I've spent the better part of the last three years helping unwind Jan 6th after being recruited by a group of OSINT researchers who aspired to bring the people who engaged in violence that day to accountability. My area of focus has been the planners, organizers, influencers & funders who astroturfed a faux movement & went on to act as pied pipers of sorts that dark day.
You & I may be quite different when it comes to policy -- but I wanted to tell you how much I admire the principled stance you've taken at a time when our country is shy on principled stances. I'm sure it's come with a cost personally & I just wanted to say you have brought me hope when it comes to the future of the Republic. Many, many thanks !
It is good to see you are enjoying the self selected homelessness. You might want to hone your homeless skills as supporting the Biden regime could lead you to a more permanent homelessness, more financial depression and fewer opportunities for growth. Either way, good luck to you.
Possibly. But to quote Benjamin Franklin, "those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". If you decide that a sightly better economic outlook is more important than having a president who won't seek to become a tyrant...then you might want to give up the illusion that self-governance is something that you are in to.
Huh, Biden has been president for years now and personally my home value and stock portfolio have gone up quite a bit. Plenty of areas to disagree but it’s hard to take this seriously.
Welcome to political homelessness. Excluding myself, you are in good company.
I’ve often wondered if there isn’t a new model that could empower varying types of political homeless, if only at the margins. Imagine that there are 500,000 of you scattered around the country. You get together and agree on ten very modest, very concrete things and commit to vote for candidates that support them. You send that list to every candidate and score their response. You also promise to vote against anyone who makes the commitment, gets elected, fails to meet the commitment, and runs for reelection (to keep from getting cheated). At the margin, you might flip a seat or two in Congress. It might be even more effective at the state and local level, where a few hundred votes often separates the winner and runner up.
“Strengthen ethics for SCOTUS & Congress, while increasing compensation”
- On SCOTUS, I think we could reduce both parties’ fear that the other will capture the court by moving to a system when the president gets one appointment every two years, for an 18-year term, and the appointee can afterwards continue serving as a judge in a district court or court or appeals.
- On Congress, you might think about how to handle delegation of legislative authority by Congress. I’d prefer a constitutional amendment that allows Congress to appoint commissions with no executive or judicial function to pass implementing regulations. Make the members mainly appointed by the Congress itself, reflecting partisan control of each chamber (like each chamber appoints 5, typically one party gets 3 and the other 2). The President appoints a non-voting chair. Make their regulations effective some number of days into the next Congress so that voters can actually vote against a regulatory agenda.
“End state-level legislature gerrymandering”
Gerrymandering has the enormous benefit of reducing the number of elections that are close enough for fraud to affect.
“Enforce antitrust legislation”
Actually anti-trust enforcement seems unrelated to actual monopoly power, so this seems like it just hands another abusive tool to bad government.
“Pass a nation-wide data privacy law and consolidate existing regs”
The states seem to be handling this adequately. Within about 3 years, I’d expect at least 40 states to have passed general data privacy laws, mostly based on the Virginia law.
I’d also say to abolish all the labor regulations and other stuff imposed in government contracts. It just costs the taxpayer money.
“Tie federal higher ed support to controlling administrative & tuition bloat”
And maybe collect and publish lists showing how much specific degrees at specific colleges increase earning power of those who get those degrees. Between the IRS and the Department of Education, it should be possible to get a good regression.
I’d also suggest a constitutional amendment to clarify that the president’s pardon power does not permit the president to pardon himself or his direct family members.
Also, constrain higher education costs by capping the amount of student loans at the cost of whatever school is the most expensive, and not raising that cap for like 30 years (not even for inflation). Initially, that would only affect the most expensive programs, but the competitive effect would put pressure on the rest. Why pay the same for an inferior degree?
...the original cut of easy rider was supposedly over four hours long...Hopper wanted it at one point to be even longer, perhaps even uncut, just a warholian look at the road trip they filmed...the film ends with the great american dream shot dead by two assholes in a pickup truck...something about that is so poetic to this moment in our current politcal nightmare...what is the trump delusion if not the idea to regress, to repeat, to never move on or move forward...biden is no better imo and until the majority of america who doesn't votes, votes, we will never escape this hellscape we have built...head out on the highway (to hell?)...
Highway to hell is a way to mess with my Easy Rider metaphor haha. AC/DC is not the same! But seriously, thanks for your kind edits and feedback, which pushed me to new places on this one.
The thing that was and still annoying about January 6th is how it became “unspeakably offensive or absurd” to talk about how there were federal agents involved in and actively participating in the storming of the capital/
Like it would be more alarming if there WEREN’T federal agents involved!! Their entire operating purpose is to be able to successfully infiltrate potential “extremist groups.” Duhhh!!!
Adam Kirsch's account of the composer Hans Pfitzner is an interesting case of a conservative who, confronted with Weimar, unfortunately.... went too far (in contrast to Thomas Mann)
It's lonely being politically homeless. I don't love voting for Democrats but as you put it, it's the lesser of two evils. The GOP won't reform unless they have to. They need to lose a lot more if they are going to ever change course and get back to electing serious people who want to govern and face the real challenges our nation faces instead of fighting stupid culture wars.
I wonder if you’ve looked at the reasons why so many Democrats I have vowed to vote Republican for the first time even though it’s for a reprehensible character such as Trump.
Honestly looking at ALL the facts can only lead a person to see that Trump is the lesser of two evils.
I've considered it pretty deeply, as my essay suggests. I have many friends who feel the way you do, and I get it but obviously disagree. Thanks for reading my piece and considering a different POV.
This is a marginal issue compared to how many are just not voting at all. Biden had a relatively large win last time. Not Johnson '64, or even Clinton '96, but he still did about as well as Obama in 2012. The race is actually gonna be close now, and Biden's likely gonna lose on account of being nothing resembling the return to normalcy that was promised, and every bit the depraved, cynical fool his harshest critics always said he was.
But the fundamental issue of every DJT election from now on -- and he will run again every election until he dies, 22nd Amendment be damned -- is whether elections themselves are legitimate means of resolving our nation's differences. January 6th is an explicit rejection of such, and there's so much room for things to get worse that almost nobody in America, at least not of our native population, remotely appreciates the gravity of just how much worse our lives will get if we lose such a luxury. As of now, this isn't a both-sides issue. Only one side is agitating to reject the system entirely, and it's solely for the purpose of protecting a rapist and a criminal.
I wonder if you have honestly looked at the fact that Biden inherited a shit sandwich from DJT-- an America pushed literally to the brink by a thin-skinned snowflake who was simply unable to deal with being rejected by the American electorate ? People keep trying to memory hole the fact that DJT inherited a relatively strong economy from Obama in 2017 & left behind one in freefall due to his mishandling of COVID, or that he allowed half a million of us die unnecessarily from COVID because he chose to downplay it's severity in hopes it wouldn't fu*k up his re-election prospects... He was the first POTUS to run roughshod over the idea of a peaceful transfer of power, seeking instead to thwart the transition at every turn to the very end, doing things like leaving Biden landmines like the weaksauce deal w/ Taliban in Afghanistan, attempting to withdraw all US forces in Iraq, Somalia, Syria & our NATO support in Germany. Or that he blocked transition cooperation in key agencies like DOD, DHS, State Dept, NSA etc, left no plans behind re: distribution of his precious Operation Warp Speed COVID vaccine. Or that he was petty enough to send the Whitehouse staff home early on inauguration day so no one was there to greet the incoming 1st family..... Or that he , his lackeys in Congress & across RW media de-legitimized Biden's win so they could "kill Biden's admin in the crib". Yet even with all of that stacked against him, somehow Biden has passed more meaningful bipartisan legislation into law than any admin in 50+ years! While there is still work to do, his admin brought us back to normalcy after COVID & reopened schools & churches, created 15+ million jobs, revitalized American manufacturing & onshored critical supply chains via American Recovery Act, CHIPs & Science Act & the Inflation Reduction Act, passed historic investments into US infrastructure for first time in decades & passed the 1st meaningful steps to address gun violence while investing hundreds of millions of dollars in state & local law enforcement agencies w/ Safer Communities Act... He ended the twenty year war in Afghanistan (messy as it was) & had the cajones to take the political hit from it VS passing the buck to the next admin, rebuilt NATO & a worldwide coalition to help save Ukraine from Putin's aggression.... Biden's been far from perfect, w/ his biggest mistakes being allowing Israel unfettered access to American arms as they've killed tens of thousands of civilians in GAZA & being too slow to course correct on the border. ALL that said, he isn't planning to usher in Christian Nationalism , repeal the 22nd amendment or kill our democracy in his next term so I believe the majority of Americans will vote Democratic in November, not Republican.... And, just imagine where we might be now if the former guy & his friends hadn't spent the last three years lying about the 2020 election & delegitimizing Biden every chance they could?
Most disaffected Democrats are angry over Gaza. Since the only alternative is Trump, who would be worse from their perspective, they will all come home to Biden.
I have looked at a lot of polling and listened to focus groups, there are virtually no two time Biden voters who are considering voting for Trump. There are more two time Trump voters who are considering Biden or third party because of Jan 6.
I haven't because I really don't believe it's a thing-- of course, you are entitled to your opinion on this, it's the beautiful thing about our country !
A two-party system has it's problems. The USA are in a bad situation. I expect bad trouble. One thing to hope for might be, one of the old men becomes president, dies soon and has a sane vice-president.
I've spent the better part of the last three years helping unwind Jan 6th after being recruited by a group of OSINT researchers who aspired to bring the people who engaged in violence that day to accountability. My area of focus has been the planners, organizers, influencers & funders who astroturfed a faux movement & went on to act as pied pipers of sorts that dark day.
You & I may be quite different when it comes to policy -- but I wanted to tell you how much I admire the principled stance you've taken at a time when our country is shy on principled stances. I'm sure it's come with a cost personally & I just wanted to say you have brought me hope when it comes to the future of the Republic. Many, many thanks !
Thanks for your kindness and support, Jewelz. I really appreciate it.
It is good to see you are enjoying the self selected homelessness. You might want to hone your homeless skills as supporting the Biden regime could lead you to a more permanent homelessness, more financial depression and fewer opportunities for growth. Either way, good luck to you.
Thanks reading it, Steve, and nice job playing on my homelessness metaphor. ;)
Possibly. But to quote Benjamin Franklin, "those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". If you decide that a sightly better economic outlook is more important than having a president who won't seek to become a tyrant...then you might want to give up the illusion that self-governance is something that you are in to.
Huh, Biden has been president for years now and personally my home value and stock portfolio have gone up quite a bit. Plenty of areas to disagree but it’s hard to take this seriously.
I appreciate your honesty about this subject. I am sure it took a lot to come to terms with this.
Excellent article.
Thanks Jack
Welcome to political homelessness. Excluding myself, you are in good company.
I’ve often wondered if there isn’t a new model that could empower varying types of political homeless, if only at the margins. Imagine that there are 500,000 of you scattered around the country. You get together and agree on ten very modest, very concrete things and commit to vote for candidates that support them. You send that list to every candidate and score their response. You also promise to vote against anyone who makes the commitment, gets elected, fails to meet the commitment, and runs for reelection (to keep from getting cheated). At the margin, you might flip a seat or two in Congress. It might be even more effective at the state and local level, where a few hundred votes often separates the winner and runner up.
Thank you Maximum. A while ago, I wrote up an "American Reform Agenda" (originally known as the anti-fuckery agenda) which you can check out here https://docs.google.com/document/d/10K4x6I--AUzCU238OnwrYWP5jfGjc9TACb3wLAqwdWk/edit?usp=sharing
You also may find this proposal from Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner thought-provoking https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/opinion/maga-republican-party-exile.html
I'm not at the point of thinking strategically about these issues, but I may at some point take a stab at it.
On your list in the first document:
“Strengthen ethics for SCOTUS & Congress, while increasing compensation”
- On SCOTUS, I think we could reduce both parties’ fear that the other will capture the court by moving to a system when the president gets one appointment every two years, for an 18-year term, and the appointee can afterwards continue serving as a judge in a district court or court or appeals.
- On Congress, you might think about how to handle delegation of legislative authority by Congress. I’d prefer a constitutional amendment that allows Congress to appoint commissions with no executive or judicial function to pass implementing regulations. Make the members mainly appointed by the Congress itself, reflecting partisan control of each chamber (like each chamber appoints 5, typically one party gets 3 and the other 2). The President appoints a non-voting chair. Make their regulations effective some number of days into the next Congress so that voters can actually vote against a regulatory agenda.
“End state-level legislature gerrymandering”
Gerrymandering has the enormous benefit of reducing the number of elections that are close enough for fraud to affect.
“Enforce antitrust legislation”
Actually anti-trust enforcement seems unrelated to actual monopoly power, so this seems like it just hands another abusive tool to bad government.
“Pass a nation-wide data privacy law and consolidate existing regs”
The states seem to be handling this adequately. Within about 3 years, I’d expect at least 40 states to have passed general data privacy laws, mostly based on the Virginia law.
“Ban racial preferences in gov contracting & institutions receiving gov support”
I’d also say to abolish all the labor regulations and other stuff imposed in government contracts. It just costs the taxpayer money.
“Tie federal higher ed support to controlling administrative & tuition bloat”
And maybe collect and publish lists showing how much specific degrees at specific colleges increase earning power of those who get those degrees. Between the IRS and the Department of Education, it should be possible to get a good regression.
I’d also suggest a constitutional amendment to clarify that the president’s pardon power does not permit the president to pardon himself or his direct family members.
This is excellent feedback, thank you! I haven't updated it in a while. I may need to write it up in an essay at some point.
Also, constrain higher education costs by capping the amount of student loans at the cost of whatever school is the most expensive, and not raising that cap for like 30 years (not even for inflation). Initially, that would only affect the most expensive programs, but the competitive effect would put pressure on the rest. Why pay the same for an inferior degree?
This are exactly the type of thoughtful policy proposals which just may pull us back from the brink, thank U!
You are brave, honest and thoughtful ♥️ I believe S would have joined you on this ride, because he also would have known right from wrong.
❤️
Great article! Liked the iatrogenesis analogy.
Thanks Josh
...the original cut of easy rider was supposedly over four hours long...Hopper wanted it at one point to be even longer, perhaps even uncut, just a warholian look at the road trip they filmed...the film ends with the great american dream shot dead by two assholes in a pickup truck...something about that is so poetic to this moment in our current politcal nightmare...what is the trump delusion if not the idea to regress, to repeat, to never move on or move forward...biden is no better imo and until the majority of america who doesn't votes, votes, we will never escape this hellscape we have built...head out on the highway (to hell?)...
Highway to hell is a way to mess with my Easy Rider metaphor haha. AC/DC is not the same! But seriously, thanks for your kind edits and feedback, which pushed me to new places on this one.
ACDC Australian -- even more homeless and lawless...
The thing that was and still annoying about January 6th is how it became “unspeakably offensive or absurd” to talk about how there were federal agents involved in and actively participating in the storming of the capital/
Like it would be more alarming if there WEREN’T federal agents involved!! Their entire operating purpose is to be able to successfully infiltrate potential “extremist groups.” Duhhh!!!
Adam Kirsch's account of the composer Hans Pfitzner is an interesting case of a conservative who, confronted with Weimar, unfortunately.... went too far (in contrast to Thomas Mann)
https://newcriterion.com/article/pfitzners-end/
It's lonely being politically homeless. I don't love voting for Democrats but as you put it, it's the lesser of two evils. The GOP won't reform unless they have to. They need to lose a lot more if they are going to ever change course and get back to electing serious people who want to govern and face the real challenges our nation faces instead of fighting stupid culture wars.
I wonder if you’ve looked at the reasons why so many Democrats I have vowed to vote Republican for the first time even though it’s for a reprehensible character such as Trump.
Honestly looking at ALL the facts can only lead a person to see that Trump is the lesser of two evils.
I've considered it pretty deeply, as my essay suggests. I have many friends who feel the way you do, and I get it but obviously disagree. Thanks for reading my piece and considering a different POV.
This is a marginal issue compared to how many are just not voting at all. Biden had a relatively large win last time. Not Johnson '64, or even Clinton '96, but he still did about as well as Obama in 2012. The race is actually gonna be close now, and Biden's likely gonna lose on account of being nothing resembling the return to normalcy that was promised, and every bit the depraved, cynical fool his harshest critics always said he was.
But the fundamental issue of every DJT election from now on -- and he will run again every election until he dies, 22nd Amendment be damned -- is whether elections themselves are legitimate means of resolving our nation's differences. January 6th is an explicit rejection of such, and there's so much room for things to get worse that almost nobody in America, at least not of our native population, remotely appreciates the gravity of just how much worse our lives will get if we lose such a luxury. As of now, this isn't a both-sides issue. Only one side is agitating to reject the system entirely, and it's solely for the purpose of protecting a rapist and a criminal.
I wonder if you have honestly looked at the fact that Biden inherited a shit sandwich from DJT-- an America pushed literally to the brink by a thin-skinned snowflake who was simply unable to deal with being rejected by the American electorate ? People keep trying to memory hole the fact that DJT inherited a relatively strong economy from Obama in 2017 & left behind one in freefall due to his mishandling of COVID, or that he allowed half a million of us die unnecessarily from COVID because he chose to downplay it's severity in hopes it wouldn't fu*k up his re-election prospects... He was the first POTUS to run roughshod over the idea of a peaceful transfer of power, seeking instead to thwart the transition at every turn to the very end, doing things like leaving Biden landmines like the weaksauce deal w/ Taliban in Afghanistan, attempting to withdraw all US forces in Iraq, Somalia, Syria & our NATO support in Germany. Or that he blocked transition cooperation in key agencies like DOD, DHS, State Dept, NSA etc, left no plans behind re: distribution of his precious Operation Warp Speed COVID vaccine. Or that he was petty enough to send the Whitehouse staff home early on inauguration day so no one was there to greet the incoming 1st family..... Or that he , his lackeys in Congress & across RW media de-legitimized Biden's win so they could "kill Biden's admin in the crib". Yet even with all of that stacked against him, somehow Biden has passed more meaningful bipartisan legislation into law than any admin in 50+ years! While there is still work to do, his admin brought us back to normalcy after COVID & reopened schools & churches, created 15+ million jobs, revitalized American manufacturing & onshored critical supply chains via American Recovery Act, CHIPs & Science Act & the Inflation Reduction Act, passed historic investments into US infrastructure for first time in decades & passed the 1st meaningful steps to address gun violence while investing hundreds of millions of dollars in state & local law enforcement agencies w/ Safer Communities Act... He ended the twenty year war in Afghanistan (messy as it was) & had the cajones to take the political hit from it VS passing the buck to the next admin, rebuilt NATO & a worldwide coalition to help save Ukraine from Putin's aggression.... Biden's been far from perfect, w/ his biggest mistakes being allowing Israel unfettered access to American arms as they've killed tens of thousands of civilians in GAZA & being too slow to course correct on the border. ALL that said, he isn't planning to usher in Christian Nationalism , repeal the 22nd amendment or kill our democracy in his next term so I believe the majority of Americans will vote Democratic in November, not Republican.... And, just imagine where we might be now if the former guy & his friends hadn't spent the last three years lying about the 2020 election & delegitimizing Biden every chance they could?
So your answer is you have NOT looked at the reasons why so many Democrats will be voting Republican for the first time this election.
Most disaffected Democrats are angry over Gaza. Since the only alternative is Trump, who would be worse from their perspective, they will all come home to Biden.
I have looked at a lot of polling and listened to focus groups, there are virtually no two time Biden voters who are considering voting for Trump. There are more two time Trump voters who are considering Biden or third party because of Jan 6.
What is a “two time Biden voter”? 2020 was his first ever presidential election. Am I missing something?
I haven't because I really don't believe it's a thing-- of course, you are entitled to your opinion on this, it's the beautiful thing about our country !
A two-party system has it's problems. The USA are in a bad situation. I expect bad trouble. One thing to hope for might be, one of the old men becomes president, dies soon and has a sane vice-president.