The Democrats need one person to go on TV, YouTube, and X every day to fight Trumpism. By Hal M. Brown As Trumpism moves to initiate 21st Century Nazism and an American police state we need our version FDR Fireside Chats.

The fireside chats were a series of evening radio addresses given by Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944. He was trying to rally the spirit of the country during the onslaught of Nazism across Europe and the Japanese Pacific War and save democracy.

The last Democrat to effectively speak to the nation about a topic of grave concern, Covid, was New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo when he talked about Covid. He had the gravitas. 

Consider this:

From the first days of the outbreak you started giving real-time updates, speaking directly to New Yorkers. But many of your briefings were also carried by cable news networks, giving you a much broader reach. Did having a national audience change your approach at all?  

Nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of steady, reliable leadership from Washington, people saw our briefings on the situation in New York—which for a time, was the epicenter of the pandemic—and they began to trust what we were saying. But no, it did not change my approach: follow the facts, follow the science, focus on fighting the disease.

You held press briefings for 111 consecutive days at one point. What was that experience like? How do you manage your team—and your own health—to perform at a high level, in the public eye, over a sustained period of time?

I don’t think I ever thought about those questions. How many times in our lives do we face challenges and say, “Relax, it’s not life or death.” Not this time; this was life or death. We did what we needed to do, and I couldn’t be more proud of the way my team rose to the occasion. I have often said I have some of the smartest, most dedicated people in government working in my administration. They proved that over and over during this crisis. Read interview here.

He was a White, mediagenic good looking male with a commanding presence. (This isn’t my idea. Someone was suggesting it on TV, I think it was CNN, this morning. I just expanded on it here.)

He’s in the news today because he’s running against Eric Adams in the New York City primary (read article). Of course he has those sexual harassment accusations (which he denies). While this is something Democrats will find offputting at least, MAGA would find this to be a badge of honor. Even if he was our last best choice as a spokesperson he’s running in the mayoral primary, and if he wins, in the election this will keep him too busy to have time to be America’s FDR.

Who, then could fill this role. We need a Democratic Party version of “The West Wing’s” Jed Barlett played by Martin Sheen. Here are videos of the best scenes from the show.

Here’s him being interviewed in 2023.

I’m not sure whether it would be better if it was someone who could be positioned to run for president or someone who couldn't be accused of having presidential ambitions. I lean towards the later.

It just has to be someone who not only has the media chops, but is also both credible and is seen as somebody who always tells the unvarnished truth. They have to be able to look into the camera and come across as if they are in the room talking directly to each person who is viewing.

Consider what is called the Q score or rating.

The Q Score (popularly known as Q-Rating) is a measurement of the familiarity and appeal of a  cbrand,elebrity, company, or entertainment product (e.g., television show) used in the United States. The more highly regarded the item or person is, the higher the Q Score among those who are aware of the subject. Q Scores and other variants are primarily used by the advertising, marketing, media, and public relations industries.

The Democrats need someone with the highest Q-Rating as possible. 

Cory Booker is who I consder to be the most compelling spokeperson. Of course he is Black. This will lead to knee-jerk bigots dismissing him just because of his race. They are so beyond redemption we shouldn’t pay any attention to the race of our number one spokesperson.

This is his speech from the DNC Convention.

My vote is for Corey Booker. What do you think?

Related Substack: “Hitlerism as a word never became popular. There is now such a thing as Trumpism.” Move over, Nazism. This is the ism that will describe America.

What's wrong with Trump's "Golden Dome" missile defense plan? Everything. By Hal M. Brown

 

I had one takeaway from Trump’s State of the Union address aside from what most everybody else is alarmed and disgusted over. It needs to be addressed. It is Trump’s promising a “Gold Dome” over the country to protect it from attack. You can read the details in this article. Basically it is Ronald Reagans “Star Wars” on steroids.

Trump wants a golden dome over the United States that makes it invulnerable to missile attack. He likened it to Isreal's "Iron Dome" which is used very effectively to shoot down rockets before impact. 

He wants to call his "golden" not, I think, just because ‘Iron Dome’ is a registered trademark of the Israeli defence company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. I would hazard a guess this is because he thinks calling by the name of his favorite metal, the metal he is obsessed with, makes it superior. Forget that gold is hardly a stronger metal than iron. He could have called it “The Steel Dome.”

There is so much wrong here. Aside from the obvious fact that the United States is a far bigger country than Israel which only has to protect itself from missiles and rockets fired from only miles way, if the United States is attacked it will be by ballistic missiles fired from across the globe.

Add to this the question as to which countries would have the capacity to attack us this way. There are only two, Russia and China. Of the two Russia has the most missiles and, most important to consider, some of them are the hypersonic Kh-47M2 Kinzhal. This missile travels at 10 times the speed of sound or Mach 10. This means that currently there is no way to shoot them down.

Let's assume that Russia is still our enemy. This may be a bold assumption since there is growing evidence that Trump has shitcanned our alliance with former allies. Perhaps Russia has become our ally and our former allies have become, if not enemies, countries, as I wrote yesterday, which he doesn’t give a fuck about. 

Say Russia, Russia, Russia is as Trump says, a giant hoax. If Trump isn’t in bed with Putin, we have to make the assumption that Russia is the only country which might threaten us with annihilation. Then a first strike from them, while devastating, would still result in our retaliation from our nuclear triad, and destroy much of Russia.

If it was even possible to build an infallible "golden dome" defense system, dismissing the budget breaking cost which would make all the DOGE cost savings negligible, there is something exponentially worse that this would do. It would start an arms race with Russia which would make the Cold War arms race look like it was a midget standing next to a giant.

Now that I’ve gotten this out of the way, military expert that I am not, just from a common sense point of view, let’s look at where the most likely attack from a foreign power is likey to come from. This ought to be a no-brainer. It is over what in the quaint old days used to be called the “Worldwide Web.” Now we may call it “The Cloud.” Web or Cloud, every country has an infrastructure venerable to what is now called cyber-attack.

If you haven’t heard the news about what Pete “ChristianWarrior” Hegseth has just done, you haven’t been paying attention:

Not only that, but as noted in the AP article, the “Trump administration also has rolled back other efforts at the FBI and other agencies related to countering digital and cyber threats.”

The article also says that “during his Senate confirmation hearing this year, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said America’s rivals have shown that they believe cyberespionage — retrieving sensitive information and disrupting American business and infrastructure — to be an essential weapon of the modern arsenal.” This is the CIA director selected by Donald Trump.

We have two giant questions here. 

One is whether Russia is still our enemy and the greatest threat to our homeand security. By a threat to homeland security I don’t mean a threat from imaginary maruading migrants raping and pillaging their way across the land, but to the homeland being obliterated by a hostile power. How much more real is the threat of a nuclear attack today than it was when the overriding deterrent to a nuclear attack from Russia was mutually assured destruction, or MAD. This aspect of geopolitics is derived from game theory and the Nash equilibrium, although the end of civilization is no game.

The second giant question is whether this “Golden Dome” is really made out of iron pyrite, otherwise known as “fools gold.” Put another way, will it really work as promised? (Actually iron pyrite did have a military use. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was a source of ignition in early firearms.) 

Another way to put it is to quote Shakespeare and remind ourselves that “all that glitters in not gold.”

“The popular form of the expression is a derivative of a line in William Shakespeare's play The Mechcant of Venice, which employs the word "glisters," a 16th-century synonym for "glitters." The line comes from a secondary plot of the play, in the scroll inside the golden casket the puzzle of Portia’s boxes (Act II – Scene VII – Prince of Morocco):”

All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told.
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold.
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscrolled
Fare you well. Your suit is cold—

Is it worth the cost if it is nothing more than Trump’s self-aggrandizing showmanship and he’s trying to sell the country a pig in a poke? Is it worth the incredible cost if all we will get is something that “glisters” and doesn’t do what it is supposed to do?

Maybe Trump, Pete Hegseth, Dept. of Treasury head Scott Bessett, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett and economic advisors you’ve never heard of should get together with Elon Musk and do a little basic arithmetic and measure the cost of the “Golden Dome” against all of the supposed savings from DOGE. If memory serves me, the other night Rachel Maddow said that the personnel cost of federal employees, not counting the military, amounted to 5% of the budget. Musk could fire everyone and Trump still wouldn’t be able to cut the taxes for his billionaire friends.

Note: There are over a dozen links in this Substack. If you want to learn more about the subject with the links just click on them.

I want to thank all of my readers and my Substack subscribers. You can read all of my Substack posts here. If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me. I generally reply to comments.

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Biggest bully Trump to the free world: "F*ck all of you," By Hal M. Brown

 

I wrote this after reading articles like JD CLASH Trump’s No2 JD Vance denies he claimed UK ‘hasn’t been in a war for 30 years’ after sparking row in the British tabloid “The Sun” and “Australian journalist: 'It’s clear that Trump is an agent of Putin.'“

Trump personally doesn’t care about anyone or anything about himself… well, duh… why do I keep having to write this and trying to find clever ways to say how little he cares. Yesterday I wrote “Donald Trump couldn’t couldn't give a rat's ass about what anyone in England, Europe, or Lower Slobovia for that matter, thinks about his cozy relationship with Putin, his abandoning Ukraine, and his shitcanning. Amercia’s role as leader of the free world.” (There are three links in this sentence.)

Change that sentence to reference what “anyone in the world” and “about anything” and it applies to how little Trump cares about what anybody thinks about what he is doing. All he wants is for people like Zelenskyy to gratify his need for adoration. 

Mary Trump has him pegged accurately as a deeply insecure person. As the one mental health professional who knows him and knew his parents she can’t be accused (like myself and other psychotherapists have been doing) of analyzing him from a distance. Mary, gotta admire her, has finally had it with him so much that in her recent Substack podcast, The Depravity is the Point, used the word fuck twice. This prompted me to use it im my title.

It is important in understanding what drives Donald Trump to realize that you can understand the way he thinks and his behavior by knowing that the insecure child became a sadistic adult bully. From adolescence to adulthood he never actually experienced the feelings he had as a child. He discovered early on that he could deeply bury this feelings by bullying others.

Now, in addition to getting what I think is a visceral satisfaction out of dominating and bullying people who don’t show him the deference he thinks he deserves, in a similar vein he gets a hard-on bullying other countries. 

You don’t have to have any more proof that Trump’s self-image is wrapped up in his feeling like he is the most manly man in the world than to look at his pro wrestling shenanigans and the cartoonish muscle bound super hero depictions of himself which he sold. 

Trump wants to sit on the throne of the phallocentric universe even though he doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He is desperate to dethrone the muscular Vladimir Putin who can ride a horse, actually has a black belt in judo, and has ordered people to be assassinated.

The “I can grab them by the pussy because I’m a star” Trump has no conception that even having this cross his mind, let alone actually assaulting women, proves that he is deeply insecure as a man. 

Musk will be shown the exit if Trump feels threatened by him. Musk has 14 children. Who the hell has 14 children except someone who thinks this proves what a swinging dick they are? He can’t expose himself to prove how manly he is, so he carries his baby on his shoulders. It’s as if he’s saying “look at me, I just made a baby.”

Add up everything Trump has done to show dominance since taking office and the sum is a volcanic ejaculation eruption that makes Kīlauea (the ongoing Halemaʻumaʻu eruption which began on February 25 and had fiery fountains which reached peak heights of around 600 feet) look like a kid’s science fair project. To make matters worse, this is only the beginning.

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I post on BlueSky though the day, You can read my posts here.

What do they think of Trump's cozy relationship with Putin in the other Manchester? By Hal M. Brown

....

.

You know that we have a Manchester in New Hampshire. Fans of Ted Lasso know there's a Manchester in England too.

I was going to unpack everything that was wrong in Trump’s post (above) about why nobody should waste time worrying about Putin. Then I read the first article a web search turned up. It happened to be in the Manchester Evening News (here). 

This was covered in the American media, in Newsweek for example, but it was also reported on in other countries. I came across an article about this in the Manchester Evening News. At first I didn’t think much about this because I assumed it was Manchester, New Hampshire. Then I noticed “MAN UTD” on the top of the page. 

As a fan of the series “Ted Lasso,” I knew this referenced Manchester United, one of the best soccer teams not only in Great Britain but in the world. 

Donald Trump couldn’t couldn't give a rat's ass about what anyone in England, Europe, or Lower Slobovia for that matter, thinks about his cozy relationship with Putin, his abandoning Ukraine, and his shitcanning Amercia’s role as leader of the free world. As I wrote yesterday, Trump only wants revenge for being treated like crap for the previous four years. 

He wants to bask in the warm glow of a sun that shines only on his magnificence. If that level of narcissism was the only psychopatholgy he had it wouldnt be all that bad. He might just be a modern day Caligula.

Unfortunately, it isn’t enough for him to be powerful and to enjoy the trappings and privileges of the presidency. He has to have people cower in fear of him and to bow down to him. It isn’t enough for him to be emperor, he has a driving need to be an evil emperor. When he says “off with their heads” he wants to have the execution televised from the White House lawn.

Trump still believes he has to feign empathy. This may change. Repeatedly he has expressed how it saddens him to know about the death and suffering in Ukraine. He says that he want it to stop. He tries to look and sound sincere. This is all performative. He says the words and people, if they are gullible, just might think he actually feels something. 

Trump never acknowledges that it is Putin who is aggressively targeting civilians and destroying powerplants so people freeze. This because that undermines his narrative of casting Russia as the hero and Ukraine as the villian. If Trump admitted this it would lay bare the lie that he cares about the suffering of Ukranians.

Trump is incapable of experiencing empathy. The only one he ever feels sorry for is himself. The last time this happened was when he had to endure sitting in a hot courtroom during the E. Jean Carroll trial. He’ll think he has to fake it as long as he believes that his grip on absolute power is unassailable. 

Once he believes nobody can ever dethrone him I think he’ll say to himself “fuck putting on the act I’d rather be golfing.”

Addendum:

Trump isn’t particularly good at method acting, but he’s been good enough to convince millions of voters that he cares about them despite not caring about anybody but himself. Perhaps ironically, this is the acting technique developed by a Russian, Konstantin Stanislavski. This seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, understanding, and experiencing a character's inner motivation and emotions. Actors trying to go beyond getting into the character’s head and get into their hearts. You don’t have to really have empathy to do this well, but it helps. 

Here’s a list of the best American method actors. The one that is generally considered the inspiration for all of them is Marlon Brando.

When I think of what has been happening to America I often flash in my mind to the final scene in “Apocalypse Now” which is simply known as “the horor, the horror” scene. You can view it here.

I must have Brando on my mind since I concluded yesterday’s Substack with this:

I want to thank all of my readers and my Substack subscribers. You can read all of my Substack posts here. If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me. I generally reply to comments.

I post on BlueSky though the day, You can read my posts here.