Is Trump imploding

I have watched two mental health professionals diagnose Trump. Both conclude Trump has mental problems and is in decline. Any normal person that has watched his speeches knows his bolts are loose. As a con man there is no one who can match him in history. As a mentally ill president he also ranks first. Of course his greatest skill is lying. Majorie Taylor Green has abandoned Trump. Wow, that says something when the other mental cases run from Trump.  

The Grifters Episode 30 "Peace Prize Dreams"

How you got screwed by your employer

HOW THE DEATH OF PENSIONS BROKE AMERICA’S RETIREMENT SYSTEM

National Association for the Advancement of Humanity

For most of the 20th century, the American worker had something rare in today’s economy: security. If you worked long enough for a company, you retired with a pension—a guaranteed monthly check for life, insulated from Wall Street’s chaos and corporate whim. Your employer carried the risk. Your retirement was safe.

Then, in the 1980s, corporate America discovered a new toy: the 401(k).
And that change—quiet, incremental, wrapped in the language of “choice” and “personal responsibility”—has produced one of the greatest economic bait-and-switches in modern history.

Today, we live with the consequences: a nation where millions approach retirement with nothing but a shaky account, a volatile stock market, and a prayer.

Here’s how it happened.

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From Guaranteed Security to Every-Man-For-Himself

A pension is simple:
You work → The company invests → You retire → You get a check every month until you die.

It was stable. Predictable. Dignified.

A 401(k) flips all of that upside down:
You invest → You hope the market doesn’t crash → You hope you don’t outlive your savings → You pray fees don’t eat the account → And if anything goes wrong, you alone absorb the damage.

The shift wasn’t an accident. It was a strategy.

Companies figured out that 401(k)s were:

• Cheaper

• Less risky for them

• Easier to cut when times got tough

• More profitable for Wall Street

So they dumped pensions and handed workers a flimsy substitute, wrapped in patriotic rhetoric about “ownership society.”

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The Collapse of Retirement Security

1. No More Guaranteed Income

Pensions guaranteed lifetime payments.
401(k)s guarantee nothing.

A pension couldn’t “run out.”
A 401(k) can vanish in a recession or just get spent down because a human being dared to live past 85.

This single change—removing the guarantee—is the core of the retirement crisis.

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2. Most Americans Can’t Save Enough

The median 401(k) balance for people nearing retirement is about $89,000.
That produces maybe $400 a month.

Try living on that.

Half of Americans have zero retirement savings. Zero.
The most powerful nation on Earth turned retirement into a DIY science project.

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3. Risk Shifted Entirely to the Worker

Under pensions:

• Employers bore market risk

• Employers bore longevity risk

• Employers bore inflation risk

Under 401(k)s, all three landed on the worker like a sack of bricks.

If the stock market crashes the year you retire—tough.
If health problems force early retirement—tough.
If inflation eats your savings—tough.

It’s capitalism with a twist: heads the corporation wins, tails the worker loses.

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4. Inequality Exploded

401(k)s work great for the wealthy:

• They earn more

• They save more

• They get bigger matches

• They can hire advisors

• They never cash out early

But middle- and lower-income workers?
They get:

• Low wages

• Spotty matches

• Job changes

• Emergencies

• Early withdrawals

• Fees, fees, and more fees

The result is predictable:
The rich glide into retirement while everyone else clings to part-time jobs at age 72.

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5. Fees Eat Up Decades of Savings

Wall Street loves the 401(k) system because it siphons off billions in fees.
These fees—hidden or buried deep in the fine print—quietly eat up 20–40% of a worker’s lifetime gains.

With pensions, fees were microscopic.
With 401(k)s, they’re a profit machine—for everyone except the worker.

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The Outcome: A Nation Unprepared for Old Age

Look around:
More Americans are working past 65 than at any time in modern history—not because they want to, but because they have to.

We turned retirement from a guarantee into a gamble.

We turned the elderly from secure retirees into anxious market-watchers.

We turned stability into speculation.

And we did it because corporations didn’t want long-term obligations and Wall Street wanted a new revenue stream.

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The National Association’s Verdict

The destruction of pensions was not just an economic shift—it was a political choice and a moral failure. A country that once promised workers dignity in old age replaced that dignity with a volatile account, market roulette, and the false promise of “individual responsibility.”

America’s retirement system didn’t collapse.
It was redesigned to collapse—quietly, profitably, and with the blessing of the politicians and CEOs who benefited from the wreckage.

If we want to restore retirement security, we must stop pretending the problem is worker behavior and start addressing the truth:

The pensionless retirement system is a rigged game.
And workers are the ones holding the losing hand.

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I

The Trump insanity spins on

Every time I hear Trump in one of his rants, I wonder how anyone can deny Trump's bolts are loose. Did you watch Trump give his McDonalds speech? Unhinged is the only way you can see that idiot. This week he call a reporter "Piggy",  how presidential. Trump is a gutter rat. Trump's insanity never stops. At the White House he is tearing down he welcomed a murdering prince, and said " Things happen".  If you are still a hard core MAGA you are as deluded as King Trump. Meanwhile the grift goes on.  The stealing and corruption of the Trump gang is setting new records every day for theft and graft.  

Corruption infecting our country

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The Most Corrupt Man Ever to Sit in the Oval Office — And Why His Second Term Is Even More Dangerous

By any and every measure, Donald J. Trump is the most corrupt human being ever to sit in the Oval Office. Historians know it. Ethics experts know it. Anyone with the courage to peel back even one layer of the onion knows it. And if the A-plot of Trump’s second presidency is his openly declared authoritarian project, then the B-plot—the one running quietly in the background, poisoning everything it touches—is his shameless, industrial-scale corruption.

And make no mistake: the B-plot feeds the A-plot. Corruption is the bloodstream of authoritarianism.

Trump’s First Term Was a Warm-Up for Corruption

The first Trump presidency was a four-year ethics crime spree:
• Cabinet members indicted, investigated, resigning in disgrace.
• Foreign governments funneling money through Trump hotels.
• Pardons handed out to cronies, political allies, and convicted criminals like party favors.
• A president who refused to divest from his businesses, meaning the Oval Office was essentially a full-time marketing department for the Trump brand.

That wasn’t a presidency. It was a smash-and-grab operation.

And yet—as unbelievable as it sounds—it was only a preview.

The Second Term Is the Heist in Broad Daylight

Trump is not hiding the ball anymore. He’s telling you exactly what he plans to do.

During his first term, he at least pretended the Constitution mattered. Not anymore. The new Trump project is straightforward:

1. Immunity for himself.
   Trump’s legal arguments boil down to: If the president commits a crime, it becomes magically legal. That is the dream of every dictator in world history.

2. Weaponizing the Justice Department.
   He openly says he will use federal power to punish political enemies—mayors, governors, journalists, former officials, prosecutors, anyone in his way.

3. Replacing qualified civil servants with loyalists.
   The goal? A government run by yes-men whose job is not to serve the public but to protect the Dear Leader.

4. Turning the U.S. Treasury into a family wallet.
   Every kleptocrat starts here. Trump’s second term is already modeled on Orbán, Erdoğan, and Putin: consolidate power, crush opposition, and enrich yourself and your inner circle.

This is not speculation. It’s the blueprint Trump and his advisers brag about on television.

Corruption Isn’t a Side Plot — It’s the Engine

Corruption isn’t a character flaw with Trump—it is the governing philosophy. The system exists only to extract wealth, power, and revenge.

You can’t have democracy and Trump’s brand of corruption in the same country. One destroys the other.

That’s why historians warn that the second Trump term would not simply be a replay—it would be a completion. Authoritarians always return to finish the job.

The Real Irony? Trump’s Base Is the First to Be Betrayed

The MAGA faithful, the folks who would lose sleep if a library book had two moms in it, are the same people Trump is fleecing blind.
He takes their donations.
He sells them cheap gold sneakers.
He turns their fears into merchandise.
He pockets their loyalty while giving them nothing in return.

Every dictator in history has the same trick: convince the peasants to cheer while you empty their pockets.

A Nation at the Crossroads

We’re not debating policy differences anymore. This is the oldest question in politics:

Do we want government by law, or government by one deeply corrupt man?

If Trump’s return to power is the A-plot of creeping authoritarianism, then the B-plot—the constant drip of corruption—is what keeps the whole rotten story moving forward.

And it ends the same way every time:
with a ruined democracy, a frightened population, and a leader who escapes the wreckage holding bags of money.

America has been warned. Loudly. Repeatedly.

The question now is whether we’re still a country capable of listening.

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The Peasants always suffer

The Peasants of the New American Dictatorship

The United States has slipped—quietly for some, violently for others—into its first full-blown dictatorship. And as history always tells us, there is never any mystery about who suffers most when a strongman takes power. It’s never the oligarchs. It’s never the billionaires. It’s never the yacht class or the resort dwellers.

It is always the poor.
It is always the workers.
It is always the people who believed the lie.

From ancient kings to 20th-century fascists, dictators rule with the same formula: weaponize the grievances of the people at the bottom, then hammer those same people into the ground once power is secured. Trump has not reinvented the wheel; he’s simply rolling the same old iron chariot over the backs of the very peasants who worship him.

The Great American Irony

What makes the Trump dictatorship remarkable is not its brutality—history has seen worse—but its absurdity. The people who empowered him were the people with the most to lose. The MAGA peasants weren’t just foot soldiers; they were the fuel, the oxygen, the cheering section.

And here is the cruel twist:
Trump abuses them the most.

The factory worker who thought Trump would “bring back jobs” now faces rising costs, disappearing healthcare, and a government run by corporations.
The struggling rural family that believed Trump would fight for them has been rewarded with cuts to social programs, worse schools, and crumbling infrastructure.
The veterans who believed the strongman myth now watch as Trump pardons war criminals but abandons those who served honorably.

The Old Story in New Clothes

Every dictator throughout history has blamed a scapegoat, promised a rebirth, and declared himself the only “truth.” Trump copied the script line by line.

• The strongman always claims he speaks for “the people.”
  Meanwhile, the real people can’t afford rent, groceries, medicine, or housing.

• The strongman always promises national greatness.
  Meanwhile, the oligarchs loot the treasury.

• The strongman always demonizes the poor as “lazy.”
  Meanwhile, his cronies siphon off billions in tax giveaways.

The only difference in America’s version is that the propaganda is piped through social media instead of state radio. Today’s peasants willingly carry the King’s message straight into their own living rooms.

The MAGA Peasant’s Burden

Call them peasants, call them serfs, call them Hoopleheads—whatever the name, the dynamic is ancient: the poor cling to the strongman because they are afraid. Afraid of cultural change. Afraid of economic uncertainty. Afraid of losing the tiny slice of status they believe they still hold.

So they pledge allegiance to the man who offers them the most seductive lie ever told in politics:

“Your suffering is someone else’s fault—not mine.”

Trump gave them a villain: immigrants, Democrats, teachers, librarians, scientists, trans kids, the FBI, the press, the courts, the experts, even the Constitution. Anyone but him.

But the bill always comes due.

And under a dictatorship, the bill is paid by the poor.

They pay with their labor.
They pay with their rights.
They pay with their public services.
They pay with their health.
They pay with their children’s futures.

And eventually, they pay with their freedom—sometimes without even noticing they lost it.

A Tyranny Built on Self-Delusion

The final tragedy of the American dictatorship is that Trump didn’t seize power from the people.

The people handed it to him.
They helped build the cage.
Then they climbed into it.
Then they slammed the door shut on themselves.

And now the strongman sits on his throne, chuckling to himself, knowing one great truth:

The easiest people to oppress are the ones who believe you’re saving them.

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The life of the Rat in the White House

“There is no literature or poetry in this White House.

No music.

No Kennedy Center award celebrations.

There are no pets in this White House.

No loyal man’s best friend. No Socks the family cat.

No kids’ science fairs.

No times when this president takes off his blue suit-red tie uniform and becomes human, except when he puts on his white shirt-khaki pants uniform to play golf.

There are no images of the first family enjoying themselves together in a moment of relaxation.

No Obamas on the beach in Hawaii, or Bushes fishing in Kennebunkport, no Reagans on horseback, no Kennedys playing touch football on the Cape.

Where did that country go?

Where did all of the fun and joy and expressions of love and happiness go?

We used to be a country that did the ice bucket challenge and raised millions for charity.

We used to have a president that calmed and soothed the nation instead dividing it.

And a First Lady that planted a garden instead of ripping one out.

We are rudderless and joyless.

We have lost the cultural aspects of society that make America great.

We have lost our mojo, our fun, our happiness.

The cheering on of others. Gone.

The shared experiences of humanity that makes it all worth it. Gone.

The challenges AND the triumphs that we shared and celebrated.

The unique can-do spirit Americans have always been known for. Gone.

We have lost so much in so short a time."

~Elayne Griffin Baker