I have nothing to say about cryptocurrency because I dislike the concept, am ignorant of related matters, or whatever. My comment is a long one. It is a comprehensive expression of my feelings that have been brewing since 2015, ten years. Mine is an expression of 82 years on this planet, worldwide travel that includes places like East Germany, and the USSR for six weeks in 1986 after Chernobyl. I make no apologies for my outrage or my use of vulgarisms. Those in this country are slow to wake up to the harsh reality that we are amidst fascism that is openly in view in this Trump administration. I will try my best to provide, in part, an answer to Mike Brock's question, "What meaningful civic resistance looks like right now—and why moral seriousness demands that we step from the sidelines into active citizenship."
Ideological drift has been happening in this country since the '60s to the '70s. I noticed this and related it to events in my life. I had just left my two-year stint in the U.S. Army in 1972, finished my residency in 1973, and was heading to an associate professorship at the University of Rochester in the summer of 1973 when a totally unexpected divorce shattered my life. I tried to reconcile my marriage and informed the University. I used my GI mortgage to purchase a duplex in Venice, CA; at that time, it was an unsavory neighborhood, but all I could afford. I accepted a position as a supervisor in the ER of Martin Luther King Hospital in Compton. Between my life in Venice and working in a gang-ridden neighborhood, I now experienced firsthand what life was about for those in the lowest socioeconomic classes in the then beautiful state of California.
I pronounced many dead due to drug overdoses on the beaches of Venice. I met what others in society would call low-class or losers. I experienced the immorality of the police (some) who stopped me and ticketed me on absurd charges (e.g., driving too closely in bumper-to-bumper traffic). I became angry at public officials shirking what was legally just when a traffic judge didn't dismiss my case, but rescheduled my hearing, when the ticketing officer did not show at trial. When I tried to voice a complaint, the bailiff told me to keep my mouth shut or I would be cited for contempt. I witnessed the disappearance of medical equipment from the ER I was supervising as patients stole equipment in the very hospital built and manned by some of the best Black physicians and nurses I have had the privilege to work with. The main administrator of the ER was also ripping off the hospital by having multiple jobs and neglecting his duties. I resigned from my position after reporting his abuses, but before he was investigated, I did not want to be stabbed to death in the parking lot of MLK Hospital.
I accepted a position as hematologist/oncologist in Beverly Hills; how about that for a striking change in milieu? I still lived in Venice and commuted via Venice or Washington Blvd. I noticed in the late '70s that the once pristine and litterless streets were now looking like some of the areas in South Side Chicago, where I did my medical training. At a stoplight before Sepulveda Blvd, I watched the person in the car in front of me roll down their window and dump garbage.
What I was seeing was a decline in morality about right versus wrong. I was and remain upset today about the corruption of that policeman and that judge. I had had earlier experiences as a medical student and again during my Fellowship at the U of Chicago, but that was Chicago, and the mayor was Richard Daley, known for his corruptness. But this was California, a paradise after Chicago of the '60s (where I lived in an apartment surrounded by barbed wire, and where corrupt police were the rule, not the exception). What happened to the accurate but vulgar maxim "you don't shit where you eat?" California was devolving into South Side Chicago. High-rise apartment houses were now obliterating the views of the Pacific Ocean from Pacific Avenue. Colleagues used the newly created Medicare to load hospitals with patients found in nursing homes to satisfy greed. One physician, a Beverly Hills-famed cardiologist, called up one of my patients who had breast cancer and talked her into coming to his office to run tests that were to augment his income. When I challenged his ethics and professionalism, he responded, "Dr. Strum, you don't know the name of the game."
What happened to pride in one's work? What happened to following the wisdom of Hippocrates' Precepts? When did accepting turning living places into garbage dumps become "acceptable?"
I think Mike B. should consider focusing on ideological change, and how it is at the crux of the mess we in America are now in:
▶︎ A fascist POTUS with a grossly incompetent Cabinet of "yes-men."
▶︎ Fascism in its early-to-mid stages with violation of Constitutional Amendments 1, 5, and 14.
▶︎ Appointment of Secretaries such as HHS, Education, Press, and DOJ who are flagrantly not for the citizenry but are destroying so much of what has been good and moral about America.
▶︎ A GOP in both House and Senate that is spineless. It has forgotten the oath they have taken and has acted unethically and immorally.
▶︎ Special emphasis on the projected loss of life due to the idiocy of RFK Jr. I knew more medicine as a first-year medical student. His handling of measles in Texas and now multiple states, his hiring of an anti-vaxxer to ascertain the nature of autism, the firing of so many brilliant people at the NIH and CDC, the termination of USAID, cutting off critical aspects to Medicaid, and not having a focus on the real needs to improve the health of this nation is flagrant malpractice.
In summary, we have morons running our country, but brilliant in their ability to run it into the ground. We have a Captain of the Ship of State who is capsizing this country, and a Congress that is allowing him to get away with bloody murder.
Don't mistake what is happening. DOGE is DOGE (Destroy Our Great Experiment). A pure and simple fascist regime would not purposely destroy itself. The coup that we are now in, yes, a coup, is hellbent on totally destroying this country. It is excellent that people demonstrate peacefully in every state, Red, Blue, or Purple. But there is one apparent failure. The people are not asking WHY. What is the CAUSATION? Why is Trump destroying this country?
1. Wrecking the economy here and around the globe.
2. Ignoring orders from the Supreme Court.
3. Deporting U.S. citizens without due process. A hallmark of fascism.
4. Arresting residents of the U.S. who speak out against him or his policies; a violation of First Amendment guarantees.
5. Alienation of all allies, including Northern and Southern neighbors.
6. Abandoning Ukraine, a sovereign nation that is for Democracy. He also extorted Ukraine's president, Zelensky, once again, but this time for mineral rights and to help his comrade, Putin, in the latter's quest to restore the old USSR.
So Mike Brock, you ask and aver, " What meaningful civic resistance looks like right now—and why moral seriousness demands that we step from the sidelines into active citizenship?"
⇢ Demand from those in Congress, be they Republican, Democrat or Independent, to answer the following question:
Do you agree with what Trump has done to: (a) the economy, (b) relationships with other nations who were allies, (c) to destroy NATO, (d) to violate First Amendment guarantees to free speech, to a free press, (e) to attack Fifth and 14th Amendment rights guaranteeing "due process", (f) imprison and/or deport immigrants, and even U.S. citizens who are in our country legally and without any felony convictions, (g) Ukraine and our abandonment of military and financial support against the war-mongering of Putin.
Lastly, the mainstream media should say it the way it is. Trump is a Fascist. His regime is incompetent. His administration is destroying America. This is not a slow Coup a la Bill Maher. This is an outright coup per Trump.
Let me also be VULGAR. Fuck the terminology that confuses many Americans. Forget "Oligarchy" or "Income Inequality" r even "DEI." Bernie, Alexandra, talk show hosts like Maddow, Psaki, Ayman, Tapper, and O'Donnell need to call Trump out. He's a fascist, acting like Benito Mussolini, using big lie tactics like Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf, 1925), and having his enemies attacked and "disappeared" like Josef Stalin. This is a "mirror, mirror on the wall" episode starring Donalito Trumpolini, whose role models are those dead fascists, along with the living ones like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Nayib Bukele.
The networks should broadcast The Great Dictator and tell the story of Mussolini. They should cite Washington's Farewell Address when he spoke of "our great experiment" and make reference to his other addresses and his concerns that could damage America, all of which Trump is now engaged in. Every broadcast should have quotes from Edmund Burke at its start, its middle, and its end.
"The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse."
"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth."
"Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality."
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Dr Strum, this is a wonderful commentary. You’ve touched on everything Trump and Project 2025 are doing. I got involved with a democratic group where they didn’t want change and only wanted light happy stories on our sites as to not upset people. People need to be upset and mad. I couldn’t stay with them. Denial along with complacency is what got us where we are now. Just like the Germans with Hitler. The corruption and lawlessness is so deep in the Trump administration that I wonder how we’ll ever recover, if we get the chance that is.
I hear in your pauses and and hesitations the same, call it historical stutter, trepidation I think all people of conscience are feeling. We can feel the dangers and consequences and are terrified to act in a way that screws us even worse, if there is a worse. Thank you for this clarity and honesty.
I have nothing to say about cryptocurrency because I dislike the concept, am ignorant of related matters, or whatever. My comment is a long one. It is a comprehensive expression of my feelings that have been brewing since 2015, ten years. Mine is an expression of 82 years on this planet, worldwide travel that includes places like East Germany, and the USSR for six weeks in 1986 after Chernobyl. I make no apologies for my outrage or my use of vulgarisms. Those in this country are slow to wake up to the harsh reality that we are amidst fascism that is openly in view in this Trump administration. I will try my best to provide, in part, an answer to Mike Brock's question, "What meaningful civic resistance looks like right now—and why moral seriousness demands that we step from the sidelines into active citizenship."
Ideological drift has been happening in this country since the '60s to the '70s. I noticed this and related it to events in my life. I had just left my two-year stint in the U.S. Army in 1972, finished my residency in 1973, and was heading to an associate professorship at the University of Rochester in the summer of 1973 when a totally unexpected divorce shattered my life. I tried to reconcile my marriage and informed the University. I used my GI mortgage to purchase a duplex in Venice, CA; at that time, it was an unsavory neighborhood, but all I could afford. I accepted a position as a supervisor in the ER of Martin Luther King Hospital in Compton. Between my life in Venice and working in a gang-ridden neighborhood, I now experienced firsthand what life was about for those in the lowest socioeconomic classes in the then beautiful state of California.
I pronounced many dead due to drug overdoses on the beaches of Venice. I met what others in society would call low-class or losers. I experienced the immorality of the police (some) who stopped me and ticketed me on absurd charges (e.g., driving too closely in bumper-to-bumper traffic). I became angry at public officials shirking what was legally just when a traffic judge didn't dismiss my case, but rescheduled my hearing, when the ticketing officer did not show at trial. When I tried to voice a complaint, the bailiff told me to keep my mouth shut or I would be cited for contempt. I witnessed the disappearance of medical equipment from the ER I was supervising as patients stole equipment in the very hospital built and manned by some of the best Black physicians and nurses I have had the privilege to work with. The main administrator of the ER was also ripping off the hospital by having multiple jobs and neglecting his duties. I resigned from my position after reporting his abuses, but before he was investigated, I did not want to be stabbed to death in the parking lot of MLK Hospital.
I accepted a position as hematologist/oncologist in Beverly Hills; how about that for a striking change in milieu? I still lived in Venice and commuted via Venice or Washington Blvd. I noticed in the late '70s that the once pristine and litterless streets were now looking like some of the areas in South Side Chicago, where I did my medical training. At a stoplight before Sepulveda Blvd, I watched the person in the car in front of me roll down their window and dump garbage.
What I was seeing was a decline in morality about right versus wrong. I was and remain upset today about the corruption of that policeman and that judge. I had had earlier experiences as a medical student and again during my Fellowship at the U of Chicago, but that was Chicago, and the mayor was Richard Daley, known for his corruptness. But this was California, a paradise after Chicago of the '60s (where I lived in an apartment surrounded by barbed wire, and where corrupt police were the rule, not the exception). What happened to the accurate but vulgar maxim "you don't shit where you eat?" California was devolving into South Side Chicago. High-rise apartment houses were now obliterating the views of the Pacific Ocean from Pacific Avenue. Colleagues used the newly created Medicare to load hospitals with patients found in nursing homes to satisfy greed. One physician, a Beverly Hills-famed cardiologist, called up one of my patients who had breast cancer and talked her into coming to his office to run tests that were to augment his income. When I challenged his ethics and professionalism, he responded, "Dr. Strum, you don't know the name of the game."
What happened to pride in one's work? What happened to following the wisdom of Hippocrates' Precepts? When did accepting turning living places into garbage dumps become "acceptable?"
I think Mike B. should consider focusing on ideological change, and how it is at the crux of the mess we in America are now in:
▶︎ A fascist POTUS with a grossly incompetent Cabinet of "yes-men."
▶︎ Fascism in its early-to-mid stages with violation of Constitutional Amendments 1, 5, and 14.
▶︎ Appointment of Secretaries such as HHS, Education, Press, and DOJ who are flagrantly not for the citizenry but are destroying so much of what has been good and moral about America.
▶︎ A GOP in both House and Senate that is spineless. It has forgotten the oath they have taken and has acted unethically and immorally.
▶︎ Special emphasis on the projected loss of life due to the idiocy of RFK Jr. I knew more medicine as a first-year medical student. His handling of measles in Texas and now multiple states, his hiring of an anti-vaxxer to ascertain the nature of autism, the firing of so many brilliant people at the NIH and CDC, the termination of USAID, cutting off critical aspects to Medicaid, and not having a focus on the real needs to improve the health of this nation is flagrant malpractice.
In summary, we have morons running our country, but brilliant in their ability to run it into the ground. We have a Captain of the Ship of State who is capsizing this country, and a Congress that is allowing him to get away with bloody murder.
Don't mistake what is happening. DOGE is DOGE (Destroy Our Great Experiment). A pure and simple fascist regime would not purposely destroy itself. The coup that we are now in, yes, a coup, is hellbent on totally destroying this country. It is excellent that people demonstrate peacefully in every state, Red, Blue, or Purple. But there is one apparent failure. The people are not asking WHY. What is the CAUSATION? Why is Trump destroying this country?
1. Wrecking the economy here and around the globe.
2. Ignoring orders from the Supreme Court.
3. Deporting U.S. citizens without due process. A hallmark of fascism.
4. Arresting residents of the U.S. who speak out against him or his policies; a violation of First Amendment guarantees.
5. Alienation of all allies, including Northern and Southern neighbors.
6. Abandoning Ukraine, a sovereign nation that is for Democracy. He also extorted Ukraine's president, Zelensky, once again, but this time for mineral rights and to help his comrade, Putin, in the latter's quest to restore the old USSR.
So Mike Brock, you ask and aver, " What meaningful civic resistance looks like right now—and why moral seriousness demands that we step from the sidelines into active citizenship?"
⇢ Demand from those in Congress, be they Republican, Democrat or Independent, to answer the following question:
Do you agree with what Trump has done to: (a) the economy, (b) relationships with other nations who were allies, (c) to destroy NATO, (d) to violate First Amendment guarantees to free speech, to a free press, (e) to attack Fifth and 14th Amendment rights guaranteeing "due process", (f) imprison and/or deport immigrants, and even U.S. citizens who are in our country legally and without any felony convictions, (g) Ukraine and our abandonment of military and financial support against the war-mongering of Putin.
Lastly, the mainstream media should say it the way it is. Trump is a Fascist. His regime is incompetent. His administration is destroying America. This is not a slow Coup a la Bill Maher. This is an outright coup per Trump.
Let me also be VULGAR. Fuck the terminology that confuses many Americans. Forget "Oligarchy" or "Income Inequality" r even "DEI." Bernie, Alexandra, talk show hosts like Maddow, Psaki, Ayman, Tapper, and O'Donnell need to call Trump out. He's a fascist, acting like Benito Mussolini, using big lie tactics like Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf, 1925), and having his enemies attacked and "disappeared" like Josef Stalin. This is a "mirror, mirror on the wall" episode starring Donalito Trumpolini, whose role models are those dead fascists, along with the living ones like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Nayib Bukele.
The networks should broadcast The Great Dictator and tell the story of Mussolini. They should cite Washington's Farewell Address when he spoke of "our great experiment" and make reference to his other addresses and his concerns that could damage America, all of which Trump is now engaged in. Every broadcast should have quotes from Edmund Burke at its start, its middle, and its end.
"The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse."
"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth."
"Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality."
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Dr Strum, this is a wonderful commentary. You’ve touched on everything Trump and Project 2025 are doing. I got involved with a democratic group where they didn’t want change and only wanted light happy stories on our sites as to not upset people. People need to be upset and mad. I couldn’t stay with them. Denial along with complacency is what got us where we are now. Just like the Germans with Hitler. The corruption and lawlessness is so deep in the Trump administration that I wonder how we’ll ever recover, if we get the chance that is.
I hear in your pauses and and hesitations the same, call it historical stutter, trepidation I think all people of conscience are feeling. We can feel the dangers and consequences and are terrified to act in a way that screws us even worse, if there is a worse. Thank you for this clarity and honesty.
Keynes considered a socialist?!
Thanks for posting. I'll have to read up more about the Tea Party shenanigans.
Thank you for putting this up as a recording. Your insight is helpful.