Are we nearing the end of the Trump dictatorship

Many Americans now share a quiet, persistent hope: that the era of authoritarian behavior masquerading as leadership is finally nearing its end. The accumulation of documented corruption, ethical violations, and credible allegations of abuse has grown so large that even the most devoted partisan defenses are beginning to crack.

Institutions meant to safeguard democracy have been weakened. The Supreme Court’s legitimacy has been called into question. The rule of law has been distorted into a tool for loyalty rather than justice. Meanwhile, the normalization of intimidation, dehumanization, and the open association with criminal behavior has left the nation exhausted and fractured.

This is no longer a debate about policy differences or ideological disagreements. It is a question of whether a society can survive when truth is dismissed, cruelty is rewarded, and accountability is treated as persecution. History shows that democratic backsliding does not require mass support—only sustained silence.

Some within the former president’s own ranks have begun to step away. Their departures matter, but they are not yet enough. The real question is how many will be required to interrupt the cycle of corruption and destruction before lasting damage is done.

If this trajectory continues unchecked, the cost will not be borne by one party or one generation. It will be paid by institutions stripped of trust, by citizens taught to fear one another, and by a nation that forgot the difference between power and principle.

Human progress depends on courage—the courage to speak plainly, to reject lies even when they are convenient, and to defend democratic values before they are reduced to historical footnotes.

A Good neighbor passed away

 Living in Hazen, North Dakota we had the best neighbor a person could have. In fact we had many good neighbors. Dallas went to heaven Christmas Eve. Dallas had a good long life. We spoke to Marlyn just this morning and found out. She is every bit as wonderful as Dallas. We spent so many good days on their deck and at their dinning room table. We helped them every way we could and they paid us back immensely. Dallas owned the grocery store in town. When Dallas had us over for a steak dinner we got the best. Dallas loved birds and was well known for attracting Wood Ducks. His yard was always one of his key projects. Often we discussed philosophy and Dallas had some good stories. Dallas added a lot to our lives and so many others. He will be missed. 

Whites, Skaggs & Cooder at the Ryman, You Must Unload

Coffee Time

A Typical Morning in the Age of American Madness

It’s a typical day in America. A husband and wife sit down at six a.m., coffee in hand, scrolling through the endless avalanche of news. And once again, most of the ink spilled is about one man—Donald J. Trump. Never in our nation’s history has so much attention been consumed by such relentless turbulence.

I sometimes wonder if I am  beating a dead horse, but  I also never imagined  I would live long enough to watch the United States willingly plunge into this level of collective delusion. Even the dimmest brick shuffling around in a MAGA hat must, at some buried level of consciousness, suspect they’ve been conned. How could they not? Every single day Trump delivers fresh proof that he is unfit—unstable, authoritarian in instinct, and operating with the emotional maturity of a child.

Yet his supporters stare at the towering pyramid of evidence that he is the worst sort of con-man grifter—and they simply look away. They pretend not to see it. They pretend not to hear it. They swallow the latest outrage as if they’ve built immunity to reality itself.

Worse still, Trump has filled his inner circle with people who mirror his delusions, feed his ego, and reinforce the madness. What, exactly, has our country come to when this is the leadership millions willingly embrace?

The question now is painfully simple:
Can we restore sanity?
Can the United States pull itself back from the brink and re-embrace truth, decency, and democratic integrity?

We have done hard things before. We can do them again. But it will take courage—from citizens, from leaders, and from anyone still capable of seeing through the fog.

Because the fog is thick, and time is short.

Tax the Rich

The Great Tax Illusion

One of the most successful illusions ever sold to the American public is the idea that the rich pay taxes. They don’t—not in the way working people do, and not in proportion to what they take out of the system.

Even Mitt Romney, no socialist firebrand, recently let the truth slip. In a candid moment reported in The New York Times, Romney acknowledged what everyone inside the club already knows: the wealthy use perfectly legal schemes—carried interest, offshore shelters, trust loopholes, asset borrowing, stepped-up basis—to avoid paying meaningful taxes. They don’t earn income; they own assets. And assets, in America, are sacred.

This isn’t new. What’s new is how naked the system has become.

We are not drifting toward feudalism—we are returning to it.

In a modern feudal economy, wealth doesn’t come from work. It comes from ownership. The lords own the land (now stocks, real estate, data, and platforms), and the peasants rent their lives back one paycheck at a time. Most Americans today are serfs in all but name: one medical emergency from ruin, one layoff from homelessness, drowning in debt while being told the stock market is “doing great.”

And presiding over this mess is Donald Trump, the head circus clown, whose job is not to govern but to distract. While wealth concentrates upward at a pace unseen since the Gilded Age, Trump keeps his followers buzzing with lies, conspiracies, and culture-war nonsense. MAGA doesn’t question power—it worships it. The anger that should be aimed upward is redirected sideways and downward, toward immigrants, teachers, librarians, journalists, and anyone without money or influence.

This is how oligarchy survives.

Romney warns that the world is on the edge of a cliff. He’s right, though he stops short of naming the obvious cause: extreme wealth concentration paired with political capture. When billionaires don’t pay taxes, democracy collapses into a pay-to-play charade. Roads crumble, schools decay, healthcare becomes a luxury, and the public is told there’s “no money”—while fortunes grow untouched.

The solution is not complicated. It can be stated in three words:

Tax the rich.

Not slogans. Not symbolic gestures. Real taxes on real wealth. Close the loopholes. End the fantasy that borrowed-against wealth isn’t income. Restore progressive taxation that once built the American middle class instead of hollowing it out.

And let’s be clear about one thing: you are not rich.

If you think you are because you own a house, have a retirement account, or make six figures, you’ve swallowed the illusion whole. Unless you control hundreds of millions—assets that generate power, not paychecks—you are not in the club. You are one illness, one market crash, one bad year away from joining the ranks of the peasants.

The sooner Americans stop defending people who loot the system, the sooner we can stop the slide back into feudalism. The illusion is cracking. The question is whether we wake up in time—or keep applauding the circus as the tent collapses.

Young people don't have time to pay attention

I went to the doctor today and had a conversation with the nurse about building a pool in Payson. She seemed unaware of what the Three Stooges are doing in regard to a pool. The Stooges want to put duct tape on the old pool and call it good. It is a poor decision to just to serve the old goats who are opposed to paying any new tax. The goats want to save the money for the casino. Payson is being run by and for the Tea Party crowd because nobody else pays attention. We have Trump on a national level because normal people failed to act. The same is happing in Payson. The Stooges have brought the town to a standstill to protect the Tea Party goats from a small tax.  Wake up young people. Your children will never enjoy a pool if the goats have their way. 

The Payson Tea Party

What Is a Group, Really?

A group is defined by what its members share. So what binds the Tea Party crowd together?

In Payson, the answer is uncomfortably clear. They share a fondness for political lies, paranoid rumors, and the comfort of a very small world where complex problems always have simple villains. Our town is burdened with a Tea Party faction that yearns for a mythic past—white dominance, gun-slinging bravado, and cowboy-hat masculinity that mistakes bluster for strength.

Tea Party women seem unbothered by crude men who treat them as second-class citizens, as long as those men shout the right slogans. Trump is adored precisely because he mirrors the Tea Party mindset: nothing is ever his fault. Every failure has an external enemy. Biden caused it. Immigrants caused it. Democrats caused it. Someone—anyone—but them.

Grievance is the Tea Party’s organizing principle. Their followers are convinced they’ve been wronged, that they are victims of forces beyond their control. They are assured, repeatedly, that their disappointments have nothing to do with poor choices, incuriosity, or a lifelong avoidance of reading, education, and intellectual honesty.

A Tea Party meeting resembles a revival tent for resentment. It is part church, part therapy circle—though not one aimed at healing. Like an AA meeting run backward, it doesn’t confront addiction; it feeds it. The addiction is to Fox News, to fear, to slogans masquerading as ideas, and to stories so short on facts they fit neatly into a headline crawl.

In the end, the Tea Party doesn’t offer solutions. It offers absolution—permission to stop thinking, stop learning, and stop taking responsibility. For some, that’s an irresistible comfort. For Payson, it’s a continuing curse.