“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” – Nelson Mandela.

_____

The shift in journalists’ roles is the most disheartening aspect of contemporary media. Once independent thinkers, they have become mere conduits of historically unreliable polls, restricted to echoing the left and right narratives, reliably shallow. In this modern and corporate idea of journalism, the only shades of thought that exist are red and blue. You’re invisible if you don’t align with either (like me); there is nothing for you.

I’m a big fan of H.L. Mencken (the photo above is a rare example of an independent thinker who tells us things we didn’t know). He saw all of this coming decades ago. He would love the chance to write about Donald Trump. Where is he when we need him?

“It is inaccurate to say I hate everything,” wrote Mencken. “I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office. In this world of sin and sorrow, there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”

He would, without a doubt, regret not being around to feast on the story of Donald Trump.

H.L. Mencken wrote that demagogues are inevitable in a nation where everyone can vote and that they  “are all the same. They can get away with a big lie.”

And it’s always the same one, he added:  women, black people, yellow people, radical people,  floods of immigrants are out to steal our food, money,  jobs (and now, dogs).  It’s an old story, he said, but it often works. I think those days are ending. I hope so.

“But the demagogues can’t get away with it twice,” he cautioned. People get bored. “They want a fresh lie. The demagogues are always too dumb to come up with another one.”

Whether Donald Trump’s actions will undermine our democracy is no longer a matter of debate. His presidency has already impacted our democratic institutions, a legacy that won’t be easily erased. And he isn’t even going to be President.

The current frenzy is over polls indicating a surge in Mr. Trump’s popularity in the Sun Belt. However, this ‘shocking’ revelation is hardly surprising, as the Sun Belt has been a Republican stronghold for years and was never expected to favor Kamala Harris or any Democratic candidate this year.

She doesn’t need them to win. It’s not essential, and it might not even be true. I do not follow polls or read about them; I did this morning and instantly regretted it.

Looking ahead,  JD Vance is now being groomed as the Prince of Trumpism and the air to anger and grievance. Win or lose, Donald Trump is nearing 80, and I was slow to realize that while people who define themselves as progressives find him repulsive, people who identify as Trumpists think Vance is fantastic—young, angry, bright, ready with a grievance,  and unrepentant for every mistake he makes. He is, to say the least,  “flexible” in his values and ideology.

He can turn on a dime. There is a snakish look about him.

Now a best friend of Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk, and also a friend of Nazi apologists and holocaust deniers, Vance is embracing the worst of us openly and defiantly (You remember those “good people” in a Nazi march in Virginia?).

Then there are the billionaires who are hungry to eat the whole country.

They are coming out of their caves and writing staggering checks. Doing the unthinkable and lying and being proud of both is the hallmark of the new far-right and more than one far-left politician. Mark Robinson, the North Carolina Republican candidate for governor who Trump says is the New Martin Luther King, was caught with his pants down,  proud to be the first black Nazi on his porn page.

Still, in the MAGA tradition, he is not shamed and full of remorse but is defiant and eager to continue his campaign. The media is lying, of course: just another Nazi, nothing to get excited about.

In a culture with no truth, there is also no shame. That is, sadly, Donald Trump’s real legacy.

People often ask me what will happen if Trump loses or when he dies of natural causes. The answer is simple: Nothing much. No living person or political party is strong enough to take down the federal bureaucracy, and America is much too diverse already to be taken back several hundred years. He is yesterday’s thrill.

The Republican Party no longer believes in negotiations, accepting defeat, or protecting democracy or the Constitution.  They are the “no” party. That will stay the same.

JD Vance is being groomed to carry the torch of Trumpism. His unwavering commitment to division and provocation—the two critical elements of movement leaders—is evident in his daily, often erratic battles.

There’s no need for truth or mercy; those are for the radical Marxists who want to destroy the country. Vance used to be one of them but pivoted instantly for an open gate to fame when a big spot came open.  He can be liberal. He can hate them. He can like Nazis. Works either way. Like Trump himself, he pretends to have strong values, and like Trump, it seems to work for him.

But he isn’t Trump. We have to wait and see. My guess is he will do a DeSantis, confuse the MAGA followers with the general public, and take himself too far to the edge—that’s what they all seem to do; the lust for power often replaces reason. The trap for them is to be popular with Trump and many of his followers; one has to be deeply unpopular with anyone else. There is no middle ground in Trumpism. This trap has always caught them, and Vance is next in line.

Those women with cats and no babies will not forget him. Angry politics is not very good politics in the long run.

George Washington said honor was the glue to preserving democracy, not political parties. We miss you, George. Send a signal. Come back.

There is great panic in the country about what Trump or Vance would do to our democracy; this is the mass media’s favorite hysteria topic.

But the cold truth seems much more likely to me: I have never believed for a minute that Donald Trump will be President again, and I think it even more strongly while checking in on his hate and doom campaign. Yes, many people love him, and there are just not enough of them in all the right places to pull it off.

The big story for me is the Women’s Revolution that Harris declares, which is out of reach of pollsters’ and most politicians’ interest or reflection. It has taken hold and will prevail for a long time. It is the one historical story of this election so far.

We are heading towards a leader who is both black and a woman, a profoundly significant change. That she even gets this close is a social and cultural volcano now erupting. Things will never again be the same. Terrified white men are wetting themselves at the notion women might get free.

Poor man, Trump is still talking about those cats and dogs being stolen and eaten by those flesh-eating barbaric Haitians in Ohio. Vance is delighted to join in, ever kissing the leader’s ass. It sounds like a horror movie. If they would eat puppies, what wouldn’t they eat?

Kamla is laughing out in her presidential plane—another gift to her campaign.

There is beginning to be a lot of motion within the Republican Party for picking a successor when Trump fails again.  Trump’s re-election campaign is in shambles; it seems he can’t recover from the shock of facing a young and sunny black woman instead of an 80-year-old white man with a deteriorating memory. In many ways, it was the worst scenario for him, one in which he has not only not recovered but is falling to pieces in as prominent a way as Joe Biden was.

Whatever is going on inside Harris’s head – we may never know – she is running one of the most brilliant, disciplined, and aggressive campaigns in history, certainly in the memory of anyone living today. Trump is running amok.

The most exciting issue for me is no longer when she can win – she is winning. She will win, bit by bit, voter by voter, day by day, as she has been doing for a couple of months now, a sunny, let’s stop hating each other, lavishly funded, brilliantly disciplined, yet ruthless political campaign that is getting stronger by the day. As usual, the polls will spend months wondering where they went wrong again.

We all know the drill.

There is more and more talk of a third party – Ms. Cheney suggested one last week – but that is complex and would take years. She doesn’t need to wait that long. Maybe she can break the spell on us.

When we look at the House Republicans, we see the future. No negotiating, no bi-partisanship, no accepting constitutional defeat ever, an unspoken war against minorities, black and yellow peopel, and all immigrants who can’t work in tech and then leave.

Vance is the perfect choice to replace Trump. Both lie without a blink or apology. Both love to flirt with bigots and Nazis – you know real men –  and are disgusted and horrified by independent working women. Trump is falling; Trumpism is not.

Both are good friends with billionaires who are unhappy and who have lots of money to buy legislators; they also want power.

Both Trump and Vance reject the traditional ethics of the past—never admit wrongdoing, never apologize, never accept defeat, complain and whine, be outraged but not joyous, and attack, attack, attack until you bury the opposition or sue them with billion-dollar money and biased judges.

America is a country where many citizens worry much more about their money than the honor and wisdom of their leaders.  This was the nightmare of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. The new generation of citizens is often eager to stop helping the poor and the needy—it is too expensive, and they need the money.

How does a country that has lost its honor regain it? That’s a tough one. We have to hope for another Lincoln or Mandela or a new one.

The big news is that the long and bitter conflict over how to keep women in their place is finally coming to a head. Women are making it clear that they won’t permit obstinate and bigoted men to dominate, abuse, or kill them with medieval values and laws.

They won’t sit still for their children to be gunned down in their schools because so-called macho men want lethal weapons to play with. They won’t sit quietly because other women are dying for twisted notions of medical and birth care.

Kamala Harris is talking as if she doesn’t wish to be divisive. We’ll see what that means.

As always, I don’t believe Armageddon or the ruin of the Republic is upon us. If the Democrats learn to listen to the half of the country that now hates them and who they have ignored for decades, things could get better, slowly but inevitably. I am full of hope. This has all happened before, and it will happen again.

I’m thinking of true leaders like Gandhi, Mandela, Lincoln, and even Roosevelt. They all managed to pull their countries together in ways believed impossible. I fantasize that one is coming just around the corner. Perhaps one is here. I just wanted to let you know that it can be done. It has been done.

It took a long time to get into this mess, and it will take a long time to get out. Being frightened is pointless; it accomplishes nothing and is rarely connected to truth and reality. Hand-wringing is a passion of compassionate people. Determination would be better.

Leadership matters. History tells us that healing even the deepest wounds is not impossible. I just read some books about Abraham Lincoln and, later tonight, Nelson Mandela.

See you later.

“The greatest enemy of authority is contempt; laughter is the surest way to undermine it.” — Hannah Arendt.

Think Joy.