>"magnified by the idiocy of the goons he surrounded himself with: sociopaths who look like they were spat out of the muck of a Breitbart comments section, only with less education and intellect."
Rick gives them much too much credit. They're worse than what he said. Rick is the commentator we need right now. He writes with the ferocity and passion of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. It's a great shame that we lost Hunter and he's not around to dissect the clusterfuck we're living through, but Rick and stepped up to the plate and taken the freedom banner and he's taking the fight to these MAGA clowns.
Reading this well structured prose, and placing it alongside the DOT lawyers who sent the Judge their draft memo demonstrating they have no case in the NYC congestion pricing suit, along with telling Arkansas that their Tornado damage was insufficient to require federal support and to pay for the repairs out of their own budget. This is not even considering the trade wars and IMF's economic forecast. All caused by one person, and his enablers. When will Congress finally realize they have to take action?
I buy all of this. Except your timeframe and use of the word "dangerous". The word was over-used for the last 10 years, or more, by the people Trump has labelled the "deranged Left". It's so far beyond it's sell-by date, we need to toss it out entirely. "Dangerous" now sounds like Murkowski murmuring that something Trump did "is concerning", as if she will sit him down and give him a good finger-waggle.
I know that the zero-sum concepts that have been forced on us call up visions of the mega-wealthy luxuriating in their tax cuts, but I'm not 100% convinced that things with them are all peaches and cream. One reason is because they are a continuum, as are all of us. Sure, there are a dozen gadzillionares, but there are many, many more business owners, investment bankers, all kinds of rich people on the make who depend on a robust economy for their prosperity. They are not a monolith, they are smart enough to know that losing 50% of your wealth for a 20% tax cut is not a winner. They understand how to cut a loss to regain long-term profitability.
More powerful and certainly more capable tin-pot dictators than Trump have been taken down. There are way too many interests that have been violated. Powerful interests. One feature of his blunderbuss approach to everything all at once is that he can't keep track of everything he's broken, or how badly. What is and will be coming back to him is manifest many-fold and from all the directions he's struck.
The chaos we have is one thing. The response and the 'recovery' will be something entirely different. Shit will be done "in the name of the country" that will be astonishing and possibly horrifying. Four years? Not a chance.
Heard some MAGA babbling the other day about how all the DOGE fraud savings found in our government will be soon mailed out to us as trickle down checks. Hate to tell you bro but that sticky shit trickling out of Musk ain’t money….
The Orange Strongman has one goal in mind for his billionaire cronies with the tariff scheme that claims America as a poor victim(sound familiar?) Get rid of income tax and rely on tariffs that insufferably tax the working class It’s bonkers but that’s his read of the “Golden Age” of the Robber barons when the working class severely economically suffered and the wealthy became ultrawealthy To get rid of income tax the Strongman’s first step is to gut the civil service that support ordinary Americans
But this greedy dirtbag of a president doesn’t understand that the economic power of this country lies in WE the People and just like he screwed up the management of the COVID pandemic he’s heading our country into another historic incompetent poorly thought out gambit that has already started destroying our country By far the most selfish greedy narcissistic president America has ever experienced
The arrogance and sense of superiority of the uberwealthy and its Nazi party is absolutely reprehensible, disgraceful, and deplorable Indeed as Marie Antoinette of French nobility demeaningly said to the peasants in the country it led to her beheading by guillotine It was WE the People during the French Revolution that finally said “Enough” And interestingly the Revolution was brought about by a currency crisis and failure brought about by the monarchy
As Musk found out in Wisconsin elections are not for sale So the billionaire class are running into WE the People who say “you don’t run this country” This attempted power grab by the ultrawealthy will not happen because there are too many of us
In 2025 “Let them eat cake” indeed!!! Protest Protest and then Protest some more
Sometimes you need to vent, but is Rick missing a larger story? That is the engine that powers Trumpism. It's the symbiotic relationship between MAGA and the cabal of billionaires inspired by the Lewis Powell memo, who went on the create the Atlas Society, the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 is merely the latest addendum to the Powell memo.
I often wondered how these men who built such vast corporate empires could be so stupid as to poison the world and attack the system that made them wealthy and powerful. I found a possible explanation in end time feudalism explained in this article from The Guardian:
Klein and Taylor would make outstanding guests for the LP Podcast.
I fear that the Lincoln Project is too myopic in its war on Trumpism. Trump is just the WMD of the coup against democracy by Powell's successors. The fall of the Constitution began in the court with Citizens United and other similar arbitrary rulings cloaked as interpretations of law. Trump is an infection of that disease, and defeating Trump is far from a cure. There are others in the wings more dangerously clever. Vance called Trump the American Hitler but unhesitatingly became another Faust. John Roberts is the general appointed by the oligarchs, and there is about to be a clash of egos between him and Trump. The oligarchs in Germany thought they could control Hitler. Will we suffer a similar fate? Stay tuned, but don't let Trump distract you from Charles Koch, the man behind the curtain with his bag man Leonard Leo and a team of billionaires, who bought congress and gave us the Roberts Court that enabled the autocracy.
I loved your books, and find your writing style deliciously inflammatory. But here's a little doodle that I pecked out a few days ago on what we're actually up against:
THRASYMACHUS MEETS EVOLUTION AND ZERO-SUM THINKING:
There is only so much of X (money, food, oil, water, arable land), so for me to get more of X the rest of you must take less. And through me getting more my genes will be able to evolutionarily dominate yours. I can outcompete you for sexual access, so have more offspring, and can also give my additional offspring competitive advantages – in diet, education and so on – that will ensure their ability to dominate your offspring; from which the cycle will then repeat, and so on. This is basic and inescapable reality; ‘the way of the world’ imposed on us (so, intrinsically, not my fault) by the competitive mechanism of evolution. Resistance to it is self-defeating, in that it can lead only to competitive disadvantage, and thereby ultimately to genetic elimination, for the resistors. Its logical corollary is dominance as our only honest directive. If – through my failure to lie, cheat, steal and betray, etc. – I miss some competitive advantage that is not missed by my less scrupulous adversary then, and to my cost, he will gain in dominance; so there is finally nothing but dominance. Reason, fairness, honesty and altruism are merely naïve comforters for the weak and foolish. There are many more of them than of me, so – as recommended by Machiavelli – I must be able to convincing fake these weaknesses when required to further my dominance agenda. But I’m way too smart and wise to fall for them.
I offer this as a statement of the Trump/Vance/Musk/Putin/Orban/etc. position, in the unlikely event that they were to suddenly become willing to express it with honesty and precision. It is of course a large and stinking pile of garbage. But until and unless our side can sufficiently recover its intellectual mojo for honest articulation of the powerful rational arguments which show it to be such a pile then it will continue to trash our world.
>"magnified by the idiocy of the goons he surrounded himself with: sociopaths who look like they were spat out of the muck of a Breitbart comments section, only with less education and intellect."
Rick gives them much too much credit. They're worse than what he said. Rick is the commentator we need right now. He writes with the ferocity and passion of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. It's a great shame that we lost Hunter and he's not around to dissect the clusterfuck we're living through, but Rick and stepped up to the plate and taken the freedom banner and he's taking the fight to these MAGA clowns.
Rick Wilson is (and has been) channeling the greatest American political satirest and commentator: HL Mencken!
Reading this well structured prose, and placing it alongside the DOT lawyers who sent the Judge their draft memo demonstrating they have no case in the NYC congestion pricing suit, along with telling Arkansas that their Tornado damage was insufficient to require federal support and to pay for the repairs out of their own budget. This is not even considering the trade wars and IMF's economic forecast. All caused by one person, and his enablers. When will Congress finally realize they have to take action?
I buy all of this. Except your timeframe and use of the word "dangerous". The word was over-used for the last 10 years, or more, by the people Trump has labelled the "deranged Left". It's so far beyond it's sell-by date, we need to toss it out entirely. "Dangerous" now sounds like Murkowski murmuring that something Trump did "is concerning", as if she will sit him down and give him a good finger-waggle.
I know that the zero-sum concepts that have been forced on us call up visions of the mega-wealthy luxuriating in their tax cuts, but I'm not 100% convinced that things with them are all peaches and cream. One reason is because they are a continuum, as are all of us. Sure, there are a dozen gadzillionares, but there are many, many more business owners, investment bankers, all kinds of rich people on the make who depend on a robust economy for their prosperity. They are not a monolith, they are smart enough to know that losing 50% of your wealth for a 20% tax cut is not a winner. They understand how to cut a loss to regain long-term profitability.
More powerful and certainly more capable tin-pot dictators than Trump have been taken down. There are way too many interests that have been violated. Powerful interests. One feature of his blunderbuss approach to everything all at once is that he can't keep track of everything he's broken, or how badly. What is and will be coming back to him is manifest many-fold and from all the directions he's struck.
The chaos we have is one thing. The response and the 'recovery' will be something entirely different. Shit will be done "in the name of the country" that will be astonishing and possibly horrifying. Four years? Not a chance.
You nailed it again, Rick.
Ultimately,
anything & everything will be blamed on President Biden. All will be spun.
You crystallized the disgust we all feel for Dump and his Maggats. Thank you Rick.
Even in Clown College I m sure they understand that we are on the verge of something really bad. Like 2008 implosión .
Heard some MAGA babbling the other day about how all the DOGE fraud savings found in our government will be soon mailed out to us as trickle down checks. Hate to tell you bro but that sticky shit trickling out of Musk ain’t money….
Great writing!
Hey Rick. Too bad you can't find the enough of the right, descriptive words. LOL Keep up the good work.
Greedy Billionaires: “Let them eat cake”
The Orange Strongman has one goal in mind for his billionaire cronies with the tariff scheme that claims America as a poor victim(sound familiar?) Get rid of income tax and rely on tariffs that insufferably tax the working class It’s bonkers but that’s his read of the “Golden Age” of the Robber barons when the working class severely economically suffered and the wealthy became ultrawealthy To get rid of income tax the Strongman’s first step is to gut the civil service that support ordinary Americans
But this greedy dirtbag of a president doesn’t understand that the economic power of this country lies in WE the People and just like he screwed up the management of the COVID pandemic he’s heading our country into another historic incompetent poorly thought out gambit that has already started destroying our country By far the most selfish greedy narcissistic president America has ever experienced
The arrogance and sense of superiority of the uberwealthy and its Nazi party is absolutely reprehensible, disgraceful, and deplorable Indeed as Marie Antoinette of French nobility demeaningly said to the peasants in the country it led to her beheading by guillotine It was WE the People during the French Revolution that finally said “Enough” And interestingly the Revolution was brought about by a currency crisis and failure brought about by the monarchy
As Musk found out in Wisconsin elections are not for sale So the billionaire class are running into WE the People who say “you don’t run this country” This attempted power grab by the ultrawealthy will not happen because there are too many of us
In 2025 “Let them eat cake” indeed!!! Protest Protest and then Protest some more
Sometimes you need to vent, but is Rick missing a larger story? That is the engine that powers Trumpism. It's the symbiotic relationship between MAGA and the cabal of billionaires inspired by the Lewis Powell memo, who went on the create the Atlas Society, the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 is merely the latest addendum to the Powell memo.
I often wondered how these men who built such vast corporate empires could be so stupid as to poison the world and attack the system that made them wealthy and powerful. I found a possible explanation in end time feudalism explained in this article from The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
Klein and Taylor would make outstanding guests for the LP Podcast.
I fear that the Lincoln Project is too myopic in its war on Trumpism. Trump is just the WMD of the coup against democracy by Powell's successors. The fall of the Constitution began in the court with Citizens United and other similar arbitrary rulings cloaked as interpretations of law. Trump is an infection of that disease, and defeating Trump is far from a cure. There are others in the wings more dangerously clever. Vance called Trump the American Hitler but unhesitatingly became another Faust. John Roberts is the general appointed by the oligarchs, and there is about to be a clash of egos between him and Trump. The oligarchs in Germany thought they could control Hitler. Will we suffer a similar fate? Stay tuned, but don't let Trump distract you from Charles Koch, the man behind the curtain with his bag man Leonard Leo and a team of billionaires, who bought congress and gave us the Roberts Court that enabled the autocracy.
Well put.
still gets me this is published in Stowe VT, small world
Rick,
I loved your books, and find your writing style deliciously inflammatory. But here's a little doodle that I pecked out a few days ago on what we're actually up against:
THRASYMACHUS MEETS EVOLUTION AND ZERO-SUM THINKING:
There is only so much of X (money, food, oil, water, arable land), so for me to get more of X the rest of you must take less. And through me getting more my genes will be able to evolutionarily dominate yours. I can outcompete you for sexual access, so have more offspring, and can also give my additional offspring competitive advantages – in diet, education and so on – that will ensure their ability to dominate your offspring; from which the cycle will then repeat, and so on. This is basic and inescapable reality; ‘the way of the world’ imposed on us (so, intrinsically, not my fault) by the competitive mechanism of evolution. Resistance to it is self-defeating, in that it can lead only to competitive disadvantage, and thereby ultimately to genetic elimination, for the resistors. Its logical corollary is dominance as our only honest directive. If – through my failure to lie, cheat, steal and betray, etc. – I miss some competitive advantage that is not missed by my less scrupulous adversary then, and to my cost, he will gain in dominance; so there is finally nothing but dominance. Reason, fairness, honesty and altruism are merely naïve comforters for the weak and foolish. There are many more of them than of me, so – as recommended by Machiavelli – I must be able to convincing fake these weaknesses when required to further my dominance agenda. But I’m way too smart and wise to fall for them.
I offer this as a statement of the Trump/Vance/Musk/Putin/Orban/etc. position, in the unlikely event that they were to suddenly become willing to express it with honesty and precision. It is of course a large and stinking pile of garbage. But until and unless our side can sufficiently recover its intellectual mojo for honest articulation of the powerful rational arguments which show it to be such a pile then it will continue to trash our world.