My friend Rogelio, who sells his wooden toys at the Saturday Market teased me about Trump pressuring Mexico. With the man who weaves rugs listening in from the next stall, I asked Rogelio a question:
"Mexico has a free trade agreement with the United States, but China does not. China sends pieces of almost finished cars to Mexico. Mexico assembles those pieces, and then sends the completed cars to the US as Mexican cars, without paying import taxes, as China would have to. Is that fair?"
Rogelio was unimpressed. Not everyone wants to hear the other side. But, following their electoral loss, at least some inside the Democratic Party are looking for answers.
James Carville *
Long-time Democratic Party strategist, James Carville is alarmed that the Democratic Party seems to be committing suicide by doubling down on unpopular positions (less than 51% of the electorate), like boys competing in girls' sports, open borders and childhood gender transitioning.
"Former CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza warned Wednesday that Democrats' intense hatred for President Donald Trump is crippling their odds of reclaiming government control.
"Cillizza, on 'On Balance,' argued that Democrats' hostility toward Trump is leading them to adopt disastrous political strategies. 'They just have a blind spot with Trump. No idea he proposes can even be a good idea.'"
Brianna Wu is a transgender activist, a transgender woman and a consultant to the Democratic Party, another very frustrated consultant. Briana, who transitioned with surgeries and hormones, points to the phenomenon of autogynephilia, a male's propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female. Contrary to the trans-narrative embraced by the Democratic Party, Brianna insists that autogynephilic males are not women, not trans-women, not in the same way that men who transitioned with surgery and hormones are. Transgenderism exists, but so do guys who just like to dress up as women.
Brianna Wu *
Another no-win situation for the Democrats is their branding DOGE's uncovering of waste and fraud as an "attack on democracy." Seventy percent of Americans believe that Elon Musk being able to see their income tax or Social Security information is a small price to pay for eliminating fraud and waste in the US government. Musk recently revealed there are nearly 20 million dead people who are still collecting Social Security.
Musk also revealed that members of Congress get millions of dollars richer by starting NGOs, that USAID then funds, which NGOs then pay the member of Congress who started them millions of dollars. Then, of course, there are kickbacks from Ukraine. (Zelensky admits that half of the money has disappeared.) A lot of those governmental fraudsters are trying to convince us that Musk should be stopped.
"NewsNation host Chris Cuomo argued that Democrats' blanket condemnation of Trump and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk shows they haven't 'learned' from their 2024 election defeats.
"'It seems like anything that Trump or Musk does, they have to condemn, and they have to condemn it on the basis of the people personally. Trump is a Nazi. Musk has apartheid roots.'"
I am neither Republican nor Democrat. My politics are local. I think the greatest security comes from neighbors acting in their own mutual benefit (www.lokkal.com/mission). But not wasting tax dollars seems like good local medicine to me.
I try not to write about politics, but I'm tired of counting to ten and not responding whenever someone emails me (and I assume everyone else on their list of contacts) some unintelligent, unfair critique of the current administration. Don't get me wrong, there are reasons not to like Trump. But it's far from clear, to me at least, that Trump is worse than Obama, Biden or Harris. Recent polls, for what they're worth, indicate that Trump's approval is higher than ever.
I'm not saying that I know what I'm talking about. I am genuinely humble about my opinions. These days we are all siloed in information bubbles, seeing one-sided content that reinforces our prejudice, information that is delivered to us by the algorithm to "engage" us, to keep us online.
As the elevator experiment reveals (see the video above), we all want to face the same direction as the crowd. There is a deep human, animal and cellular need to belong. But belong to what?
We now know that USAID funded the NGOs that funded the Black Lives Matter protests/riots, the pro-Palestine encampments/protests/riots, the Green Agenda, the open borders movement, boys in girls' sports, and the support for childhood gender transitioning. And USAID directly paid the media (Politico $8 million, Reuters $9 million...) to bias their coverage.
Ironically, with all those billions of dollars spent to manufacture consent, it might be argued that there is no organic progressive movement. It may be that the only people who believe in the Woke agenda have been brainwashed by CNN, MSNBC and Politico.
"The Democratic Party's approval rating plunged to nearly an all-time low of 31% among registered voters, according to Quinnipiac University polling published on Jan. 29."
Polite society once agreed that blacks, Jews, Irish and Italians were "not the right people." Now polite society feels the same about Trump supporters. I wouldn't label myself one of those. I am a contrarian, the son of contrarians. But I do stand with the large majority of Americans who are tired of one-sided, state-sponsored propaganda. I would like to hear both sides of the discussion, and if you've read this far, I suppose maybe you would too.
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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.
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