25 years after 9/11, did they win?

By Isaiah Thomas
Board of Editors

The 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 hit us harder than we thought it would. We remember not only the shock and horror of the day, but what happened before and after.

We remember the turn of the century as an exciting, optimistic time. The Cold War was over. We had won, and distinguished academics told us that history was over and nothing bad would ever happen again. Russia and China seemed nice and friendly. We enjoyed cable television and looked forward to flat screen TV’s. This Internet seemed like it would be lots of fun. Maybe someday we could watch movies on it!

In retrospect, how innocent we were! Of course, we didn’t know, unlike George W. Bush, that al-Qaeda was determined to strike in the United States, as his intelligence briefing told him. We didn’t know that outsourcing airplane security to minimum wage drones so airlines could make more money might cost thousands of innocent lives. And if the Mayor of New York put his emergency command center in a building already attacked by al-Qaeda due to its proximity to his office and his love nest, who noticed?

That changed.

Remember what happened next? The media last week were full of happy tales of heroic interventions and national unity, and there was indeed a lot of that. As it turned out, thousands labored at Ground Zero, not including a busto real estate developer who never gave a dime to the victims’ families. Now we know that those who worked there were exposed to a toxic stew in the air and ground that has since claimed more lives than the original attack. We know this because the current Mayor of New York released the documents proving it had been suppressed by the supposed Republican heroes of 9/11, now living in disbarred disgrace in Florida.

But even the normally staid New York Times admitted on September 11, 2026 that what happened after the attack destroyed the unity and purpose the nation had mostly displayed in the immediate aftermath:

Yet this recitation of post-Sept. 11 accomplishments masks a harder truth. The principal legacy of America’s response to that horrible day is not a stronger, more resilient nation. It is instead two long, bloody wars — one of which, in Iraq, was started on false pretenses — that mostly weakened the United States, at home and abroad. It is an America more isolated from the world.

More than 7,000 service members were killed and more than 53,000 wounded in the war on terror. By one estimate, it cost more than $8 trillion and 900,000 lives. It drained resources that could have been used to strengthen the country against emerging rivals. Some of the steepest costs are the hardest to measure: the damage to our social compact and our domestic politics. Many soldiers who answered the call to defend the country and fought in the misguided wars, along with their families and communities, understandably feel betrayed by their leaders.

Well, yeah.

Elsewhere in the day’s news you learn that the busto real estate developer, now a corrupt demented bigot who incredibly enough is President of the United States, is intent on repeating the exact same bigoted idiocy that generates the awful results listed by its Editorial Board:

Closing out his speech at the Pentagon today, Trump again suggested that the military conflict with Iran was part of the legacy of 9/11 terror attacks. “Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago. We will never, ever forget,” he said. “That’s why we fight today. We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win.”

At the beginning, the 21st Century seemed like fun

By the way, we’re losing, just as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Times was too circumspect to recount accurately how the nation descended from the unity of 9/11 to the abyss in which it is now trapped. In their account, it sounds like a hurricane came ashore.

Let’s take the advice of our old expository writing instructor and use the active voice. The debacles of the last 25 years didn’t just happen. Republicans caused them.

As mentioned already, unqualified Republican frat boy George W. Bush, installed as President by a narrow 5-4 vote of the bent Supreme Court, ignored the torrent of intelligence about the imminence and seriousness of another terrorist attack in the United States. His handlers, including Vice-President Dead-eye Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, were equally oblivious, despite the best efforts of White House Antiterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, who couldn‘t even get a meeting with Dead-eye Dick to discuss the al-Qaeda threat until September 4, 2001. (9/11 Commission Report at 201.)

Having left the nation exposed, while the rubble still smoked, the tinny Republican warmongers immediately saw the terrorist attack as a license to carry out their unfinished agenda of global domination, by building an unconstrained lawless Presidency that could chuck U.S. citizens into dungeons without anything resembling due process and overthrowing Middle East dictators who had nothing to do with 9/11.

These Republicans chose to take America to war based on lies, and demonize our allies when they refused to go along with the preposterous war of aggression. Remember freedom fries?

Their henchmen, despite occasional self-serving requests from Bush for tolerance, built the case for war not only on lies but by fanning the flames of American intolerance and bigotry, in this case toward all Muslims, who were regarded as an undifferentiated mass of bloodthirsty terrorists bent on destroying America. They also led a drive to undermine the civil liberties of all Americans, with special emphasis on those who dared to criticize Mission Accomplished George. Remember “shut up and sing?” We do.

The results were accurately described by the Times Editorial Board as far as it went.

But the disgraceful Republican performance after 9/11 resonates strongly today. In 2026, another Republican bigot, stupider and more despicable than even George Bush, has built an entire political movement on hatred and fear of anyone who practices one of the world’s great religions.

We’ve already quoted his laughably bigoted case for starting a losing war of choice against Iran, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and even came to our aid in the aftermath of the attack.

But the Islamophobia fomented by the previous generation of Republican hacks and warmongers has been stoked to volcanic levels by the current crop of corrupt cynical Republican bigots:

When Zohran Mamdani, as Mayor of New York, said he would as part of his duties, attend 9/11 memorial ceremonies at Ground Zero, white bigots let their freak flag fly:

Council Member Vicki Paladino demanded that Mayor Zohran Mamdani not attend the 9/11 ceremony, saying he “does not belong there” and that “we, the people” do not want him there.

[image or embed]

— Mediaite (@mediaite.com) September 9, 2026 at 1:41 PM

Just a reminder that the core principle of both white racist Republicans and Islamist extremists is that they get to decide who belongs, and who doesn't.

Speaking of hate and intolerance of those with different religions, let's go to Texas!

In the state where white men are men and everyone else is cattle, Texas Republicans are desperately trying to cling to power by making a naked appeal to religious intolerance and anti-Muslim bigotry.

The clown who is running for Texas Railroad Commissioner (despite the name, a powerful office with control over what they call down there erl) posted the following troll bait in support of his campaign for elected office:

Let's unpack this photo.  it shows a bunch of young people in the stands at a Texas football game, wearing Texas regalia (including the stupid hats) and cheering on their team.  That sounds pretty Amurican to us.

To white bigots like Bo, though, there's a problem: most of the cheering guys in the foreground appear to be South Asian.  There are persons of South Asian heritage in Texas.  Some were actually born there.  Some attend the University of Texas.  As for their foreignness, they must be hiding it deep under their disguise as Longhorn football fans.

Smearing these cheering students is consistent with the general climate of Islamophobia in Texas, although someone might want to tell Bubba that most South Asians aren't in fact Muslim.   

Captain Karl Rove, having pocketed his winnings for decades from fomenting hatred and bigotry to elect sh***y Republican candidates, is now shocked, shocked to discover what has been going on his casino:

Karl Rove said he’ll break 30 years of only supporting Republicans to vote against “bigot” Bo French www.texastribune.org/2026/09/14/b...

[image or embed]

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) September 14, 2026 at 8:05 PM

Sure, Karl.  Now see if you can find those six million emails you erased.

Remember that al-Qaeda’s enemy was the tolerance and openness of the democratic secular “infidel” West. Their goal was to replace it, at least in the Middle East, with intolerant religious extremism, just like Texas Republicans. As the 9/11 Commission report found at 51-52:

To the second question, what America could do, al Qaeda’s answer was that America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture:“ It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind.” If the United States did not comply, it would be at war with the Islamic nation, a nation that al Qaeda’s leaders said “desires death more than you desire life.”

Like the Republican Party, bin Laden declared the world “divided between infidels and believers.”  The only difference of course was the religion espoused by the haters.

Bin Laden's followers await his 25th anniversary remarks

Bin Laden also wanted to drive American influence and power out of the Middle East.  Thanks to the Mad King’s disastrous war against Iran and subsequent inability to protect Saudi and the Gulf States,  the era of American dominance in the Middle East has ended.

And the ongoing effort by the corrupt, clueless, and depraved Republican Party to split the United States from its democratic allies, while fostering the recrudescence of Fascism in Europe, may well complete the work that bin Laden couldn’t, before his life was ended by real President Obama.

Although bin Laden was unavailable for comment, from his current residence in Hell he must be pleased by the havoc wrought by 25 years of Republican disasters in the Middle East, all perpetrated in supposed response to his dastardly attack on September 11, 2001.  

Journalism unable to recognize extremism is no virtue (Sorry, Barry)

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

Like the White House itself, American democracy has been destroyed in part by a wrecking ball wielding by a corrupt demented Mad King bent on replacing it with something more to his liking, like a depraved tyranny that might give pause to Mussolini if not Caligula. 

No wonder that what's left of an independent American media has gotten so exercised about the real problem: extremist Democrats.

Examples abound but here's a representative sample offered by long-time conventional wisdom dispenser and David Broder wannabe, New York Times reporter Carl Hulse:

And the rise of far-left socialist candidates has Republicans seeing an opening to try to brand Democratic contenders across the country as part of a movement out of step with typical Americans. 

Examples of far-left socialist positions include advocating for extending Medicare to all Americans, ending a useless bloody war started for no reason by a demented bully, limiting U.S. aid and support for a country conducting a brutal campaign of persecution and ethnic cleansing against five million people it wishes to expel, and abolishing an unaccountable violent secret immigration police force that has spread fear and terror across America. Pretty far-out stuff, at least according to this hack.  

Hulse's thumbsucker followed endless New York Times coverage of Democratic primaries, which were invariably described as “divisive,” although as even their subhed admits, such divisions disappeared once the votes were counted and party unity prevailed:

So in fact the Michigan primary turned out not to be divisive, which also could be said of every f***in' Democratic primary in 2026, each of which ended with the losing side promising to support loyally the winner in the fight to save American democracy.

But that hasn't stopped the Times from referring to candidates it doesn't like – invariably the progressive ones – as either divisive or extreme or both.

When a progressive candidate seemed to be making a strong run for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Wisconsin, the Times lost no time branding her as socialist and extreme:

Her policy goals and social media rhetoric have raised eyebrows among some Democratic voters, who are questioning whether her views are too extreme to represent Wisconsin’s many moderates and independents. 

These positions, lovingly described by the Times as if it were reviewing an edgy new fusion place in Williamsburg, included views she no longer held, as well as policies like higher taxes on the rich (a category that includes newspaper publishers).

By the way, when she lost to a more moderate candidate, she immediately endorsed him.  So much for another divisive primary battle. 

And what about Republican candidates who might plausibly be considered extreme and divisive, like this clown in Texas:

A self-described gun-rights absolutist and YouTuber known for his inflammatory humor, Mr. Herrera, 30, was initially opposed this year by both Mr. Johnson and President Trump as he challenged the district’s Republican incumbent, Tony Gonzales, for a second straight time. Mr. Gonzales and his allies spent millions painting Mr. Herrera as extreme, highlighting old videos in which he made wildly offensive jokes like saying that a Nazi-era submachine gun was “the original ghetto blaster” and “Hitler’s street sweeper.”...

In the days before Mr. Johnson rallied for Mr. Herrera and held a fund-raiser for him, a video resurfaced of the YouTuber using crude, sexualized insults against a female gun-control activist in 2022. 

Answer: he's not extreme; he's just edgy:  

That's totally different. 

Speaking of extreme and divisive, how about the Texas Republican Party trying to cling to power by fomenting bigotry against Muslims, who represent maybe 2% of Texas's population?

For many conservative voters in Texas, Islam has replaced the border as a major concern since early last year, Republican consultants have said. Anti-Muslim activists and hard-right candidates have increasingly described Islam as incompatible with American values. They warn that the United States could soon look like Europe, where Muslim populations are larger.

“I won’t rest until every Muslim is gone,” one statewide Republican candidate, Bo French, wrote on social media this summer. 

Sounds divisive to us but then we don't have the Olympian perspective of the New York Times. 

Is it divisive and extreme when ill-trained violent masked secret immigration police rampage through American communities to please Geheimespolizeileiter Stephen Miller? Could you characterize views like these as extreme and divisive?

What's the white answer?   Anyway, we couldn't find any news media calling him extreme.

How about the destruction of America's system of public health, which endangers children every day by spreading lunatic vaccine and other health disinformation, largely at the instigation of batshit cracy junkie Brainworm Bobby Kennedy?

None dare call him extreme, either.  Even after unvaccinated children and babies dropped dead from measles.  Even after he appointed a nutcase who compared vaccines to experiments on concentration camp victims, the Times could not bring itself to utter the e-word or the d-word.

Finally, let's turn to the greatest single financial benefactor of the Republican Party, whose endless bags of money are considered vital to the survival of endangered Republicans like Sen. Susan “Distressed” Collins.  What are his views on the issues of the day?

We know that he cheered the victory of the bigoted Russian stooge neo-Nazi AfD party in recent German elections:

“And you don't think that's extreme?” – B. Fleckman

On Sunday, Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternativ für Deutschland, or AfD) party won 43.8% of the vote in a legislative election in the small state of Saxony-Anhalt, formerly part of Soviet-dominated East Germany. The AfD is anti-immigrant and pro-Russia and has won the support of both Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk. When Musk posted “Well done!” in German to the co-founder of AfD, Alice Weidel, another AfD leader responded with thanks.  

When not endorsing neo-Nazis or giving the Schickelgruber salute himself, the ketamine-demented supervillain has illegally dismantled Congressionally-mandated foreign aid program leading to the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of poor and sick people, none of whom were white billionaires from Silicon Valley.

He also stole the Government's Social Security personal data files, to put to whatever he use he chooses in between efforts to propagate a race of superior beings, all short and pasty and with receding hairlines, like their superior dad. He is now attempting the same data-harvesting stunt by paying for a fake website supposedly devoted to protecting the right to vote but in fact stealing as much personal data as he can get his grubby mitts on.

You'd expect our fearless mainstream media to grill every Republican about their links to this extreme and divisive madman.  

You'd be wrong.  Only Democrats are extreme and divisive.  To the New York Times, the nefarious Nazi-lovin' white racist is just a good ol' tech billionaire. 

And the shills for the Party he supports (and which returns the favor with billions in government contracts and immunity from any regulatory oversight)?  According to just one day's Times, they're only meandering, delivering dark speeches, appealing to moderates, displaying Texas flair, and unwilling to rest until every Muslim is gone.

Nothing extreme or divisive to see here, people.  Move along.   

Congress: with America on the brink, let's go home!

By Senior Washington Correspondent John Hay

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Sept. 1) – On this first day of September, the alarms about the future of American democracy are shrieking.

Just today, we learned that despite a court order, the Administration is barreling ahead with an illegal plan to thwart mail-in voting, with the goal of rigging the midterms to keep in power a massively unpopular Republican kleptocracy.

We also learned that in a time of war, a drug-addled Defense Secretary is continuing his maniacal purge of competent uninformed and civilian leadership at the Pentagon, putting U.S national defense at grave risk.

This is the same Administration that is insanely prolonging its war of aggression in Iran, which it has already lost.  Just today, a frustrated and obviously demented tyrant is threatening Iran with 

When a reporter asked if this meant nuclear weapons, the rattled kleptocrat snarled that the question was stupid.  In the meantime, the Mad King continues to post AI slop boasting of non-existent triumphs.

Mad King several pieces short of a full bucket

While our armed forces are squandering U.S. military strength and credibility in this futile violence, they continue to commit war crimes by attacking and killing the crews of small boats on the high seas, who may or may not be smuggling drugs or catching tuna, but who are indubitably not engaged in an armed attack against the United States.

In Venezuela, the Mad King has stolen $13 billion of oil revenues with no accountability and no reporting on where the money has gone.  Now he has announced a vague new scheme to pillage billions of barrels of that country's oil to reward himself and a few cronies. 

Closer to home, the demented Mad King is fomenting a trade war against our neighbor and closest ally solely because the Canadians have dared to oppose his insane plant to annex their large and powerful country over the objections of the population.

Everywhere you look in the Mad King's regime you find devastation and corruption.  His equally insane HHS Secretary, Brainworm Bobby Kennedy, continues to trivialize the public health disaster of this year's measles outbreak by variously trying to rig the statistics and insisting that it's no problem because only the weak die from measles (which of course is false).

To degrade and destroy our environment, the Mad King, not content to perpetuate dangerous climate denial while the Earth boils, has decided to sell off parts of our national parks to his corrupt friends and exempt useless energy-gobbling data centers from environmental regulation.

And we haven't even gotten to the Mad King's assault on the rule of law, from ordering fraudulent indictments against those who stood up to him (like Jim Comey) to unleashing a brutal secret immigration police on law abiding residents to demolishing portions of the White House to build a monument to his vanity. Despite the blatant illegality of the project, five bent Republican Justices on the Supreme Court gave him the green light to continue. 

The barrage on what is left of our democracy have reached a level of intensity not seen since the Western Front of World War I.  The Congress and the Supreme Court, dominated by equally corrupt and extremist Republicans, have failed to do their jobs.

At this desperate hour we turn to our last hope: the large Democratic minorities in the House and Senate.  Surely they will make every effort to defend our beset nation. Surely they will not pretend it is business as usual and shirk their duties by leaving town as quickly and quietly as possible.

It's pretty to think so, isn't it?

But this afternoon,

What could be finer to the hacks at the New York Times than an outpouring of bipartisan enthusiasm? 

Why were Democrats so eager to carry on business as usual in a time of national crisis?

The vote was a lopsided 370 to 48, a reflection of the bipartisan enthusiasm for heading off any funding fight before November, when voters will decide which party will control Congress for the final two years of Mr. Trump’s term. It paved the way for lawmakers to quickly return to the campaign trail for the critical final weeks before the elections. 

Oh. And what does anyone think will happen in November?

Another CR moving the deadline into the new year is likely....

At this point the captious may argue that the Democrats, being in the minority in both Houses, could not have blocked continued government funding.  First, that's not quite true, as such resolutions require 60 votes in the Senate (which rubber-stamped the CR back in the predawn hours of an August morning by a vote of 90-6). 

In any event, politics isn't just about legislating; it's about fighting.

Imagine if all Senate and House Democrats had stood firm and demanded fundamental changes in the way the Mad King regime does business.  Imagine if they demanded defunding the Department of Justice's corrupt prosecutions of political adversaries  Imagine if they had demanded an end to insane retaliatory tariffs.  Imagine if they had sought to defund anti-vax drivel.  Imagine halting the destruction of the White House.  Imagine requiring ICE reforms, like banning warrantless arrests and home invasions, not to mention their shiny new torture mitts. Imagine prohibiting using the Postal Service to suppress mail-in votes.

Democrats were pleased by their peaceful resolution 

The nation's attention would be focused on these and other critical issues, rather than what some Twitch nitwit said a year ago.  The Democratic base would be inspired and energized.  The national agenda would be driven not by the demented ravings of a corrupt madman, but by an organized effort to direct the electorate's attention to the assault on democracy and the rule of law.

Further, keeping the House and Senate at work and in session would provide many opportunities to question Republican cowards about whether they agree with the latest plutocratic insanity.  And there's plenty every day.  Instead Republicans will be able to hide out in their districts or at fancy resorts where they can schnor money from rich s***s. 

But  demanding that Congress address these fundamental issues would have required courage, not to mention a willingness to cut short one's undeserved second vacation.

Either this country is in a grave crisis of democracy and legitimacy or it's not.  When Democrats are willing to do business as usual, they're telling their base and the nation that there's nothing to see here, people, move along.

Midterm elections are thought to depend on base turnout   It's hard to imagine a strategy less likely to motivate the Democratic base to vote when large majorities of their legislators couldn't be bothered to put up a fight. 

How to tell if you're in the middle of a Red Nightmare

By Emma Goldman
Dialectical Materialism Editor

With the world in flames (thanks to him) and the American economy in tatters (ditto), the Mad King has nothing to offer America except fear over the supposedly dreaded specter of Communism, last seen in 1989:

“A generation after we fought and won the cold war against the menace of communism, there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” he said in a speech at Mount Rushmore on 3 July, on the eve of the US’s 250th birthday.

He vowed to “vanquish communists quickly” and “send them into exile”.  

He tried to warn us about Communism!

Wow, this sounds really bad. But those of you under 40 may have no idea what the f*** he's talking about (like the Mad King himself). So as a public service before the Spy, like the Congress, takes an entirely undeserved vacation, we thought we'd give you a little primer on the Red Menace.

What's so bad about Communism?  So many things!

1. Absolute power vested in a tyrant who rules by force and terror.  

 The essence of Communism is a totalitarian dictatorship. What does that mean for the poor subjects of such a regime?  

That was fashionista and lifetime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover explaining it all to his fellow Americans on page of 44 of his tome called Masters of Deceit.  We'll cite this primer simply as Hoover.  

A wannabe Communist dictator seeks power by overthrowing the legitimate institutions of government by force and violence:

President Trump had summoned a mob, including armed extremists and conspiracy theorists, to Washington, DC on the day the joint session of Congress was to meet. He then told that same mob to march on the U.S. Capitol and “fight.” They clearly got the message.  

2.  The rule of law is replaced by the whim of the dictator.

Under communism, a tiny minority, perhaps ten to twenty men, would rule the United States....The Constitution, and all our laws, would be abolished. 

Hoover at 7.

A Communist dictator would ignore our laws and the Constitution, by, for example, trying to repeal a core provision of our Constitution by Executive fiat, Trump v. Barbera, No. 25.-365 (U.S. June 30, 2026), or imposing onerous new taxes without the required Act of Congress, Learning Resources v. Trump, No. 24-1287 (U.S. Feb. 20, 2026).

Such a dictator could, hard as it may be to believe, assume the power to demolish our most cherished buildings and memorials for his own pleasure without lawful authority. 

3.  Destruction of free and open inquiry.

Communists try to overthrow democracies by force

No wonder communism can operate only in the glow of book burnings. No opposite view can be tolerated. “Down with non-party writers!” Lenin demanded. ...Shifts in the Party line also cause book burnings. One New England headquarters, caught in a Party shift, destroyed three barrels of literature. What is “true” today in the Party may not be “true” tomorrow.   Hoover at 157.

The [Communist] Party, in the final analysis, has an interpretation for the whole of human life. Nothing is untouched: science, psychology, sex, love, care of children, literature, history, the origin and end of life. Everything must be absorbed. Communism is a unitary, all-embracing, and absolute system. Hoover at 161.

A Communist dictatorship tries to destroy free and open inquiry by using its powers to destroy its great institutions of higher learning on transparently flimsy or false pretexts.  For example, a major university with an observant Jewish President was sued by Communist functionaries on the order of the dictator on the absurd ground, quickly dismissed, that it fostered a climate of antisemitism.  That same university had been targeted by losing all federal grants because of its supposed opposition to the Communist regime.

Like the ruthless totalitarians they are, the Communists have made it clear that they will continue to attack universities and other citadels of free inquiry:

The administration and the Justice Department seem to have “focused on Harvard as the major private school target, but a number of other private and some public schools have been, and seem to remain, in D.O.J.’s cross hairs,” he said.

But Samuel Bagenstos, a University of Michigan law professor, said the ruling “eliminates any realistic chance that the Trump administration can use a Title VI investigation to coerce Harvard.”

The government has proved “very creative” in devising ways to pressure the university, he said, though “at some point, the folks in the Trump administration will surely realize that they look as ridiculous as Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner.”  

Even small colleges in distant places can be crushed for failure to toe the party line. In Florida, for example, one school was destroyed by the Communist regime and books displeasing to that regime were chucked into a dumpster. 

The New College of Florida is under fire after what appears to be hundreds of books that have been wiped from its collection and discarded on the street....[A] New College student who reported seeing what they believed was up to "thousands" of books being "shoved into a dumpster" behind the college's library.

... "​​There were Bibles, there were stories of Black authors, of Latin authors, female stories, there were LGBTQ+ and queer stories, or trans stories, all thrown into a dumpster. It sends the message that New College of Florida wants to send stories of gender and diversity to the dump, and it was so heartbreaking and also very frustrating." 

Those same apparatchiks have banned a total of 700 books from the public schools in that backward state.

4.  Replacing honest government with a corrupt cabal of friends, relatives, and flunkies chosen for their ability to fawn over and flatter a dictator.

Another mark of a Communist dictatorship is that the Communist tyrant replaces competent government officials with fawning toadies who must constantly suck up to him to survive.

In Stalin's Russia, it was a crime to be the first one to stop clapping at a Stalin speech:

An explosion of enthusiastic applause for Joseph Stalin followed a Communist Party conference in 1937.

The dictator must always be fawned over by his flunkies

The ovation went on for three minutes, four, five…

Palms were getting sore, arms were aching, and the older members of the audience were panting with exhaustion.

According to dissident author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the clapping continued for 11 minutes. "It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However, who would dare be the first to stop?" he wrote in The Gulag Archipelago.

"With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers!"  

Fun fact: the first to stop applauding was in fact sent to the Gulag. 

Today Communist dictators insist on the same level of fawning from their flunkies, enforced by fear:

During Tuesday's marathon 3-hour and 16-minute Cabinet meeting at the White House, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff offered a masterclass in sycophancy. One real estate developer sucking up to another.

"Mr. President, working for this government, for you, is the greatest honor of my life," he told his golfing buddy. "I tell it to everybody, and I really do feel that way, and I thank you because it's a privilege to go out there and represent you in your humanitarian effort, in your goals of solving conflicts all over the world."

Israel had just killed 20 people, including journalists, at a Gaza hospital, and Trump was deploying U.S. troops to crack down on Americans in their own capital. But the irony of casting the president as a peacemaker was entirely lost on Witkoff.

As a result, the Communist tyrant's flunkies and enablers live in fear of losing favor with the absolute ruler:

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he had not yet made a determination about whether Jeanine Pirro's job is safe in his strongest public comments yet on her future as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

The remarks came after Trump told reporters on Monday in the Oval Office that Pirro "choked" and "folded like an umbrella" in dropping the charges against former Olympian David Hearn, who was accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Pirro then showed up to the White House on Monday afternoon with a banker's box in tow full of evidence as she prepared to defend her decision to the president, according to sources familiar with the meeting. 

Which is why a Communist regime drives out anyone who is competent to carry out the work of government and replaces them with otherwise-unemployable suck-ups. 

5.  The use of tools of terror, like murder, torture, and imprisonment of non-criminals in Gulags   

Stalin [the Communist dictator of the old USSR, for you Gen Z'ers] acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correctness of his position—was doomed to ... subsequent moral and physical annihilation. Hoover at 44 

It is a hallmark of Communist regimes to build vast shadowy detention facilities where men, women, and even children can be held without criminal conviction on flimsy or no grounds.  In these gruesome network of prison camps, helpless detainees are regularly mistreated and denied medical care and palatable food and water.  Too often, the miserable wretches die in custody from their mistreatment and neglect:

At just one Communist-run Gulag in the wilds of the Texas desert,

Dozens of people held at a sprawling Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas say they were either beaten by guards or witnessed others being beaten, according to a new report issued by legal and human rights advocates.

Dreaded internal security czar poses at Gulag

The 84-page report issued jointly Wednesday by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union also says men and women held at Camp East Montana, located at the U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss in El Paso, recounted being denied necessary medical care, forced to live in filthy conditions and fed inedible meals. Detainees also said they were prevented from contacting their lawyers or family members.

Of the 71 detainees contacted over a five month period, 64 — about 90% of those interviewed — said they had either personally been assaulted by the staff or had seen others physically abused, according to the report.    

And Communist regimes are known for instilling terror by gloating about the torture and mistreatment they impose with impunity.  Even today, in Communist states, the armed secret police are now authorized to impose painful electric shocks by wearing special gloves.  One of the advantages of these torture devices is said to be they leave no marks on the victims.

Some of the most extreme Red regimes even enlist the Communist International to build huge torture centers and then move their own people hundreds of miles in chains to be held forever without trial in such infernal dungeons.  The apparatchiks who devise such cruelty enjoy posing in front of their victims.

 6.  State ownership of the means of production.

A central tenet of totalitarian Communism is:

All property used in production would be confiscated, thus leading ultimately to total communization, meaning state ownership.  Hoover at 7

It should be obvious that allowing a corrupt Communist tyrant to acquires private enterprises transforms what should be an efficient free economy into a twisted command economy, in which all enterprises respond to the whims of the dictator rather than the interests of consumers.

The concentration of ownership in the hands of a Communist elite also provides them with an immense power that they can use for their own nefarious ends:

The Trump administration has taken direct stakes in companies on a scale rarely seen in the U.S. outside wartime or economic crisis, ...

Japan’s Nippon Steel agreed to give President Donald Trump a “golden share” in U.S. Steel as a condition for the two companies’ controversial merger. Trump now personally wields sweeping veto power over major business decisions made by the nation’s third-largest steel producer.

“You know who has the golden share? I do,” Trump said at a summit on artificial intelligence and energy in Pittsburgh on July 15.

....But the Trump administration demonstrated earlier this month that it is also willing to buy directly into publicly traded corporations. The Department of Defense agreed to purchase a $400 million equity stake in rare-earth miner MP Materials, making the Pentagon the company’s largest shareholder.

....Trump’s unique hold over the Republican Party gives him the ability to intervene in companies on a scale that would be difficult politically for a Democratic president,[ who]... would have been accused of being a communist .... 

7.  Use of war to keep the masses focused on an external enemy

In his classic work 1984, George Orwell noted that a totalitarian regime such as Communism uses constant war to oppress the people and amass even more unaccountable power.

Today Communist dictators use wars of aggression to distract from the grotesque sex crimes committed by those dictators and to amass even more wealth and power for themselves and a small clique of family members and other hangers-on:

Despite the administration’s denials, it’s hard to avoid the perception that Kushner is leveraging his influence over US policy – and his proximity to the president – to drum up new business for his company. It’s also clear that Kushner is raising money for his personal benefit as Trump has plunged the US into a war against Iran, which has caused immense destruction across the Middle East and global disruption in energy prices and supply. 

What could be more un-American? 

8.  The belief that the leader is infallible:

You should have seen Stalin’s fury! How could it be admitted that he, Stalin, had not been right! He is after all a “genius,” and a genius cannot help but be right! Everyone can err, but Stalin considered that he never erred, that he was always right. He never acknowledged to anyone that he made any mistake, large or small, despite the fact that he made not a few mistakes in the matter of theory and in his practical activity. Hoover at 45.  

The belief in the infallibility of a dictator, now matter how compromised or even demented he is, is a hallmark of Communist totalitarianism.  No democracy could survive when Communist stooges in positions of power make statements like these:

[South Carolina Republican Senator Darlene Graham] said, "I realize the price of gas is a little high right now, but I think President Trump is gonna get us through this and the price of gas will eventually come down . . . I believe in him when it comes to dealing with Iran." 

And when a Communist dictator tried to repeal the U.S. Constitution by decree, one of his strongest supporters, supposedly a well-educated lawyer, toed the illegal party line:

And the drivel put out by the talking heads of Communist propaganda outlets is if anything more outrageous:

I think what the president has done militarily and economically is historic. I think our military has been spectacular. I think cutting off the strait was genius. And we have the enemy exactly where we want them.

Source: Media Matters for America.

Of course, having to mouth Party lies destroys the reputation of the former journalists who now kowtow to the Red Nightmare:

[Fox “News” host Maria] Bartiromo has fallen far—from a business journalist to a right-wing propaganda machine—as was exposed in Dominion Voting Systems’ massive defamation lawsuit against Fox News. The looking glass has been shattered for Bartiromo, who now spends her days spinning falsehoods about Trump’s ties to Epstein and denying climate change. 

We could go on, and on, and on, but you catch our drift: Communist dictatorship is truly a nightmare.  Just anyone who's living through it. 

The Boston Globe cracks the case of Boston's missing mojo by rounding up the usual woke suspects

By Harold Traveler
City Desk

We woke up to the news that in the dead of night the Senate discharged its constitutional duty to advise and consent to the nomination of the architect of the lawless Epstein child rape file coverup to the position of, wait for it, Attorney General of the United States.

Their work done, they fled for a richly-unearned six week vacation.  Fortunately, by voting for Blanche at 4:30 a.m. they were able to make the 7 a.m. shuttle and their lunch date in the Hamptons.

Where's the mojo, asks the Boston Globe?

Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R – Hadestown) staff put out a statement, faithfully transcribed by all media, in which the totally alive Senator “said,”  “I was thrilled to support Todd Blanche's confirmation and look forward to many productive 20-minute telephone calls with him.”  According to the press release, McConnell was so happy he danced a Kentucky reel before doing a couple of handsprings.

With these spineless cowards and poltroons flying under the radar until well after Labor Day, our thoughts turn closer to home.

How's it going in the Hub of the Universe?

An untutored observer might conclude things are doing just fine.  The city enjoyed two huge festivals this summer – the World Cup and the Tall Ships.  Hundreds of thousands enjoyed themselves without incident, except for the threat posed by the Scots of drinking the town dry.  Even the formerly wretched Red Sox are on a tear, due not at all to their world-championship caliber disabled list.

But if you ask our business community and their jock-sniffers at the Boston Globe, the city has lost its mojo, whatever the f*** that is:

Boston has lost its swagger. Talk to people across industries and you’ll hear that the boundless vibrancy we once took for granted has faded. The World Cup brought a jolt of energy that disappeared as suddenly as it arrived, a reminder of how enervated this city, especially downtown, can feel. 

Oh, yes, let's decide that Boston is in the dumpster because rich s***s, interviewed by text from their $12 million oceanfront estates in Osterville, say so.

And what pray tell do these titans think us plebes should do about it?  You'll never guess:

And the state’s economic engine — a turbocharged model that outperformed from the early 1980s to the pandemic in 2020 — is sputtering. If Massachusetts doesn’t become a more attractive place to live and run a business, more people and jobs will leave and the quality of life here will fray. 

Let's see: Boston has a highly educated workforce, internationally-renowned universities, a well-developed network of sophisticated enterprise support services, like lawyers and private equity, access to world-class health care, a healthy environment, an international airport, and fried clams.  What else is needed to grow a business and thrive in Boston?

Any guesses? The tycoons are complaining about “a broken housing market, soaring living costs, high taxes, an aging population, the hostile White House.”

Well, if they are so upset about the Mad King's hostility to their beloved home town, maybe they could do something about it, like stop filling the coffers of Republican dark-money PAC's and start speaking out about his assault on American democracy.   

Want mojo?  Pay the man!

As for the aging population, that's a national problem.  There's a simple cure for it: immigration.  Letting young immigrant families stay, rather than torturing and tormenting them, would be a great way to grow the nation's base of young families, consumers, and taxpayers.  And that's why these moguls have been so outspoken in their opposition to the Mad King's persecution of immigrants, amirite?

As for high taxes, taxes here aren't higher than in, say, the capitalist paradise of California, as calculated by the same right-wing source cited by Edelman.  And the millionaire's tax imposed beginning in 2022 hasn't caused an exodus of immiserated job creators to more business-friendly places like Alabama or North Dakota.  

Just today, The Boston Globe reported on a young Quincy entrepreneur who located his business to Silicon Valley. Why? Let's see: both taxes and living costs are higher there than here, so that can't be it.  It turns out that the venture capital community in Boston wouldn't fund his pitch, but the one in California did.  Is that really the fault of Mayor Wu and Governor Healy? 

The other factor mentioned is that Massachusetts enforces noncompetes, thereby reducing mobility and choices for young techies.  California doesn't.  That's because the business poo-bahs here like noncompetes because the closer their employees are to indentured servitude, the more advantageous for them.

So we can't wait for the 40-part Globe series blaming craven venture capitalists and self-interested business moguls for the supposed decline in mojo levels. 

There is in all this garbage one point of legitimate concern: the crushing cost of housing in Massachusetts is driving out young families.  That's largely because unlike booming hellholes like Phoenix or Dallas, developers can't just feast on open wasteland and build vast housing tracts.  This part of the world has been settled for centuries, and if you go 40 miles from State House dome you don't find prairie or desert, you find Worcester.  [Same difference – Ed.]

The obvious solution is to try to build housing where there's open space, especially denser transit-adjacent sites.  For example, five miles from downtown, on the Blue Line, there's a defunct race track once known as Suffolk Downs.

How's that going?

The Boston authorities approved a huge new transit-friendly dense development six years ago.  Since then nothing has been built on the Boston half of the site.

Whose fault is that?

If you said that it's the fault of the developer who promised to build the project and then sat on their Texas billionaire asses, you're wrong, according to the business shills [Surely, editors? – Ed.] at The Boston Globe.

The real problem according to them is that Boston requires a portion of the apartments to be affordable, and it won't shtup the developers with huge decades-long tax cuts. 

The Globe sees the choice as binary: either bribe the developer or leave the site empty.

That's not actually the complete list of options.  The youngish tigers at the Globe may not remember this, but there was a time in America when government built hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing.  Today, hundreds of thousands of families still live in them.

More recently, in New York, a program called Mitchell-Lama succeeded in building hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing:

By offering developers low-interest-rate mortgages that covered up to 95% of project costs, generous property tax breaks that reduced operating costs over time, and, sometimes, a ready-made site to build on, New York City and State funded the creation of permanent units, kept so by limiting developers’ profits and, initially, placing perpetual restrictions on how much a co-op share could be sold for and how much a rental apartment could be rented for. 

We are aware that in recent years, the housing has become less affordable as owners have bought and flipped their units.  That's something that could be easily tweaked.

In any event, why not try it at Suffolk Downs?  The problem with bribing developers, as recommended by the Boston Globe, is the same as bribing the Mad King: it's not a purchase, it's a subscription.  You have to keep paying the protection.

In other words, it's a racket.

In the meantime, subsidizing low and limited profit development organizations could hardly do worse than six years of futility in East Boston.  If you're looking for a mojo generator that doesn't involve spending millions of tax dollars to line the pockets of rich a******s, look no further. 

In response to the Mad King's abuses of power, Democrats say: let's give him some more!

By Nellie Bly, Washington Correspondent

Even the meanest intelligence by this time knows what is going on in America: there is an ongoing Fascist coup against democratic government and the rule of law led by the Mad King and blindly supported by all Congressional Republicans and the six bent Republican Lords of Justice.

The details shouldn’t need to be repeated but because each day our mass media re-enacts “Memento” by having to learn from scratch these simple truths, let’s mention a few.

• The Mad King has corrupted the Department of Justice by ordering it to gin up lawless prosecutions of his political enemies, one of which collapsed last night in a puddle of Franzia.
• The Mad King’s handlers have created an unaccountable masked secret police and unleashed it not only on immigrants but on American citizens who stand in its way, and have set up a network of for-profit prisons and airlines to terrorize immigrants into surrendering their legal rights.
• The Mad King’s drug-addled minions have embarked on a crusade to destroy America’s nonpolitical armed forces by forcing out anyone with dark skin or a vagina, and have ordered them to carry out murder on the high seas for the sadistic enjoyment of said Mad King.
• The Mad King and his co-conspirators have decided to ignore or override appropriations passed by Congress and signed into law to punish political adversaries and rig all elections going forward.
• The Mad King has tried to override the Constitution by Executive Order, and needs only one more bent Justice to succeed.

Give him more power?  Why not?

But our focus today is on foreign policy, where the Mad King abuses his statutory authority, or simply assumes powers he doesn’t have, to bully and intimidate long-standing allies by threatening or imposing tariffs (which are in fact sales taxes on American consumers and businesses) and sanctions. Some of that was even too much for the Lords of Justice.

By now it is clear that the Mad King cannot be expected to exercise any authority granted by Congress in a lawful manner.

So how are Democrats responding to this pattern of continual illegal conduct?

Why, of course, by giving the Mad King even more powers to abuse!

The sanctions legislation that moved forward in the Senate this week goes beyond enacting new financial restrictions on Russia and Iran. It also gives President Trump broad new powers to impose tariffs on imports from some of the world’s largest economies. ...But tucked inside the legislation are tools that would give the Trump administration sweeping discretion to impose steep tariffs on major buyers of Russian energy products. ...

The policy could lead to additional levies on billions of dollars’ worth of products imported from China, India and European Union countries.

And there’s no chance the Mad King would abuse any “broad new powers” to impose tariffs on every f***in’ country in the world, if only out of spite.

I mean, no Democrat would be stupid enough to fall for this con job, right?

The vote was 86 to 12, with nearly all Republicans and a majority of Democrats joining together to push it well beyond the 60 votes needed to tee up a final vote.

So 36 Democrats voted to place vast new powers in the little diseased mitts of the Mad King.

Why, ffs?

Democrats claim that the bill will help Ukraine in defending itself against the Mad King’s stalwart ally, Vladimir Putin’s Russia and regard it as a bipartisan tribute to Sen. Lindsay Graham, now dead. Apparently installing a depraved sex offender on the Supreme Court was an insufficient tribute to the late Mad King-taint-polishing Solon.

In fact, Democrats know exactly what they are doing:

Who wouldn't trust the Lyin' King?

Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, was among those who voted against moving ahead with the bill. He cited language in the legislation that allowed the White House to go after “facilitators” of the sale of Russian oil with tariffs, which he said was not narrowly defined enough and could be taken advantage of by Mr. Trump.

Well, duh.

Of course the Mad King is going to abuse any supposed tariff authority he has to punish and intimidate any country that dares to stand up to him, like Denmark or Canada. We know that because he’s done it.

And what happens when the Mad King imposes new 100% tariffs on say Canada or Spain for allegedly buying Russian oil, or somehow “facilitating” those transactions?

The bill’s proponents point to Section 113, which limits sanctions to the top five importers or facilitators of Russian oil.

And if the Mad King falsely declares Spain to be among the top five, in the same way that he falsely claimed – well, really every word that comes out of his mouth every day? What will Congress do then? They can pass a resolution of disapproval subject to the Mad King’s vetoes. And we all can rest assured that the independent Republican stalwarts in the House and Senate will judge any such resolution strictly on its merits and not on the Mad King’s threats to primary them with Laura Loomer or Alina Habba.

Or if the Mad King lumps the entire European Union together as one entity since it’s a single trading bloc? That’s far less frivolous than most of his bulls*** claims.

The potential for abuse has not entirely escaped the attention of sentient human beings:

There is no limitation, the president can decide which countries this bill applies and hit them with a 100% tariff for five years. Historically, tariff provisions required either long investigations in advance, consultation with Congress, or imposed short, limited durations. This one does not.

— Aaron Fritschner (@fritschner.bsky.social) July 28, 2026 at 12:59 PM

Mr. Fritschner also points out that the sanctions against Russia can be waived by the Mad King in his demented discretion in the event he turns out to be a Putin stooge. 

The Washington lobby that represents big U.S. exporters also warns that this new authority would be bad for its members and their workers:

“Congressional leaders ought to consider the long-term effects of the sanctions legislation they seem ready to ram through. Yesterday, the President used a nearly 100-year-old statute for the first time to impose tariffs on Canada. Once Congress delegates an authority, it is nearly impossible to claw it back or control its use.

“We urge Congress not to sleepwalk through this process. Congressional leadership should revisit the tariff provisions in the bill, decouple them from sanctions enforcement measures, and include guardrails and best practices that preserve Congressional authority.” 

When even the highly-compensated cautious flacks for big business think your legislation is bad, you would think that Republicans and schnorring Democrats would listen.

Not this time.  Their grief over Lindsay's demise has blinded them.  

As for the Democrats, what's the problem with pandering to the Mad King?

Source: The Associated Press.

In three months, the United States will hold, we hope, elections that will decide the future of our democracy.  Midterm elections are all about motivating your party's base to turn out. They stay home, you lose.  

Maybe Sen. Blumenthal and his Democratic colleagues might reflect a moment about why Democrats aren't thrilled with the direction of their party before voting to give a tyrant enormous and unconstrained new powers, after watching him abuse his powers since he was inaugurated.

We know it's sad about your buddy Lindsay, but as for us we'd rather have democracy than Belle-Reve. 

Hot off the Trail: Everyone's got advice for Democrats!

By Spy Political Columnist David Bloviator reporting from his listening post at the National Press Club bar with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

There's a midterm election scheduled for this November.  Who knows whether it will occur or whether its outcome will be respected by the Mad King regime and his Article I and III Republican enablers on Capitol Hill? 

But that's not important.  What's important is the belief universally held that Democrats, and only Democrats, are in desperate need of advice from every Harvard-Dalton jackass with a smartphone about What Democrats Must Do To Win.

(Notice that these same gasbags don't believe the Republicans are in any need of their wisdom, despite polling showing their support crashing.  Perhaps that's because every pundit knows that white supremacy, plutocracy, and election rigging remains a winning formula for Republicans, as it has generally since 1968.)

The advice dispensed to Democrats varies, chiefly according to the political beliefs of the dispenser. 

Self-styled “moderate” or “centrist” loudmouths demand that Democrats embrace positions they like, such as tormenting trans kids who want to play soccer, never demanding that a tiny handful of rapacious plutocrats share even a farthing of their windfall with the rest of us, and responding to the supposed crisis of Social Security by some combination of f***ing current and future recipients and regressive taxes on wage-earners.

By the same token, more lefty types urge Democrats to embrace policies they like, including Medicare for All, expediting the transition from fossil fuels, and defending intellectual freedom.  All worthy goals, to be sure.

Each side quotes from polls suggesting some empirical support for their positions, including galaxy brain questions like do you think both parties should work together.  You'll never guess how most people respond!

And we exclude from this discussion the perennial contributions of reactionary Republican hacks and shills who likewise advise Democrats on the only path to political success: agree with them!

Mr. Hamilton Nolan said all that needed to said about St. David Brooks and his Disciples:

His masterful dissection of this always-erupting bull**** volcano can be found here.   All we can add is “Amen.”

Well, OK, we couldn't resist one quote:

It is one thing for a Republican pundit to write “I dislike socialism.” It is another, more ridiculous thing for a Republican pundit to write “Democrats must reject socialism, for their own good.” The only thing that exceeds the uselessness of writing these types of columns is the reading of them

But back to the rest of the nattering nabobs of Democratic negativism.

We all know why Medicare for All or not tormenting trans kids and their parents are good things.  We get it.

But what are the deep moderate thinkers offering up as proposals for Democratic victory, in a time when our Republic and our rights are under constant attack, our nation has blundered into one foreign policy disaster after another, and our systems for protecting public health and the environment have been annihilated?

The obvious answer is...national service!

Wut?

This turkey has been floating around for a long time.  Recently it was espoused by lovable moderate California Gov. Gavin Newsom:

On mandatory national service: Newsom says all Americans should be required to serve their country for "a year, six months minimum," whether through the military or volunteer work, as a way to rebuild shared experiences: "I don't know how else you build this country back together." 

He didn't come with this idea all by himself.  Maybe it was pillow talk from his high-mileage ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle.  

Maybe he got the idea from a different long-time Republican whore:

There's one thing that unites all the advocates of compulsory national service for young people: the advocates are middle-aged or better and therefore under no circumstances would their lives be disrupted by a year of involuntary servitude.

The point of this idiotic proposal is to rescue Kids Today from their current wasted lives of screens, drugs, and dinner with Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, wait a minute, that was St. David Brooks.

Imagine Matt, St. David, Frank, and Ezra bonding

The attacks on the younger generation as dangerously lazy and dissolute have been going on for as long as older white men have looked down at them with envy. Their minds were supposedly corrupted over the years by pool (thank you Harold Hill), comic books, television, gang membership in either the Sharks or Jets, MTV, AOL instant messenger, the Internet, and today's favorite vice, screens.  

It's one plague after another, each rotting the brains of tomorrow's leaders.  Yet each generation grows up and, in its middle-aged wisdom, believes the next one are a bunch of lazy ignorant putzes.

The cure for this, according to St. David and others, is to make high school graduates labor for nothing in the hot sun or join the military to be sacrificed in insane wars dreamed up by generations of Republican clowns (like Brooks) or demented Fascist dictators. 

It's not just a way to save money and avoid spending tax dollars on things like maintaining national parks.  It's also good for the little bastards:

What would it mean to the future social cohesion of this country if a large part of the rising generation had a common experience of shared sacrifice?  

St. David's question is so compelling that it has led us to ask what would it mean to the current social cohesion of the country if lazy rich white men and their shills had a common experience of shared sacrifice. 

Accordingly, we propose compulsory national service, not for young people eager to get on with their lives and build their careers, but for millions of layabouts who could really use the experience of sacrifice for the common good, like these: 

Bari should be proud to work in a naval shipyard

1.  Anyone whose net worth exceeds $50 million. Imagine how cohesive it would be for entitled megalomaniacs like Jeff Bezos or Ken Griffin to clear trails or repair outhouses in National Parks.

2.  Anyone who gets or has a regular column in the New York Times or other mainstream media outlet or is appointed head of a national news organization. Imagine how a year of pick and shovel work would toughen up Bari Weiss's chubby little mitts and give her a new outlook on what real America is like.  Same for Joe Kahn at The New York Times.  Get off the floor Joe and start picking up litter in Prospect Park!

3.  Anyone who has enough spare time to start a podcast.  Is there anything more useless and divisive than a podcast?  Why not put Joe Rogan's mighty muscles and Ezra Klein's mighty mind to work for the nation?  With the Mad King killing off Haitian TPS, who's going to change Grandpa's catheter if Joe and Ezra won't?

4.  Anyone who graduates from Dalton and Harvard.  These elites are known for believing that they have a deep understanding of the hopes and dreams of the common people.  Surely they would want to get even closer to them by working at food pantries or free health care clinics.  Someone's got to sort the cabbage or bag the medical waste and it might as well be Matty.

5.  Anyone who wants to work as a political consultant.  This is another group who constantly profess their connection to the Common Man.  Why wouldn't Morris and Frank jump at the chance to spend a year in their midst, mending lobster traps in Lubec?

6.  Anyone who dumps his wife because he's banging his 30-years-younger research assistant.  Nothing is worse for social cohesion than divorce.  If you don't believe us, do what St. David Brooks does and ask Jesus.

You may have your own list.  If your goal is fostering social cohesion, let's start with the generation most in need of the experience.  Further, we'd argue that those who get the most from society should give a little bit back and let young people alone.

We like this idea.  That's why we, employing the same thought process as every other bulls*** slinger, think that it is wildly popular with the electorate.