Thank you
I appreciate your comments.
I’ve fielded a tsunami of comments on my piece about Trump/Harris, almost all positive and appreciative. A couple of mostly respectful dissents came in and I appreciate those contrary viewpoints as well. More than twice as many people read this piece, which indicates strong interest.
I won’t have time to respond in person to every one of you. So, I’m presenting a truth telling piece from Ed Dowd who has done a personal 180 like I have, because he explains his evolved understanding much better than I did. See below.
This will be my last post before Election Day. My prayer is safety for all. There will be a result. We will have a new President. And life will go on. We will find our way. Love will find a way. It always does. (That’s a lot of “will’s, says Will)
Marianne Williamson posted a 5 minute video that provides a high level, spiritually based perspective on the election. I’m pasting it below and encourage you to watch and feel into her wise perspective. Regardless of how we may vote, her inspired message is comforting for everyone.
Thanks for sending this to me Angela. You all might want to forward to friends, like I am, to help provide a stabilizing influence when one side gets upset that they lost!
This completes my brief assignment as a political commentator. Short, maybe not so sweet, but necessary to my own ongoing process and apparently of value to some readers. Post election, I’ll be returning to the high ground where Marianne lives, which is more my natural habitat.
See you on the flip side, where everything is going to look, feel, and be very different!
Now, here’s the truth telling piece from Ed Dowd. Enjoy.
“Like many others, including J.D. Vance, I’m very much on record in warning about Donald Trump from 2015 onward, including articles and an entire book (which is still valuable) on the rightest version of collectivism.
As we approach election day, my opinions have undergone a shift, particular in the last three years watching as Biden/Harris marshaled a massive ruling class propaganda and compulsion machine to push everything I oppose the most: state consolidation, corporatism, censorship, inflationism, central planning, and compulsory injections of experimental medical products.
It all seems surreal to me. I think back to what worried me the most about Trump: demagogic nationalism, nativistic protectionism, executive centralization, and the leadership cult. Features of his last term confirmed my worst fears, particularly his green lighting of lockdowns for Covid and disregard for religious and personal freedom in the period. He also has a terrible record on spending, mitigated in part by solid efforts toward deregulation and higher quality picks on the bench.
To my amazement, when Trump realized he was wrong on Covid controls and began to argue for opening up again, he was denounced by the whole of the political opposition! Then once he was out of office, everything became vastly worse, including mask mandates, forced closures, and finally the unconscionable forced shots that have no only killed and wounded many but demoralized and subjugated the population in ways that can only be compared with wartime conscription.
As regards Trump himself, what we’ve seen emerge since then is a changed man in many ways, or so it seems. He has new appreciation for the wicked power of the deep state and the toxicity of lawfare of which he is a main victim. The kinds of people he has gathered around him, including RFKJr and Elon, is also encouraging.
At the same time, I’ve changed too on many topics on which I thought I had settled opinions.
On nationalism, I had never imagined the conditions in which that impulse would favor rather than oppose liberty, and amount to a form of decentralization from what is called globalism. The Covid response was largely dictated (from Feb 26, 2020) by the World Health Organization, which is mostly funded privately as a corporatist racket pushing pharmaceutical products. This is why the Covid response was the same the world over (but for three nations). Even the CDC claimed to defer.
And that’s just the start of it. It’s true for censorship and financial power too: both are global initiatives pushed by corporate elites, as we see in Europe. The treatment of Elon Musk for daring to permit speech is indicative: they really want to turn the Internet into a curated information machine controlled only by stakeholders. I’m not making this up. This is what they say!
Indeed, the problem is even deeper. There is a machine being built globally that necessarily disenfranchises voters the world over. Once they have power, democracy is at an effective end, which means that citizens no longer have any possibility of influencing the shape of the regime under which they live.
Nationalism in this case means taking back power from usurpers. (Generally speaking, as I’ve long written, whether nationalism is good or bad for liberty depends on circumstances of time and place.).
On the matter of immigration, I never imagined that I lived under a regime that would deploy the free movement of peoples as a weapon of vote manipulation and power consolidation. Voters in the UK saw it, and Murray Rothbard saw it as a possibility as early as 1993 but I couldn’t imagine it.
I was wrong. It became our reality. The liberal and broad-minded impulse to welcome strangers has been weaponized as a vote-getting scheme operated at taxpayer expense. This has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with the aspiration for a one-party state and premeditated demographic upheaval to break up opposition to state consolidation.
On matters of trade, I’m with Rand Paul in opposing tariffs as industrial protection. That said, the loss of domestic manufacturing is driven in part by a bad monetary system that broke all monetary settlement mechanisms that had smoothed trade in the 19th century and replaced it with a one-way industrial policy that came at the expense of the citizenry.
It has become clear, in addition, that the longing for a system of fiscal financing via tariffs rather than income taxes is on the table, as in the 19th century. That would certainly amount to an improvement over the current system. If that kind of nostalgia drives Trump’s tariff push, there is some basis for it and not automatically a form of what I feared the most.
The number one shift I’ve undergone in my thinking concerns the source of the real problem in the US. It is not the politicians elected by the voters as such but the permanent state structures that exist on three levels: shallow, middle, and deep. The consciousness of this is as new as it is ominous.
The deep state refers to the intelligence community which very obviously exercises massive power not only internationally but domestically as well. I’m not sure I was fully aware of that.
The middle state is the civilian bureaucracy, some 2 million strong plus 400 agencies that imagine that they are the real and permanent rulers of America.
The shallow state is the retail end of this machine: the media, the medical systems, the tech companies, and the corporate structure itself whether it controls advertising or philanthropy or banking or financial markets. The corruption is deep and wide.
There is only one way to break up this wicked cartel,: with executive, legislative, and judicial action. The Trump forces have a bead on this, in part because his last term was utterly foiled by this machinery.
We’ve never had an incoming administration so finely focused on the real problems and floating real solutions to actually save freedom in this generation from utter destruction.
Of course it might not go well: usually politics betrays us. But this much I know: we cannot endure four more years of where things are headed now. Everything we love is being lost.
Most Americans have a simple demand: we want our lives back. It’s that simple. We don’t even need to take recourse to far-flung ideological precepts to understand it. We need only draw on moral intuition and what we remember (if we can) of what normal life should be like.”
And a bonus: how to heal the divide between us. When you click below it will bring up this whole post again. Scroll to the bottom and click again, the very short video will come up, a sensible, surprisingly loving message about unification not division.
In Germany we went through this, and it didn’t end well. Seeking help from a strongman is a natural impulse from tribal times, but it is not appropriate in our complex world.
What seems to happen is that various figures in the extreme right hallucinate that Trump is their savior, while he is a rather incoherent 78-year old who has a penchant for lies and made up stuff. Christians believe that the ‘orange Jesus’ will create a theocracy, hippies think he will create a better medical system, losers think he is on their side, and men think he will bring back their dominance. Peaceniks believe he is the peace bringer. I don’t really hear this from Trump, he is into drill, baby, drill and cat eating and he loves beating up people who have lost everything. It’s the commentators who make him a savior and see something in him that he isn’t.
I asked AI for parallels between Hitler and Trump and was surprised what came out:
Yes, there are notable parallels between how Hitler and Trump garnered support, though there are also important differences in context, ideology, and outcomes. Both leaders capitalized on the sense of disenfranchisement and fear among various groups, projecting themselves as the strong, singular figures capable of addressing specific concerns. Here’s a breakdown of some of the similarities:
1. Appealing to Economic Anxiety and Job Insecurity: Trump’s rise coincided with widespread economic anxieties, especially in regions hit hard by globalization and automation. Like Hitler in post-World War I Germany, Trump positioned himself as an outsider who would shake up the status quo, promising to “bring back jobs” and revive American manufacturing. His “America First” stance resonated with those who felt left behind by economic shifts.
2. Nationalist Rhetoric and Restoration of National Pride: Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” mirrors Hitler’s appeals to restore German pride and power. Both leaders tapped into nationalist sentiments, framing their agendas as a return to a better past. This type of rhetoric appeals to groups that feel their national identity is under threat, and Trump’s portrayal of America as being in need of rescue aligns with this narrative.
3. Scapegoating and Divisive Rhetoric: Trump often blames immigrants, foreign countries, and elites for America’s challenges. Like Hitler’s focus on Jews and communists as enemies, Trump has emphasized threats from outside groups, portraying them as responsible for the struggles of “ordinary Americans.” This can create a unifying force among those who feel marginalized or fearful, with Trump cast as the one who will “take care” of these perceived threats.
4. Anti-Establishment Persona: Both Hitler and Trump portrayed themselves as outsiders to the political elite, despite both having backgrounds that connected them to powerful institutions. This stance helped them appeal to those who felt betrayed by traditional politics and wanted radical change. By framing themselves as fighters against corrupt elites, they positioned themselves as advocates for “the people.”
5. Authoritarian Leanings and “Strongman” Persona: Both figures cultivated an image of a strong, decisive leader who could bypass “ineffective” democratic processes to get things done. Trump, like Hitler, has often disparaged established democratic norms, including attacking the media and undermining trust in democratic institutions. This appeals to groups who believe that regular checks and balances are obstacles rather than safeguards.
6. Use of Media and Propaganda: While Trump didn’t control media to the extent of a dictatorship, he effectively used social media and right-wing outlets to shape narratives, amplify his message, and dismiss critical coverage as “fake news.” By creating an information loop similar to Nazi propaganda, he could reinforce loyalty among his supporters and maintain his narrative as the only true source of information.
7. Cultivation of a Heroic, Almost Mythic Image: Both figures drew on imagery of themselves as saviors or heroes who alone could protect and deliver people from the “enemies” they identified. Supporters often saw them through this mythic lens, believing that only they understood the “real” problems of the country and would courageously face them. In both cases, this following sometimes led to a sort of blind allegiance that ignored contradictory information.
The critical distinction is, of course, in the outcomes and the severity of their impacts. Hitler led Germany into a genocidal regime and a world war. Trump’s rhetoric and policies, while divisive and impactful, have not led to outcomes of such extreme devastation. Additionally, the U.S.’s democratic institutions—while under strain—have been more resilient than Weimar Germany’s fragile system.
Nonetheless, these similarities underline how populist leaders can use people’s fears, desires, and sense of disempowerment to build broad support, sometimes resulting in an environment where groups project their hopes onto a figure who might not ultimately fulfill them. For some, this kind of “hallucinated salvation” can lead to disenchantment, while for others, it deepens their loyalty, creating sharp divides that often persist even after the leader leaves the scene.
So much from AI.
Indeed, a lot of Germans believed in Hitler for decades after he had destroyed the country. The law there still doesn’t allow the spreading of lies that the right wing crazies come up with, like Holocaust denialism.
Thank you for this post and all the others too. We are each moving in our own unique ways on this together path of growing awareness and embodying higher consciousness. Your motion has continually pointed this out in very helpful ways and I feel and think (the heart/brain intelligence) that the wider and more expansive perspective and point of view that Marianne Williamson speaks about rings true. Many blessings to all of us!