Chapter 20 - The Last Mile
January 2024
I began the year in Sacramento doing a video project for Jane and Bill. We shot product videos about their featured wines for use at their retail locations. Bill was a good storyteller and the videos turned out well.
I also picked up my retail job hunting process with Costco, UPS, FedEX and PetCO now that we were through the holidays. I was hoping someone would hire me around the pro-democracy work, but if not I could make up the difference between my social security and what I needed to live with a retail job at basically minimum wage. Little did I know that the hiring process in 2024 for retail positions was working against me.
I also began following up on two contacts Mark Gerzon had given me. I had known Mark since Jennifer had been in Boulder. He had written a book that had gotten some notice and developed a documentary based on the idea of people attempting to bridge the culture war gap between red and blue affiliations by talking to each other. This view was part of the Alliance strategy that I had been a part of nearly four years, but in my view since Trump had won in 2016 this approach had become irrelevant.
Mark had once again come on like a ball of fire in 2023 to do something more for the 24 election. His idea was to push a narrative of what a “True American Patriot” was. He hired me to do some research on this narrative with the promise he had funding to do something big.
I thought the idea to flip the “American patriot” narrative from MAGA to pro-democracy had some promise based on what we were seeing in our VSD narrative analysis. We were just getting started when Mark went to a pro-democracy convention in Hollywood without me, talked to two people and decided to can the idea. As my going away prize he had given me two contacts in the Bay Area that were doing pro-democracy work that I included in the interview work I was doing for Vital Signs. The more interesting one was the a web property called “All Sides”.
All Sides had developed an algorithm that allowed them to “rate” news articles as either being conservative, independent or liberal in their perspective. They then presented the three views side by side so that in theory the user could get three points of view and decide where they stood. This type of analysis was in the same conceptual ballpark as the narrative analysis we were doing at Vital Signs with the exception they did not rate the respones. It was an attempt to cut through the noise in the news marketplace and make some sense of it all.
Normally, All Sides would have been an interesting idea, but it made one assumption that in my view was no longer true. IF the cultural conversation had still been taking place within the historical guardrails of political discourse based on a common set of facts, then there might have been something to it, but in the current MAGA environment where the “conservative” view had been distorted by lies and disinformation, the idea of comparing lies to truth was useless, even dangerous in that it appeared to normalize the lies as some version of the truth. When I talked to the CEO he seemed interested in the Vital Signs work as another filter he could offer his web visitors. He was also raising a new round of funding to expand the company. At some point he sent me to his guy that was the head of programming. That is where I began to run into the “not invented here” syndrome that I would find so prevalent in pro-democracy forces as I pushed forward in 2024.
Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that the narrative analysis we were doing at Vital Signs was the be all, end all. It was just one subjective narrative filter you could use to calculate how much our democracy was in trouble based on the stories we were telling. But it WAS different than anything else being done.
I thought “Both Sides” would be looking for something new to offer their audience as the 2024 political environment became more challenging. That turned out not to be true. The program guy wanted nothing to do with something he didn’t create. He submarined my conversation with the CEO by claiming I was trying to sell VSD services to them. This was not true. I had offered them for free. I really began to feel that the big fund raising effort he was doing to support this All Sides premise was a kind of sham. This seeming disconnect between the unprecedented challenge that was facing us in our democracy and wanting to try something new to address it would continue to raise its head as I pushed out in the Northern California pro-democracy community.
Community
As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, my considerable network in Boulder did not come back after Covid had run its course. Many of my boomer friends felt their age creeping up on them like I did and never did fully emerge after we were allowed to come out of our homes. That’s one of the reasons I had come to California. To attempt to find some new community energy that could help me with my feeling so alone and isolated.
Bruce had given me a couple of contacts with media production people he knew from the past in Sacramento. I had some initial conversations with some of them. They had some interest in acting as shooters and editors if I made more videos, so that was something. But, they also felt tired like I did in attempting to continue to dredge something up from nothing.
I also reached out to a number of pro-democracy groups I found in Sacramento. They were still mostly meeting on zoom, so there were few gatherings I could go to meet kindred spirits. One group that was made up of boomers looked promising, but after multiple attempts to connect with them I gave up. They did ask me for money however, which would also become a pattern. I even looked at Governor Newsom’s pro-democracy group. I admired his energy as a possible candidate for 2028, but again I got requests to give them money, but no pick up on what I was offering. No one seemed interested in thinking outside the box. That worried me with “the Donald” arising again.
Another thing I did was look for “storytelling” groups that were interested in exploring the power of stories to transform us. There were a couple, but in attending their gatherings I felt like I was walking into an old folks home. For whatever reason younger, more energized people were hard for me to find with my web searches OR they were just so busy with the lives (as I had been at that age) that gathering wasn’t their thing.
I did continue my interviews on the state of democracy for Vital Signs. One of those was with Barbara Wilson. She was described by my old friend Isabel Wade as the best Democratic organizer in Northern California. She immediately got excited about the video campaign I wanted to create using the VSD narrative intelligence. She claimed she had a group of rich people that she could gather to hear my pitch. I felt a glimmer of hope that I had found the opening I was looking for. I had done pitches like this in the past and they had gone well. The $100,000 I needed to support me up until the election to create and distribute the videos she said was no problem.
Barbara also got me involved with two big funding organizations that offered people with money the information they needed to pick groups to donate to. These funding organizations were very sophisticated and seemed to have methods of measuring the impact of money they raised on the election in question. That was very different from organizations like “All Sides” that could never tell you how effective their offerings were in impacting the political arena. I had also witnessed this lack of “proof” that money or time that contributors gave them actually made a difference in the group Vote Common Cause that I had done the 2022 mid-terms campaign with. We progressives like to talk about how Trumps MAGA PACs are really grifts to pay his legal bills or support his lavish lifestyle, but this “grift” also existed in my view on the progressive side as well. Even IF the intentions were better. The biggest of these frauds I found in 2024 was the group called “No Labels.”
They had started out as a grassroots effort that I looked at before in my research in 2022 concerning the potential of “independent” candidates winning elections.
I identified as an independent. I didn’t like what either party was doing to keep competitors from mounting campaigns that were not theirs. There had been some efforts in the past by billionaires like Ross Perrot to offer an alternative to the two main parties.
He actually got 19% of the vote in 1992. (no electoral votes) All that did however was hand the election to Bill Clinton because Perrot took more voters from Bush than Clinton. At the beginning of 2024 it looked like we could have another spoiler in Robert Kennedy Jr. In spite of his conspiracy theory fixation. His Kennedy name was attracting those that were unhappy with the seeming bad choice of Trump or Biden, but back to No Labels.
No Labels exploded into a group with millions of dollars in funding because of the uneasiness of rich people about the choice between Trump and Biden. I sat in on their big zoom calls to hear the pitch. They claimed that independent voters now made up the biggest voters group in America. IF they could be organized as a third force, they might have a chance to impact the 2024 election. What started to smell to me was they were receiving big donations from MAGA billionaires. The only thing I could figure out about why this was is that they thought this “No Labels” “bi-partisan” ticket would take more votes away from Biden than Trump.
The only issue I had with No Labels was that their claims of legitimacy were based on a very flawed reading of voter preferences. While it was true that independent voters were the largest group in 2024, most of them actually “leaned” either left or right. There were very few that were interested in something truly independent according to the research.
No Labels made big claims that they would attract major political figures like Joe Manchin, but in the end, they took in all that money and then announced they couldn’t get anyone significant to be their candidates. I was on the call when this was revealed. Their CEO joined the call briefly and said it had been a great journey but now it was over... thanks for playing. It didn’t mean however that the organization wasn’t going to continue with their big payroll. A grift by any other name.
No One Above the Law?
The news from the courts and Justice System at the beginning of the year continued to suggest that Trump was being treated with kid gloves concerning his 85 felony count indictments. Supposedly, America was founded on the premise that no one was above the law, even ex-presidents, but for years individuals with money (including Trump) had “bought” a different, privileged kind of justice. They could tie up cases with endless appeals and extend trials until they were no longer relevant anymore. Their high powered, well paid attorneys “played” the weaknesses in the system.
In addition, Trump attempted to publicly intimidate judges, jurors and witnesses by calling them out as politically motivated. His buddies at Fox News repeated these lies to millions. He extended his rants to include their families as well. When his followers discovered their home addresses, the threats (including on their lives) increased. The justice system did not seem to know how to deal with this harassment. They kept warning Trump that if he continued they would issue “gag” orders, but those didn’t seem to slow Trump and his allies down very much. He just got other people to repeat his rants including prominent MAGA members of Congress.
If you and I had threatened witnesses, judges and jurors like Trump did, we would have been sent to jail. Yet, the courts, apparently not wanting to appear politically biased, let him mostly continue his attacks no matter who it endangered. It got so bad that judges in the first cases to come to court tried to protect the names of the jurors and witnesses, but some still got out. Jurors asked to be excused, not wanting MAGA true believers to leap into their lives. In some cases, individuals and families had to move to reduce the dangers. Yet, Trump continued on.
In order to distract from Trumps legal troubles, his allies in the House convened “impeachment” hearings against President Biden without a single shred of evidence. All this activity was designed to play to Trumps base and distract from Trumps crimes. What impact these antics would have on his trials moving forward before the election was unclear at this point.
Lets Make a Deal
Trump had always been described as “transactional.” He made his decisions based on what he was getting out of it, even if that meant hurting the American people. This had included his first impeachment when he attempted to strong arm the Ukrainian government into creating dirt on Joe Biden and his family by withholding military aid approved by Congress.
There were also all kinds of other rumors about money he was receiving illegally from foreign governments while he was President. At the turn of the year it was revealed that China had given him millions through his various businesses even as he painted them as the evil empire. Any one of these “transactions” would have doomed anyone else’s career, but there were so many of them, the justice department and the media had trouble keeping track of them. And the public got tired of hearing about them day after day. For the most part, he got away with these “donations” and “gifts” while he was president.
Culture Wars
As we headed into the election year of 2024 the country seemed more “polarized” than ever. Trump’s operational plan to set Americans against each other seemed to be succeeding. There had always been extreme conspiracy theories hanging out on the edge of the cultural conversation, but what had changed was that social media platforms like Meta (Facebook) Twitter and Tik Tok (owned by a Chinese government company) picked up these lies and disinformation and brought them into the mainstream conversation as part of their business plans.
For years it was recognized that people paid more attention to news when they covered scandals, violent behavior or tragic events. The old broadcast television news adage of “if it bleeds it leads” was now pumped up on steroids by the reach of the social media platforms. Millions now saw these “stories” whether they were true or not. And the platforms adjusted their algorithms concerning what got published and promoted to create conflict that would draw audiences.
Even a Davos Survey from the infamous organization of billionaires warned the biggest threat to global security was the disinformation and lies driven by AI algorithms on social media news platforms. The MAGA game plan was to sow as much confusion and chaos in the campaign that normal citizens would have trouble figuring out what was happening. In all the smoke from these fabricated narratives, the rich and powerful corporations like Google, Amazon, Meta and Twitter got away with anything while they majorly impacted America’s cultural conversation. In all the attempted discussions in Congress about how these platforms should reduce the lies and disinformation they published, not once did anyone suggest that to really do this, the platforms would have to change their business plans. They made money off the chaos and influenced enough people in Congress to keep the grift going.
The insanity that these billionaire monopolies were still protected from being sued for liable by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 was just one example of what was wrong.
Section 230 had been passed with great fanfare by Bill Clinton to protect fledgling internet startups from legal prosecution for what they published, It was meant to give these Internet startups a chance to develop. Whatever good intentions had created Section 230, this regulation was now crippling our social discourse. Yet, with the exception of a few brave Congress men and women, no one suggested that Section 230 should be revoked. There was simply too much money to be made by setting Americans against each other and these “fledgling” Internet startups like Google, Amazon etc now spent more money than any other industry lobbying Congress not to change the regulations. Money talks seemed to be in play… in spades.
2024 - A Banner Year for Fascism
The challenges to democracy were not just taking place in America. Around the globe western democracies were being pressured by fascist political forces as a result of immigration pressures caused by civil war, political persecution and climate change. It seemed entirely insane we had forgotten that 80 million people had been killed in World War 2 defending ourselves from fascism. Fascist roots that remained after the war were arising again as a political cancer even in countries that had been devastated by fascism in the past. The old adage After defeat... shadow takes a different form and attempts to rise again came to mind. In 2024 more than 4 billion people worldwide were eligible to vote in an election. Would democracy continue to maintain its influence or was the world slipping towards something darker… again.
When you listen to such provocative fascist voices in America or in other countries around the world, they use the same language and cultural memes as the Nazis did leading up to WWII. No one seemed to remember what the result had been that time around as that war “generation” was mostly dead.
Historically, this rise of authoritarian forces about every 70-80 years was not new. It seemed the lessons of the past were forgotten and these dark voices given credence again. A new generation of “leaders” proclaiming these fascist narratives, seem to have forgotten the fate of those that came before them. It would be interesting to see if we had the stomach to go through the anti-authoritarian fight all over again. Democracies are messy, slow and hard to maintain. Authoritarian forces like we see again in Russia and China are actually much more efficient at dealing with cultural challenges. They simply kill anyone who opposes them. No real elections or voting necessary.
The question at the beginning of 2024 was… were a majority of Americans willing to move out of their comfort zones to stand up to these authoritarian bullies?
Is This Our Choice?
Biden had beaten Trump in 2020 by 45,000 votes in three battleground states. True to his word, Trump never accepted his defeat so as 2024 dawned, he and his allies were still questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election while they got ready to do it all over again in 2024. While it seemed clear that Trump and Biden would be the candidates again, there were so many unknowns we were seeing based on our VSD narrative intelligence it didn’t seem like a sure thing.
Trump might be in jail convicted of any of his crimes and Biden at 82 was beginning to show his age. Being president ages even the strongest man, and Biden was showing signs he was declining. However, what were the Democrats supposed to do? No one younger would challenge Biden if he wanted to run for a second term. And the thing that was mostly forgotten was this. In 2020, Biden had not had to go out on the road to campaign in the usual stressful manner. Covid made it mandatory that he mostly did virtual campaign appearances. How would the rigors of a real road campaign impact his health.
And on the MAGA side, Trump had been indicted for fomenting an insurrection against the US government and the peaceful transfer of power among other things. If it wasn’t for few Republicans in battleground states that did the right thing, Trump and his allies could have succeeded in 2020. America seemed like it was in some sort of alternative reality show where someone with Trumps baggage would even be considered to run again. But the Republican party was no longer traditionally conservative. They had become a cult to one man. This made voters seemingly uneasy and disinterested in politics as we headed into the election year. 70% of Americans wanted different choices than Trump and Biden, yet the wheel continued to turn towards that inevitability.
How Do You Report On That?
The other big question looming in January was how the progressive media was going to report on Trumps revival. Some thought he shouldn’t be given the amount of air time he was getting, endlessly reporting on his latest threats and bizarre pronouncements. Others said the electorate needed to be reminded of just how crazy and dangerous he was if he got elected again.
At Vital Signs we were asking an even bigger question that was unprecedented. IF it looked like Trump was winning and our democracy was in trouble… how would the progressive media report on it. Would they continue to simply describe the latest dust up with no opinion on its impact on our system of governance? Certainly, Fox News continued to do it on the other side of the contest, or would they stand up and attempt to rally the majority of Americans to stop Trump from becoming president again.
Again, the issue of money and profit was in the mix. Fox News had become the largest cable news network in terms of ratings by pandering to their audience with an alternative reality stew of lies and disinformation. It was designed to support the continuance of the white, patriarchal power structure that was threatened by the multi-cultural make up of America in 2024. But CNN and MSNBC and certainly the social media platforms also understood the every time they made Trump the lead story their audience numbers went up. So, what were they to do? This would become increasingly dangerous as the year proceeded.
Some other quick hits from the January news of 2024 included:
• The MAGA majority on the Supreme Court continued to manufacture cases to consider so they could challenge long held legal precedents in their efforts to eliminate the power of the Federal government and add to the power of the rich and powerful, including them.
• Climate Change as an issue was hardly being mentioned by either party in the middle of all the cultural war chaos leading into 2024. MAGA folks decided not to be vague about it anymore and labeled Climate Change a “woke” fairytale, even as the severity of storms and loss of life continued to increase in red states.
• A bipartisan group in the Senate and the House negotiated a deal to improve southern border immigration. To get it done Democrats agreed to some stiff measures that would limit the number of people being allowed to immigrant legally. As it was about to pass Trump got on the phone with his MAGA allies in Congress and killed it. He wanted to use immigration as a major weapon against Biden in 2024. He did not want to see conditions improve. It seemed Democrats could use that against him in his run for the presidency again.
• As a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Europe and NATO were beginning to entertain the unthinkable. A Russian invasion of NATO countries in the East leading to a world wide conflict. Putin seemed that committed to restoring the former Russian empire.
February
I continued to work with Barbara Wilson on planning a “live” event in her home to pitch our Which America 24 video campaign concept to her rich friends. I visited her home to discuss how to set up the room for maximum effect and we talked about what the pitch should lead with. She also sent some of my storyboards to friends of hers. I had asked her not to. In my experience, normal people can not extrapolate what the video will be like from still images and text. Fortunately, most of the reviews came back positive with the exception of some 30 something nephew of hers who had just gotten his first producing job on the Democrats Senate campaign. He was really critical of the approach for all the wrong reasons. I seemed to put Barbara’s concern to rest but it may have played a part in what was coming next.
As we were closing in on a date for the pitch gathering, she decided we should have real sample spots to show people. To her credit she gave me $10,000 to create them. Just enough if my new production friends would work for low wages hoping the full campaign would get funded.
In the interviews I had been conducting for the VSD work I had wanted to interview students. It turned out one of my new production friends was a film and media professor at Sacramento State. Mark suggested we give his students cameras to go out on campus to interview other students about their feelings about the 24 election. Remember, Biden and Trump were still the choice at this point. The results of these impromptu interviews were really eye opening.
In addition to a general ambivalence about their election choices, some of those interviewed most revealing answers came when they were asked to describe “democracy.” Remember, the Democrats at this point were really pushing the “save our democracy” from Trump narrative.
It turned out that what was revealed in the students impromptu answers was a general lack of knowledge of how democracy was supposed to work. This was something we had picked up in our VSD research about a year prior. At that point I could not understand why more people under 40 were not more outraged concerning Trump and his allies challenging our constitutional system of checks and balances or ignoring Congressional subpoenas and Department of Justice inquiries.
When I looked into the assumption I had made as a boomer that all students in middle school get a year of “how our system works” like I did, I was shocked. Only 12 states of the 50 still required this year of instruction anymore. The interviewees could recount some of the principles of a democratic system like “everyone gets to vote” but they did not know how the system of checks and balances between the three branches of government was actually supposed to work to keep extremists on either side of the aisle in check. So, IF you didn’t know how the system was supposed to work, why would you get very excited about saving it.
Saving democracy to these students was mostly an abstract concept. Any campaign built on that story seemed like it would not impact them. And most of the early pro-democracy spots promoted Biden's accomplishments on the economy and climate. The problem with this approach was that MAGA media told an opposite story leaving the country confused about what the truth was. Biden said we had a robust, recovering economy, MAGA said it was crashing from high prices and inflation. Biden said violent crime was down nationwide. MAGA said violent crime was rampant, particularly in Democratic cities. Biden said they had stemmed the overwhelming flow of immigrants over the southern border. MAGA said thousands of immigrant killers, rapists and terrorists were pouring over an open border.
It was so easy to get lost in the weeds on these issues that I thought we needed voters to step back and first ask a question… “Which America Do You Want?” The authoritarian one offered by MAGA or a more democratic one offered by Biden Democrats. It turned out when we asked this question in a second round of interviews with students they picked democracy over MAGA darkness every time.
This was supported by the polls on any major issues like abortion rights, gun or immigration reform. 70% of Americans generally agreed women should have the right to choose, that we should impose reasonable gun regulations and ban assault weapons and set fair goals for immigration and enforce them. This 70% included moderate conservatives, independents and liberals. They still did not agree sometimes on exactly how to do it, but they choose democracy vs. oligarchy every time. I thought we could create a set of simple, sample spots that would ask this question on a variety of issues we faced in the 2024 election. We seem to have that going for us.
The Illusive Community
I also re-connected with my friend Blake Kingsbury after I got to Sacramento. He had been one of the original investors in Story Studio. The pandemic had severely altered his finances. Deals he had in place to provide him with a revenue stream to save the world disappeared with the downturn. He muddled through so by now he had somewhat recovered and was building a model community in Asheville, North Carolina. We had talked a lot about developing models of communities that could work as if they were in the future world that we wanted to live in. I thought at the time, if the VSD work cooled I might go take a look at what he was doing after the election. I was desperate to be part of something again... with people. Little did I know that Blake’s dream in Asheville would be severely impacted later in the year.
The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
My relationship with Jennifer remained tenuous. Even though she was struggling to meet her bills, she still was not insisting that Matt get a job to help her with the cost of their common living space. Even though I missed her I was glad to be out of that drama I would hear about when we talked on the phone. I still hoped that Matt and her would find their way and we could revisit what we wanted to do as an aging couple at some point.
Not Happy with Their Choice.
In February a poll came out that stated that 70% of American voters were not happy with the choice of Biden or Trump again. 70%. Unprecedented.
In spite of the news about Trump being indicted on 85+ felony counts apparently was not making any difference to his supporters, a first sign that Trumps legal problems might impact his candidacy surfaced in a new poll. This poll reported a majority of American voters said they will not choose Trump IF he was CONVICTED in any of his federal trials BEFORE the election.
This fun fact however made the assumption that any of his trials would take place before the election. So, far his strategy of delaying the trials with support from his MAGA justices on the Supreme Court put that in question. We kept hearing even the reasonable judges in these cases saying they did not want it too look like the trial would unfairly influence voters by conducting it before the election, but I thought this narrative overlooked sometime equally important. In my mind, I thought the voters had a RIGHT to know IF Trump was guilty of any of these charges before the election.
In the 1972 election the evidence that proved Nixon was guilty of the Watergate coverup was largely ignored until after the election. Nixon resigned roughly a year later but these were different times. Nixon lost his support when the evidence came out where as Trump seemed to gain even more support from his MAGA true believers though he was charged with crimes far more serious than a coverup.
MAGA Supreme Court
Sometimes the luck of the draw has a major impact on history. Certainly the fact that Trump got to choose three new Supreme Court justices was… lucky and tragic for America. For years the Republicans had made a concerted effort to get ultra right leaning judges on courts at all levels of the system.
This campaign was directed by the far right leaning Federalist Society. They not only picked “approved” judges for Trump that promised to overturn Roe v. Wade, but they backed Senator McConnell's blocking the Senate’s consideration of Obama’s last court nominee 10 months before the 2016 election.
Looking back on it, President Obama made a mistake, in my view, of not taking his effort on the road and using his celebrated charisma to shame the Senator into allowing the nomination to move forward as it should of. In hindsight, his nominee, Merrick Garland, would have made a better Supreme Court justice than the Attorney General under Biden. Garland was slow to act in charging Trump with federal crimes. Again, not wanting the Justice Department to look biased. Trumps team were attempting to use that sentiment to delay all the trials against Trump until after the election.
In another unlucky break Justice Ruth Ginsberg after a celebrated career fighting for the rights for the American people choose not retire even though she was deathly ill. She died 6 weeks before the 2020 election. McConnell had no problem rushing another MAGA justice through the Senate that close to the election. His hypocrisy was criminal and could potentially impact America for decades because of the “for life” appointments to the court.
Against the background of a 6-3 MAGA majority on the Supreme Court, the government’s case against Trump for blocking the peaceful transfer of power was now in their hands. The Trump lawyers claimed Trump had immunity from prosecution for fomenting an insurrection against the US government because these “illegal” acts were official duties of the president.
The district and appeals courts rejected this absurd argument and it was thought the Supreme Court might not take the case because it was so clear cut. Boy, were we wrong. The MAGA justices led by John Roberts not only took the case but delayed ruling on it until late in the election cycle.
When they did rule they shocked the legal community. Through some twisted legal logic, the MAGA majority claimed it was possible Trump was immune from some of his illegal actions because they “might” be seen as part of his official duties. As I write the sentence the absurdity is clear. Trump attempted to overthrow the 2020 election results as a candidate, not president. The ruling was also very vague when it was sent back to the district court to re-consider. As a result, there was no way this trial would start before the election. Trump with his friends on the court had succeeded. IF Trump was elected again, he would make these cases go away. So much for "no one is above the law."
At the same time, revelation after revelation emerged that some MAGA justices on the court were receiving large “gifts” from MAGA billionaires.
Although the founders had intended the three branches of government to keep each other in check if they got too radical, Roberts and other MAGA judges claimed no one had jurisdiction over them. That was technically not true. The Senate was supposed to be that balancing factor. But with the slim one vote margin Democrats had, all efforts to investigate justices for fraud were useless. Roberts refused a Senate request to appear before congress on these ethics matters. And again in our view, the Democrats blinked. They would whine on cable television about the abuses on the court or hold hearings, but did nothing to educate the American people concerning the danger the 6-3 MAGA majority represented to democracy in America, so they would do something about it.
Distractions.
One of the side effects of the chaos and confusion swirling in the 2024 election campaign was that we were distracted from the very real challenges that faced us no matter your political orientation. In February the global temperature report for 2023 was released and once again it showed the hottest year on record continuing an overall steep warming trend.
Addressing climate change had hardly been mentioned in the campaign or in the debates to date.
The other “red light flashing” issue was artificial intelligence. This non-human intelligence was already changing the way we worked, the methods that information was being gathered and analyzed, and allowed for the manipulation of any still image, sound file or video so that it looked or sounded authentic when it was a fake. You literally could not trust what you were seeing or hearing anymore.
The real question concerning AI that we were focused on since we started tracking its emergence, was who was going to control the access to its massive capabilities. In 2024 there was very little regulation on the books that attempted to define a “safe” development path or one that would benefit anyone but the wealthy and large corporations. Social media platforms were already using AI to better target consumers with data these platforms were still stealing from them.
Congress seemed lost. Lots of panels and testimony, but no real effort to rein in Big Tech. The big boys were deflecting any inquirey brilliantly.
IF AI was only available to those who could afford expensive access, the separation between the financial classes would further widen. Literally, a minority of the population would have access to knowledge and methods that the majority did not. Could Big Tech be trusted to use this exclusivity on behalf of all Americans. History suggested they would not.
Economically, President Biden was still not getting credit for an improving economy. He had inherited a mess from Trump and had put us back on the road to better times. However, the MAGA news ecosystem claimed every night the economy was the worst it had ever been. If this continued this was not a good thing for Bidens presidential campaign.
Lastly, military conflicts in the world continued to worsen at the beginning of the year. Israel was proceeding with their genocidal war on Palestinians and denying humanitarian aid from reaching those displaced in Gaza.
The United States continued to call for a lessening of the intensity of Israel’s attacks, but Netanyahu and his far right coalition had no reason to wind down their campaign knowing that when the war was over they would be thrown out of office by Israeli voters.
With President Biden’s numbers still very low and polls showing Trump ahead in most of the battleground states, the rest of the world was showing signs of losing trust the US would continue to support them in resisting invasions from autocratic countries like Russian and China.
Here are other headlines that were noticeable in the news landscape in the early part of 2024.
• An overwhelming majority of Americans think Biden is too old for another term.
• Supreme Court to weigh in on whether Covid misinformation is protected speech
• House votes to impeach homeland security secretary lacking any evidence of criminal activity.
• Top U.S. officials warn Congress of China's hacking powers
• Texas spent more than $148 million to bus migrants to Democratic-led cities
• Almost 5,000 people have died in U.S. gun violence so far in 2024
• More than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israeli/Hamas war
• And in tragic news… Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian resistance movement against Putin, died mysteriously in a Russian
Artic prison.
In addition, three Alabama clinics paused IVF services after the state court ruled that embryos were children. Sean Hannity and the right-wing media had claimed the ‘Biden crime family’ took millions in bribes. Now their star witness had been charged with lying to the FBI. What he submitted to them as evidence was false information given him by Russian intelligence services. Where have we heard that story before.
March
Well Being
My body had not been the same since my two operations in 2019. I had no sexual function (although I didn’t really need it given my relationship situation), I had nerve damage from the waist down that caused my legs to buckle sometimes, I had gained a lot of weight in spite of trying a major Ketto diet. I lost 10 pounds but gained it back when I resumed eating normally. It turned out it was really a reduced caloric approach that could not be maintained for anything other than short time frames. Weight loss programs including drugs at Sutter Health in Sacramento were not covered by Medi-care.
My kidneys also continued to be in a third stage of chronic disease. Fourth stage meant dialysis. And my gut and digestive system really slowed down so I had to drink a laxative tea every 7 days to clean it out. It worked but contributed to my not feeling well.
None of this was a surprise to me considering I was 76 years old, but knowing it intellectually and experiencing the fact my health and body were not going to get better was something else. I loved to move, hike, bike etc. but my body had been reduced to 1 ½ mile walks on level ground. And I felt tired a lot. I was not sure if the massive stress I was under was a factor as well. Probably. My mother had struggled through two bouts of cancer and multiple falls as a result of her deterioration, and had finally decided she’d had enough. I could understand her reasoning in making that decision much more now as I experienced my own decline.
Work
I continued to meet with folks that Barbara Wilson introduced me to. One was a young man at MVP.
He was particularly interested in getting them to use our VSD narrative analysis in their efforts. At this point I was offering our intelligence for free with the hope that if they found it valuable they might start paying me for it. I also offered our VSD narrative analysis to at least 15 other pro-democracy organizations with little pickup. I did not have a strong network of contacts that could advocate on my behalf and there was a “not invented here” syndrome that limited my possibilities.
I also got a couple of in-person interviews at Best Buy and PetSmart. Both hiring people were women in the late thirties. I thought the interviews went well. That my “experience” was seen as a plus, but both passed with no explanation. The reasons for this would become more clear later in the year.
WhichAmerica24 Campaign
The one effort that seemed to be going well at this point was my friendship with Barbara Wilson and her husband. We continued to talk about dates for their VSD fund raising event and I began looking at our latest narrative intelligence that would inform what the WA24 campaign would become. My DP was a talented film maker and a film professor at Sacramento State. Tt seemed natural to involve his students in creating the sample spots. It seemed like progress was being made. Here are examples of two of the rough spots.
News of March 2024
Judgement Delayed
One of the main questions for America since Trump had become president was… could our justice system hold law breakers accountable? Trump had been indicted on 85 felony counts. In the first part of 2024 another question emerged. Could they hold Trump accountable in a “reasonable” period of time.
For years, our justice system had gotten more complicated and slower to bring law breakers to trial. This benefited rich people like Trump who could afford legions of lawyers whose only job was to create bogus legal challenges that forced the justice system from the district level to the Supreme Court to delay trials while these appeals (with no basis) were dealt with. Trump always lost the appeals, but he was wildly successful at delaying his many anticipated days in court until after the election. So, this notion of our system holding law breakers accountable in a REASONABLE period of time revealed a severe weakness when the system was dealing with criminals like Trump.
Also in March Trumps Georgia state trial into his direct efforts to find bogus votes during the 2020 election was dealt a major blow. It was revealed that Fani Willis, the very aggressive prosecutor, had an affair with one of her lead lawyers. It had come to light during his divorce proceedings.
There was only one way our narrative analysis could read this… what the f..ck! If you are going after Trump in a very public way you better be sure you have your own house in order. Willis tried to push by it but her seeming arrogance about the matter didn’t help her. As a result the trial based on very real evidence that Trump had attempted to intervene illegally in Georgia got delayed indefinitely. It was almost as if Trump had some magic spell he cast over his accusers that would render them vulnerable.
Voter Suppression
It was reported in March the turnout gap between white and nonwhite voters in the U.S. was growing the fastest in jurisdictions that were stripped of a federal civil rights-era voting protection. In 2013, the conservative 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court led by John Roberts effectively gutted Section 5 in the Shelby County v. Holder case claiming voter protection for people of color was not needed anymore. This study showed that not to be true.
Taxes and Weddings
Two items concerning wealth disparity also emerged in March. It was reported that Tesla paid no federal income taxes for the last five years while paying executives $2.5 billion over the same time period. The company actually received $1 million in refunds.
This was ironic in that Tesla’s development as a startup had mostly been paid by Federal subsidies designed to promote EVs. The US tax system STILL favored the wealthy while leaving the middle class and poor to make up the difference.
The other tabloid news item was the coverage of the uber-wealthy wedding of the Ambani family in India. Those in attendance at the three day celebration included Bill Gates, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Ivanka Trump, as well as Indian billionaires, Bollywood stars and heads of state.
Rihanna performed her first full concert for the bridal couple since 2016, with a set list longer than what she performed at the 2023 Super Bowl. These lavish displays of wealth were not helping the culture war discussion about the existence of an wealthy elite in both parties.
Is It Short Sighted?
One of President Biden’s challenges for re-election was that certain groups in his winning 2020 coalition were questioning his achievements as President based on one issue they cared about. Whether it was the 200,000 Muslims in Michigan (a must win state) who were upset with the Biden Administration’s support of Israel attacking Gaza or young black men feeling they had no job prospects under Biden, you could certainly understand their frustrations.
The question remained however, was it short sighted in this election to get hung up on one issue and not vote for Biden. What if this meant Trump might get elected again? These two groups apparently did not understand that they would be at the top of the list of groups Trump would go after in the name of national security or curbing violent crime. They lacked a longer view of the election. They could vote for Biden and still hold him accountable for what they cared about afterwords. This one would be one to watch.
In this time frame, MAGA Republicans (and their alt right media) also spent a great deal of time questioning President Bidens age and mental state. Even the pro-democracy press made it one of their continuing stories. Again, this showed the power of narrative in play. Biden was just four years older than Trump and since at least 2016, a group of psychologists and other mental health professionals had been trying to warn the public about Donald Trump’s obvious un-wellness and pathological behavior. So, why was this story only about Biden?
A Major Re-Write
The MAGA movement also continued their attempt to rewrite what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.
They were trying to convince Americans that the attack by Trump and his fanatical supporters on the capitol was, in fact, a principled protest undertaken by virtuous patriots. Just as Trump had pardoned a bevy of his miscreant cronies on his way out of the White House, he now pledged to release those who overran and damaged the Capital that day if he was re-elected.
Does He Mean It?
Trumps social media and press conference rhetoric rose to new dangerous levels in March. Trump attacked the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan on his Truth Social platform not once, but three times. He published her name, work address and her picture even though she has nothing to do with the case.
Trump was using an old method from his past playbook of attempting to intimidate anyone and their families that were trying to hold him accountable. This harassment by his followers had included public confrontations, showing up outside the victims home and vile social media attacks. For the individuals targeted this has resulted in their lives being severely impacted.
Justice Merchan had issued “three” gag orders, each one expanding the field of protection for prosecutors and their families, and court employees. Trump continued his attacks regardless and the courts refused to put him in jail as they would have with anyone else that carried out this type of campaign of intimidation.
The Extreme Court
The Supreme Court MAGA majority had agreed to hear a bogus case brought by Christian lawyers in Texas that challenged the FDA”s approval of sending an abortion drug called Mifepristone through the mail.
While a majority of legal observers were shocked the court would take up such a superius case brought by the anti-abortion group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the conservative judges questions of the attorneys representing both sides revealed deeper concerns about what the court might do next concerning women’s health care.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito repeatedly asked counsels on both sides about the relevance of the Comstock Act. This act was a 151-year-old law which made it illegal to use carriers like the United States Postal Service to mail "obscene" materials. It had been applied to illegal drugs as well, but this case expanded those drugs to include ones that had been used for abortion. This was another attempt to limit abortion options for women.
The Comstock Act has not been enforced for years because of its outdated references to what was considered obscene in 1863. However the questions asked by the conservative justices suggested they might attempt to use the Comstock Act in later cases to effectively ban all abortion medicine from being sent through the mail.
Here are other headline narratives we were following in March 2024.
• No Labels Third Party Vows to Introduce Fresh Hell to 2024 Election
• Biden barely beats Trump on saving democracy narrative.
• Trump Vows to Free Jan. 6 ‘Hostages’ as One of His ‘First Acts’ as President
• The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election
• The United States produces more crude oil than any other country, ever.
• The Supreme Court may let Texas get away with an unconstitutional deportation law
• A subtle shift in how China talks about Taiwan suggests it could be gearing up for war
• 3 Red Sea data cables were cut as Houthis launched more attacks on shipping in the vital waterway
• Georgia lawmakers make it easier to challenge a voter’s registration
• Reddit and YouTube face a lawsuit over their role in the radicalization of the Buffalo shooter
• MAGA Republicans Have a 920-Page Plan to Make Climate Change Worse.
April
In my attempt to re-establish some sort of community in Sacramento I visited with a couple of “storytelling” groups. These groups were just beginning to have live events again after being Zoom remote through the pandemic. I was looking for people that shared my love of the stories we were telling about the now and future and their impact on what was emerging. I also hoped the VSD narrative analysis process would be interesting to them.
It turned out that both of these groups “live” felt like visiting an activities hour at an old folks home. I know that’s a weird thing for me to say because I am old, but I was just not ready for that pasture yet.
I also followed up with a couple of contacts Bruce gave me at UC Berkeley. My idea was to offer VSD narrative analysis to UC classes for free as a way of exploring me teaching my “Secret Stories” course. It turned out I ran into some academic bias about the importance of stories. I actually had a senior staffer at a new institute at Cal tell me they did “policy” not stories. As if “policies,” particularly if you are changing them, are not based on stories. When I was confronted with that skewed a view, my first instinct was to push back but I didn’t want to reflect on Bruce badly, so I let it go.
This ignorance about the importance of stories is shared by many. Although everything we think, feel and do is based on stories we are telling ourselves we tend not to study storytelling in this way in school. Everyone agrees we all have stories, but they don’t see the connection to how we manifest them in the world. Usually, the first place you encounter the importance of story in this way is in personal therapy. The therapist will suggest that if you want to start changing your life, you have to change your story about it.
My Medical Help
I was appreciative to get some referrals on doctors being new to Sacramento. I’d had a group of them for years in Boulder that dealt with my cancer, my kidney disease, and my beginnings of heart issues. What I first found is that anyone that sounded any good were not talking new patients. This was not unlike Boulder, but I had been a patient there for such a long time and I had met all my doctors BEFORE the became a part of big profit practices. As soon as they did this the quality of their personal care suffered. And they seemed overworked when I did see them.
This was indicative of what was happening all over the business world. Businesses in many fields were collapsing individual brands into very large corporations through mergers or takeovers. Sometimes these giant corporate entities had revenue sheets bigger than small countries. I saw this happen in the entertainment industry when bad cable companies like Comcast bought legacy studios like Universal and Fox. The result was art treated as product. It also allowed these semi-monopolies to raise prices because there was no competition. It also could hurt supply when one of the giant chicken producers had problems with contamination because there were no alternatives.
In all the dystopian films and TV series we looked at in our Story Project, the future we were most imagining was a type of corporate feudalism. Not a top down fascist or communistic system but an a loosely organized oligarchy wrapped in the American flag. Sort of what Elon Musk was advocating where the line between corrupt government and corporations was blurred.
In spite of all that I got a reference from a new friend in Sacramento to his doctor and showed up for my meet and greet. Not to make this a long story, I got charged a whole bunch of money as he spent time reviewing past history I had already given him in print documents.
In other visits he prescribed services that were not covered by Medicare. The only reason I am recounting any of this is that it is an example of what has happened to our health system. Even good doctors get lured into these “corporate” practices because they can’t compete on their own anymore. Then regardless of how good they were, their care suffers. A practice I had gone to in Boulder for years was responsible for misdiagnosing my prostate issues that almost caused some real damage on top of the cancer. I don’t know what the answer is. After a few visits I learned to rely on this new guy to review my blood tests 3 times a year. And even then sometimes it wasn’t him but a tech.
The Most Disappointing Thing
We had finished the WhichAmerica24 test video spots and I had sent them on to Barbara. In our follow up call, even though she and her husband loved the spots she told me she couldn’t host the event we had been planning anymore. She said it was because her husband had taken a turn for the worse.
I was devastated. Barbara had seemed like the one who got what I wanted to do and could help me with fundraising. I will never know for sure what the reason was, but I was back to square one when I thought I had the next year pretty much covered with something I really cared about. It was the beginning of a trend with my VSD narrative work. Lots of interest, but no one willing to fund it. If I had anything else I was curious about, I probably would have shifted gears. But for better or worse, the coming election and the threats to our democracy was the only thing that interested me.
NEWS April 1-15
As the election year heated up, there was lots of talk in pro-democracy circles concerning what Trump was promoting as being fascist. He appeared he wanted to be emperor of America much like his buddy Putin was in Russia. And he didn’t seem too concerned about the rule of law or the constitution that he had violated and was indicted for in his “stop the steal” effort following the 2020 election.
In the VSD work we set up a scale from 1-10 to rate the content of news stories. 10 being totally authoritarian language and concepts and 1 being a perfect democracy. (even though there was no such thing)
Oligarchy
Systems of governance that are a democracy or fascism are pretty easy to identify. One allows everyone to vote and be counted fairly and the other has a leader or a ruling body who is all powerful in governing citizens lives.
America had never been a true democracy. The founders were worried about giving the vote to a unschooled rabble. So, initially they only gave the vote to white landowners. Not white, black or Latino citizens or women. They also created the electoral college to further remove the final choice from the masses by winner take all electoral votes if they won the popular vote in that state. The national popular vote in modern times had always been different. The Democrats had won the national popular vote in the last 6 elections but lost the electoral vote twice.
While this may have been a prudent thing to do when the country was being founded, eventually all men and women regardless of race were given the vote. However, the electoral college was kept in place and in the turbulent times since MAGA’s emergence, it allowed a minority of voters to win an election even though the popular vote greatly favored the other candidate. MAGA realized that they could compete in the 6-7 battleground states regardless of the vote nationwide. The resulted in Trump winning the 2016 election even though Republicans had not won the popular vote since 2004.
On the other side of the political spectrum fascism is fairly easy to spot whether it is a communistic system like China or a more top down autocracy like Russia, the populace is under tight control of the state including the new AI behavioral tracking programs.
What made what America might become was hard to pick up because it wasn’t completely overt.
It had always been claimed that America was really run by a wealthy elite. This allowed for both parties to win elections, even trade the presidency back and forth, but the power structure remained the same, controlled mostly by white, patriarchal men. This activity still was going on beneath the present culture war between red and blue states in 2024. Economic disparity had been growing since the 1980’s with a small group of billionaires controlling much of the wealth. This system was kept in place by an active lobbying industry (millions of dollars) that kept the interests of large corporations in play. Lately, those corporations included big tech.
So, the term that described this loose set of arrangements between the rich and powerful was "oligarchy." I first came across the concept in a book by Sarah Chayes titled “Thieves of State.” In it she recounted her time in Afghanistan attempting to understand how the country governed itself. She identified a power structure of informal relationships between a corrupt government, religious tribes and the military that had something to say about what emerged. This was before the Taliban took over.
When an oligarchic system begins to impact a democracy, its first goal is to create a sense of distrust in the minds of the citizens about their government and the media that reports on their activities. It wants to distract citizens from paying too much attention to what they are doing. This environment of chaos and confusion was exactly what Trump and his MAGA allies like Fox News had been promoting since he emerged on the political scene in 2015. There was no longer a spirited discussion between conservatives and liberals based on a common set of facts, but at least two completely different narratives that claimed to describe what was going on.
We had seen the impact of this in the 2016 election where Trump had lied his way to the presidency. We saw it again in the aftermath of the 2020 election and Trumps subsequent insurrection move against the peaceful transfer of power that culminated in the January 6th attack on the capitol by Trump true believers. Normally, when extremes like this cross the normal guardrails, the system balances itself, but in this case the MAGA Republicans attempted to re-write history. Even though Trump was indicted with 85 federal and state felony counts, here he was again the leading presidential candidate for Republicans in 2024.
Just to put a point on this. Here are the poll numbers this month that reveal the levels of trust in the government and the media.
Only 20% of Americans say they trust the government most of the time
Only 47% of Americans have a fair amount of trust in the judicial branch
Only 32% of Americans have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence that the media reports the news in a full, fair and accurate.
Even with these numbers, Fox News Corp finished 2023 with more viewers that CNN and MSNBC combined.
This in spite of admitting they lied to their viewers about the legitimacy of President Biden’s 2020 victory. This included them having to pay a record fine of $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Machines for falsely claiming that Dominion Voting Machines changed Trump votes to Biden. We were definitely in new territory in this culture war.
The April Bomb Shell
The “conservative majority” on the Supreme Court officially became a MAGA “rogue” body that was more interested in protecting Donald Trump than holding bad actors like him accountable. April 25, 2024 would indeed be recorded as a dark day in our constitutional democracy as the court insured Trump would not be brought to trial before the election for fomenting an insurrection against America based on some “novel," twisted pretzel logic. As legal observers on both sides of the aisle noted we could now stop calling these six judges “conservative” and refer to them as they are now presenting themselves as a MAGA movement majority.
This was NOT just a problem for Biden Democrats, but true conservative Republicans as well. If a majority of Supreme Court justices could intentionally delay the trial of anyone based on political favors, we were entering a new era in our system of checks and balances. And in this case, we the people, had no remedy like we do with politicians at election time. These MAGA judges were appointed for life. AND if Trump was re-elected in 2024 he would cancel all the federal cases against him while committing more crimes without any consequences. So much for “no one is above the law.”
One Question We Had
In the middle of this sea change we wondered how the progressive media would cover our slide into MAGA oligarchy. CNN was still struggling to find some middle ground as they continued to provide a platform for MAGA disinformation to be expressed unchallenged. Even MSNBC chose to mostly focus on tabloid pieces like Trump appearing to fall asleep in court, or giving dirty looks to reporters he didn’t like.
The Supreme Court MAGA majority also signaled their support for reducing the power of Federal agencies. Observers expected they would try to undermine core functions and operations of the federal government in their campaign to return power to the states and to themselves. Ultimately, this would thwart the will of voters by usurping power from the elected branches of government and instead giving this power to unelected judges with lifetime tenure.
Other April 2024 News Headline Narratives
• Elon Musk investigated over fake news and obstruction in Brazil
• Florida Governor DeSantis Quashes Civilians’ Power to Investigate Police Misconduct
• Arizona Supreme Court ruling outlaws all abortions based on a forgotten law passed in 1864
• Mega MAGA fundraiser Leonard Leo won't comply with Senate Democrats' subpoena.
• Voters interest in 2024 election hits nearly 20-year low
• A majority of Americans now support mass deportation of illegal immigrants.
• Far-right news network retracts false claims about Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels
• TikTok will not be sold, Chinese parent tells US.
May
I continued my attempt to generate interest in Vital Signs and our WhichAmerica24 video campaign with pro-democracy groups. The pattern continued of interest but not something they would pay for or fund. They seemed to be committed to the normal things they did during election years like voter registration. There was nothing wrong with that, but I thought given the unique challenge the 2024 campaign presented we needed to be trying things that were outside the box. I was in the minority.
In my attempt to find some community in Sacramento I met Kent Lacin, a local artist/activist, who was interested in forming a discussion group of individuals who were as concerned as we were concerning the increasing threats to our democracy.
We held a number of these two hour in person salons. It helped me feel less isolated. However, a strong theme arose from our discussions. The belief that if Trump and his MAGA allies were successful in getting re-elected our “system” of checks and balances would keep them in line. Our Vital Signs narrative intelligence really questioned that perspective given the narrative tenor of the 2024 culture war. I understood it was easier to hold on to that belief than moving out of our comfort zones to do more than we had in the past. In some ways this group framed the conversation (or lack there of) that was taking place in the country.
My overall health continued to exhibit signs of decline. I felt a general weakness in my body particularly with the nerve damage in my legs. My sense of balance that for all my life had been great started to wane. I found myself having to really think about how I was moving through the world. My blood tests kept coming back about the same as they had been since my cancer, but I was experiencing the adage of old age, my body was not going to get fully better again. It would continue to decline at 76 years of age. That was sobering.
The May News Narratives
At Vital Signs we had warned that 2024 was NOT a normal election year. At the beginning of the year there were still questions if Trump and Biden would be their party nominees. But now it had happened. Biden was faltering more each day. In some ways I related to the increasing decline in his health. I knew what his halting walk meant. And Trump continued to be unhinged, although it was nothing like what he exhibited later in the year.
At Vital Signs we identified two narratives being told by Democrats as to why they were behind. One was the polls were wrong. This narrative assumed that if they just did what they normally would do like get out the vote, President Biden would win again. According to this narrative there was no way voters in the key battleground states would put Trump back in the White House with everything he and his allies were promising they would do. This narrative was resident in many voters who were not following the news or were feeling overwhelmed by all the political and cultural chaos. We got it. But what if this narrative was wrong? Were we willing to bet the results of the 2024 election on it.
The other narrative, in which we shared, was that we hoped the first story was true, but we didn’t trust that a super close election like this one wouldn’t need more creative effort from all of us who supported democracy to ensure Biden’s win. Trump won by 85,000 in three states in 2016. Biden won by 43,000 votes in 2020 in three states. The slightest thing could have tipped the results either way. That’s we were facing again with two candidates that 60% of the voters were not crazy about.
Another narrative theme we identified was the reporting on a meeting between Trump and the 500 CEO’s from the top corporations in America. He offered them everything they wanted IF they gave him a billion dollars. There was nothing subtle about Trump at this point. He could be bought or manipulated easily.
The latest example of a MAGA Supreme Court ruling challenged the FDA’s authority to allow abortion drugs like Mifepristone to be distributed through the mail. This group of MAGA lawyers claimed that the drugs were not safe, although they offered no proof.
So, the court did decide this case in favor of the FDA but not based on the facts of the case, but that this MAGA group of lawyers did not have the proper standing to bring the case in the first place. In other words they left the door open for further challenges.
The MAGA majority also hinted at how those challenges might be successful if they included references to the 1873 Comstock act that prohibited sending pornography and illegal drugs through the mail. The act had been mothballed for a hundred years because it was no longer appropriate to 21st century society, but it was still on the books. Legal experts on both sides of the aisle had originally said the court should NOT have taken up this case in the first place. So, on the surface of it, their ruling against the MAGA groups standing made sense, but it did not close the door on more attacks on abortion drugs.
The First Time
Donald Trump was convicted of all 34 counts in his attempting to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about their affair.
The charges were based on the falsification of business records that attempted to hide the illegal payoffs to Ms. Daniels. The smart money had predicted a hung jury, but the twelve jurors agreed with the prosecutors case after a very short time of deliberation. As a result, for the first time in the history of America we had a former president convicted of felony crimes while in office.
You could say that after all the hyperbole from all sides of the media ecosystem and the leadership of both parties our justice system worked. For the moment, it held Trump accountable although his sentencing was still a ways off. It was not clear if the election would be an issue in the timing of his sentencing.
The coverage of the guilty verdict at the top of the hour following the breaking news underlined where we were in terms of alternative narratives.
Fox News, as expected, called the trial Democratic Party election interference, CNN immediately focused on what could happen next instead of looking at why the jury had decided the way they did and MSNBC highlighted the high level systemic changes we might expect in our democracy because of the verdict. In our view, all this coverage included a kernel of the truth, but did not fully report on the impact of the most concerning narrative that emerged from the verdict. That involved the MAGA Republican leaderships response.
It would have been completely appropriate for MAGA Republican leaders to express their displeasure with the verdict for whatever reasons, but instead they ramped up their attacks on the legitimacy of US justice system because of it. They did not acknowledge that this case had been brought because a grand jury of ordinary citizens agreed the state had enough evidence to charge him, a jury of Trumps peers heard both sides arguments during the trial and Donald Trump had every opportunity to question the governments case including testifying himself which he did not do.
Instead, MAGA leaders echoed Trumps whining that if “they” could do this to him they could do it to anyone. This reaction highlighted one of the things at stake in the 2024 election. If enough citizens cast their votes as if they have lost faith in the US Justice System to render fair verdicts, then America was adrift in a no man’s land of MAGA’s deception.
Here is a brief summary of two of the news categories that saw increases in threat levels that contributed to the one level increase in the VSD master rating in May that I thought were worth noting.
Voting Rights and Elections
• The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the “right to vote” was not included in their state constitution. While that may be technically true, it could impact which votes were counted in that state.
• The Supreme Court allowed South Carolina to use gerrymandered voter maps that had been ruled by the appeals court as biased towards MAGA candidates. Another sign that the MAGA majority on the court seems to be attempting to tip the scales in the potential 2024 election results to Republicans every chance they get.
The Independence of Our System of Checks and Balances.
Our democracy has a system of checks and balances that is intended to keep all three branches of government from straying outside the “guardrails” on either side of the political spectrum. During May however it was revealed that Supreme Court Justice Alito flew flags at his home and summer residence that represented the insurrectionists on January 6th. When the judicial committee in the Senate attempted to get Chief Justice Roberts to explain why Alito should not recuse himself from the January 6th court cases, he flatly refused to participate. This was another example of the Supreme Court not recognizing any oversight of its activities since they achieved a 6-3 majority. A real growing danger.
In Texas, Governor Greg Abbot pardoned the man convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing a Black Lives Matter protestor in 2020. Even as the trial was taking place Abbot said that he thought the prosecution was politically motivated and would not accept a guilty verdict in spite of the evidence presented by the prosecution and ruled guilty by the jury. If you wonder what our justice system would look like if MAGA Republicans win the 2024 election, Abbots actions could be a preview.
Other News Narratives We Were Paying Attention to in May
• Supreme Court Justice Thomas took more trips paid for by GOP donor than he disclosed previously.
• Tech CEOs meet with Trump to discuss Federal government overhaul
• G7 leaders agree to lend Ukraine billions backed by Russia’s frozen assets
• In the 4 years since George Floyd was killed, Washington can't find a path forward on police reform.
• Louisiana Legislature approves bill classifying safe abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances.
• Clarence Thomas wants the Supreme Court to stop hearing election cases on racist redistricting.
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs a bill that strikes climate change from state law.
• Continuing Israel airstrikes in Rafah kills dozens.
• U.S. lawmakers pledge support for Taiwan and its new president angering China.
June
I continued doing interviews with people and groups that were working in some part of the 2024 election campaign. I still was hearing that MVP might be interested in funding the WhichAmerica24 video campaign that had been sitting dormant since Barbara Wilson pulled out. I also was still challenged to expand my community in Sacramento, but I felt sort of a post-covid headspace. I couldn’t find anyone that was having interesting political conversations.
By the mid-point in the year I was really not doing better at finding a new vector for work that paid or a community I felt inspired by. Jennifer was also still struggling. There really wasn’t anything more I could do for her. And Matt not working to help her was still the norm.
June News
The Supreme Court continued to increase its powers as it ruled in a Chevron case. Big oil was arguing against a forty year precedent that gave regulatory power to federal agencies to oversee things like enforcing climate change measures, and immigration, healthcare and gun reform regulations. The MAGA justices now ruled that if a federal agency wanted to enforce such regulations on the oil industry for example, they have to ask the court to rule on each enforcement. Effectively this striped Federal Agencies of a lot of their power and gave it to the courts. A pattern was emerging.
The Democrats also decided to schedule a debate between Biden and Trump early in the election cycle. The debate in 2020 had been good for Biden in that he had looked like the adult in the room as Trump ranted. Unfortunately, any worry we had about Bidens mental state in 2024 was answered in the negative by this debate. Biden came out looking confused, his mouth slightly agape.
Trump must have gotten his drug cocktail right because his first answer was calm and presidential.
However, when Biden spoke in respsonse it was clear something was wrong. We all said 15 minutes into the debate he was done. It was so shocking for even the pro-democracy media that it overshadowed that Trump lied for all 90 minutes of the debate. The debate coverage cut at the end of the debate to MSNBC anchors looking pained. That said it all.
Someday someone may write a book about Biden’s 2024 campaign. Unlike 2020 in the middle of covid when he did not have to go out on the campaign trail with all the rigorous it entailed 2024 was back to normal. There had been rumors of his staff having to manage his appearances. Whoever let him go out on stage that night should have been fired. You make some health excuse or something but you don’t allow the man to be deeply embarrassed.
Some Democrats immediately called for Biden to step back as the candidate, but it was so complicated to make such a change even 5 months out from the election. And President Biden had done a really good job in his first term and it was natural for him to want to complete the job.
The other thing that was finally getting more mainstream news attention was Project 2025. This was the blueprint for a second Trump term developed by the MAGA Heritage Foundation. (We had been tracking since beginning of year)
This 900 page document was a road map t for what MAGA would do if they are elected again, particularly concerning the dismantling of the Federal government. Following the debate the director of the project made the rounds of cable news channels and said things like “we are bringing forth a second revolution. It will be peaceful (bloodless) as long at the left doesn’t resist us.” Chilling...
Presidential Immunity
Trump claimed when special prosecutor Jack Smith charged him with inciting the January 6th attack on the capitol that he had “immunity” for those actions because he did them as official acts while president. Obviously, attempting to overturn the legitimate outcome of an election is not an lawful act of the president, but what did he care.
The district and appellate courts both agreed that Trump had NO such immunity for any of the crimes he had been charged with. Many thought the MAGA justices on the Supreme Court would let the appellate ruling stand, but the MAGA majority had something else in mind. Not only did they take the case, but they intentionally delayed ruling on it until the last day of their term. That meant it was very unlikely to come to trial until after the election.
In addition, these six MAGA justices out did themselves when the ruling did come out. They sent the case back to the district judge with questions about some sort of immunity for Trumps illegal acts. That meant that Jack Smith would have to prove that Trumps acts were NOT official acts, even though that had already been established. This immunity ruling also impacted the sentencing date for Trumps conviction in New York State for election interference until the middle of September. Whatever we thought of the MAGA majority on the court before as being biased had now been elevated to a much higher level of concern.
Other News Headline Narratives for June.
• House Speaker Johnson backs Ten Commandments mandate in Louisiana
• Supreme Court rules for Jan. 6 rioter challenging obstruction charge
• The New York Times wants Biden gone — but they seem OK with a convicted felon
• More than 1,300 people died during this year’s journey to Mecca as pilgrims faced extreme high temperatures
• Florida ‘will not comply’ with US surgeon general’s gun violence advisory
• The reason why NATO and Europe found Biden’s debate performance alarming.
July
Our democracy salon continued to meet. The question we kept discussing was… is there anything else we can do? Some made suggestions like filling out postcards. This was fine as far as it went but still too little in this unprecedented election year for me.
I came up with a new concept. Build a web portal that would report on the news AS IF Trump had won the 2024 election.
The web portal would highlight what he was likely to do. There was so much disinformation flying around I thought this might be one way to get undecided voters to lean towards Harris. We would promote the site with click bait headlines that would get citizens to respond... "What?" “Trump uses military to quell demonstrations.”
The group split again along similar lines in response to this concept. Some thought it was just outrageous enough to work. Others thought it was too negative. This was the split I was encountering across the pro-democracy movement. I pitched the idea to my friend at MVP. He said they might be able to find a budget for it. I never heard from him again. Par for the course lately.
I also starting thinking about a “sanctuary” concept that we would establish in Canada for expatriates in case Trump won. I could not imagine living in a country that had elected him. I talked to my old Canadian friend from Integral days. He got excited about it. We scheduled another call and then he disappeared. A pattern.
I was seriously beginning to wonder whether I still had the personal influence I had enjoyed before the pandemic. Were friends overwhelmed and stressed with their own lives in a post-Covid world? Or was it that I had been doing Vital Signs for the last two years and it scared people. Or was it that I was not in position to help them anymore like I had been when I was running Integral Life?
My health continued to be dicey. I was still having intestinal problems, a shaky sense of balance, weakness in my legs etc. One day while I was putting on my pants, I lost my balance and slammed up against the wall. As I hit the floor I felt something go in the left side of my ribs. As I attempted to get up, I experienced a sharp pain in that area. I had broken ribs before so I knew this feeling. I tried to ride it out for a week but then went into Sutter Health for them to do a scan. Sure enough I had fractured two ribs. I would have to live with the discomfort for 6-8 weeks. I thought of my mother and how her repeated falls eventually fatigued her to the point of not wanting to be here anymore.
I also turned 77. In some ways I was amazed I had made it this far. All the men in the prior generation were dead by 62. My grandfather was 78 when he gave up the fight. I had always thought that if my health got bad again like it had with my cancer in 2019 that I would choose to opt out. I felt lost as I tried to make something of these unexpected circumstances I found myself in. The question kept coming up… “why am I still here?” Was there one thing that I hadn't identified yet that would give this last chapter meaning?
I decided to employ a different method of job hunting at the big box stores. I would send in an application for a particular location and then visit that location in person and attempt to talk to the hiring person cold. I did get to speak with some real people but mostly they wanted to end our conversation as quickly as possible. I learned that even though a location posted a new job opening, often times they were just collecting resumes in case they needed someone. Or at least that what they told me.
News Narratives for July, 2024
The lead story in July was the assassination attempt on former President Trump
It seemed impossible that the secret service would let a stranger with a rifle climb up on a roof of a building overlooking the stage. We saw the bullets wiz by Trumps head in real time. One nicked his ear so he had just enough blood to make it dramatic. One man sitting behind Trump was killed and two severely wounded.
What was amazing to me was that in all the confusion and the secret service attempting to get him off the stage, Trump raised his fist towards his audience in defiance. Trump had some instinctual genius that would kick into gear almost automatically sometimes. The image of his fist raised, blood running down his face was frozen in time and sold on T-Shirts.
Fox News and MAGA media immediately blamed it on the Democrats for creating an “environment of violence.” In truth this was their doing. They had polarized this country and encouraged violent behavior like January 6th. Perhaps karma was coming home to roost, but in the end, the bullet missed Trump. He was back on the campaign trail in a couple of days.
Normally when a dramatic event like this happens to a presidential candidate during the campaign it makes some difference in the polling numbers. It was reasonable to expect that Trump would get a “sympathy” bump in the polls. He didn’t. In fact none of these events like Bidens debate performance that in the past would have made a difference seemed to not to impact the polling in anyway. Was that because voters were just numb from all the MAGA theatrics or had voters already made up their minds. We just didn’t know. As one MAGA spokesperson said... "Trumps craziness is already baked in?"
On the other side of the aisle President Biden continued to struggle with calls from some of his party leaders for him to step back as the Democratic Party candidate because of declining mental abilities that we saw on display during the debate. Trump still led Biden by 2-3 points in the battleground states. That’s why if anyone was saying they could predict the outcome of this election, they were delusional. If you had told me three weeks ago that President Biden would melt down at a debate or an assassination attempt would be made on Trump, I would have told you that sounded crazy and paranoid.
There was also further evidence that MAGA judges at all levels of the justice system were helping Trump delay or cancel his criminal trials. The big justice system news in July was the dismissal of the Florida secret documents case by Justice Elieen Cannon.
She bought the Trump team argument that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith by the Department of Justice violated the Constitution. Legal precedent was again not on her side and this flawed ruling would be mostly likely be overturned on appeal, but that could take months. Just what Trump and she wanted.
Early in the month the calls for President Biden to step down as the parties presidential candidate continued regardless of his stated desire not to do so. Many thought the Trump assassination attempt would end this replacement talk, but more party leaders continued to call for him to step back.
In all the uncertainty in the party at least one question had been answered that we didn’t know following the debate. IF Biden stepped back Kamala Harris would more than likely replace him. There was no way the Democrats could open up the primaries again this close to the election. Harris had won the nomination with Biden, so for better or worse she would be the candidate if he stepped back.
Start UP's?
Big Tech had also been on an unbelievable roll since the inception of the Internet and social media platforms. In addition to the billions in profits they made they had received unprecedented protection from federal regulation 240 that stated they were not responsible for content that was published on their platforms. If they had been, as they claimed, simply publishing platforms, maybe that was appropriate, but now they were near monopolies, the arbiters of the culture war conversation with clear bias. They understood that explosive disinformation or deep fakes attracted an audience and made them money. If regulation 230 was rescinded, it would require them to change their very profitable business plans. They were spending millions in lobbying money and contributing to political campaigns to make sure that didn’t happen.
Musk and the growing group of tech billionaires that now supported Trump were NOT interested in any regulations at all. They maintained that they alone could make all the decisions about our digital future. Nothing could have been further from the truth. That world starts to look like the dystopian movies we had created in Hollywood that featured some type of corporate feudalism.
The Unthinkable Happens
On July 21, 2024, Joe Biden, the incumbent president of the United States, announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.
Now, that would normally have seemed like good news for democracy, but this was not a typical election year. President Biden had been behind Trump in the battleground states by 2-3 points for months. Even though Harris quickly reversed that trend the race at the moment was still a tossup.
There was renewed enthusiasm however in the Democratic party as Kamala brought a fresh energy.
She appeared to have learned from her disastrous presidential candidacy in 2020. She seemed confident, presidential. Particularly when you compared her to Trump. But the question remained… "was America ready to elect a women of color for president?" It didn’t seem like a great time to test that theory of the case but this election and the threats to democracy it represented had changed the calculus. Pro-democracy forces with Kamala leading had to go for it.
Killing Hamas
Hamas’ top political leader was killed in Iran by an Mossad house bomb. Iran immediately suggested they would “directly” retaliate against Israel. This coupled with the defiant tone of Israeli prime minister Netanyahu on display again in his speech to the US congress…
leaned the GAZA conflict towards a much wider, more dangerous regional conflict. IF Iran and Israel went after each other it could also pull in the US, North Korea, Russia and China, further endangering all of us.
There was also some question whether Netanyahu was upgrading the violence in GAZA on purpose. The first reason was that it kept him in power as long as the war continued. It was also suggested by some that he wanted to create an October surprise for the US election in Trumps favor. The Democrats were facing some resistance from Muslims in key battleground states like Michigan as a result of what they saw as Biden/Harris supporting the killing of Palestinians. If the Democrats were responsible for another tragedy like the withdrawal from Afghanistan it could impact the election.
In addition, China and Russia also re-committed to their joint intention to control the Artic ocean when the impacts of climate change melted the Artic ice. Not far off.
There were also increasing numbers of tech billionaires that were outright endorsing Trump. Folks like Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Marc Andreessen. OR Peter Thiel backing J.D. Vance for MAGA VP or Mark Zuckerberg expressing his admiration for Trumps courage during his assassination attempt.
Musk’s seemingly never ending need to be the center of attention, had fueled his promotion of Trump on X and his disdain for Harris by posting a deepfake Harris video he promoted to his millions of followers without it clearly being identified as such. (He said he was joking) META’s Facebook decision to allow stories to be posted again about the 2020 election being stolen was another concern. One of our continuing questions had been was… "who will big business back in the coming 2024 election?" Would they really support an anti-democratic candidate like Trump?
Other News Headline Narratives from July 2024.
• U.S. House passes bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal races
• Leader of the pro-Trump Project 2025 suggests there will be a new American Revolution
• Kansas’ top court bolsters a state right to abortion and strikes down 2 anti-abortion laws
• Musk calls for ultimate penalty of death for those opposed to requiring voters to prove citizenship
• The world’s power grids are failing more often as the planet warms
• US inflation cools again, potentially paving way for Fed to cut interest rates soon
• NATO leaders look to ‘Trump-proof’ their military alliance against Russia.
• Some Trump campaign staff are now openly declaring there will be a “civil war” if the Democrats win.
• MAGA VP candidate J.D. Vance claimed the “childless left” have no “physical” commitment to the future of America.
• Trump offers his followers “assassination themed sneakers” for $299.
• President Biden's releases election-year proposals to change the Supreme Court. Any action of them was very unlikely.
• Some Democratic cities have quietly begun cooperating with ICE on immigration arrests and deportations
• New Jersey's ban on AR-15 rifles is unconstitutional, federal judge rules
August
I ramped up my efforts to get a “holiday” job at one of the big box stores I had applied to. It seemed like the time they would be hiring for the fall. I didn’t have much luck as most said they had all the people they needed.
I was also asked by old Integral friend Nomali Perrera to do a presentation of the Vital Signs work to the Integral Life audience.
This would be the first time I had seen many of these people in five years. Many were also new to me. The prez went well and in some ways it felt like a final statement about the VSD work. The election was coming and there would be no need for VSD after the voters made their decision no matter who won.
AND the f…cking weather was hot, hot. We had multiple weeks where the temps in Sacto were 100 degrees or higher.
No wind, no clouds, just baking heat. It made sleeping at night harder and reminded me Climate Change was on the march. I hoped it would break for the fall in September.
News Narratives for August
The question in August was… is the resurgence of the Democratic Party narrative now that Kamala Harris was their candidate legit or would it fade? The increased positive energy and changes in the battleground state polls was indeed breath taking in such a short period of time, but the race was now just back to being a tossup. We were going to see if the Harris/Walz campaign train could sustain their rise in popularity in the weeks ahead.
Back at the Supreme Court
There is nothing wrong with a Supreme Court Justice stating his or her views on the American political system, but Justice Gorsuch, one of the six MAGA majority went much farther in an interview on Fox News. He suggested that it was the JOB of the Supreme Courts to remake the American governance system in the way they thought it should be. They were currently picking cases and issuing rulings that would move much of existing Federal authority to the states. When asked what he thought of Biden's recent efforts to bring about Supreme Court reform, he said just two words… “Be careful.” Chilling.
Distractions
Although, good government and military officials can multi-task, the chaos of Trump criticizing the military and the wide variance of MAGA’s ideas about America’s role in the world could mean that we could be so caught up in our present reality show that we wouldn’t correctly anticipate Iran’s response towards Israel for killing Hamas leaders on their soil. Or supporting Ukraine’s new invasion of Russia. Its almost like we would look up from the chaos being sown in this election cycle just in time to see a tactical nuke go off in in the middle east or Eastern Europe.
I know that sounds extreme, but in addition to the current threats in the middle east and Europe, the 2024 election could result in a very different American stance on our role in the world if Trump and his MAGA allies were elected again. Trump claimed he could end the Ukraine war tomorrow with his pal Vladimir Putin. What he meant was he would give Ukraine to the Russians.
MAGA Justice Project
Over the years, particularly since 2016, Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell had taken it upon themselves to pack US courts at all levels with judges that were friendly to the MAGA agenda. We had already seen the MAGA justices on the Supreme Court invent new law concepts out of whole cloth to protect Trump from going to trial on his immunity indictment before the 2024 election.
We also saw a mix of different types of rulings on things like gun reform depending on the justices presiding. America had banned military assault weapons between 1994 and 2004. Mass shootings and the senseless violence these weapons caused declined. However, that ban ran out because of a lack of action by both parties and since then we have seen mass shooting events involving assault weapons increase significantly. In this vacuum of Federal law we saw states and some municipalities attempt to pass their own bans. The constitutional rulings on these laws have been mixed depending on the court involved and who appointed the judges. This is the thing I wanted to point to. A justice system where the political bias of the judge was suddenly an issue.
Voting
MAGA politicians had been busy in red states like Texas and battleground states like Arizona and Georgia. The MAGA Texas AG raided the homes of Latino voter registration activists claiming they were searching for registration fraud while offering no proof. The Aug. 20 raids targeted Manuel Medina, chair of the Tejano Democrats, several members of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a state House candidate and a local area mayor. These raids were intended to intimidate these leaders into curtailing their voter registration activities. Texas Governor Abott also celebrated his purging of thousands of Texas citizens from voter rolls. Can you guess which voters he targeted?
In Georgia, pro-Trump politicians worked to install new rules that would make it easier for them NOT to certify results of the 2024 election if they didn’t like the outcome. Emails showed a Georgia State Election Board member worked with Trump supporters to write rules allowing counties in Georgia to refuse to certify election results.
And finally in Arizona, the six MAGA justices on the Supreme Court partially revived Arizona voter proof-of-citizenship requirements that targeted voters of color. These regulations had been deemed unconstitutional by the lower courts which included Republican judges.
The Old Playbook
Another thing. Since Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate for president one ting our narrative analysis had noticed was this. The revival of the old MAGA playbook memes attacking her on intelligence, race and gender. These MAGA culture war moves in the last two weeks included turning the Arlington Cemetery event honoring those killed in America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan into a political stunt for Trump. The Army said an Arlington National Cemetery worker was ‘pushed aside’ by Trump aides as he tried to enforce regulations that make it illegal to shoot video within the cemetery.
Whose News is it Anyway?
It was easy to see how the MAGA Fox News ecosystem continued to distort the facts. This last week Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo repeatedly said that Democrats were pushing to register “massive lines of illegals” to vote in Texas. As it turns out, she never did any actual research on the topic. The Texas Department of Public Safety debunked Bartiromo’s claims, with Sergeant William Lockridge, a spokesperson for the department, calling the claims “simply false” and “kind of racist.”
It was sometimes harder to see how the more progressive cable news channels were also contributing to voter confusion. For example, the news media generally made a big deal out of the fact the VP Harris had not sat down for any “one on one” interviews since she became the presidential candidate. Let’s remember she had been the candidate for roughly 30 days.
CNN finally secured an exclusive interview with Vice President Harris and her running mate Tim Walz. The media hyped this interview as a make or break moment for Harris. Let’s say that was true for a moment and not just hype to attract more viewers. You would expect Dana Bash (the interviewer) to ask hard nosed questions that would reveal more about Harris to the public. Instead, we got the same tired questions like “what would you do on day one” and “what was it like when you learned President Biden was stepping back.”
Likewise, there were some strange visual moments in the interview. First, Harris had been criticized for not doing the interview alone, instead seeming to rely on Walz for cover. We also noticed some strangely framed video shots during the interview that made Walz appear much bigger than Harris. Harris was already under increased scrutiny as a woman concerning her ability to do the most important job in the world. Why would her staff allow her to look small?
Other Narrative News Headlines from August
• Biden says he’s 'not confident' of a peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses
• Trump signals openness to banning abortion pill
• Supreme Court’s voting rights act decision narrows another path to challenge discriminatory voting laws
• Justice Department sues TikTok and ByteDance for widespread violations of children’s privacy laws
• Thousands of riot police on standby as UK braces for more riots
• RFK Jr. suspends his presidential bid backs Trump before appearing with him at his rally
• Supreme Court denies Title IX rule expansion protecting LGBTQ+ students
• Bombshell report exposes how Trump Is lining his pockets with campaign funds
• Big Tech wants AI to be regulated. Why do they oppose the California AI bill?
• Harris and Trump offer starkly different visions on climate change and energy
• This Election, Dark Money is being used to blackmail Lawmakers
• “Genocide Will Continue”: fury grows as Harris vows to keep Biden’s Gaza policy
September
With my finances continuing to decline I had no choice but to consider bankruptcy. I had done this once before on Whidbey when we crashed there, so I knew it was no fun. I started pulling the materials together the lawyers needed. If I did not have to pay the interest on my credit card debt, what I needed monthly in addition to my social security was less,
I continued to work with Bruce on new Berkeley Climate Change Network website. He wanted it to be a hub for connecting people with the climate change work going on campus. The university insisted we use their new authoring platform. Their lead line was that anyone could build a website with it without needing much coding. That turned out not to be true. That statement had been written by coders. The documentation on the platform was massive. It took us three weeks just to understand what the platform allowed. In the end, we did make a good website for Bruce’s purposes. This work reminded me how much I admired his work on climate mitigation. Talk about a narrative that was hard to get people to act on.
I got a couple more in-person interviews at places like PetSmart. I had this idea it might be rewarding to work around animals. In spite of the interviews seeming to go well, I never heard from them. I was beginning to wonder if my extensive experience was in some way threatening to these young hiring managers. Maybe they were concerned I would be after their job.
The other heartbreak I was going through was considering adopting-out my beloved cat Zeffie to a new home. He was not happy in my small apartment and looked worried every time I left him alone. He was a cat that needed room to roam and chase things. I was hoping against hope I would not have to do this, but where I was potentially going he could not accompany me. We had saved him from the reservation but he needed someplace better than I could offer.
Narrative News Headlines for September
For us the big question still remained… would the result of the 2024 election be clean and would both parties accept the results. We were still seeing well-funded efforts by MAGA Republicans making it harder for people of color in certain communities to vote and the institution of new questionable voting requirements that unfairly targeted minorities in battleground states like Georgia and Arizona.
One of our Vital Signs “hidden stories” in this month was election observers warning that continuing problems at the US Post Office could delay the all important mail in vote from being delivered and counted in a timely manner. In 2020 a Postmaster General appointed by Trump attempted to slow the processing of mail in ballots by removing mail sorting machines in key battleground districts, Guess what? He was STILL the Postmaster General. Why didn’t the Biden Administration get rid of him? One of many problems the Democrats just seemed to ignore.
The Rule of Law
We like to believe that one of the core tenants of America is our rule of law. It is supposed to apply to everyone, no matter who they are. At the moment however, Trump was 4-0 against the Justice Department (Federal & State) in delaying his sentencing in his first conviction and going to trial in the other three. Judges were denying voters the right to know if he was guilty of these charges before they voted in the name of “fairness.” He was helped by the six MAGA justices on the Supreme Court.
A document, along with other memos and testimony from sources the NY Times interviewed, offered a window into Justice Roberts' high level of involvement in several cases that had benefited Trump and ultimately helped him climb out of the mire of legal troubles that threatened to upend his 2024 presidential campaign. His handling of these cases even surprised other justices on the court where six of the nine members had been appointed by Republican presidents. But that’s not all of it. Even judges appointed by Democrats were seeming to join in.
NY State Judge Juan Merchan announced that former President Donald Trump would NOT be sentenced in his New York criminal case conviction until after the 2024 election. He explained his decision to delay was in part to avoid any appearance of impacting the outcome of the presidential race. Prior to 2016 it was who won the debates or had the best policies that were the things that decided elections. In this current environment that was not true anymore. When MAGA candidates like JD Vance admitted that the story they made up about Haitians eating pets was not true, but necessary, for MAGA to get press attention, it signaled a different world.
Another example… when 61.7 viewers watched Trump come unhinged in his debate with Kamala Harris that would have normally hurt his chances of getting elected. Even though Harris got something of a bump in ratings, the race in the battleground states was still a tossup. Immediately after the debate Trump and his allies declared he won the debate according to 90% of MAGA watchers they polled. Normally, this kind of disinformation spin would be dismissed, but when Fox News and the entire MAGA media ecosystem repeated this claim, 40% of the voters in America believed it.
When you have one party promoting an alternative reality about the state of the economy, the status of women’s rights, the latest on immigration reform and the level of violent crime in the US how were voters supposed to ferret out what is true.
While it was normal in a political campaign for candidates to “stretch” the truth about their accomplishments and the failures of their opponents, the level of intentional lying in this campaign was unprecedented. If you needed proof you could just look at the VP debate. J.D Vance did a masterful job of making the MAGA lies seem like they could be true or at least not threating. And Walz countered with facts about Democrat policies while looking scared. So, there was that, but what I want to point to here is… it’s not just what is being said, but the way it is being covered by the media that matters to the outcome of the election.
Certain commentators in the pro-democracy media had increased their warnings about the outcome of a Trump victory to an audience that was already anti-Trump. However, too often during those endless panels of pundits both sides talked about this election as if the two parties were debating from the same set of facts. Even when MAGA pundits attempted to spin Trumps increasing instability, the moderators allowed one or two comments from pro-democracy pundits to remind viewers that MAGA statements were increasingly untrue, but then quickly moved on.
Even the mild mannered NPR coverage of the VP debate, featured three pundits in their opening remarks noting that Vance was very smooth in his delivery and Walz seemed uncomfortable. Not one of them mentioned that Vance was lying during the entire debate. (They did mention it later) And Vance’s one departure from his “reasonable” tone in the debate was when he was fact checked by moderators for continuing to lie about the Haitians in Ohio.
One last comment on the current state of the 2024 campaign as we head into October. You can’t open your news browser these days without seeing a new poll predicting something about the approval rating of the two candidates. Our narrative analysis reminded us that it was important to keep in mind that the state of the “news” was PROFIT driven. The poll with the biggest audience makes the most money from advertisers or subscriptions.
Whether it’s the lead-in headlines on cable news or the latest “breaking stories” on our web browsers, the ”click bait” mentality of teasing out poll results that will alarm one audience or the other was increasingly the practice. The “pollsters” all wanted their polls to be considered the definitive source so their brand was promoted on television while driving traffic to their advertiser sponsored websites. Even polls from non-profit organizations still had to be popular enough for them to receive grant money.
Other News Narrative Headlines in September
• Poll Shows Further Decline in Americans’ Confidence in Election Integrity
• Ohio sheriff suggests residents keep a list of homes with Harris yard signs
• Amber Thurman 'left to die” after abortion complication
• Trump hit with new evidence from Jack Smith in Federal Jan. 6 case
• Judge to finally approve auctions liquidating Alex Jones’ Infowars to help pay Sandy Hook families
• ‘Nowhere is safe’: shattered Asheville NC shows stunning reach of climate crisis
• Chevron CEO hits Biden's natural gas policies, says fuel is crucial for AI
• Ohio GOP Gov says ‘at least 33’ bomb threats because of false Haitian narratives prompt Springfield to begin daily school sweeps
• Iran launches missile attack on Israel for killing of Hezbollah leader
October
I felt the clock ticking on finding a job or some source of income to make up the difference between my social security and my expenses. I declared bankrupcy so that had helped lower my expenses to needing to find $3,000 a month. So doable it seemed but if you are un-hireable it was a steep climb.
One thing I did discover about the job market after the many applications I sent out through Indeed, LinkedIN, or corporate websites featured s a glut of "ghost jobs" These were listings that said a job was open but on closer inspection they were not. Some of the big box stories would collect resumes in case they needed someone but the job that was listed was not open at that moment. The other player in this new digital job market were recruiters. In my big career years recruiters were a real deal. I got my position at Time Warner through a recruiter approaching me. It was a very hands on process. I met with him and he promoted me to Time Warner. In the digital job market this had all changed. Recruiters would list jobs that didn't exist to get your information on their lists. I ran into two instances that the jobs listed as customer service jobs were actually door to door sales jobs. I couldn't believe it. Who sold cell phone service door to door?
That put even more pressure on who I knew. My network was flat lined and that continued to be a problem. I was approaching what little response there was as a "cold call."
My apartment lease at River Blu was up at the end of the month. After telling me they were raising the rent by $200 I begged them to give me a seniors discount. They did which was nice of them. I was inked in for another 6 months having no idea how the next months would play out with the election and other cultural concerns.
My health continued to be iffy. I was having more trouble with my legs feeling weak from the nerve damage from the operations. The only way I could clear my gut was to drink the "smooth move" tea about every 6 days and go through 24 hours of that. A real pain.
And my mental state started showing signs of being off. Certainly, some of it could be written off to the financial stress I was feeling but I was having trouble focusing on things or remembering why I had walked into a room. It scared me a bit. The last thing I wanted to experience was a diminished mental capacity. It was all I had to work with.
American Democracy
The 2024 election campaign was winding down to wire. Kamala's uptick had flattened out and unexplainably, Trump's numbers seemingly rose in spite of his unhinged campaign speeches. He was truly an ugly American attempting to pull this country into his darkness.
How Would We Know?
As we kept noting in our Vital Signs scan summaries the news media environment that included broadcast and cable news networks and social media platforms seemed hopelessly murky depending on which ones you looked at. The same three potential outcomes we have been predicting all year were still in play. A clean Harris or Trump win. OR it could be so close that both parties would challenge the results and end up at the Supreme Court. (Shades of 2000 election)
Remember, we were independents. We were not anti-conservative. In fact we felt a healthy conservative and liberal voice debating a common set of facts was what has made America great. The reason we created Vital Signs of Democracy in the first place was to give voice to this majority of Americans. But in our view the MAGA movement was something else. Something influenced by the darkest impulses of the American experiment.
IF Donald Trump was elected he was threatening out loud to:
• Use Federal government agencies to carry out the MAGA agenda. His latest suggestions that Elon Musk take over
controlling the economy and RFK Jr to oversee our health system are just two initial moves.
• Instruct his Justice Department to abandon the two federal felony cases against him for his insurrection attempt and
stealing top security documents. The state case in Georgia will probably go away as well. IF this happened America’s claim
that “no one is above the law” was officially over.
• Round up and deport 1 million immigrants he claims are here illegally.
• Pardon January 6th criminals that were in prison.
• Seek revenge against anyone that opposed him politically or in the media.
• Abandon America’s security role in the world. Ukraine would be on their own. Israel would be encouraged to attack Iran, and
the fate of Taiwan will be uncertain. Remember, Trump would make a deal with anyone just to say he ended the war.
And those were just his short list. His MAGA allies would also feel emboldened to press their minority views (like abortion bans) on the majority. Certainly, “loyalty” oaths would come into play if you wanted any type of relationship or funding from a Trump/MAGA federal government.
On the other hand, if Kamala Harris was elected, America would have bought some time to reform the system that allowed the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement in the first place. However, the threat they posed in our narrative view was not going to disappear. It would get smarter. There was too much money behind this notion of an unregulated American oligarchy for it simply to go away. They would pick someone to lead the movement that appeared more capable to lead than Trump, but it would be the same agenda.
Kamala’s pro-democracy policies would certainly be better for more American’s than the MAGA agenda, but if she did not have control of Congress it would not make much difference. America would continue to be paralyzed… vulnerable to the whims of billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
The Resistance
IF Trump and his MAGA allies were elected the question remained… WHO was going to resist them. In the past our system of checks and balances provided that answer. The Executive branch, Congress and the Courts kept each other honest if they strayed too far towards either extreme. And the news media did a decent job of reporting on the debate given a common set of facts.
IF Trump was elected he will seek imperial power for the Executive Branch through its various federal agencies and the justice department. Congress would continue to be sufficiently split that it couldn't provide their normal guardrails and the Justice System would be answerable to a MAGA majority on the Supreme Court that had their own agenda.
Anyone that was receiving Federal funding for security, infrastructure, education and disaster response etc. would be vulnerable to MAGA pressure. We had already seen instances where the former Trump presidency withheld aid to blue states or to our allies worldwide until he received some sort of loyalty oath or preformed some sort of quid pro quo favor for him.
What about the fourth estate… the news media? This was where we had been working for two years. Our narrative intelligence in October was suggesting that the news media and social media platforms owned by wealthy corporations and billionaires would do little to expose MAGA’s aggressive nature to remake America in their image. If you needed a current metric for this narrative the failure of The Washington Post, The LA Times and the Garrett news group (USA Today) to endorse a presidential candidate was a first in many firsts for the 2024 election cycle.
The weak excuses from the Posts owner Jeff Bezos or Soon-Shiong, the billionaire that owned the LA Times, were that they didn't want to appear biased was based on the false assumption that both candidates were equal in their support of democracy for a majority of Americans. They were not by any measure. The irony for Bezos was the slogan on the Post’s masthead has always been… “democracy dies in darkness.” Was Bezos going to change that to “democracy is what I say it is? And when you add AI to the mix, you had large tech corporations like Google and META eager to push forward with their development with no regulations. A subject for another day.
Taking It to the Streets
Historically, when we Americans had felt our grievances were not being acknowledged by those in power we took to the streets. Us boomers certainly did this when we were young during the Viet Nam war protests and the civil rights movement. During that time, important political leaders and activists were assassinated and students on campuses were shot or beaten in the streets of Chicago but we never asked the question, “was our democracy threatened?” We just didn’t like the people in charge.
However, in this instance, Trump and his MAGA allies had already said they would have handled the Black Lives Matter protests in a much more aggressive manner than the Obama administration. So, does this last avenue of American protest simply provide an excuse for a type of MAGA martial law?
Our Prayer
As the calender wound towards election day on November 5th all of us at Vital Signs were hoping we were wrong. That the narrative trends we were reporting on would not come to pass IF Trump or Harris was elected. However, the America we found ourselves in 2024 was not even remotely like the one we had just 10 years ago. It was something else. The normal guard rails were not protecting us in the way they had in the past. So, would we rise up and evolve our system of democracy so that it met the challenges of the 21st century or let it become something else?
The other thing in play in this moment was my realization that the VSD threat scan we sent out at the end of October would most likely the last one of its kind. We had spent two years attempting to warn progressives of the dangers the MAGA movement represented to our way of life. When everyone felt sufficiently alarmed we had spent our time creating alternative media campaigns that we hoped would have some impact on the electorate. The question we seemed to think was important was... "Which America Do You Want?" That basic. In coming to this close of two years of intense work, I had no idea what I was going to do next. IF Trump somehow got elected that question had another spin on it. How could I just carry on when America was not a country I recognized any more. And I was tired of fighting. Where that left me in addition to going broke in the process was uncertain. For the first time in my life I did not have a sense of a story I was interested in past the election.
Here are other narrative headlines that were in play in October
• Trump lays groundwork to challenge potential Harris win with false narrative on non-citizen voters
• Ron DeSantis, using levers of state government to defeat Florida abortion-rights ballot measure
• Capitol riot defendants face upheld trespassing charges in US court
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says Trump Promised Him "Control" Of CDC And Other Health Agencies
• Elon Musk asks voters to brace for economic 'hardship,' deep spending cuts in potential Trump Cabinet role
• Satellite photos show Israeli strike likely hit important Revolutionary Guard missile base in Iran
• China's warplanes have all but erased the dividing line in the Taiwan Strait, creating a dangerous new normal.
One last note on how the US election might influence world stability. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase Bank, hardly an alarmist, told a gathering of financial experts that he thought World War III had already started. That the middle east was in continuing crisis, Putin still threatened Ukraine and Europe and China was getting more aggressive about getting Taiwan back. Any of these conflicts could involve "tactical" nukes. We appeared to have forgotten that once the nuclear option is out of the bag, it tends to blow up everyone. The danger that Dimon was highlighting was particularly true if Trump was elected and he pulled us out of our strategic relationships with NATO and made "deals" with dictators like Putin in the name of ending the war. Although we found Dimon's warning unusual, at the same time he did not endorse a candidate for the 2024 election like many of the other billionaires. They seemed to be hedging their bets.
There were also legal forces arrayed on both sides of the spectrum to address the numerous legal challenges that were expected to come as voting was progressing. It turned out in the end there was very little complaining from MAGA lawyers as the early returns showed a pattern of a Trump victory starting in states like Georgia and then spreading to the battleground states.
That “pattern” showed that Trump was doing a bit better than he did in 2020 in most states and Harris was doing a bit worse than Biden. It seemed like 2016 all over again as vote tallies kept coming in. Trump was winning rather easily. We all had said it would take days for the all the results to be known because the race was projected to be so close, but very early Wednesday morning Trump was declared the victor even though there was a lot of counting left to do in the Western states.
Was this a surprise to all of us? I can’t say I was shocked by the result the way I had been in 2016. We had said it was a tossup that could go either way. However, that prediction didn’t turn out to be true. Trump won ALL 7 battleground states AND the popular vote for the first time for Republicans since 2004. Although the magnitude of Trumps victory softened as more votes were counted in the western states, he still won the popular vote by 2.5 million votes. He had gotten more votes than he did in 2020 but Harris got roughly 3 million votes less than Biden in 2020. That meant a lot of pro-democracy voters did not show up. That was shocking considering the stakes. Why that was I will get into shortly.
In addition, the Republicans won the Senate back by five seats and the House of Representatives by a narrower margin than 2020, but still held the majority. It was the trifecta. The White House, The Senate and the House AND the 6-3 MAGA majority on the Supreme Court. At first blush it looked like whatever the MAGA movement attempted to do could happen and it was difficult to see where the resistance was going to come from unless people went into the streets.
A Couple of Other Themes
Big money had always played a part in influencing American elections since the Supreme Court had ruled corporations and Super PACS could raise and spend unlimited funds for a candidate of their choice anonymously. However, there was new twist. Billionaires like Elon Musk had played an active, upfront part in Trumps campaign and expected to be given a shadow appointment as a Government Efficiency czar. He was joined by another Silicon Valley conspiracy guy, Vivek Ramaswamy They said they wanted to cut massive amounts of Federal government employees and whole agencies in some cases.
This would not need the approval of the Congress. It could be done by executive order. Other billionaires also stepped into the spotlight like Jeff Bezos. And as Trumps cabinet picks rolled out, many of them were billionaires. These rich guys (mostly) were no longer hiding in the background but declaring a new day in America where the mythical open market sans any federal regulation would make decisions that benefited them and hurt everyone else. The question was… would anyone notice or object?
When the race and age numbers of the election results were analyzed it showed Trumps support grew among Muslims, and young people, particularly men. Even suburban women who had been counted on to back Harris did not in any overwhelming numbers. The question that hung in the air was… how had this happened? And as a storyteller I would say that is the power of story.
There is and will be lots of gnashing of teeth about why Democrats lost. Common themes like… Harris was a woman of color, Biden did not step back in time, they couldn’t get their economic message clear enough so voters believed it, they didn’t pay attention to working class people etc. There was one theme that was new and unique to the 2024 election. And this theme is the one I don’t know we are going to change. For a while social media, podcasts and other kinds of streaming media had been increasing their market share. Influencers like Joe Rogan often had larger audiences than the progressive cable channels.
This election however, announced the end of what was now called “legacy media.” Cable networks like CNN and MSNBC that for years had been the information source for citizens. In the run up to the election one of our questions at Vital Signs was how CNN and MSNBC would report on Trumps rise again, particularly if he was ahead. Fox News stayed with their lies and disinformation that fed their audience with false narratives. CNN and MSNBC just kept “covering” the news like the latest crazy or dangerous thing Trump had said, or the delay in the felony cases against Trump. In other words they made their money off of going outrage anti-Trump.
Following the election CNN and MSNBC’s ratings took a nose dive. I could now tell from my vantage point what the commonly held reasons were but I suspected that their audience was disappointed they had not done more to stop Trump’s re-election. This would have required them to switch up their business plans to be in more activist mode like Fox where they clearly became mouthpieces for progressive candidates. One question that emerged was... was "objective" journalism dead unable to compete with MAGA narrative that they were fake news. Their numbers were so low after the election that CNN announced they were doing massive layoffs and MSNBC was going to be spun out by its parent NBC news to a new independent company. Usually a sign the parent company doesn’t want the liability anymore. An era of cable networks seemed to be ending.
No where was this more apparent than in the numbers that were revealed after the election concerning how many voters were influenced by the MAGA news media and how many by the progressive media. It wasn’t even close. MAGA news won that culture war by a lot. For example, Joe Rogan’s interview with President Trump was streamed by 30 million people. That was way more than the audiences for the Trump/Harris debate. Kamala Harris declined to do an interview with Rogan because of “scheduling “issues. Rogan endorsed Trump shortly thereafter.
One answer as to why Americans would vote to put a convicted criminal, a liar, a financial cheat and a sexual abuser back in the White House, was that the story being repeated by the MAGA media 24/7 was that all those glaring reasons not to re-elect him were politically motivated by the Democrats. It seemed to literally not matter to voters including Muslim populations and young black men that would find themselves on Trumps hit list if he was re-elected. A truly new revolution in influencing elections.
I think this is what makes it so hard now to rally around any resistance movement to block Trumps 2nd term agenda. Us pro-democracy folks don’t have a narrative distribution network anywhere near as big as the MAGA movement. Before Democrats attempt to “change” their story or find more “electable” candidates the MAGA news eco-system needs to be countered, or at least challenged. As I write this at my age, that seems like that option could take a long time to develop.
One last thing I will say about Trump/MAGA’s re-election is that the current pro-MAGA landscape could change if the clowns Trump is installing in important Federal government positions make colossal mistakes like Trump did with Covid in 2019-2020. I have always said that IF he had recognized the Covid pandemic as the perfect excuse for him to become a dictator in early 2020, he would have been easily elected in 2020. But autocratic leaders tend to overreach in their success fever as we see Trump doing in this moment. Perhaps if the crisis is bad enough, Democrats will find a way too push back. Our democracy could depend on it OR on some new third party organization that would represent the majority of American’s that we can’t see in this moment.
For me, Trumps re-election and all it could mean for this country I love is in a sense a death blow to anything I would get involved with politically from here on out. It had been a long two years of doing Vital Signs (which I would do again) that had now brought me to some future where I had no money and my health was worsening. Unknown territory for the moment and unclear where my curiosity would point to going forward.
Other Narratives Worth Knowing About in November.
• Job growth bounced back in November
• US universities urge international students to come back before Donald Trump’s inauguration
• Trump “Guitars” accused of trademark infringement by Gibson Brands
• 20-year-old OnlyFans model Sophie Rain earns ₹366 crore in one year, pays off parents’ debt
• Donald Trump roasts Joe Biden, Kamala Harris in AI video on ‘Thanksgiving'
• ‘Aliens checking out Congress?’: Eerie lights over Capitol Hill sparks UFO concerns in America
• Israeli President Herzog called Elon Musk to discuss revival of hostage talks, source says
Netanyahu arrest warrant tests Western commitment to international law
• Deadly Israeli strikes hit southern Lebanon after Hezbollah attacks, testing shaky ceasefire
• Maritime threats high on agenda as Chinese navy hosts Gulf of Guinea forum
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia struck the Ukrainian city with a new mid-range ballistic missile.
• Ukraine fired at Russia this week with long range missiles made in the US, UK and France.
December
The last month of 2024 launched hopefully even though I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms concerning MAGA winning the election. I had a new web portal client. The Lawrence Hall of Science. I had a long history with the hall as a kid and building an inflatable traveling pavilion for them in the late 1970’s.
The group that was building a Research impact web portal had seen the work I had done for the Berkeley Climate Change Initiative and had contacted me. The scope of the project was huge in comparison to the climate work in that it was indexing all research programs on the UC Berkeley. The wanted a very sophisticated search function built into the Open Berkeley platform. This project was a godsend. It would cover three months of my expenses. It was also a pilot for a much bigger project if the pilot was approved could keep me employed for a year plus meet others at UC Berkeley.
I had written up a development strategy that split the huge project into two pieces. A pilot demonstrating all the key functions and the final web portal once everyone gave us their notes. I gave those talking points to the project director to sell to her board. She came back quickly and said we were good to go and wanted to start immediately.
The initial meetings with her on Zoom were convoluted affairs where she seem to be asking for a search function that the current Open Berkeley platform did not offer. This was not a big issue. We could find the search function and add it to the Open Berkeley platform.
At her suggestion I met with the Lawrence Hall of Science tech guy. He suggested we meet with other programs at Cal that had the more sophisticated search functions and then he could write some simple code to bind their engine to the Open Berkeley platform. I wrote that in an email to Dee the project director. Then all hell then broke loose. She cancelled our meeting that day and said not to do anymore work until we talked. Very confusing response from a person that had been so excited to work with me.
I won’t go into all the details but the next day she took me off the project and refused to pay me for the 10 days I had worked because my statement of work had not made it through the University payment system. I had worked on the Climate site for six weeks before the “paperwork” was completed. I suspected she felt embarrassed she had not realized that the Open Berkeley system did not provide the advanced search functions she wanted. This was not a huge problem but she made it one. In our last zoom she was a completely different person than she had been in our work together. She just issued her pronouncements and then hung up the call. It was shocking and put me back into the mode of how I was going to pay for my life.
The 2024 Election Aftermath.
All of us who were on the losing team were attempting to make sense of what had happened. It wasn't just that MAGA won it was the way they won. Trump got a majority of the popular vote as well as the electoral victory. First time that had happened for a Republican since GW in 2004. Our story had been that the electoral college allowed a minority to win an election. This was not true in this circumstance. The numbers showed that the MAGA cultural war narrative had completely overwhelmed the pro-democracy narrative. If you believed the numbers Kamala got 3 million less votes than Biden in 2020. Trump won all 7 swing states plus a majority in the Senate and a narrow margin in the House. That meant a lot of pro-democracy voters had not shown up. That included white and black women and younger men.
Democrats immediately went into blame mode, saying Kamala had not been a strong candidate, Biden had stepped back too late, their messaging did not influence ordinary voters etc. There were immediate calls for Democrats to re-invent themselves. Ironically, the Republican party had re-invented themselves after Obama's eight years. It had gone radical MAGA. It was not the conservative party of the past but a party that now demanded imperial powers and an end of democratic safeguards. And a majority of American voters had just agreed with them. I didn't know what country I was living in anymore.
In my view, IF MAGA put just half of what was in their Project 2025 into play the America I knew would slowly cease to exist. Trumps first cabinet appointments included 18 billionaires. Elon Musk who had engineered Trumps win became a "shadow president" even before they were officially sworn in. Rich and powerful individuals in both parties had always attempted to pull the strings from behind the curtain but now they were stepping out into the light with bravado.
One quality of the narratives we reported on at Vital Signs was a story that we heard from many, particularly those that felt our predictions about a MAGA victory were too "alarmist." They appeared to believe that somehow, we would still muddle through and the system would correct itself eventually if it went too far toward the MAGA right. Historically, even in America, that correction had required violence like we had seen during our civil war where there was a fundamentally different belief system between north and the south. This time that "divide" was not as cleanly drawn as that. Even in deep blue states like California there were substantial rural areas that were MAGA supporters. How would all that work out if things got "physical?"
One Thing that Interested Me?
IF I could find the money one story I was starting to get interested in was researching... did the MAGA news system really out influence the pro-democracy news system? Certainly, some were suggesting as much. Such an effort would require first looking at the "influence" numbers. How many voters did Fox and the rest of the MAGA news system get to? The second thing would be to look at the media distribution types that MAGA used to influence voters. Was it really true that this was the first election that podcasts and social media news platforms dominated the influence game? And lastly, was there something about the way the MAGA news media messaged their offerings that was more effective than us pro-democracy geeks.
One interesting note that popped early was something called an "ambiguity quotient." What that term meant was the level of ambiguity that the news personality employed as he/she offered lots of different stories and antidotes without ever finishing talking about any of them. Trump was a classic example of this style. He would go on for hours segueing from one crazy notion to the next. The effect was that it was hard to remember what he has said five minutes ago. This "style" was designed to overwhelm the listener so they would be distracted from what he was really suggesting. Since Trump had come down his golden elevator in 2015 the media had struggled to keep up with all his scandals and anti-democratic pronouncements.
In the world of viral messaging the common wisdom was to keep the news flashes short. This was because the attention span of the social media generations was so short. In 2024 the Democrats used this style in marketing themselves on social media. What emerged however from Trump and key influencers like Joe Rogan was a long form. Often hours long. One Joe Rogan podcast I had listened to before the election covered 25 different subjects without finishing any of them. However, the impact of this style was hidden in the aggregate. The general takeaway from Trump or Rogan was that... something was terribly wrong and they could fix it. The story from the 2024 election campaign was that Trumps folks had seduced popular podcasters particularly those under 30 to promote Trump to their huge audiences. I made a note to look into this in the New Year.
Years End
2024 ended for me much like it had started. In a state of disarray. Very little money, no project ideas after the election and still a deep lack of community. I kept fighting the feeling that maybe what the universe was telling me was... I was done. My life had been an extraordinary ride for 50+ years. But all things end and what I was increasing feeling was a lack of attraction to staying here any further.
All that was left was to use my life insurance money to square my debts, get Jennifer some money to reboot her life and pass on some funds to Neal, Lou and Ridge. This narrative obviously had all sorts of layers to it. If I was going to end my life when the money ran out in 2025 I would have to adopt out my cat Zeffie. He was already showing signs of stress from living alone with me in a small apartment for the past year. It would break my heart to do it, but he deserved better than what I was giving him now. Perhaps what the "universe" or my higher self was telling me was to let go of all of it and move on or reboot and try again if that is what happens.
Signs
A funny story. I was walking on Sunday before New Years on my usual route that takes me along the river and then back through the neighborhoods. I decided that day to walk the long version for the first time in a while. As I am walking back on the surface streets a car slowed beside me with four young guys in it. It reminded me of when I was in high school when we drove around yelling things at people thinking it was funny. In this case the guy in the backseat leans out the open car window and says... "keep up the good work." WHAT? Now he could have seen me as fat and walking was my attempt to lose weight, but what are the odds that on a street I'm not usually on, the one car I see makes a point of saying "keep up the good work?" The question was which work? Something more in this life or letting go of all of it and moving on?
It was quite a thought to end 2024 on.
MY MAGA win depression. if i was distracted but...
No money in sight.
If there a war I would fight,,, sacrifice myself for the younger people to have a chance.
Retreat Centers - teaching secret stories
January 2025 - A path for Zephie. Still looking for community. Attempting to find funding. Did MAGA news media out influence pro-democracy news media
The question was... could I wait in the Sacramento way station for the Kosmos to come get me or call an Kosmic uber and make my own way home like my mother did.
Day 1 Trump 2.0
pardons 150,000 Jan 6th including most dangerous
attempts to cancel all funding for climate change
Fires 1000 gov employees puts DEI fed employess on leave
Cabinet nominees still crazy
Thinks he can rename the Gulf of Mexico - Gulf of America
Withdraws US from WHO and Paris Climate Change agreement
Israeli hostages finally come home after deal - who responsible? Hardly noticed in the "news"
College playoffs and the result of NIL money
Cancels all green energy projects
Wants to seal US borders with military troops
ICE targets schools and churches in immigration sweeps
American Oligarchs become part of the main stream conversation
CNN Boss Warns Star Hosts to Avoid Trashing Trump’s Record
How Snowflake Zuckerberg Was Triggered by Biden: New Fox Pal
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg complained Monday night that he had been offended by former President Joe Biden’s suggestion that he is an oligarch and blamed the erstwhile commander-in-chief for destroying support for Democrats in Silicon Valley, according to a Fox News host.
First 100 days
Trump doles out security clearances to unvetted officials
CBS 58 weather reporter Sam Kuffel is out after criticizing Elon Musk arm gesture
Fired Inspectors General Raise Alarms as Trump Administration Moves to Finalize Purge
Trump administration offering "deferred resignation" to government workers unwilling to return to office
Trump's funding freeze creates widespread confusion
Judge temporarily blocks part of Trump administration’s plans to freeze federal aid
White House Backs Down From Funding Freeze
Trump ends Fauci's security detail and says he'd feel no responsibility if harm befell him
World must take Trump’s threats against Canada, Denmark extremely seriously
Trump defends pardons for rioters and suggests Proud Boys could have place in politics
Israel's Netanyahu invited to meet Trump at White House next week - How those muslim voters in michigan feeling
Trump and his cronies seem to be prepping MAGA world to accept higher prices
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announces major changes for media at first briefing
We welcome independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers and content creators to apply for credentials to cover this White House," Leavitt said, directing these media voices to the White House's website to apply.
Sorting through the storm of executive orders to find the ones that really matter.
Trump administration fires justice department lawyers who investigated him
Loyalty Above All Else: Pam Bondi Passed Donald Trump's Loyalty Test To Weaponize The Justice Department
Hegseth confirmed as Trump’s defense secretary in tie-breaking vote despite turmoil over his conduct
Shocking Proof: Trump’s VICTORY WAS RIGGED Through Voter Suppression!
Elon Musk Foe Escorted Out of Fed Office After Refusing to Resign -
Fired inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Phyllis Fong was removed from her Washington D.C. office on Monday after refusing to comply with the conditions of her termination.
A 22-year-old veteran of the department—which has a broad mandate to investigate food safety and animal welfare—Fong’s office has been investigating Elon Musk’s brain implant startup Neuralink, among other investigations into the Boar’s Head’s listeria outbreak.
Elon Musk 'pressured' FAA boss to quit one week before Potomac river plane crash
Chuck Todd to Exit NBC News - Jim Acosta CNN
Musk pushes out top Treasury official over effort to access US government payment system: report
Pentagon removes major media outlets, including NBC News, from dedicated workstations in new 'rotation program'
NBC News, The New York Times, NPR and Politico must vacate their office spaces in two weeks for other news organizations
FEB
Democrats hammered by ugly unpopularity numbers
There are several reasons Musk wants to control Treasury payments. None of them are good.
An unelected and unaccountable billionaire wants to dictate what working families can and cannot afford.
Canada and Mexico order retaliatory tariffs on U.S. as Trump’s tariffs spur trade war
JD Vance backs Trump's DEI claims after D.C. plane crash
China to retaliate after Trump fires first salvo in trade war
Beijing says it will impose countermeasures against the U.S.’s 10 percent levy on Chinese imports.
Blitz! President Trump returns to familiar strategy that exhausts foes, delights friends
Trump Orders Schools to Ease Sex Assault Rules
I’m a Federal Worker. Elon Musk’s Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame.
Musk Says DOGE Halting Treasury Payments to US Contractors
China counters with tariffs on US products. It will also investigate Google.
CDC webpages go dark as Trump targets public health information
Federal employee unions are suing the Treasury and alleging Elon Musk's DOGE gained illegal and 'unprecedented' access to data
Trump signs order establishing a sovereign wealth fund that he says could buy TikTok
Ukraine’s mineral riches have long been eyed by its allies. Now they may be Trump’s price for military aid
Abbott says Texas National Guard now authorized to make immigration arrests
The seven techies barely out of college helping Musk to slash billions from federal government
FBI turns over details of 5,000 employees who worked on January 6 cases to Trump Justice Department, as agents sue
Doctors sue Trump admin over removed health data
EAT THE RICH
Progressive News: The founders in the declaration of independence did not just report on the British moves or demands, the declared what they would do if they did not like it. They actively gave citizens the blueprint for what to do and why.
The Fed is too big and to bureaucratic but the solution is not to get rid if it Or making it beholden to the white house. It breaks our system of checks and balances. We have a private billionaire that is not a US gov employee, runs a DODE advisory group, and has not be vetted who is running his own mystery group that is into the FED payment systems. AND he has presented no proof that the reasons he is doing this (illigally) other than to say theres fraudulent