Read your Mencken: “If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”

They are trying to terrify you, on the left and right, into voting one way or the other. Corporations have taken over large and mainstream media and enthusiastically whore daily to make record amounts of money by keeping people frightened and interested.

Politics was never meant to be digested and argued over all day, every day, seven days a week. Politics are not healthy in our time if they ever were.

That is something new, mostly done by scaring people or fueling grievances. Don’t let anyone tell you that only Republicans or Democrats do it. Everyone does it; the fund-raising ads pouring into my phone and computer daily are as sad as they are disgusting.

People need to know that the debt ceiling will be passed, and neither side will permit the economic system that funds them to be destroyed. Suggesting otherwise is utterly hysterical and dishonest; every Washington reporter knows it. This time, it’s real, we are told. This time, it isn’t real, either.

I don’t fit into one mold or another and refuse to be stereotyped that way. I don’t write from the left or the right; parts of each live within me, and God help me; I still think for myself, not how other people tell me to think. That doesn’t mean I am right; it just means I write what I see and feel, not propaganda.

I’m here to say that the things we are being told to most fear are not happening and will not happen. I’m not a Pollyanna, I just won’t bow to lies and fear.

What seems like an awful mess is the nature of American Democracy. It has frequently been hateful and bigoted. Politics in America has always been built on finding new people to hate and persecute, demonize, and then passionately deny that it ever happened. Governor DeSantis believes he can erase history. He can’t.

Donald Trump will not be re-elected President. Neither will Governor DeSantis be elected President; he is merely the newest progressive boogaloo aimed at raising money and scaring the crap out of Democrats and progressives.

And both for the same reason: not enough Americans support their loopy, ridiculous policies and views. Like it or not, the country is diverse. You can’t win a national political campaign (as we learn repeatedly) with a promise to make people of different colors and persuasions disappear.

I live in Trump country, and I can tell you what the media are too busy drooling over conflict to know because they only read polls: Trump’s supporters are already abandoning him. They don’t see the point of telling pollsters about it and are eager to meet their new Messiah.

Just wait and see. The idea that he is surging and more potent than ever is so wrong it’s almost pathetic. It’s Donald Trump’s turn to be the marrow bone of American politics. The media refuse to say that their ethics are centuries old and outdated and they will lose a lot of money when Trump goes down.

DeSantis is said to bring a lot to a presidential campaign. But somewhere along the line, he left his personality at home.

As a reporter, I had the chance to interview the infamous George Wallace in Alabama; I was expecting the nasty and bigoted bugagboo of his time. He was one of the nicest and friendliest politicians I ever met. He knew how to kiss babies, charm reporters,  and work a room.

Don DeSantis is as appealing as a ceramic tea cup outside of Florida and maybe Iowa.

Nothing in our chaotic political system is new. His bullshit meter, essential for a national politician, hasn’t ever moved.

The aim of practical politics, wrote Mencken, ” is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Does this sound familiar? He wrote it more than a half-century ago.

Once in a while, a true leader like Lincoln rises and tortures us with the possibilities. But many Americans have always wanted a Trump instead – menacing us with an endless series of hobgoblins, almost all of the imaginary. Our politics in 2023 are about keeping us frightened and angry.

Social media was born to do that. He knew it.

I’m not joining that fray.

DeSantis is a caricature out of Mencken: So far, His campaign is shockingly stupid, narrow, and void of hope, promise, or compromise. What is he promising us but more hate and fear? We don’t need him for that; we can always go online.

DeSantis only speaks to one kind of person – the extremes of the far right. But the rest of us also vote. He would need our votes to win.

He is, I will say, excellent at creating hobgoblins and new people to hate. And everyone who has ever known him (this is true of Trump as well) knows he is just pretending. Our politics is about keeping people riled up, not cared for, or inspired.

His campaign against Disney is the most ridiculous political battle in modern American history, even dumber than Trump recommending drinking bleach to cure Covid-19.  Disney is one of the largest, most moved-loved, giant, and most ruthless corporations. They will eat DeSantis alive until the courts do it for them.

Bob Iger is among American history’s most suggest, shrewdest, and toughest Corporate Sharks.

He will eat Governor Santis for lunch and spit him out. But I doubt it will come to that.  Iger has more money for lawyers than DeSantis has.

This campaign is just another fake device to raise money and get people to pay attention – the fight between DeSantis and Disney will wind through the courts for years – Iger will make sure that happens – and another governor will find better things to do than torment the biggest employer in his state. This company draws 50 million visitors a year to Florida.

And DeSantis knows this is all theater for short-term gains. This is a political game of checkers. It is all allusion and posturing. Can we not go for it? His outrageous efforts to ban the teaching of race, sex, or gay and transgender life won’t stand up either—more posturing and manipulation.

Undocumented and this illegal immigrants are not overwhelming America or destroying our economy or way of life. The economy is surprisingly resilient; corporations love hiring poor people who can’t sue them but work for anything and demand little. The border problem is genuine and severe but cannot be solved by hysteria and bus treks to Martha’s Vineyard.

Governor DeSantis will not prevail in his Mussolini-style campaign to bully Disney and take over their operations to punish them for disagreeing with him. No conservative or liberal federal court in America will permit him to do that for reasons that should be obvious to anyone awake or sleeping.

The United States or Europe will not abandon Ukraine. Neither political party will embrace that or let it happen. It may be time to start thinking of how diplomacy might end the butchering of so many people—that’ snot the same thing as running away.

And there is no chance that America’s Debt Ceiling will not be raised. Really? Republican and Democratic politicians are going to cut off the hand that feeds and controls them? Corporate money. Are you kidding me.?In case it isn’t yet clear, Marjorie Talyor Greene and Matt Gatz love the money people are sending them. There is no chance they will give that up in exchange for nothing. Extremists are politicians, too, some of the best right now.

I should add that democracy in America is neither doomed nor on the table. We are raucous, diverse, and at the moment, divided country. It has happened before; it will happen again. Democracy is like that, and believe it or not,  democracy is like that. The country’s most significant danger is the takeover of Congress and the media. That threatens our democracy more than the Russians or China ever could.

America is losing its grip on being the world’s most powerful and influential nation. We will have to share. That doesn’t mean we are finished.

But more and more people in America are grasping the real story – white men of all ages struggling to keep their dominance in our world. We didn’t realize how threatened they were and how threatened they feel. It’s their last stand.

Jews, immigrants, and trans people are not the danger; most Americans have already figured that out – we have never been more diverse as a nation – and some have never accepted that and never will.

So that’s my reality check at the moment. If it changes, I will let you know. Fear is the enemy. Don’t let them do that to you. Nothing about the 2024 elections is evident now; they will be soon enough. There is no apocalypse for our country.

I am learning to think for myself. I’m learning to stay out of the fray. I won’t argue my beliefs with strangers online or strangers anywhere else.

Democracy is one of the ugliest forms of governing. It was never pretty. It is also the best one available to us at the moment.

Since politics is so polarized, elections are determined by small numbers of what the media call “moderates” and “independents,” who increasingly decide elections. They are enabled by this by social media and greedy media, both of which profit enormously from extremist rhetoric, invocations of fascism and the collapse of democracy, and the idea that “woke” conspirators, whoever they are, are seeking to transgender our children, replace whites with people of different colors, or operate vast but secret pedophile rings in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles.

Suppose you are a sane and rational person who likes to think for yourself and avoid other people’s labels; how on earth are you supposed to navigate this? Although people are always eager to label me, I am not a member of the left or the right, and I don’t see my politics as “blue” or “red,” as mind-numbing stupid a label as has ever been conceived.

I am not a political writer anymore; I live on a farm in upstate New York and mourn the utterly corporate takeover and collapse of our culture, especially of a media system that often failed but tried to make sense of our country’s civic life in a somewhat detached and rational way.

Reporters left the office to talk to people, and people who were paying attention got a rough but generally rational and truthful idea of what was happening.

This is no longer true. We are on our own.

I’m staying out of the fray but poking my nose in when something needs saying.