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Articles by Robert Becker
‘You say you want a revolution’ – where’s the coalition against the relentless tyranny of this minority?
A No Kings protest in Washington, D.C. Photo: Nvss132 / CC BY 4.0 Except for Democratic Socialists, what grassroots group is pushing systemic reform, let alone law, order and Constitutionism? Federal amendments are impossible, impeachment daunting, and new civil war highly improbable. Thus, incremental reforms, like it or not, are what must stop cold the coup in process.
Will America reactivate its decency gene, closing the spigot of scorched-earth MAGA schemes?
The US Capitol at night. Photo: Diliff, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Will voters defy pestilent frauds And muzzle death-dealing demagogues? Will decent folks get what’s at stake And broadcast MAGA’s costly mistake? Hardly making ‘merica greater, MAGA Trump made ‘merica crater; Racism drives anti-foreign rage– Descent to a barbaric stone age. A failed, loser “businessman” on top Degrades ruling to agitprop. How better to serve bankruptcy Than smug, unchecked stupidity?
Trump conned by his own worst enemy: himself – and the fixated lunacy of believing his own BS
Demolition of the White House East Wing. Photo: Sizzlipedia / CC BY-SA 4.0 Except for two close national elections against weak, ill-chosen Democratic candidates, what has Trump the “public servant” ever won? No previous elections, no majority approvals ever, no escape from sexual harassment and tax fraud convictions, hardly admiration by irate ex-partners or abused vendors who’d never vote DT businessman of the year.
The best comeuppance for the first anti-American administration – perpetual exposure as the seditious Constitution-killing party
The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Photo: FEMA/Bill Koplitz, via Wikimedia Commons Once upon a time, in a fit of pique induced by punitive fates, a boastful nation contracted a terrible, internal sickness – infected by fundamentalism, racism, wishful thinking, and ignorant reductionism. Not thanks to a foreign invasion, economic disaster, global pandemic, not even a looming asteroid – just the searing contradictions of a country too big for its britches, devolving into a dangerous world leader.
The first trillionaire – no big deal?
A SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage at Landing Zone 1. Photo: SpaceX (CC0) Like slavery, massive corruption or reckless imperialism, draconian income inequality is a compound, internal cancer that corrodes democracy, vetoing both the idea and delivery of positive government actions How curious, and telling, the shocking news a month ago that one earthing boasts control over a trillion dollars hardly drew weeks of headlines! Let alone shock, awe and outrage, even demands for reform.
F is for Failure and Fascism
The U.S. Capitol. Photo: FEMA/Bill Koplitz (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) Instead, award booby prizes for dishonesty, vanity, subterfuge, theft, corruption, immorality, racism, broken promises and autocratic control manias MAGA Trump is so blatantly incapable of rational, let alone moral governance – glorifying showboating, greed and power-mongering – that its mounting, catastrophic flaws make nightly headlines.
How the Loser-in-chief sabotages the midterm – better a trumped up martyr than disaster-driven whiner
Donald Trump at a campaign rally. Photo: Artaxerxes / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Ensnared by self-made calamities, Trump betrays his own party hacks to set up an “abandonment” and “I am irreplaceable” blame game – mock fortifications against the fierce, inevitable backlash My, my, the greatest buffoon alive Is clueless how best to survive. Haranguing, bonkers and beset, “Victim” Trump makes his riskiest bet. Can Donald subvert party branding And spite co-hacks with a crash landing?
The second worst MAGA Trump calamity – more than equal to its Constitutional concussion
The US Capitol at dusk. Photo: Sven A Rajala / CC BY-SA 4.0 Remember TV’s “Truth or Consequences”? We ain’t got truth but we’re fogged in with endless smoke-screens, empty gestures, showboating and propaganda – poisons to the people. Mesmerized by stunts, the endless MAGA insurrection conflates defying reality with cruel, domination disorders fed by lying, self-deception, rule-busting and invented enemies.
‘My religion’s better than yours’ – so there!
Paolo Uccello, The Flood and the Ark afloat on the waters, fresco in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, about 1446. Photo: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Way back, the anxious bought religion – To stomach frights like circumcision. Must be higher-ups, far and wide: For how else does land from sea divide? Then comes reversal with Noah’s flood A tsunami that left rocks and mud; When earth’s reduced to inundated sea, No downer to miss a front door key.
The sadistic MAGA Trump Death Spiral twists and turns – a fierce test for democratic viability
The South Lawn of the White House. Photo: Daniel Schwen / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons This creepy cretin sucks as president – he’s not even good at being bad. Who shreds food, health, insurance, and price supports (war, gas, tariffs) from already pissed off, seriously betrayed 2024 voters? No president revels more in violent payback schemes, producing a flood of death-dealing barrages, directly and indirectly.
If winning is everything, why are hardcore MAGA still locked in—blind to gushing failures, betrayals and ambush politics?
A good friend and guest writer here, Severo Ornstein, emailed this puzzlement: It amazes me that his numbers don’t seem to be significantly falling. Too much of the public seems doggedly blind to reality. Severo’s essay explains a larger context, The MAGA Movement is Jonestown writ large, arguing “the reversion to primitivism” parallels “the rise of the MAGA movement.
What blind Lord of Misrule keeps showing he can’t avoid wrack and ruin, leans hard on dumb Big Lies, and expects different outcomes?
After “I alone can fix everything,” no propaganda from the king of unwitting irony offsets his own words: “We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say: ‘Please, please, it’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore. Mr. President.’” “We’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it.” Just replace “winning” with “losing” to precisely capture hard, cold reality with a painful thud.
Forget the DC swamp—here’s a gripping documentary about the most courageous, legendary clean water activist anywhere: Texas’ own ‘Hellcat’ Diane Wilson
Progressives often demand more from pundits than scrutiny of oligarchic exploitation—not just words but action. To all those desperate to do something—to confront and impede polluters making the earth a toxic dump site—here’s a tested, triumphant model.
Today’s bankrupt presidency is not merely economic but moral, cultural and environmental in scope
Image Credit: Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency /Getty Images A bankruptcy of the mind and body, especially with kids going to bed hungry, equals in suffering a disruptive economic fiasco. Here’s the summary of devastation from MAGA Trump in less than 18 months: a drought of middle-class jobs (especially for newbies), high, persistent inflation unabated, non-stop affordability crises and insatiable ICE stalks the land.
Losing face, losing the base, losing the midterm race—a tidal trifecta
The life-long Loser who keeps losing Ups abuse, inciting more bruising. So one fool dying to be famous— Steals the prize as world ignoramus. When idiocy fuels ignorance, Collapse frames global belligerence. When Loser stinks his ignoble name, The future fixes the family shame. The engine for this suicidal pace— MAGA converts all “wins” to disgrace; Psychopaths dying to be well known, Concoct their own demonic throne.
Two deranged blowhards walk into a bar . . . pontificate like know-it-alls . . . then get tarred and feathered
Some days enlightenment, indeed stunning revelations of tragic, laughable modern times, pop up when tracking otherwise mundane quotations. Per Meidas’ Ron Filipkowki and his June 18 daily review: JD Vance has started doing podcast interviews [to pitch] his new book on religion: “Trump is super smart. He reads a lot. He understands people at an instinctual level better than anybody I’ve ever known. He is a very, very—just from a pure IQ perspective—a very smart person.
Like the WH ballroom, MAGA Trump is in ruins, stuck in a losing streak after unprecedented domestic, judicial and overseas fiascos
Except for the favored few with enough clout to offset bullying and blackmail, recouping more in tax cuts than campaign payola, how many of us are better off now than two years ago? Who has superior health care, lower prices, affordable housing, more job opportunities and better pensions, let alone cleaner air, water and soil—or plausible responses to climate change?
Suicide is never painless—yet right-wing implosions bring positive changes
Cold-cocked at what MAGA touches dies— At last ambushed suckers agonize, Repeat fools alone trust dumber fools, Spewing toxic rot like nightmare ghouls. Knee-jerk, right wing self-sabotage Stripped clean of lying camouflage, Debasing lawful checks and balances, With wacko tantrums to hide lethal stances. If Trump were a Democratic plant, Certainly he’d never recant, And never concede blatant errors— Instead dumps more seditious terrors.
Wow! Losing the war PLUS losing the peace – the frenzy of fiascos ravage MAGA Trump ‘greatness’
Despite the tariff scourge (more inflation, less growth), immigration abuse (overt crimes, fewer workers), DOGE (erratic savings, epic cruelty), bad tax cuts (welfare for fat cats, crumbs for small fry), endless Epstein mess (cover-up maxes impact), vendettas overseas (appalling allies, undermining prestige, tourism and trade), and vile vaccine hocus pocus (less safety, less science, more fatalities), serial, contradictory failures show how predators can still win for losing.
Exposing discredited ‘alpha male’ dominance myths driving the worst toxic MAGA Trump masculinity
What the Iran disaster broadcasts, aside from “bomb, destroy and steal oil” madness, is the purest Yankee version of strutting, sadistic male violence against the latest victim of Trump’s alpha male dominance matrix. Hegseth and Trump are not just rampaging conquistadors but braggarts gleefully threatening war crimes against a country that did not attack US citizens.
The Age of Arrogant Amateurism – as ‘know-it-all’ opportunists seize power to control, not enlighten
Do you follow the booming parlor game of “who’s the dumbest, most inept MAGA Trump suck up?” Whether by citizens, professional or amateur, online commentators, the focus transcends disagreement with destructive decisions or busted, inane policies. No, the object is to overcome shock and analyze which MAGA buffoon, mirroring the rash, feckless top clown, is bought and owned impresarios of bad faith, propaganda, and non-stop lying.
Thanks, MAGA, for exposing six corrosive myths that plague America – if we survive!
To unearth light from darkness, let’s scrutinize what lasting, defective myths Trumpism has spotlighted. After all, evolved cultures differ from primitive ones by learning from destructive earthquakes, then enacting major reforms. We’re way behind on the reform front but better late than never; things can always get worse, – even lacking direct attacks, Black Swans or stray asteroids. To be “dis-illusioned” means not just disheartened but actively abandoning durable illusions.
Homer nails uncivilized, all-devouring MAGA Trump brutality - and strategic aikido to return fire
Rereading one of my favorite narratives, Homer’s The Odyssey, I discovered to my amazement how fully the Cyclops episode frames the Destroyer-in-chief. That augments a MAGA legacy that already merged the Pandora story (releasing worldwide evils) with governing like rogue Three Stooges (making mayhem the greatest MAGA export). Like Odysseus, we confront Polyphemus the Cyclops – a primal, sadistic strongman (literally a “man-mountain”) who makes Goliath look good.
What this backward country needs-reality messaging, redemptive ‘dog whistles’ and life-saving primers to regain decency and democracy
Image Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Folks once quipped, “we are what we eat,” but this best captures America today: “we are what realism we consume and what outrage erupts.” And the worm has turned. Minority enmity and hatred against the majority is an untenable strategy—with another blow against despotism visible in this weekend’s stunning, 14 pt., red district Texas Senate upset.
America at a crossroads. What if MAGA Trump bloodlust sets the stage for greater ‘state terror’ atrocities?
The loudmouth bully running the White House has never hidden his knee-jerk appetites for brutal, violent responses to those he can’t abide. That’s especially true if they’re “enemy” minorities, legal protesters, swarming critics or victims seeking judicial regress. Even one “treasonous” ex-military chieftain. Long before channeling today’s vile grievance/vengeance crusade, Trump voiced his “dump-trials, hang ‘em high” vigilante mentality. So far, only E.
How much ego-serving cataclysm must MAGA Trumpism wreak-before fierce adversaries resist?
Image credit: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana What stands out right now are two painful insights: 1) that a perverse, sadistic president can pulverize whatever he touches; and 2) worse still, that legal, cultural, political and structural stop signs are tinpot trifles. How much damage occurs before a critical mass snarls loudly enough to impede the barrage? What happens when even 70 percent+ decide MAGA Trumpism amounts not just to bad policy failures but bad faith and bad intentions?
In-Tim-I-Dation - brutality drives “domestic ICE terrorism” to shut down mass, anti-MAGA resistance
Pity the poor, shoot-first ICE onslaught, having to stomach legal, verbal protests after invading safe neighborhoods where resilient citizens defy outlaw commands. If only the law-abiding Renee Good, ambushed by masked men in unmarked vehicles, hadn’t tried to bolt from harassment, detention or worse, she’d still be alive.
Exporting MAGA Trump’s bad faith Death Trip, lashing out at defenseless foreigners as with home-grown victims
If an atrocious administration can get away with assaulting, even killing its own citizens, why not try the same gambit in Iran or Venezuela, if not Panama or Greenland? Sky’s the limit until depleting special forces – or facing refusals to obey. “Shit-hole” countries abound, and some have oil. Thus, the big puzzle: will the staggering (unreimbursed) Venezuela costs, in money and lives (for all), be less or more than Bush-Cheney travesties in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria?
What defective “moral majority” thinks rewarding might-makes-right immoralists won’t make America immoral?
Except for speed and range, little that MAGA Trumpism dumps globally should shock those alert to self-entitled, imperialist resource/land grabs, contempt for law, malignant narcissism, and the bellicose nativism that denigrates opposition, real or fabricated. In a word, Project 2025. To satisfy total control fantasies, MAGA Trump must invalidate dissenters, rights activists, immigrants, foreigners, and law-abiding citizens seized by ICE’s octopus grip.
Fed up with toxic snake pits? Find solace and timeless vistas from geology, cosmology and classics
Trapped in an asylum where the crazies double-down and escape hatches rare, who doesn’t need relief from relentless, calculated disequilibrium? What else results from a culture of chronic, manipulative lying? Meditation, drugs, alcohol, or weed have their limits as the walls close in. However uplifting to see inept spite-mongers crash and burn, we still need personal ballast against further terror tornadoes against sane, majority governance.
Will ambushed voters be so repulsed by MAGA’s war against America-systemic reform looks good?
We live in an unenlightened, badly-educated, materialistic, spoiled country vulnerable to political grifters, with DT atop the sinkhole as the crudest, marauding bully. Even vs. a hand-picked, unprimaried moderate, re-electing a certifiable, shit-disturbing, lame duck president, with nothing to lose, had to end badly.
The ‘perfect’ Equal Opportunity Oppressor - Don the Con pulls off the impossible: ‘grievances R us all’
Despite the basest pandering to his base, Trump policies are just as horrific for MAGA family life as for befuddled centrists or outraged Never Trumpers. No group, besides the 1%, is better off one year after the ultimate rip-off election ever. In fact, assets held by the top 1% of U.S. families total $52 trillion – adding a whopping $4 trillion, an 8% surge, since 2024 (the Trump billionaire dividend).
Battered Americans honor-bound to provoke odious Trumpism- exposing the full horror of “Off with their heads”
Here is truly a national watershed moment and, if not resolved, augurs worse to come. Who knows whether the six Congressional heroes designed their video – on the mandate to disobey illegal orders – to provoke idiotic, death-dealing screams from the outlaw president.
Priceless Teaching Moments From the Last Five Presidencies, Especially Today’s Craziest, Most Corrosive
The cup runneth over with lessons from blistering WH crises, almost all self-induced. Gosh, even low-information dimwits should learn from reckless mistakes – but that demands a sane learning curve. Defenders blame destiny, divinities, dastardly divisions, even serendipity to explain why so many presidents face plant by the end, cursed with bonehead decisions. Competence must have fled with the fantasy MAGA golden age.
Priceless teaching moments from the last five presidencies, especially today’s craziest, most corrosive
Defenders blame destiny, divinities, dastardly divisions, even serendipity to explain why so many presidents face plant by the end, cursed with bonehead decisions. Competence must have fled with the fantasy MAGA golden age. The “great man theory of history” – by which a dominant personality imposes his will on an age – is kaput, measured by the last 25 years of serial blunders. One wonders why we bother to elect misfits whose spiel is infinitely better than their misrule.
Voter backlash defies MAGA’s anti-reality hokum, entrapped by its own BS, rip-offs, venom & failures
Once GOP savior, Don the Con stumbles as a wildly unpopular pariah, endangering his own lackeys, party domination and malicious policies. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, says Yogi, But what if scores are all triple-bogey? How tricky to tell when frauds are toast While scheming devils still take the hindmost. Must voters wait for the nuclear flash Before spitting on MAGA balderdash? Chaos rife, cruelty reigns, laws upturned – Yet elections signal what’s crashed and burned.
The quandary of contraries in human nature - half problem-solving genius, half destroyer of worlds
Never before have privileged Americans faced such blatant, earth-shaking paradoxes and contradictions. Democratically-elected leader turns instant, untethered Dictator-in-chief. Bad news swamps good, justifiable evidence for an indictment against modern politics, indeed modernity itself. A population bomb plus climate change defiance only accelerates huge threats to whether the earth stays widely habitable. Many rightly posit democracy, not just in the US or the west, staggers.
Beware MAGA’s bad medicine driven by bad science - a PR pandemic that makes people sick
A new, underpublicized report concluded that just listening to monumentally stupid science long enough impairs faculties, physical and mental. One can get sick, and crazier, by just having your brain twisted by fables invented by desperate MAGA conspiracy machines. A busted brain assures that busted bodies will follow (bring on opiates, junk food, obesity and data denial).
The choice is now Trump vs. Jesus as a profane president rejects Christianity’s highest teaching
A lead historian on belief systems, Joseph Campbell, confirms that Jesus’ most significant if daunting breakthrough instruction was “Love thy enemy.” Not just the difficult “turn the other cheek,” but a commandment that sought to transfigure hateful violence into peace and harmony. Similarly and earlier, paramount virtues in Buddhism became compassion, non-violence and reconciliation: murderous destruction violates the foundation of one’s humanity.
Will artificial intelligence (AI) only serve billionaire dominance-or end up educating, even dispelling lies?
Every breakthrough technology arrives with complex, mixed blessings, promising Olympian leverage (and greater profits) by disrupting the usually skeptical, resistant status quo. But as the supreme Law of Unintended Consequences complicates even the Law of Magical Inventions or the Law of Human Progress via Technology, there could be positive, unexpected deliverables.
Two rogue, global criminal egomaniacs walk into a closed-door bar . . . what could go wrong?
Since the world’s two most visible, dangerous disruptors must chat now and again to align strategy, reconstructing the gist of their collusion hardly takes much imagination. The key is understanding how badly both need redemptive publicity, no mean feat since neither gives a good goddamn about anyone but himself.
Cults, cults, everywhere-raring to bash majority rule, pluralism, justice, science and rationality. Isn’t that enough?
Cancers on civilization and attack dogs on reason, pernicious cults plague history, among the most destructive menaces to humanity after war, pandemics, intolerant religion and right-wing balderdash.
Cosmic irony, cosmic con job: MAGA Trump, hatched in savage distrust of government, now explodes rage against a hateful, rights-abusing state
The engine of the inevitably stamped “Trump Era” runs on this tragic, heart-rendering irony: Trumpism seized media leverage by railing against federalism so low-information, aggrieved voters could damn something as “the enemy.” Today, seditious, incendiary barrages complete the scorched-earth demolition that, absurdly enough, confirms the original mania: government is the implacable, evil enemy.
What else but seething, punitive MAGA grievance explains its undying loyalty - absent real-world payoffs?
“I am your retribution,” blustered a sinister Trump, the self-anointed divine agent forever deflecting his historic void of meaningful campaign reform pledges. From that first elevator stunt onward, promises of retribution against overstated victimization defines Trumpism. How distinct from grounded promises, “I am your economic or job or healthcare champion”? Why worry about real pressures when smashing phony foes?
What happens when bad guys win-without direct counter-punches except defiance and litigation?
It’s vital these dark days to recall how life offers both comedic outcomes (happy endings, reconciliation of differences, evil rebuked, revitalized community values, even optimism) and tragic ends (irredeemable loss, might rules right, no happy ending, even bitter acceptance of the dark side).
When and how do reluctant Dems ‘Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war-like resistance?
If Gestapo detentions of elected Dem leaders do not trigger the emergency call to “seize the barricades,” what will? Or the brutal murder and shooting of two elected, liberal Minnesotans backing procreative rights? How about an unprovoked, unjustified, rogue bombing of a country not about to attack us? Or the unConstitutional command for combat troops to invade L.A. against massive defiance? That legal residents are kidnapped and imprisoned by nameless, faceless, merciless ICE enforcers?
When do the ‘primal, profit-driven forces of nature’-racked with buyer’s remorse-dethrone or defang MAGA Trumpism?
As the business of America, more than ever, is business, Wall Street luminaries forever rail against the quicksand Nightmare of Uncertainty.
Beyond revoking the New Deal, MAGA Trumpism reignites the Civil War, thus must defame the Constitution
When the blinkered Supreme Court handed over a free presidential pass to escape accountability, an already broken dam became a floodgate sabotaging hard-won rights and Constitutional government. After all, the Court had already endorsed campaign dependence on dark money with Citizens United, then betrayed elections by failing to stop government abuses of voter, procreative, and human rights – exactly opposite to any original judicial mission. Rolling over is not only for servile dogs.
Knowledge is not just power but what drives unrivaled U.S. prosperity - slashed on the MAGA chopping block
Compared to other populous countries, we have more than a decent life-style, at least for the upper third. Tens of affluent millions live longer (college degree = seven years more), securing better health care and freedom from toxins, enjoy comfortable, single-family homes, and boast far more disposable income for vacations, new cars, eating out, tech gadgets, games and clothes.
The MAGA Movement is Jonestown writ large
This guest piece is written by a long-term friend, keen political observer, and fellow writer (meriting his own Wikipedia page). His impressive background includes critical work as a very early computer scientist and, had he decided to follow that path, the performance skills of a concert pianist. His musical prowess was influenced by having a significant modern composer, Leo Ornstein, as his father, whose music he later edited and published online with its own website.
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