the air we breathed. The water we swam in. That whiteness was everywhere but unspoken. Not because it was “deemed impolite” to acknowledge it, but because to acknowledge it would, in fact, call attention to it, and that could not be allowed.

Here’s the part that really gives it away: "Given the advantages that whiteness often conferred, calling attention to it was like being a sore winner.” Bullshit. It wasn’t about being a sore winner. It was about making sure no one saw white people as the winners in the first place. We’re going to circle back to this in a minute.

For now, come back in time with me to the 2010s. In this distant past of just a decade and change ago, a strange thing happened. We, as a society, started to talk about white privilege and white supremacy and whiteness itself. We had talked about it before, of course, but this time was different. This time it took root, and the conversation became part of the national consciousness.

Remember, according to Williams, we didn’t do this previously because it was gauche to talk about whiteness. White people were denied their whiteness by…someone. Social norms? Angry Black people? Radical leftists? Williams is never quite clear, but it’s heavily insinuated that minorities somehow forced white people to deny their whiteness:

All racial identities were named and valorized, except one. This wasn’t the sole cause of the white backlash that ensued; racist politicians and media figures bear ample responsibility for that. Still, the rhetorical and ideological excesses of the left generated a sense of unfairness that has become central to the white-identitarian project.

But when we started to talk about whiteness and white privilege, and again, remember Williams explicitly says being white confers advantages, what did white people do? Were they delighted to be seen? Did they start chanting “Free at last!”? Did they rejoice at no longer having to hide the shamefulness of being white?

No. That’s not even remotely what fucking happened. Instead, they lost their goddamn minds and spent years screaming in aggrieved outrage.

Now, I remember this clearly because I didn’t understand it at first. I got that the right was falling to its knees and wailing big, sobby tears of outrage. But an awwwwful lot of white leftists and liberals got up on their hind legs and screeched in pain like a fucking vampire seeing sunlight for the first time.

Oh yeah, that happened. I couldn’t post the words “white privilege” without being lectured about how “my white skin didn’t give ME any advantages! My life has been rough! How fucking DARE you suggest I’ve had it easy as a white person?!” And this from people whose Facebook feeds were nothing but bragging about what good allies to minorities they were.

This went on for years. I don’t see it much anymore. Probably because we’re too busy dealing with Nazis marching in the streets to complain about how white privilege doesn’t exist.

But the fact remains that white people were not quietly pining away for recognition of their whiteness. Even the ones who didn’t think of themselves as racist or benefitting from structural racism needed it to remain unseen and unspoken. That is how systemic injustice operates. It becomes so ingrained and “natural,” we stop seeing it as injustice and think of it as “just the way things are.”

It’s a nice fairy tale we can tell ourselves. Everything I have, I earned through the power of my own awesomeness. And all of the women and Blacks and Latinos and Asians and and and that didn’t make it as far? Well, they should have tried harder. Like I, Todd Bradford Whiteson, did!

But of course, privilege is not necessarily life on the easy setting. You don’t have to have it easy to be the winner. You just have to have EASIER. And white people did. Privilege made us the winners by putting life on the difficult setting for everyone else. And the nightmare setting for specific groups like Black women and trans people. Intersectionality is a hell of a word that captures a world full of pain.

But once we started to talk about whiteness, it stopped being invisible. That’s what made these secretly “oppressed” people so angry. Williams opines that white people felt excluded, but once we saw them, they wanted nothing else but to disappear again, and they instinctively knew why. Even if they didn’t grasp or admit to benefiting from generations of privilege, they knew that being exposed was not in their best interest. They didn’t WANT to be seen.

But they were, and there was no putting the toothpaste back into the tube. We kept talking about whiteness and white supremacy and white privilege. We talked about Karens and white women’s tears and how white people policed Black bodies in public spaces. Suddenly, all of the bad behavior white people had engaged in all along stopped being “normal.” It stopped being the air we breathe and the water we swim in. Suddenly, we stopped tolerating it.

And just like that, white people went from being invisible to being victims.

One doesn’t need to be a white man to see that this is true. Over two decades in and around universities, nonprofits, and the publishing industry, I have repeatedly served on selection committees in which jurists—in many cases white jurists—stated that a candidate’s racial, ethnic, or sexual claim to marginalization ought to be the deciding factor for a coveted position or prize.

“Today, the advantages white Americans have are mostly informal and evanescent cultural legacies,” as Carl writes in The Unprotected Class. “The discrimination they experience is also sometimes informal but is increasingly legal and formal.”

It’s hard to choke down the self-martyrdom of white men. After literal centuries of structural, legal, social, and economic white supremacy, we started to take steps to reach the very tiniest beginnings of balance. We didn’t make great strides; we barely took fucking baby steps.

Yet, you would think someone passed a law dictating that all white people were to be put into chains. That’s how great the temper tantrum from white people has been.

To his credit, Williams does not think the far right’s race war is helpful or productive. He thinks going full white power is not the way to restore balance in America. He would prefer a “color-blind” system. You know, the one where whiteness was invisible and absolutely everywhere, shoved down our throats 24/7. He doesn’t SAY that, of course, but who the fuck does he think he’s kidding?

We know what Williams is really after because even as he laments the extremism of the right’s march towards white nationalism, he just feels so fucking terrible about how “both sides” don’t get it:

Justin Lee, a writer published by Passage Press and an associate editor at the conservative journal of religion First Things, told me that the white identitarians are mimicking the “woke” identity politics they ostensibly seek to counter, resurrecting the hyper-racialized politics of 2020, when the left was at the peak of its dominance.

The white identitarians’ ultimate goal seems to be the moral and institutional power that comes with victimhood status, which is now anyone’s prize in post-woke America.

The difference, of course, is that to be Black or Latino or Muslim or any minority IS to be a victim in a system designed by white people to exclude everyone else. And the only remedy is to pull everyone else up until they’re on equal footing. The fact that Williams sees this as anti-white oppression tells you everything.

But here’s the money shot:

In a country that is becoming less white, any short-term victories notched by white identitarianism will be pyrrhic, just like the “wokeness” that preceded it—and that it continues to sustain by foregrounding race.

Thhhhheeeeereeee it is. One wonders if Williams is even aware of how hard he is telling on himself in this article? The real concern is not that white people are oppressed or that “both sides” are too extreme. Williams wants a return to the original status quo of invisible omnipresent whiteness because without it, white privilege will disappear in the not-too-distant future.

This is the thing racist white people fear more than death itself. White privilege is how they have maintained the illusion of racial superiority for centuries. Without it, everyone will see the unspeakable truth: That there is nothing special about white people. They are not smarter than anyone else. They’re not more competitive or innovative. They’re not the best mankind has to offer. They’re just like everyone else.

Without white privilege, the millions of mediocre white people who have secured an unearned place on top of the racial hierarchy will be revealed as the nobodies they’ve always been. That future is unacceptable, and they would rather end human civilization than let it come to pass.

Williams is just another in a loooong line of trash looking to provide cover for the right’s racism. This entire article is an extended exercise in bothsiderism. Sure, the white racists are going too far but really, whose fault is that? If minorities hadn’t made racist white people so mad by demanding equal rights special privileges, none of this would be happening.

Because if everyone is guilty, then no one is guilty. And if no one is guilty, then we never EVER have to hold racist white people accountable for what they’re doing. Best to just go back to the way things were and stop all this silly identity politics stuff. Sure, that would benefit white people the most, but let’s not quibble about the details, people!

Always pay attention to the people who tell you not to talk about race and gender and class. Those are the people most invested in keeping systems of injustice in place, and they are always the ones who benefit the most from them. Push the lies aside and push back even harder. If they weren’t scared of us, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to take away our voice.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

🖕FUCK RACISM!🖕

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There are 146 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.

Jerry Cayford at Three Quarks Daily has written a piece responding to the near-farcical “jungle primary” in California where it appeared possible at one point that both of the candidates making it through to the general election might be Republicans. The proposed response is to allow the top five candidates through to the general election, which would be run under Ranked Choice Voting.

Here’s the conclusion:

Final Five Voting emerges as the single most powerful way to address political dysfunction, “the root cause of the decades-long inability of our government to make progress on America’s most pressing economic and social problems” (18). (Better legislative rules take a strong but secondary position.) Harvard Business School’s large-scale, multi-year project has given us, then—along with valuable information, analysis, and insight—a thesis vitally relevant to our public conversation about electoral reform: the stakes of that conversation are immeasurably higher than we usually recognize. To make this point, HBS not only documented the magnitude of America’s decline and crisis, but also spotlighted electoral reform as the very top priority in reversing our long slide. Not just easing polarization, gridlock, and other narrowly “political” problems. Not just making California’s elections sensible. Breaking the politics industry’s self-serving duopoly is how we address everything else as well. 

Do you want to repair crumbling roads and bridges, lower infant mortality rate, or fix K-12 education? The single most effective remedy is “nonpartisan top-five primaries and ranked choice voting in general elections.” Are you trying to improve health care, life expectancy, or public transportation? Your method is “Final Five Voting.” The powerful message of HBS’s U.S. Competitiveness Project is that electoral reform is our main tool to end dysfunctional politics, strengthen U.S. competitiveness, and stop America’s decline. Want paid leave and walkable cities? Or—updating from 2019 to today—do you seek to compete with China on anything at all, unwind predatory monopolies, or develop more useful, less dangerous artificial intelligence? All of it. The basic aspects of a civilized life. The answer is the same. Put your effort into nonpartisan top-five primaries and ranked choice voting in general elections, aka Final Five Voting.

On Thursday, Trump added yet another massive construction project no one wanted to his list of shit no one asked for. This time, he wants to build the “Trump Promenade,” which he totally didn’t pick the name for. It would be a walkway connecting the Lincoln Memorial to the Potomac. Just another huge waste of money for him to put his name on in tacky gold lettering.

Via CNN:

Trump said the project would revive what he described as the memorial’s original intended design.

“The Lincoln Memorial — the front was supposed to be the back. The back was supposed to be the front. It never got built, because they built two roadways behind it after it was built, and it shut off the gateway to the water,” he said.

“That was really going to be the main entry, and we’re going to be doing that,” the president said, adding that “we have a way of beautifully going over those two roads.”

Like his plans to add his name to the Kennedy Center, this isn’t going to work out, either. But good luck in your desperate quest to steal some of the glory of better presidents (and men) by co-opting their national monuments for yourself, you bloated fascist pile of pigshit.

Substack has been slowly choking off traffic to smaller newsletters like this for more than a year. If you appreciate the stories I tell and the voice I tell them in, please become a contributing subscriber and push back on corporate censorship. We need all of the independent media we can get before the only news we’re allowed to consume is what is allowed by a fascist regime controlled by billionaires. For just $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!), you can help fight back against Substack’s censorship. Thank you for reading and keeping this newsletter going.

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Personally, I’m thrilled that Trump is putting all of his time and energy into self-glorification. The entire country is watching a dying toddler scream, “ME! ME! ME!” at the top of his lungs while they look around and see a country in a dire financial situation.

It doesn’t matter how hard the press is working to ignore the wheels falling off the economy; everyone can see it. Everyone can feel it. Something is dangerously wrong and getting worse. And where is our leader elected to keep it from all falling apart? Playing with Legos in the Oval Office, demanding more worship and praise.

Meanwhile, credit card debt has reached an all-time high of $1.39 trillion (with a “T”), burying the average American in debt. Worse, unlike the last time this happened, these are cards with high interest rates, meaning it will take years, if ever, to pay them off.

At the same time, people are starting to default on their mortgages. People are starting to default on their subprime auto loans. If that word “subprime” caught your attention, it should. Those are the types of predatory loans banks used to make billions before the crash of 2008-2009. Laws were passed to prevent banks from offering subprime home loans. No one said they couldn’t offer predatory car loans. So here we are, looking at another banking bubble. Fun!

Student loan delinquency is rising as well, and the regime is abusing its power to put liens on borrowers’ paychecks. Surely this will contribute to the economic well-being of the nation.1

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Trump, Republicans, and the press will, of course, point to the nation’s ok (not great, but ok) job growth and the stock market to claim everything is just fine. They will point to the GDP and say everything is great. They will ignore the fact that the AI bubble is the only thing keeping us out of a recession on paper and keeping the stock market from collapsing. But the hundreds of billions Silicon Valley is spending on data centers doesn’t, ahem, trickle down to the rest of the economy. It doesn’t even really produce any jobs. When that bubble pops, the collapse will be fast and hard.

Trump’s oil shock will be here within a month or so, and the strain on the economy will reach a breaking point. The recession the press has been pretending doesn’t exist will be undeniable. And where will Trump be? What will he be doing? Still obsessing over his fucking ballroom and fucking arch and now his fucking “promenade” and whatever other stupid shit someone tells him he can slap his name on to convince everyone that he was the Greatest President To Ever Live.™

Trump will fiddle while Rome burns, and the entire country will see it. Millions of families living on the edge will be pushed into poverty. Those already in poverty will find themselves begging just to survive. While that’s happening, Trump will be bragging about the size of his swimming pool, and Republicans will be smiling and nodding their heads because there is nothing else those fucking cowards can do when the Mad King orders them to praise him for his cleverness and wisdom.

Republican voters will be disgusted and stay home. Independent voters will swing even further to the left than they have so far. Democratic voters, already highly motivated, will turn out in even larger numbers. The midterm wipeout will become an apocalypse.

Trump’s entire plan to steal the midterms depends on close elections he can take to court and have corrupt judges overturn. They have to be close, otherwise the public will not accept it. Throwing out 10,000 “illegal votes” is plausible. Throwing out 500,000 in a single state is not. Like I keep pointing out, stolen elections have to be plausible. Stealing multiple Senate elections will not be plausible. Stealing enough House seats to hold on to the majority absolutely will not be plausible. Especially after Trump spends the next six months jerking himself off on TV while millions struggle just to buy groceries.

Maybe if the demented pile of rotted orange peels hadn’t surrounded himself with bootlicking toadies, someone would have the courage to tell him to stop. That he was destroying himself and his party. But Trump only wants empty-headed sycophants, so nothing will stop him from self-destructing. The downside is that he’s going to take a very large part of the country with him in the process. The best we can do is use that pain and suffering as a cudgel to beat the GOP to death and never let them inflict their brand of fascist stupidity on us again.

I write to help you cope with the fear and anger threatening to overwhelm you every day. If this newsletter gets you through these dark times, please consider becoming a contributing supporter for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

There are only 150 days until the midterms, and Trump is failing on every front. He is desperate and dying. Keep the pressure on and burn his corrupt regime to the ground. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.

There Are Ways Democrats Could Focus and Amplify Their Message

The Democrats need a designated spokesperson. President Trump can get his message of the moment covered in news and media because he is president. One person, speaking as head of the government and head of his party. One person for media to cover. One person all media know that if they cover what he’s saying they’ll get lots of hits from people checking it out. Both those who will like what he says and those who won’t.

On the other hand if, say, the candidate for governor of California, whichever one is running second in the polls, says something about what Democrats should do if they regained the House or the Senate, or both, or the presidency too in 2028, a relatively few people will check it out. Likewise if it is the governor of some middle-sized state, or the second in line on the Congressional Ways & Means Committee (ranking member of the minority party), or even the head of the Democratic organizing committee. Some people would pay attention but most would not know who these people are, or would assume they have no authority other than in their own domain, or that what they say is just their opinion and can’t be taken with confidence that that’s what Democrats would do.

It’s difficult for either party to have a focused message when they don’t have a president in their party to make statements. The only other time that works is when the presidential election is coming up and some leading contender has become the default spokesperson for the party.

So how to overcome that? Designate a spokesperson. One person designated by the party to make as much of a news splash as possible, as often as possible. Every other day if possible. Go to the border and talk about how the wall is a waste of money. Go to Minneapolis and talk about how any deportations that should happen, should happen in a just and humane way. Go to Alabama and talk about how Democrats would not have just redistricted black voters out of being able to elect their own choice. Go to some place in the middle of the country where there have been large layoffs due to AI and declare what Democrats would do to make AI help workers rather than replace them.

A caveat here. Of course, Democrats, if in power, would have to be effective at delivering on those issues, whereas generally they have not been taken as effective in those ways. Although until Trump reversed a lot of things there is a lot to be said for what Biden did on many of these issues. In any case Democrats have to first make their case, then have that lead to regaining power, then follow through. Step one could be greatly helped by a designated spokesperson.

They would have to be someone who is not running for an office anytime soon so the party is not playing favorite to someone. They would have to have some credibility like perhaps a retiring member of Congress. Dick Durbin, the retiring senator from Illinois, would be an option. Someone with the charisma to convey a message. (Durbin would be middling in that regard.)

They would have to stick to general themes. To take one issue, say the wealth tax, some elected Democrats, or ones running for office, would support that and some wouldn’t, so you can’t promote that as something Democrats agree on. But they could talk about making taxes fairer, and about making the whole economy more focused on how well the people doing the work are doing in it. There are also things that are non-negotiable. For instance, that all policies of the government should give full respect to all people, white and black and brown, gay and straight, everyone.

It would take time for such a spokesperson to be at it until the media becomes convinced this really is the voice of the party and so cover them regularly. The president will always get more coverage, but this could add up to a strong boost to an alternative message. Certainly better than the messaging happening now.

I’ve tried to talk to some Democratic leadership about this idea to get their reaction and have either gotten no expressions of support or even criticism insisting that they don’t need any messaging improvement. I’ll write more about all of that later.

So why aren’t they doing this? Why aren’t they using every means available to stir up support? Well, if you’re a Democrat or a supporter, maybe you should send this along to your Representative and ask them that.

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As the old saying goes, never in all my born days did I ever imagine that I would one day be writing an obit for 60 Minutes, the CBS News magazine every columnist this week has been calling “venerable.” The word they use to describe 60 Minutes is correct. There has never been another show like it on television, and there never will be. I was interviewed on 60 Minutes three times. It was one of the great honors of my life.

That’s the root of my sadness. The Ellisons, father and son, having bought Paramount, came into possession of the Columbia Broadcasting System, as it was originally called. It’s a painful fact that CBS started as a radio company, way back in 1927, because it was less than two weeks ago that its new owners shut down CBS radio, which had been on the air for nearly 100 years. 100 years of history! Gone! Just like that. They announced it as a “business decision,” of course – the radio division wasn’t making enough money. Eighty people lost their jobs. That’s what a “business decision” really means.

Now, in the name of right-wing ideological purity, and in deference to the urgings of the Sick Man in the White House, Ellison and son are preparing to run the CBS television network into the ground. They started, as we know, by buying the anti-woke company owned by Bari Weiss and putting her in charge of CBS News. We’ve read, Ad infinitum, that Weiss has no “broadcast experience,” as if that were a necessary qualification for the job she was given: killing CBS outright. That she has begun her disassembly of the network by going after its marquee program, 60 Minutes, is entirely unsurprising, given that Ellison’s master, the Sick Man in the White House, had sued CBS for a wholly bogus reason, revenge for what he considered “unfair” treatment by 60 Minutes. First, they settled with him for a $16 million payoff to his “library fund.” We now know, of course, that the Trump Presidential library, whenever it comes to pass, will not be an ordinary presidential library, but rather another Trump tower housing his usual grouping of crap, everything from retail space to a hotel to condos, and it will be owned by Donald Trump, meaning, unsurprisingly, that the $16 million from the Ellisons has gone straight into Trump’s pocket.

So, when 60 Minutes ended its season last week, Weiss hired Nick Bilton as the new executive producer of the program. Bilton is a British-American former tech columnist and blogger for the New York Times and Vanity Fair who is also being described as a “filmmaker” because of his involvement in producing and writing a documentary for HBO. Along with Weiss, he is also described as having no experience in broadcast television. But of course. He wasn’t hired to “broadcast” 60 Minutes, in the sense that CBS was once the Columbia Broadcasting System. He was hired to turn the program into a propaganda outlet for Ellison’s friend, the Sick Man in the White House. This will strip 60 Minutes of its prestige, audience, and profitability, which is the point. Weiss ran the CBS Evening News into the ground with her appointment of Tony Dokoupil as anchor. The program was already third in the ratings behind ABC and NBC. I don’t know how you fall further than third in a three-way contest, but somehow, that’s what Weiss has managed to do with the show that for decades led the ratings among the network evening news shows.

Everything has changed in the world of over-the-air television, now referred to as analog TV. Ratings have gone down, down, down, as people have moved to streaming platforms, many viewers now consuming entertainment and news on their phones. Every time I read a story about artificial intelligence, I may as well be reading an obituary for All Things Analog, beginning with network and cable television. Everything is going to be digital, we’re told. Artificial intelligence will know what you want to see and hear and consume before you do.

So, does that make a show like 60 Minutes, which used to be called “appointment television,” a dinosaur? Who knows? The Ellisons and their hand-puppet Bari Weiss certainly seem determined to fossilize 60 Minutes. They fired the show’s star correspondent, Scott Pelley, after he committed the crime of talking truth to power at a contentious staff meeting to introduce Bilton to the staff. Pelley told Bilton his qualifications for the job were “thin,” and noted that Weiss was utterly unqualified to run CBS News. Before that, they fired the show’s former executive producer and two correspondents. There are just three remaining on-the-air people at 60 Minutes -- Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and L. John Wertheim – and they are said to be considering whether they will stay with the program or resign, probably in advance of being fired or replaced anyway. The words “YouTube” and “TikTok” have been mentioned in reports about the direction Bilton wants to take the show, so the proverbial handwriting would seem to be on the proverbial wall. Every time anyone has attempted to “improve” serious journalism by chopping it up into bite-size pieces because of a decline in audience attention span, it has meant the death of the journalism and usually the platform on which it appeared, whether print or broadcast.

In the past, such a “fix” has at least had the aim of extending the life of the magazine or newspaper or TV news program. Not now. The aim of the Ellison-Weiss campaign with CBS is to kill it program by program and hour by hour. We’ll be told that the most profitable show on the entire network isn’t profitable anymore, so a “business decision” must be made. 60 Minutes will die a slow death, with shorter news pieces, more fluff, a more “conservative” angle on the world. Then it will collapse altogether.

I don’t think they’re trying to create Fox News Lite. Fox viewers want Fox, not 3.2 beer Fox. What I think is happening is this: The Right in this country has been trying to win the culture war for decades. Nothing they’ve tried has worked. Just look at Trump’s lineup of musical acts that were supposed to perform on the D.C. Mall this month in his “Freedom 250” celebration. That’s what passes for right wing “culture.” Failing to win the culture war, they decided to just buy it. Trump tried making himself chairman of the Kennedy Center and putting his name on it. Not even his MAGA minions would show up to support his version of the Kennedy Center, so he ordered it shut down for “renovations.” Now a federal court has ordered his name removed from the building. It is unclear what will happen to his “renovations.”

The Ellisons and Bari Weiss are doing to CBS what Trump did to the White House. 60 Minutes is the CBS east wing. They’ll tear it down and try to build a cheap, gaudy and ugly monument to Trumpism. It won’t work.

Capitalism will have the final say. The “renovations” of CBS will lose a little money at first, then a lot. The Ellisons will blame Weiss and get rid of her. They’ll get rid of Bilton and blame him for the death of 60 Minutes. Eventually, they’ll tire of the CBS red ink and try to sell it. By that time, it will be like trying to unload a Trump crypto coin on Ebay.

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