Hard to imagine

The Three Stooges of Payson

Imagine three grown men, dressed as public servants, walking into a town hall meeting as if they were starring in a low-budget remake of The Three Stooges. Now imagine them beginning that meeting with a solemn prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance—heads bowed, hands over hearts, every gesture dripping with performative patriotism.

In Payson, Arizona, this is our reality.

These three men—Mayor Steve Otto, Jim Ferris, and Charlie Bell—give hypocrisy their most earnest effort. They pray as if they follow the teachings of Christ. They recite the pledge as if they understand the meaning of “liberty and justice for all.” And then, moments later, they proceed to violate every principle embedded in the words they just spoke.

Jim Ferris kicks things off by claiming—without evidence—that the public library is promoting pornography. It’s a smear straight from the national extremist playbook: attack institutions of learning, stir fear, and hope no one asks for proof.

Steve Otto, meanwhile, sees no issue with attending Tea Party meetings that exclude the public he claims to represent. Transparency? Accountability? Those words disappear the moment he steps into the Tea Party clubhouse.

And then there’s Charlie Bell—poor Charlie—who simply salutes whatever the Tea Party demands. No independent thought, no evaluation, no courage. Just obedience.

Because pandering to the Tea Party is the entire operating system for this trio.

The Tea Party in Payson functions like a Boy Scouts troop for Trumpism: badges in outrage, merit awards for misinformation, and a handbook written in conspiracy theories. Reality doesn’t faze them. Facts are optional. The truth is like putty—molded, twisted, and reshaped to suit whatever narrative keeps the base riled and the power structure intact.

This is what passes for leadership in Payson. A ritualized performance of prayer, patriotism, and public service—followed by a meeting where those very principles are cheerfully discarded.

And the citizens of Payson deserve better than a government run by stooges.

Denial

It is comforting to believe nothing has changed. It is comforting to believe we are still young, still free, still living in the country we were taught to admire. But reality has a way of shattering comforting illusions.

The scale does not lie. You can avoid stepping on it, you can convince yourself the problem doesn’t exist, but the truth remains unchanged. Denial does not alter reality.

The United States was once a place where people could walk with confidence that the law applied equally, that freedom was more than a slogan, and that government power had limits. Those days are gone. We are now living under a dictatorship, whether we choose to admit it or not.

Donald Trump has made that reality unmistakable. He threatens to send federal troops into American cities to suppress unrest that his own actions ignited—after armed agents shot a woman in the face and killed her. Instead of accountability, we get intimidation. Instead of truth, we get lies layered upon lies.

You can go about your day pretending the sun still shines the same way. You can insist this is normal, that freedom still exists because it once did. But deep down, you know better. Truth no longer matters. Power does.

We are being reduced to subjects—peasants meant to serve the wealthy and protect their interests. Rights are conditional. Justice is selective. And obedience is increasingly demanded, not earned.

This is what dictatorship looks like—not all at once, but step by step, while people convince themselves nothing has changed.

The scale is waiting.

There are none so blind as those who will not see

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
Donald Trump has not merely bent the rules of democracy—he has spat on them. He treats the Constitution as a nuisance, elections as inconveniences, and the rule of law as something to be mocked. What once would have ended any political career is now shrugged off as “fake news” by a movement trained to reject evidence and embrace lies.

Trump’s enforcers roam the country with the arrogance of unchecked power. They intimidate, harass, and brutalize in the name of “law and order,” while operating above the law themselves. This is not strength; it is the behavior of regimes that fear accountability. History has a long record of what happens when leaders surround themselves with loyal thugs instead of principled professionals—and none of those stories end well.

The corruption is staggering. Theft, grift, self-dealing, and bribery have become normalized. Public office is treated like a private ATM. Foreign interests, corporate cronies, and wealthy benefactors buy influence in plain sight. Any previous administration would have collapsed under the weight of such scandals. Yet here we are, watching a president enrich himself while millions of Americans struggle to afford food, housing, and healthcare.

Most disturbing of all is the reaction of Trump’s loyal followers. Faced with overwhelming evidence, they retreat deeper into the fog of lies he has carefully constructed. Facts bounce off them. Court rulings are dismissed. Journalists are labeled enemies. Anyone who speaks truth is attacked as disloyal or un-American. This is not ignorance—it is willful blindness.

Democracy does not die in a single dramatic moment. It erodes slowly, as citizens stop caring, stop questioning, and stop defending the institutions meant to protect them. Tyranny does not require universal support; it only requires enough people to look away.

The tragedy of our moment is not just Trump’s behavior—it is the number of Americans willing to excuse it. History will not be kind to those who chose comfort over conscience. The question remains: how much damage must be done before the blind decide to see?

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Keep Payson Clean

Keep Payson Clean is a great idea, and the volunteers deserve credit. But let’s be honest: it is impossible to keep a town clean when its leadership refuses to address the largest sources of blight.

Litter along roads and in public spaces is visible and annoying, but it is not the root problem. Payson could be completely free of roadside trash and still look neglected as long as large-scale junk properties are allowed to exist unchecked. These aren’t hidden problems—they are in plain sight.

Anyone who doubts this should drive down Arrow Street. What you see is not “clutter,” it’s a full-blown eyesore that looks more like a junkyard. Look toward American Gulch and you’ll find the same thing: junk, disarray, and neglect that reflect poorly on the entire town.

This is not a lack of ordinances. Payson already has the legal authority to address these properties. The real problem is enforcement, and enforcement is the direct responsibility of the Town Manager, the Mayor, and the Town Council. Choosing not to act is still a decision—and it’s one that harms property values, drives away tourists, and tells residents that the rules are optional.

If residents want real change, posting online isn’t enough. People need to show up at Town Council meetings and use the “Call to the Public” portion of the agenda. That is where citizens are guaranteed the right to speak, be heard on the record, and put elected officials on notice.

One person can be ignored. A room full of residents, all asking the same question—why aren’t the ordinances being enforced?—cannot be.

If Payson truly wants to be clean, attractive, and welcoming, then its leadership must move beyond words and take visible action. Volunteer cleanups help, but they cannot substitute for governance.

Show up. Speak up. Use Call to the Public. Demand enforcement, timelines, and accountability.
That’s how Payson gets clean—for real.

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The High School Bully works for ICE

Some people never reach a mature mental age. They grow older, but they do not grow up. They remain trapped in a world of macho fantasy, where dominance substitutes for intelligence and force replaces thought. To them, every problem looks like a nail, and the only tool worth respecting is a bigger hammer—or a gun.

Donald Trump is one of these people, and the culture he has empowered reflects his arrested development. His ICE agents are not an accident; they are a product. Who else would willingly harass, intimidate, and brutalize innocent people while claiming they are “just doing their job”? You already know the answer. You know the type.

We see them locally, too. At the recent Democratic protest in Payson, they announced themselves in predictable ways—rolling coal in their trucks, flipping the bird, sneering as they passed. No arguments. No ideas. Just reflexive hostility. This is not political disagreement; it is emotional immaturity on display.

Who are these mental midgets? You guessed it. They are the high-school failures who never learned to read critically and discovered early on that thinking is hard work. They are the bullies—and the bullies’ henchmen—who learned that intimidation feels easier than understanding. When confronted with complexity, history, or empathy, they respond with rage, mockery, or violence.

This is not merely a Trump problem. It is an American failure. It is the failure to educate for citizenship rather than obedience, for reasoning rather than reflex, for empathy rather than dominance. When a society stops valuing thought, it starts celebrating cruelty. When ignorance is rewarded with power, brutality soon follows.

We are now living with the consequences. A nation led by emotional adolescents will behave like one—lashing out, blaming others, and confusing aggression with strength. Until we confront this cultural and educational collapse, the bullies will keep marching, convinced that their immaturity is patriotism and their cruelty is courage.

The rest of us know better. And knowing better means refusing to normalize this behavior, refusing to excuse it, and refusing to surrender our democracy to people who never learned how to grow up.

Trump's Epstein Phone Call - The Recording That Ended Everything

Once Again

Once again the sun has come up in Payson. Yesterday 78 people stood on Highway 87 to protest Trump's thugs shooting people in the face. Yes, there are good people in Payson, but too many don't have the courage to stand up against the dictator.  

Of course the local Hoopleheads always attack with their smoke dog wagons. The smoke dogs like you see in the picture above take great pride in displaying their immaturity, and stupidity. The Payson Police have been pretty good about ticketing the smoke dogs. Trump has his thugs shoot a woman in the face and it just does not register with his cult. Trump lies about it so quickly it is astounding. Worse yet Vance chimes in calling the woman a terrorist. Of course Christie Nome lies about it also. All have the high school mentality of the smoke dog in the picture.