ESSAY:  THE END OF AMERICAN “CAPITALISM”

As the decisive political year 2026 begins, the source of our national angst is becoming clearer.  It’s nothing less than the collapse of American capitalism.  Our peculiar brand of extreme, unregulated, self-promotional, science- and engineering-free, over-the-top capitalism is collapsing of its own weight, not to mention its many contradictions.  The discontents and depredations of President Donald Trump’s incipient despotisms are mere symptoms of that dread disease.

Before you click out, consider this.  China, which will clearly own our new twenty-first century, is now, by far, the world’s foremost capitalist nation.  It’s a robust example of state capitalism.  There a vast array of private firms has free reign to produce things and make money, subject to strict regulation by the state in its interest.  That simple subjection to government control makes all the difference.

China’s great industrial firms are beating ours, Europe’s and even some in Japan in productivity, price and more recently quality.  They are nearly all privately owned and privately run and therefore “capitalistic” in every sense.  In this respect, they resemble the robust private firms of the postwar US.

READ THE FULL ESSAY AND SUPPORTING MATERIAL HERE.

It doesn’t have to be this way

I heard that phrase briefly, far too briefly during the last election.

I suggest that should be the main platform for the Democratic Party for the midterms and beyond.

Thom Hartmann has pointed this out often and it was my experience too. My father had a middle class job. My mother didn’t work. Yet my father was able to buy & own a house. Every 4or 5 years he would buy a new car. His health care benefits from having a union job were excellent. NEVER had to worry about hospitals or any health care costs.. A two week vacation every year. I realize that I was fortunate, but this was the experience for a hell of a lot of people in the middle class. Now that middle class is shrinking at an alarming rate. Two people working full time cannot afford what on person used to be able to afford.

A huge percentage of our population has never experienced this and has no knowledge that this actually existed in our country.

This all began to disappear with the election of Reagan and the Supreme Court allowing more and more money into election.   Billionaires didn’t always control our government.

IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY should be # 1 on the Democratic platform. We can and should not ever go back, but we should move forward with the best of what we had helping to guide us.

President Trump announced Wednesday that he is pulling National Guard troops out of Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, for now.

District judges and appeals courts have issued various rulings about the legality of the deployments. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block a lower court’s decision barring Trump’s use of the National Guard in Chicago.

“We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact,” Trump wrote in a TruthSocial post. “Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in. We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!”

Trump went on to call the Democratic leaders of the cities and states where he deployed troops “greatly incompetent.”

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This is what happens when we oppose Trump and stand up to him:  He loses and runs away.

Opposing Trump and resisting him always works.  Bargaining with him never works.  

RESIST.  OPPOSE.  DO NOT COMPLY.

President Donald Trump has spent nearly a quarter of his second term at a golf club, according to a tracking website. The 79-year-old has visited golf clubs at least 79 times since taking office on January 20, 2025, or about 22.8 percent of the presidency, according to DidTrumpGolfToday.com.

The tracker, which compiles data based on Trump’s public schedule, does not include data from December 2025.

Since returning to office, Trump’s golf club visits have cost taxpayers an estimated $110,600,000, according to the website.

The tracker based that calculation on a 2019 Government Accountability Office report on the cost of four golf trips during Trump’s first presidency. Trump’s busiest month at the golf club was August, when he spent every weekend at his golf clubs, totaling 10 days. The president also spent nine days at the golf club in both March and November, according to the tracker.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/fore-trump-spent-nearly-a-quarter-of-2025-at-his-golf-clubs/ar-AA1TpI1A

This ‘ho is the First Lady of the US.  Aren’t you proud?

I recall back in the heyday of the Tea Parties in Virginia  “Agenda 2021” was one of their big things.  While most local Tea Parties disappeared from Virginia after Obama’s last term,  their remnants picked up the “COVID vaccine will kill you” chant and added it to “Agenda 2021,” “chemtrails,” and other rightwing fever dreams.  WTF is wrong with these people?

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he expects construction of the “Triumphal Arch” he wants to build in Washington, D.C. to begin “sometime in the next two months.”

The arch is one of several building projects Trump has pushed for as the country enters into its 250th year, proposed to be constructed at the culmination of a bridge that leads from the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery. The design of models Trump has shown reporters echoes that of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France and would be designed to honor America’s military veterans.

The president’s other efforts to remake Washington, D.C. have been divisive, from the demolition of the White House’s East Wing for a ballroom to the addition of his name to the Kennedy Center, cheered by his supporters and drawing condemnation — and lawsuits — from critics.

Meanwhile – – – – 

“They joined what they joined.”

One day Trump’s attempt to establish a dictatorship in the US — supported by about 40 percent of the population – will be over and the rest of us will have to restore our democratic republic.

The question then will be how to deal with Trump’s followers. The example of Nazi Germany after WW II may be instructive.

When Trump and his dictatorship are gone, and we are faced with dealing with his supporters, remember this:

“They joined what they joined.”

Then, treat them accordingly.

Now that Trump is one year into his second term, it is clear that Trump is not the problem.  The problem — the threat to our democracy — has been 50 years in the making and that threat is the Republican Party.

I have added a new section to my Clear and Present Danger blog:  THE PEOPLE WHO ARE KILLING OUR DEMOCRACY.

This new section will feature articles, background, and facts about the individuals who are the real threat to our democracy.

The first person I will focus on is Chief Justice John Roberts whose life’s work has been to destroy the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the firmly establish the rule of wealthy white people.

Here’s a little something about Roberts.

In 2013, when Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. issued the most far-reaching Supreme Court decision on voting rights in the 21st century, he finally succeeded in gutting a civil rights law he has been fighting his entire career. For three decades, Roberts has argued that the United States has become colorblind to the point where aggressive federal intervention on behalf of voters of color is no longer necessary—and this case, Shelby County v. Holder, was the pinnacle of that crusade.

Roberts honed his views on race and voting as a clerk for Justice William Rehnquist, a man who as a court clerk himself had written a memo endorsing Plessy v. Ferguson, the “separate but equal” doctrine upholding segregated schools. On the high court, Rehnquist helped redefine opposition to civil rights laws as a commitment to color blindness, and he used this theory to undermine the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Roberts took a similar outlook in the Reagan Justice Department, where he worked after finishing his Rehnquist clerkship. Gerry Hebert, now executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, was also at the DOJ. He recalls that Roberts “had it in for the Voting Rights Act,” which Roberts thought should cover only intentional discrimination, not discriminatory results or effects of state voting regulations. But proving intentional discrimination is virtually impossible—and besides, Hebert says, judges “don’t want to find that somebody was a racist.” They’d rather focus on the discriminatory impact of a law. “I don’t think John Roberts ever got that.”

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My new blog section will be a work in progress; I’ll add to it as time goes on.  Bookmark it and come back often.