Vox has the answer............

 OR................ pie in the sky sermonizing?

You decide:

https://www.vox.com/even-better/383873/coping-strategies-trump-presidency-processing

Some snippets:

Americans disheartened by this year’s election results may find themselves in a 2016 redux. Facing yet another Donald Trump presidency, you might be asking yourself: How do I cope? How will I steel myself to do it all over again for the next four years? This time around, Trump and his allies have vowed to deport millions of people, fire civil servants and appoint loyalists in their stead, and further restrict abortion access. These policies are genuinely distressing and can feel overwhelming for the many millions of people who will be affected by them.

But it is not 2016. Having a clear-eyed plan for how you’ll handle what lies ahead is more protective than succumbing to despair. You can take the lessons learned to buttress your coping skills and avoid psychological exhaustion to make it through the coming days — and the next four years.

Processing emotions requires quiet time with your thoughts. It’s important in this moment to tune out distractions, like social media, and resist avoidant coping strategies, such as sleeping or doomscrolling, and sit with your feelings instead — whether out in nature or while meditating in your living room. 

(sure sure, yup, we all gonna avoid doomscrolling, yup yup)

So, what is the solution you ask, well, read on............

instead of devoting your attention to things you have no power to change, like the enactment of specific policies or Cabinet appointments, focus on what you do have control over. Choose one issue that resonates with you and find ways to get involved locally. “It might be organizing something at the grassroots level to support new families who need child care, It could be going to a city council meeting to talk about housing.”

Knowing your neighbors and finding local groups of people who champion the same causes as you can help you form community. Mobilize to find events and volunteer opportunities near you. Think about what makes you feel like you’ve made a difference in the world. Is it protesting? Working with a mutual aid organization? Making dinner for your elderly neighbor? Ask yourself what issue in your town or city matters the most to you and how you could make an impact there.

“How we live is not really a question that’s intrinsically tied to a political outcome, Obviously, it has real-life impact, globally and personally, but that philosophical question of how you live your life is not something that can be dictated by other people.”

OR..........just escape to Canada. 

New Year's fiddly bits

 Aw geez, the news is just soooo good right now. A few fiddly bits are in order.

Fiddly bits

"You f**king deserve it": Lemon mocks "dumb" MAGA fans blindsided by Trump backing Musk visa push -- "Oh my gosh, I love this," Lemon said in a 40-minute video posted to his YouTube channel. "Now you’re finding out, you dumb f**ing idiots. Now you’re just figuring this s**t out. You’re so f**king stupid, and you deserve it. And you f**king deserve it because you’re so dumb. It’s hypocrisy. So go with me here. Yes. I am gloating over your stupidity and how you were taken. I’m cracking. I’m cackling – I am. You have been co-opted because you’re in a f**ing cult and you don’t even realize it because you have stupid MAGA brain, and you don’t get it. How stupid and dumb are you?" -- "We haven’t fought these battles over years and years and years to allow American citizens of every race, ethnicity, religion, be gutted by the sociopathic overlords in Silicon Valley,” Steve Bannon said on his podcast War Room on Monday.

Goodness gracious & great balls 'o fire! Don seems to be a bit vexed with MAGA voters over the outcome of the election. And Steve is in a snit too! Things seem to be degenerating into enraged irrationality.

Q: Have the wheels come off the cart of civilized democracy?

Nope, we're good -- wheels still on!

Whooping cough cases surge across the US as vaccinations decline -- The CDC reports more than 32,000 cases — a number nearly six times higher than this time last year -- Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a contagious respiratory illness, but it is preventable with a common vaccine. For many, it can start with symptoms similar to the common cold, such as a runny nose, low-grade fever, and cough. However, a very painful cough can develop a week or two later. Coughing fits can become so severe that infected people vomit or break their ribs.

They break their ribs?? Quick, get JFK Jr on the klaxon! Get rid of the polio vaccine. That will get rid of whooping cough!

Chief Justice Roberts condemns elected officials for intimidating judges -- “Attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed,” Roberts wrote. “Public officials certainly have a right to criticize the work of the judiciary, but they should be mindful that intemperance in their statements when it comes to judges may prompt dangerous reactions by others.”

Seriously?? Yabbut whaddabout supreme court judge's intemperate rulings that cause elected Republicans and other forms of extremist crackpot to (i) trash innocent people's lives, democracy and the environment, and (ii) get away with massive theft and corruption, e.g., via forced birth laws, voter suppression laws, obliteration of gun safety laws and legalization of (a) bribery in the federal government, and (b) crimes and treason by a US president? Those can and have caused dangerous reactions by others, sometimes lethal, to your insanely intemperate rulings!  

Elon Musk changes his name to Kekius Maximus on X --- Elon Musk changed his username to "Kekius Maximus" and updated his profile picture to an image of Pepe the Frog dressed in Roman attire. This action significantly impacted the cryptocurrency's value, causing it to surge by over 700%! "Kekius" appears to be a Latinization of "kek", a word roughly equivalent to "laugh out loud" popularized by gamers but now often associated with the alt right. "Kek" is also the name of the ancient Egyptian god of darkness, who is sometimes depicted with the head of a frog.

700%?? MAGA!! But Kekius Maximus? That inspires memories of Biggus Dickus.

OMG, Elon (Pepe the Frog) has done it again!

A 700% gain while playing a video game!

The Biggus Dickus scene

Elon Musk channels Hillary Clinton in calling Trump supporters ‘contemptible fools’ amid H-1B visa debate -- Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is digging in his heels in his defense of H-1B visas, saying some Trump supporters are “contemptible fools” who “must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.” -- Good grief, now those poor MAGA voters are getting flack from sociopathic Silicone Valley Overlords! 

A blast from the past: Memo from 1970: ‘A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News’ --  John Cook found “a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library” that addresses how to circumvent the “prejudices of network news” and deliver “pro-administration” stories to heartland television viewers. -- The memo explains why television was the way to go: Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you.

American kleptocracy update

I wanted to start the new year with a bang! 

Two posts today for the price of one!!

Corruption in congress is bipartisan and increasingly aggressive. Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute reports a new change being enacted by the House "Ethics" Committee that he says amounts to a "New Year's Eve ethics massacre." Schuman writes:

The New Years' Eve Ethics Massacre

The House Ethics Committee's decisions let congressmen put campaign cash in their pockets and make other allegations of misusing their offices disappear

For context, congress's independent ethics watchdog, the Office of Congress Ethics (OCE), raised the alarm on four members of Congress. They issued six reports on suspected improper activities of Rep. Alex Mooney, in reports dated July 23, 2021 and December 22, 2021, Rep. Sanford Bishop, in a report dated February 10, 2020, Rep. Ronny Jackson, in reports dated December 22, 2021 and March 25, 2024, and Rep. Wesley Hunt, in a report dated March 25, 2024.

The OCE is not empowered to make final determinations or punish members of Congress, but they do conduct investigations and make recommendations to the House Ethics Committee regarding their findings. OCE sent the Ethics Committee six reports on member misconduct that sat unaddressed for as long as 1,785 days.

The Ethics Committee is composed equally of Democrats and Republicans. Members are appointed by the Speaker or the Minority Leader. The purpose of the Ethics Committee is to police member misconduct, its apparent purpose is to insulate members of Congress from accountability for ethical misconduct, except when leadership withdraws their protection from a particular member.

The Committee is not a court of law. It cannot put anyone in jail. It was created by the House of Representatives to establish and enforce official standards of conduct. Those official standards of conduct are significantly broader than criminal law and are intended to protect the integrity and reputation of the House of Representatives. As a result, the Committee should be quicker to act than a court of law and should act on a wider range of issues.

As a historical matter, the Ethics Committee failed so publicly at its mission after the turn of the millennium that the pretense it is focused on ethics could no longer be credibly maintained. In response to the public outcry, the House established the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) in March 2008 to clean up the culture of corruption in Congress.

That corruption festered when Ethics Committee Democrats and Republicans essentially agreed to avoid investigating anyone for misconduct. 

On December 30th, 2024, the House Ethics Committee "resolved" the OCE's allegations of misconduct against the four members by issuing new guidance on the personal use of campaign funds and wiping away those allegations and others. The Ethics Committee made three important decisions.

First, the Ethics Committee decided that the Congressional prohibition on using campaign donations for personal use is limited to instances that violate federal law. The House of Representatives' rules are broader than the language codified in statute, so they narrowed its application.

Second, the Ethics Committee made it virtually impossible to prove that a member of Congress violated the rules. The Ethics Committee declared guidance from the Federal Election Committee with respect to conversion of funds are "ambiguous" and provide for "significant gray areas." Accordingly, the Ethics Committee decided it would not punish Members who converted those funds unless there was evidence "that any Member intentionally misused campaign funds for their personal benefit." They required specific proof that a Member intended to misuse campaign funds in knowing violation of the rules. And then they looked the other way.

Third, the Ethics Committee made OCE allegations regarding other violations of the House rules disappear without a trace.

Well there it is. Legalized and normalized corruption is right out in the open. Worse, it is bipartisan. I thought that DJT and MAGA were the key forces behind the rising tide of kleptocracy in American politics. Kleptocratic impulses in the Democratic Party apparently are about as bad as those of MAGA. I became aware of serious Democratic Party pro-corruption sympathy when Nancy Pelosi condoned insider trading by members of congress in 2021. It's not clear if there is a significant difference between the Dems and Repubs when it comes to kleptocracy and corruption in government.

It's not corruption, it's just participating 

in a free economy 🤪

(based on insider knowledge)

Last Oct., I posted about a NYT opinion by Sarah Chayes. That was about corruption in the Dem Party. Chayes is a long-time critic of corruption in government. She questioned Dem commitment to ethics and honest government:

The way corruption is prosecuted and reported on — as one-off scandals committed by these individuals at a specific point in time — camouflages what may be modern corruption’s greatest evil: It is at its heart a system of exclusion, designed to reserve ongoing access to political and monetary gain to a close-knit group of insiders.

Around the world, and increasingly in the United States, networks of public officials, financiers, business executives, philanthropists and even out-and-out criminals have used corrupt practices to monopolize public power. These networks repurpose the levers of government to serve their private interests at the expense of the public and to ensure their own impunity.

We are in terrible trouble. Dem Party elites have fallen to the corrupting power of money, as have the Repub elites. The US supreme court recently legalized bribes as "gratuities" or "rewards" for people in government. As of now, it is mostly accurate to call the US a kleptocracy. We are so screwed.

Regarding mandatory voting

Salon writes:

If democracy dies in this country, it can be blamed on people who did not bother to vote last November.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump fought tooth and nail over almost everything. But, in the run-up to the November election, both urged Americans to vote like never before, saying over and over again that “This will be the most important election in the history of our country.”

Yet, despite the stakes of the 2024 election, millions of Americans sat out the election and did not vote. There were about 90 million of them, a number that dwarfs the 77 million people who voted for Donald Trump.

The United States can respond to looming threats to democracy by tackling the non-voting problem directly. That means making voting mandatory. Only by doing so do we have any chance to make the political system more democratic and more representative, and thus more resilient. 

Those who did not vote in 2024 were younger than those who voted. The Pew Research Center observes that they also were “more racially and ethnically diverse,…less affluent and less educated ” than those who voted.

Pew notes many reasons eligible voters did not vote in 2024. 35% believed that “their vote would not make a difference.” 31% said they did not vote because they generally do not like politics. Another 17% said they did not vote because they “did not care about the outcome.”

The rest of the non-voters didn’t turn out because they were not registered or voting was inconvenient. 8% said “they forgot to vote.”

Australia has had compulsory voting for almost one hundred years. As former Connecticut Secretary of State Miles Rapaport and historian Alex Keyssar explain, “In Australia, all registered citizens must vote, and almost everyone is registered; the enforcement mechanism is a fine of about $15, and people can cast blank or “none of the above” ballots to express their indifference to the offered slate of candidates. The result has been turnout of about 90 percent in every Australian election since 1924.”

Mandatory voting does not mean you have to vote for anyone or anything on the ballot. It just means you have to get a ballot and return it, even if you leave the whole thing blank. I'm a huge fan of mandatory voting because it tends to be pro-democracy, anti-extremism and anti-authoritarian.

Q: In general, what have been the effects of mandatory voting in Australia?

A: Compulsory voting ensures a more socially even turnout, reducing disparities in voter participation based on socioeconomic status, age, and ethnicity. This contrasts with countries like the UK, where turnout can vary significantly by demographic.

The system encourages political parties to appeal to the center rather than the extremes, as they must win over the entire electorate, not just their base. This has been credited with keeping Australia's political center more stable compared to other democracies.

Compulsory voting is believed to improve the caliber of individuals who run for office and the quality of decisions they make, as candidates must appeal to a broader electorate. Parties must consider the full spectrum of voter values, leading to policies that address a wider range of issues.

Etc.

But as we all know, the Republican Party opposes mandatory voting for the obvious reasons, i.e., wealth and power. Heck, the modern GOP leadership opposes real elections, period. Sham are probably OK for window dressing.