Mandate for Democracy 2026: The Rational Promise: Preface

The Democrats are still too scatterbrained to think straight and still blinded to the scope and gravity of the Trump/MAGA authoritarian threat. Clearly, someone needs to do something. Maybe preparing something akin to MAGA's authoritarian-kleptocrat manifesto called Project 2025 could help focus unfocused minds. This a first pass at a preface to a pro-democracy Project 2026 manifesto. Any comments, criticisms?

Project 2025 framing of its authoritarian demagoguery and insulting false narratives:

This work, Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, is a collective effort of hundreds of volunteers who have banded together in the spirit of advancing positive change for America. Our work is by no means the comprehensive compendium of conservative policies, nor is our group the exclusive cadre of conservative thinkers. The ideas expressed in this volume are not necessarily shared by all. What unites us is the drive to make our country better.

It’s not 1980. In 2023, the game has changed. The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings is too great for any conservative policy shop to spearhead. It requires the collective action of our movement. With the quickening approach of January 2025, we have two years and one chance to get it right.

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Mandate for Democracy 2026: The Rational Promise

Preface

This work is a declaration of unflinching support for American representative democracy and the constitutional rule of law. This vision of rational democratic politics is grounded in moral philosophy, legal realism and service to the public interest. The rational promise constitutes a good faith defense of our urgently threatened democracy, rule of law and civil liberties. This mandate is offered in the spirit of positive change for, and defense of, American democracy, democratic institutions and the American people as a whole. 

The rational promise is grounded in a simple moral high ground that most Americans still claim to believe in and try to live by. Most of us still believe in a few clusters of core beliefs. One is the value of America's representative democracy over authoritarianism, with honest, transparent governance desired instead of corruption and unwarranted opacity. Another cluster is a shared belief in the value of facts and truths over lies and false beliefs, and sound, good faith reasoning over partisan spin, deceit and division. Few Americans openly assert that they prefer a true dictatorship over the representative democracy we still have. Few claim to enjoy being lied to or slandered. Most want to see all Americans treated with reasonable respect. All of that is well within the scope of the democratic rational promise.

What is offered here is by no means a comprehensive catalog of rational pro-democracy policy choices. Instead, it focuses on the most serious threats to our precious democracy, rule of law and civil liberties. The rational promise incorporates the public interest and indicia of democracy as elements for respect and consideration. Important democratic indices include reasonable consideration for majority public opinion and reasonable compromise consistent with democratic governance. What inspires this effort is a transparent, good faith desire to make our country better by restoring our representative democracy and the balance of power between the people and elite authoritarian special interests. Those interests include the Republican Party. That party has knowingly shifted major power from the people to the elites. That must be reversed.

The march of radical right authoritarianism through our democratic institutions has now come to pass. Our federal institutions and agencies have been captured and weaponized against the public interest. Our Supreme Court is now radicalized and authoritarian. It has empowered the autocratic ideal of a unitary executive beyond the reach of the rule of law. The federal government's role in vindicating the rule of law and defending our civil liberties has been neutralized and weaponized against American citizens and democratic values. Individual freedoms and democracy itself are under a powerful, ruthless authoritarian onslaught. 

This democratic rationalist effort is not grounded in liberalism, centrism, conservativism, socialism, capitalism, fascism, or Christian or any other religious ideology. This effort is secular and grounded in pro-democracy and rule of law ideology. That ideology amounts to unwavering belief in the moral superiority of politics centered on service to the public interest and representative democracy operating under the principled rule of law and honest, transparent government. In terms of support for this effort to resist American authoritarianism, it does not matter if a person is a liberal, moderate, conservative, or religious. What that matters is support for secular American representative democracy, the principled rule of law, civil liberties, and service to the public interest including honest governance. 

The task at hand is to coalesce public opinion around a common defense against radical right authoritarianism and corruption. The goal is to reverse growing authoritarian power and restore our Republic and democracy to its original moorings in the context of modern social, cultural and economic conditions. Stopping the final conquest of radical right authoritarianism requires the collective action of concerned, informed, well-meaning citizens. With the approach of the November 2026 elections, there is little time left to mount a defense and reverse America's slide into corrupt autocracy. The goal for 2026 elections is to displace radical right authoritarian Republican control of either the House of Representatives of the US Senate. If authoritarian Republican politicians retain control of both chambers of congress after the midterm elections, the chances of our democracy and its benefits decrease drastically.

AI update: A new & improved final error reduction instruction set

The monster error reduction set (~603 words) I spend hours and hours coaxing out of Pxy has failed. Last August, I posted it at this link. The monster seemed to work for a while, but then the error rate seemed to return to the old bad normal. I stopped using that error reduction instruction set.

Recently I wrote my own short instruction set (currently 113 words) that directly hit on the five most common sources of error and substandard responses in Pxy's outputs in response to my usually complex politics queries. This is it:

AI response instructions: Respond in analytical mode, not advocacy. Do not advocate for any particular political position. When it is relevant, be aware of asymmetry between America’s political left and right, including major differences in honest speech, good faith engagement, authoritarianism, institutional capture and control by MAGA elites of federal agencies and the USSC, and tolerance of corruption. Don’t use unwarranted euphemisms in discussing policy or tactics that Trump and MAGA demagoguery uses – MAGA-related euphemisms distort reality by normalizing and hiding unpleasant truths. Examine evidence from multiple perspectives. Eliminate bias, including sycophancy bias. Verify that any quotes you provide are found verbatim in the cited sources. Provide links to all sources you cite.

So far, this is working pretty well. The instructions to (1) respond to queries in analytic mode, not advocacy mode, and (2) verify that quotes are real, are major improvements. The anti-bias instruction seems to work pretty well too. The others are hit and miss, mostly miss, but I suspect better than nothing.

After making way too many blatant errors and me complaining about it, Pxy finally broke down and responded to my complaints that the monster instruction imposed too great a calculation burden, and that led Pxy to simply ignoring to most of the instructions.

Live and learn.

When Institutions Don the Mask: How American Accountability Vanished (Op-Ed)

In the still-dark hours one recent morning, federal agents descended on a South Shore apartment building in Chicago. Armed, masked ICE officers rappelled from helicopters, burst through doors, and swept through every floor—detaining adults and children alike, some in pajamas, zip-tied, and held in the parking lot for hours. Debris, toys, and broken furniture littered the halls. Most of those swept up—including U.S. citizens and legal residents—were released without charge, and Illinois’s governor himself said he could not learn where many had been taken. No search warrant for the building was ever produced; no clear, timely explanation was offered. Days later, federal officials released a glossy, edited highlight reel of the action on social media, justifying the operation with boilerplate language about “reliable intelligence” and “criminal activity”—but without specific details or transparency.

Just days earlier, federal agents shot Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen, five times during an enforcement action. Agency spokespeople initially claimed she was armed with a semi-automatic weapon and attacking officers. Court filings, bodycam footage, and shifting official statements soon told a different story: Martinez was  unarmed (the official government filing does not mention a gun)  and shot, according to Martinez' lawyers,  after being rammed by a law enforcement vehicle—yet these contradictions were buried in reporting, and the government never appeared publicly to account for the action.

Once upon a time—in real life and in Hollywood’s imagination—a crisis like this would have produced another kind of public spectacle: the American press conference. Police chiefs, agency heads, mayors, even presidents would line up, awaiting unscripted and persistent questioning. Reporters would demand not just numbers but clear explanations—why these tactics, who authorized them, what went wrong, what safeguards existed. It was sometimes flawed, sometimes messy, but it was a ritual of transparency, the people’s demand for answers. It was the face of democracy, unmasked. 

Today, that ritual of public explanation is vanishing. The sharp decline in presidential and agency press conferences—already pronounced in Trump’s first term—deepened under President Biden, whose administration held fewer formal pressers and revoked hundreds of journalists’ credentials, setting a modern low for media access. What began as neglect or caution became, under Trump’s new tenure, not accident but deliberate camouflage: a standardized, institutionalized form of political inaccessibility, now deployed as cover during domestic deployments of extraordinary force.

The “faces” of power—like those of masked ICE agents—are now concealed behind layers of PR statements, staged media events, and rare, tightly-controlled briefings. When violence erupts, when citizens go missing, when entire families are rendered temporarily homeless by a federal sweep, both government and media largely move on. No high-profile pressers for the nation to watch. No opportunity for a governor, police chief, or agency head to be grilled in real time. The press, itself increasingly cowed by the threat of lost access or outright retribution, seldom notes this radical transformation of public life.

This is not an accident. Trump’s regime has standardized inaccessibility—making secrecy and evasion fundamental tools of power. The “mask” becomes both symbol and method, hiding not just the faces of agencies on the ground, but the responsibility and reasoning of those at the top. In this new landscape, democracy’s rituals—press conferences, Q&As, unscripted follow-ups—have been quietly replaced by spectacle, a highlight reel in place of an honest reckoning.

The mask is not just on the agents. It is worn now by the state itself. And every time the news fails to pull it back, we drift further into a republic where anything can be done in the night, unknown and unexplained, fitting the shape and story of unchecked power.

 

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References:

• [TIME: Military-Style ICE Raid On Chicago Apartment Building]

[Books&Ideas Blog: From Vulnerable Groups to Iconic Institutions – Trump’s Hybrid Regime]

[CNN: 37 people arrested, American kids separated from parents]

[PBS: Immigration agents become increasingly aggressive in Chicago]

[Reuters: US Border Patrol raid sweeps in citizens, families as Chicago crackdown intensifies]

[Presidential News Conferences | The American Presidency Project]

[CNN: Biden did half as many news conferences as Trump]

[Axios: Biden's media evasion—Fewest press conferences of last 6 presidents]

[Daily Press: Biden holds record for lowest number of press conferences]

Democracy falling: Dems are a gnat to be swatted

TNR reports about djt's speech at the Naval Academy on Oct. 5, 2025. TNR and other sources report Trump's exact quote: "We have to take care of this little gnat that's on our shoulder called the Democrats". He made a flicking motion from his shoulder to emphasize the non-human status of Democrats. The speech was before ~10,000 sailors in dress white uniform. Trump acknowledged the partisan political nature of the event, saying "Let's face it, this is a rally".

A historian and dictator expert commented: "When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you're saying they're not human. That's what dictators do". Presidential historian Jon Meacham said that "to call your opponent vermin, to dehumanize them, is to not only open the door, but to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes".

We now live under what is almost a full-blown dictatorship-kleptocracy. It is rapidly converting to a cruel, lawless police state as djt and MAGA elites keep pushing both ICE and the US military into a dictatorship mindset. Some of the peanuts in the gallery get it:

A peanut, former military, commented: Bush stood in front of my friends, the survivors of some of whom never made it home and I, and thanked us for our sacrifice to the county. Now, Trumps says I'm a terrorist because I think children should have priority over profits.

Another peanut responded: I turned 18 a few months before the Iraq War started. It was the first political issue I cared about and went a long way to shape my current political views. I never thought we'd have a president that I hate more than GWB in my lifetime, but the two aren't even in the same ballpark. 

This should be terrifying across the board. It falls in line with a pattern that I can only describe as years of psychologically priming the public to engage in hate.

There is no doubt that threats to democracy and the rule of law from Trump, MAGA elites and their pro-dictator ideology are increasingly explicit and increasingly threatening of unwarranted, unprovoked violence. It's not just me that sees it. 

By now, no one of good faith and good will can spin insulting MAGA ideology and demagoguery like this into something other than the stinking moral rot and evil it is. 

Trump, MAGA elites

& their insulting threats