Much to the negative comments from a few of my neighbors, I have had signage on my property now for the last five years. One reads, "Democracy or Dictatorship, Your Decision." Another is, "Love thy neighbor as thyself. Remember, We the People." And the third are two flags, one the flag of Ukraine, acknowledging the bravery of the people of Ukraine, and the other being "Kindness is everything, No human is illegal."
We are in deep guacamole and we better fight to get out of it. We allowed an evil thing to enter our house and bring with him his evil supplicants. And yes, the Republican Congress is disgusting in its betrayal of ethics and the loss of any moral fiber. But like the old song from the 60s, "never give up, never give up, fight to the very end," show your support, unite, protest, stand up, speak out for that which is right, support what you believe in, and do it, even if it means to your dying breath. That's what true patriotism is all about. And interact on these Substack sites. Screw the likes, I don't give a damn about those. What I want is to hear what others are thinking and saying. And if we disagree, then let's have discussion. Let's speak out and share our past experience and what I hope equates with knowledge.
Thank you Mike , for your calmness , your clarity and your truth . I believe It is the truth of every moral and sane American, or even half sane, in the face of this insanity.
We the People need to stay together and work together .
Sorry to remind you, but there will be no "thousand years" for our species, na matter what the USA does. The handwriting is on the wall, written in microplastics and declining sperm counts.
In the meantime I emigrated from the US several years ago; living in Catalunya, a polity that understands all too well how coups work.
However, I am surprised, frankly, how little the political conversation intersects with the scientific consensus that the future will contain challenges to human existence that make Donald Trump look a mere infection..
I noticed this as well. While 10 years ago there was some clarity in the public sphere about the dangers facing humanity, this stance has all disappeared. To cite just one example, The Guardian used to have a campaign called "Keep it in the ground". Nowadays they run unapologetic propaganda for the fossil fuel industry, in particular on their sports pages (which are probably the most popular section of The Guardian).
PS Gemini tells me that my comment is unfair. Yes, I use hyperbole. But it serves to describe my pain at seeing us move further and further away from a possible solution to the dangers.
It’s not your fault. Evolution has not prepared our species to understand the mess we’ve made; at least not at the time scale our technology requires. We can do so much damage, even existentially, without having a clue about unintended consequences.
When does the time ripen for millions to gather in DC, haul out every last one of these people, strip them naked on the White House lawn, and ride them on rails through the streets? Cart them to the landfill.
The federal government has not worked for the people for the last 30+ years.
The Constitution was drafted to construct a government that draws its power “from the people”. In return the government is to act in the “people’s behalf.”
Starting with Reagan but accelerated under Clinton - when globalization became the main driver in what the government focused on, the people’s concerns have diminished to the point now where they are paid only lip service, if that.
The villains are known to those who are paying attention: the plutocrats, Silly Valley TechLords, bankers, the MIC, and Israel with their 5th column. This group is interlaced and works collaboratively if not allows cohesively. They have used the system to seize control and use the power of government to achieve their own objectives.
The majority of Americans through relentless conditioning, failing educational institutions, reduced prospects, propaganda, laziness and indifference have ceded the field to the villains to allow the country to arrive at this point.
The good news is it appears, and that is the extent of it at the moment, that a growing number of Americans have woken up to the fact that they have been fleeced and abused for these last decades. Moreover, it appears the youth have begun to trust their own eyes to recognize the lies for what they are.
The question now is are people going to do something?
The first opportunity comes in November when you still have the chance to elect people to office. If people default to the usual one or the other wing of the corrupt duopoly then nothing will change and the trip to oblivion will continue a pace.
But if people, each individual, will take their moment to reject the corrupt duopoly and vote for the unaffiliated or third party candidate then maybe the tide will turn.
As an outsider, I can’t understand how the Founding Fathers, with all their caution and foresight in writing the Constitution, didn’t think of a mechanism for enforcing the system of checks and balances they so assiduously created, particularly in dealing with a tyrannical executive branch. Or did they?
Mike, you’ve been generous in engaging, and I think we’re far enough apart here that we’re not going to have a very productive back‑and‑forth on the substance. So I want to ask a different kind of question.
When you write something this apocalyptic – “the government has been couped,” “no functioning institutions,” “alien regime wearing American colors” – what is your actual end goal? Is it to inform people about a serious war‑powers and constitutional crisis, or is it to shock and enrage them?
If the aim is to persuade and clarify, why frame it in terms that collapse every distinction between a damaged, overreaching republic and an outright illegitimate regime? What work do you think that level of rhetorical escalation does, other than to crank the emotional temperature?
I mean what I said. If you're worried about the implications of what I'm saying, well, I'm not. We're talking about life and death here, Vincent. People are dying right now, at this very moment. If you haven't noticed. If you're suggesting I politely lower the rhetorical temperature such that people may not lash out emotionally against the very obvious truths—which I note you didn't dispute—then we simply have distance of seriousness between us, I think.
For whatever it's worth, as an 83-year-old Vietnam vet and physician and diplomat to the USSR after Chernobyl, you are spot on. Reality is difficult for many to face. You are trying to wake up a populace that's been asleep and a populace that's been ignorant or a populace that's been poorly educated as to the hallmarks of fascism. Your commentary today is spot on.
Mike, if this really is life and death, then the responsible move is to analyze the actual event, not just use it as a fresh occasion to declare that the entire U.S. government is an alien coup regime. ‘People are dying’ is exactly why the standard should be evidence and argument, not maximum rhetorical voltage.
If this action is illegitimate, make that case on the merits: what authority is Trump claiming, what statutes or treaty obligations are being violated, how do the numbers on deployments and strikes compare to past uses of force, what has Congress formally done or refused to do? Those are concrete, checkable questions. Right now you are jumping straight from “there was a strike” to “the republic has been overthrown” without filling in the middle.
And you are also skipping the underlying policy question. Put Trump aside for a second. Is Iran, as it is currently behaving in the region, a serious threat to U.S. forces, partners, shipping, and energy flows? Have its actions across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf, and now against Israel crossed a threshold that would justify some kind of military response under any president? If your answer is no, that’s a defensible position, but then say so and argue it. If your answer is yes, then the harder question is what response is proportionate and lawful.
So my ask is simple: before we declare coup and alien regime, can we get a clear answer from you on whether you think Iran poses a real threat that merits any military action at all, and if not, why not?
Dude: This is part of an ongoing pattern. You do not see it because you don't want to see it.
No one thinks Iran is a good guy in the region. That's a red herring argument. We had a peace deal with Iran. The deal was trashed by trump. We were engaged in another deal with some major concessions on the table and then Boom! For a host of reasons trump along with that war criminal Netanyahu engaged in attacks on Iran. Aside from the fact that trump got dog walked by Netanyahu I can spell out all the benefits of this war to trump personally but any thinking person knows them already, none of them include the calculus of "We the People".
This isn't entirely about trump as much as I despise him. If my own mother was in charge of our nation and did this 1) against the express will of the people and 2) in defiance of the rightful war powers of Congress 3) at a moment when we weren't particularly under immediate threat by a regime wobbling on one leg, with the other on a banana peel I'd be calling for her ouster so fast her head would spin.
First, you keep telling me what I ‘don’t want to see’ instead of answering what I actually asked. I never said Iran was ‘the good guy.’ I asked a very simple question you keep dancing around: is Iran any kind of real threat that could ever justify military action under any president, with a proper vote? If your answer is no, say that plainly and defend it. If your answer is yes, then we have to talk threat, proportionality, and legality, not just ‘WTAF.’
Second, ‘the express will of the people’ is not whatever you and your feed are feeling on a Saturday. If Congress has war‑powers votes, if members are divided, if there is real disagreement in the country, then we are in a fight over policy and law, not some self‑evident moral monolith that Dear Leader just trampled. That matters if you want to be taken seriously outside your own comment section.
Third, the ‘if my own mother did this…’ line is cute, but it smuggles in exactly what you accuse me of: vibes instead of argument. You are sure it’s about Trump’s personal benefit and being “dog walked,” but you haven’t given a single concrete alternative strategy for dealing with Iran’s behavior in the region, or a single limiting principle for when force might be justified.
So I’ll put it back in plain English:
– Should there ever be circumstances where the U.S. uses force against Iran?
– If yes, what are they?
– If no, then just own that you are against any strike on Iran on principle and stop pretending this is only about Trump’s character.
Until you answer that, all the caps‑lock and metaphors are just noise, Hoss.
You excel in red herring arguments (take your bow) and AFAIK, this is my first engagement with you so your all knowing stance about what I "always" do or what I "keep" telling you is laughable. Done here and dusting off my shoes.
Another disagreement with you, Vincent, and I'll tell you why again. Trump declared war on Iran today and he did so without the consent of Congress. That is a violation of our Constitution. Trump has violated the Constitution ad lib all over the friggin place: Freedom of the Press, Freedom of rightful assembly, Freedom of due process, habeas corpus, Emoluments. This is a POTUS for whom everything is a deal. It's a transaction. There is no empathy. There is no concern for the rights and liberties guaranteed as part of our American heritage.
You've got members of the Department of Homeland Security acting exactly like the Gestapo acted in the late 1930s in Nazi Germany. You've got people beaten up, handcuffed, and murdered. Not only that, but you have a president that's selling guitars and coins and involved in cryptocurrency who's amassed a billion dollars just in one year at the expense of the U.S. citizen. And you were asking for proof? You have the murder of people on small vessels sailing the Caribbean who are unidentified as to who they are and what they're carrying on board, and the invasion of a sovereign nation, supposedly in the name of regime change, and yet, who is taking power in that country? A person following the same dictatorial approach toward its citizenry. It's all a deal. It's all about greed, gold, ego, power.
Have you seen people who are living in a government that suppresses them? I have. In East Berlin in 1966 and in the USSR in 1986. You don't want to go there.
"You see what you want to see; you hear what you want to hear." Harry Nilsson in The Point, Chapter 4
I disagree with you Vincent, and I'll tell you why. I take the lessons I've learned from everyday life and use them as metaphors when interacting with the bigger things that are life-changing. Working in my dad's gas station as a six-year-old through my teen years and during summers off from medical school, I ended up using the automobile metaphor for so much of my teaching others about important concepts.
I will speak for Brock and he can correct me if I am wrong. But in this instance, and tying into the above paragraph, the key concept here is status - that which is, or what Robin Williams once said, "reality, what a concept." If you do not know what your status is, what your baseline is, then you have no way to rationally proceed with a strategy to make the changes needed. In cancer medicine, establishing that status is crucial to the correct therapy to undo the evil that malignancy brings to the patient. All the advances in cancer medicine tie into a new way to more accurately understand status.
What Brock is doing here, again apologizing for speaking for him, is to tell us, this is your situation, Americans. We are in some very dire straits, and we better now unite and do whatever is in our ability to change this. It is not a lying down and saying, oh, woe is me, but more a wake-up call, which Americans should have had years ago with all the evidence provided by the actions and utterings of a malignant narcissist and sociopath.
So don't say everything's okay. Don't worry about your cancer. We'll make it fine. Ask what you can do instead. How can you be involved? What commitment will you make to leave the world a better place than you found it?
Stephen, I have no problem with status, or with clear diagnoses. I have a problem with misdiagnosis. In medicine, if you tell a patient they have Stage IV metastatic cancer when what they actually have is a serious but treatable condition, you are not ‘raising their awareness.’ You are lying to them about their status and distorting their decision‑making.
Saying ‘the war powers system is badly broken, Congress has let its authority atrophy, and the president is now using force in Iran with no specific authorization’ is a serious diagnosis. Calling that ‘a coup,’ saying all three branches are ‘captured,’ and declaring the federal government an ‘alien institution wearing American colors’ is not status, it is metaphor. And it is a metaphor that erases the very tools you say we should use: elections, legislation, litigation, organizing.
If you want people to act, specificity is more useful than apocalypse. What votes do you want Congress to take? What statutes do you want invoked or repealed? What do you want citizens to do on Monday that they are not already doing? ‘Wake up’ is not a plan.
And underneath all of this is the question Mike has not really touched: set Trump aside for a moment. Given Iran’s behavior in the region, do you believe it poses any serious threat that could ever justify military action by any lawful administration? If your answer is no, then say so and argue that case. If your answer is yes, then the real argument is about what response is proportionate and legal, not about declaring the republic already overthrown.
Vincent, what you say has value but it is a non sequitur to Brock's comments and mine. Congressional ethics and morality and legality have been breached. The behavior of the Republican Congress (almost all of them) has been to concur that the 2020 election was stolen. Complicity with Trump, not speaking out and voting against Trump is demonstrative of unethical behavior and putting greed, power before truth and right. If we cannot agree this is the case, then we have a replay of Cool Hand Luke: "What we've got here is failure to communicate" — Strother Martin & Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967)
What to do. Know the situation and its full implications. You have lost weight, your hemoglobin has dropped in a serial fashion, and you have noted a change in your bowel habits. Moreover, your stool test shows internal bleeding. Do you want to know more or just stop here?
I have seen over diagnosis in my 63 years as physician. But it is far more common to see missed diagnosis and under diagnosis. This has led in recent years to improved STAGING, (i.e., determination of the EXTENT of disease.
Brock is doing exactly that ⇢ Telling us our reality. We have seen SCOTUS make decisions that granted Trump absurd powers. We have seen SCOTUS take a year to make a decision that a tribunal of scholars could make in a week. Justice delayed is justice denied is a crock of shit in our current system-- we need to change this.
And what we see with virtually every Department head, appointed by Trump, is outright violation of liberty, freedom, good health, proper education, etc etc.
If you want evidence of that, I would say, Vincent, what cave have you been living in. I say that not to demean you, but as a fellow citizen, as a fellow member of this planet, as one purportedly of a species called Homo sapiens, with a full understanding of what that means. Every loss of patience diminishes me. Every life that is lost in the world sucks out a part of me. To hear today that our American bombs killed 57 people in a girls' school is heartbreaking. All I can think of is "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do."
Do you not see this, Vincent? And your name, Vincent, is one that is part and parcel of my every fibre. Since boyhood, the life of Vincent van Gogh and his love of the poor people and his living the gospel as it was intended has always been a modus operandi for my behavior as a human. You need to live up to that name, Vincent. And you can see what this 83-year-old medical oncologist, Vietnam vet, afflicted with a horrendous malignancy, has done in this last chapter of his life. Read What We Must Demand For Our Democracy to Survive.
And then let's talk some more and interact because this is the value of these substacks to my way of thinking. And if our conversation leads me to my being wrong, no big deal. I can accept that.
Stephen, I respect your age, your service, and your work more than I can easily convey in an online thread. I am genuinely sorry you are dealing with serious illness on top of watching all of this unfold. Nothing I’ve written is meant to minimize the gravity of what is happening or the human cost of the decisions being made.
Where we differ is not on whether Trump is corrupt, whether Republicans have behaved cynically, or whether institutions have failed. On those points, we are closer than you seem to think. Where we differ is on the jump from ‘grave constitutional and moral failure’ to ‘the republic has been couped, the government is now an alien regime, and our institutions no longer function in any meaningful sense.’
Your medical metaphors are exactly why I am pushing on that. In medicine, staging matters, but so does accuracy. Calling Stage II disease Stage IV is not “telling reality straight,” it is a mis‑staging that changes how the patient thinks, chooses, and copes. My worry is that when we describe a battered, degraded republic as if it were already East Berlin or the USSR, we encourage people to give up on the very tools that are still available: elections, legislation, litigation, organizing, persuasion.
You ask whether I see the abuses, the deaths, the girls’ school. I do. That is precisely why I want us to keep a clear distinction between ‘this is intolerable and must be fought’ and ‘the system itself is already illegitimate and overthrown.’ If you truly believe the latter, then the logic points away from constitutional politics entirely. I’m not prepared to say we are there yet, and I don’t think it’s responsible to talk as if we are.
You are entitled to think I am under‑diagnosing. I think you and Mike are over‑staging. Reasonable people who both care about the country can still disagree on that without accusing each other of living in caves or failing to live up to their names.
In any case, I appreciate that you engaged in good faith. I’ll leave it here so we don’t just start repeating ourselves, but I’ve heard you.
Mike, that’s exactly my point. The Constitution doesn’t have a clause about ‘Iran’s moral crimes’ because that’s not how we judge legality at all. Article I and the War Powers framework are about *our* process: when, how, and by whom force is authorized, not whether the target is virtuous.
So let me ask the question you keep skipping: set Trump aside and set ‘coup’ language aside for a second. As Iran has actually behaved over the last decade — nuclear work, missiles, proxy attacks, shipping, strikes on U.S. forces and partners — do you believe it poses a serious threat that could ever justify military action under any lawful administration?
If your answer is no, then make *that* case and say plainly that even a properly authorized strike would be wrong. If your answer is yes, then the real argument is about whether this particular use of force is proportionate and legally authorized, not about pretending the threat question is irrelevant.
So you agree this is extra-constitutional, by your very words and by implication. But suggest I err in noticing that a government operating outside its own establishing laws is a government in coup. I must say, at this point, I really don't know what the hell you're talking about here.
That works as a clean exit, but you can sharpen it just a touch:
OK Mike, I can see you’re not interested in taking this seriously, so I’ll leave you to it. One suggestion before I step out of your feedback loop: try getting outside the circle of people who only confirm your priors. You might see things a lot clearer.
Thank you! I have been suggesting that we fly our flags upside down for some time now, but you are right— there’s no choice about it now.
Much to the negative comments from a few of my neighbors, I have had signage on my property now for the last five years. One reads, "Democracy or Dictatorship, Your Decision." Another is, "Love thy neighbor as thyself. Remember, We the People." And the third are two flags, one the flag of Ukraine, acknowledging the bravery of the people of Ukraine, and the other being "Kindness is everything, No human is illegal."
We are in deep guacamole and we better fight to get out of it. We allowed an evil thing to enter our house and bring with him his evil supplicants. And yes, the Republican Congress is disgusting in its betrayal of ethics and the loss of any moral fiber. But like the old song from the 60s, "never give up, never give up, fight to the very end," show your support, unite, protest, stand up, speak out for that which is right, support what you believe in, and do it, even if it means to your dying breath. That's what true patriotism is all about. And interact on these Substack sites. Screw the likes, I don't give a damn about those. What I want is to hear what others are thinking and saying. And if we disagree, then let's have discussion. Let's speak out and share our past experience and what I hope equates with knowledge.
Thank you Mike , for your calmness , your clarity and your truth . I believe It is the truth of every moral and sane American, or even half sane, in the face of this insanity.
We the People need to stay together and work together .
☮️
Sorry to remind you, but there will be no "thousand years" for our species, na matter what the USA does. The handwriting is on the wall, written in microplastics and declining sperm counts.
Then go somewhere nice to die, I guess, Richard. I don't know what to tell you.
That will happen soon enough.
In the meantime I emigrated from the US several years ago; living in Catalunya, a polity that understands all too well how coups work.
However, I am surprised, frankly, how little the political conversation intersects with the scientific consensus that the future will contain challenges to human existence that make Donald Trump look a mere infection..
I noticed this as well. While 10 years ago there was some clarity in the public sphere about the dangers facing humanity, this stance has all disappeared. To cite just one example, The Guardian used to have a campaign called "Keep it in the ground". Nowadays they run unapologetic propaganda for the fossil fuel industry, in particular on their sports pages (which are probably the most popular section of The Guardian).
PS Gemini tells me that my comment is unfair. Yes, I use hyperbole. But it serves to describe my pain at seeing us move further and further away from a possible solution to the dangers.
It’s not your fault. Evolution has not prepared our species to understand the mess we’ve made; at least not at the time scale our technology requires. We can do so much damage, even existentially, without having a clue about unintended consequences.
And our truth marches on.
When does the time ripen for millions to gather in DC, haul out every last one of these people, strip them naked on the White House lawn, and ride them on rails through the streets? Cart them to the landfill.
The federal government has not worked for the people for the last 30+ years.
The Constitution was drafted to construct a government that draws its power “from the people”. In return the government is to act in the “people’s behalf.”
Starting with Reagan but accelerated under Clinton - when globalization became the main driver in what the government focused on, the people’s concerns have diminished to the point now where they are paid only lip service, if that.
The villains are known to those who are paying attention: the plutocrats, Silly Valley TechLords, bankers, the MIC, and Israel with their 5th column. This group is interlaced and works collaboratively if not allows cohesively. They have used the system to seize control and use the power of government to achieve their own objectives.
The majority of Americans through relentless conditioning, failing educational institutions, reduced prospects, propaganda, laziness and indifference have ceded the field to the villains to allow the country to arrive at this point.
The good news is it appears, and that is the extent of it at the moment, that a growing number of Americans have woken up to the fact that they have been fleeced and abused for these last decades. Moreover, it appears the youth have begun to trust their own eyes to recognize the lies for what they are.
The question now is are people going to do something?
The first opportunity comes in November when you still have the chance to elect people to office. If people default to the usual one or the other wing of the corrupt duopoly then nothing will change and the trip to oblivion will continue a pace.
But if people, each individual, will take their moment to reject the corrupt duopoly and vote for the unaffiliated or third party candidate then maybe the tide will turn.
As an outsider, I can’t understand how the Founding Fathers, with all their caution and foresight in writing the Constitution, didn’t think of a mechanism for enforcing the system of checks and balances they so assiduously created, particularly in dealing with a tyrannical executive branch. Or did they?
Mine’s been flying upside down for awhile…
This cabal longer has the consent of the governed.
Mike, you’ve been generous in engaging, and I think we’re far enough apart here that we’re not going to have a very productive back‑and‑forth on the substance. So I want to ask a different kind of question.
When you write something this apocalyptic – “the government has been couped,” “no functioning institutions,” “alien regime wearing American colors” – what is your actual end goal? Is it to inform people about a serious war‑powers and constitutional crisis, or is it to shock and enrage them?
If the aim is to persuade and clarify, why frame it in terms that collapse every distinction between a damaged, overreaching republic and an outright illegitimate regime? What work do you think that level of rhetorical escalation does, other than to crank the emotional temperature?
I mean what I said. If you're worried about the implications of what I'm saying, well, I'm not. We're talking about life and death here, Vincent. People are dying right now, at this very moment. If you haven't noticed. If you're suggesting I politely lower the rhetorical temperature such that people may not lash out emotionally against the very obvious truths—which I note you didn't dispute—then we simply have distance of seriousness between us, I think.
For whatever it's worth, as an 83-year-old Vietnam vet and physician and diplomat to the USSR after Chernobyl, you are spot on. Reality is difficult for many to face. You are trying to wake up a populace that's been asleep and a populace that's been ignorant or a populace that's been poorly educated as to the hallmarks of fascism. Your commentary today is spot on.
Mike, if this really is life and death, then the responsible move is to analyze the actual event, not just use it as a fresh occasion to declare that the entire U.S. government is an alien coup regime. ‘People are dying’ is exactly why the standard should be evidence and argument, not maximum rhetorical voltage.
If this action is illegitimate, make that case on the merits: what authority is Trump claiming, what statutes or treaty obligations are being violated, how do the numbers on deployments and strikes compare to past uses of force, what has Congress formally done or refused to do? Those are concrete, checkable questions. Right now you are jumping straight from “there was a strike” to “the republic has been overthrown” without filling in the middle.
And you are also skipping the underlying policy question. Put Trump aside for a second. Is Iran, as it is currently behaving in the region, a serious threat to U.S. forces, partners, shipping, and energy flows? Have its actions across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf, and now against Israel crossed a threshold that would justify some kind of military response under any president? If your answer is no, that’s a defensible position, but then say so and argue it. If your answer is yes, then the harder question is what response is proportionate and lawful.
So my ask is simple: before we declare coup and alien regime, can we get a clear answer from you on whether you think Iran poses a real threat that merits any military action at all, and if not, why not?
I explained my reasoning very clearly.
Dude: This is part of an ongoing pattern. You do not see it because you don't want to see it.
No one thinks Iran is a good guy in the region. That's a red herring argument. We had a peace deal with Iran. The deal was trashed by trump. We were engaged in another deal with some major concessions on the table and then Boom! For a host of reasons trump along with that war criminal Netanyahu engaged in attacks on Iran. Aside from the fact that trump got dog walked by Netanyahu I can spell out all the benefits of this war to trump personally but any thinking person knows them already, none of them include the calculus of "We the People".
This isn't entirely about trump as much as I despise him. If my own mother was in charge of our nation and did this 1) against the express will of the people and 2) in defiance of the rightful war powers of Congress 3) at a moment when we weren't particularly under immediate threat by a regime wobbling on one leg, with the other on a banana peel I'd be calling for her ouster so fast her head would spin.
WTAF Hoss?
Couple things, Hoss.
First, you keep telling me what I ‘don’t want to see’ instead of answering what I actually asked. I never said Iran was ‘the good guy.’ I asked a very simple question you keep dancing around: is Iran any kind of real threat that could ever justify military action under any president, with a proper vote? If your answer is no, say that plainly and defend it. If your answer is yes, then we have to talk threat, proportionality, and legality, not just ‘WTAF.’
Second, ‘the express will of the people’ is not whatever you and your feed are feeling on a Saturday. If Congress has war‑powers votes, if members are divided, if there is real disagreement in the country, then we are in a fight over policy and law, not some self‑evident moral monolith that Dear Leader just trampled. That matters if you want to be taken seriously outside your own comment section.
Third, the ‘if my own mother did this…’ line is cute, but it smuggles in exactly what you accuse me of: vibes instead of argument. You are sure it’s about Trump’s personal benefit and being “dog walked,” but you haven’t given a single concrete alternative strategy for dealing with Iran’s behavior in the region, or a single limiting principle for when force might be justified.
So I’ll put it back in plain English:
– Should there ever be circumstances where the U.S. uses force against Iran?
– If yes, what are they?
– If no, then just own that you are against any strike on Iran on principle and stop pretending this is only about Trump’s character.
Until you answer that, all the caps‑lock and metaphors are just noise, Hoss.
You excel in red herring arguments (take your bow) and AFAIK, this is my first engagement with you so your all knowing stance about what I "always" do or what I "keep" telling you is laughable. Done here and dusting off my shoes.
What red herring
Another disagreement with you, Vincent, and I'll tell you why again. Trump declared war on Iran today and he did so without the consent of Congress. That is a violation of our Constitution. Trump has violated the Constitution ad lib all over the friggin place: Freedom of the Press, Freedom of rightful assembly, Freedom of due process, habeas corpus, Emoluments. This is a POTUS for whom everything is a deal. It's a transaction. There is no empathy. There is no concern for the rights and liberties guaranteed as part of our American heritage.
You've got members of the Department of Homeland Security acting exactly like the Gestapo acted in the late 1930s in Nazi Germany. You've got people beaten up, handcuffed, and murdered. Not only that, but you have a president that's selling guitars and coins and involved in cryptocurrency who's amassed a billion dollars just in one year at the expense of the U.S. citizen. And you were asking for proof? You have the murder of people on small vessels sailing the Caribbean who are unidentified as to who they are and what they're carrying on board, and the invasion of a sovereign nation, supposedly in the name of regime change, and yet, who is taking power in that country? A person following the same dictatorial approach toward its citizenry. It's all a deal. It's all about greed, gold, ego, power.
Have you seen people who are living in a government that suppresses them? I have. In East Berlin in 1966 and in the USSR in 1986. You don't want to go there.
"You see what you want to see; you hear what you want to hear." Harry Nilsson in The Point, Chapter 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRul4JoHepY
I disagree with you Vincent, and I'll tell you why. I take the lessons I've learned from everyday life and use them as metaphors when interacting with the bigger things that are life-changing. Working in my dad's gas station as a six-year-old through my teen years and during summers off from medical school, I ended up using the automobile metaphor for so much of my teaching others about important concepts.
I will speak for Brock and he can correct me if I am wrong. But in this instance, and tying into the above paragraph, the key concept here is status - that which is, or what Robin Williams once said, "reality, what a concept." If you do not know what your status is, what your baseline is, then you have no way to rationally proceed with a strategy to make the changes needed. In cancer medicine, establishing that status is crucial to the correct therapy to undo the evil that malignancy brings to the patient. All the advances in cancer medicine tie into a new way to more accurately understand status.
What Brock is doing here, again apologizing for speaking for him, is to tell us, this is your situation, Americans. We are in some very dire straits, and we better now unite and do whatever is in our ability to change this. It is not a lying down and saying, oh, woe is me, but more a wake-up call, which Americans should have had years ago with all the evidence provided by the actions and utterings of a malignant narcissist and sociopath.
So don't say everything's okay. Don't worry about your cancer. We'll make it fine. Ask what you can do instead. How can you be involved? What commitment will you make to leave the world a better place than you found it?
Stephen, I have no problem with status, or with clear diagnoses. I have a problem with misdiagnosis. In medicine, if you tell a patient they have Stage IV metastatic cancer when what they actually have is a serious but treatable condition, you are not ‘raising their awareness.’ You are lying to them about their status and distorting their decision‑making.
Saying ‘the war powers system is badly broken, Congress has let its authority atrophy, and the president is now using force in Iran with no specific authorization’ is a serious diagnosis. Calling that ‘a coup,’ saying all three branches are ‘captured,’ and declaring the federal government an ‘alien institution wearing American colors’ is not status, it is metaphor. And it is a metaphor that erases the very tools you say we should use: elections, legislation, litigation, organizing.
If you want people to act, specificity is more useful than apocalypse. What votes do you want Congress to take? What statutes do you want invoked or repealed? What do you want citizens to do on Monday that they are not already doing? ‘Wake up’ is not a plan.
And underneath all of this is the question Mike has not really touched: set Trump aside for a moment. Given Iran’s behavior in the region, do you believe it poses any serious threat that could ever justify military action by any lawful administration? If your answer is no, then say so and argue that case. If your answer is yes, then the real argument is about what response is proportionate and legal, not about declaring the republic already overthrown.
Vincent, what you say has value but it is a non sequitur to Brock's comments and mine. Congressional ethics and morality and legality have been breached. The behavior of the Republican Congress (almost all of them) has been to concur that the 2020 election was stolen. Complicity with Trump, not speaking out and voting against Trump is demonstrative of unethical behavior and putting greed, power before truth and right. If we cannot agree this is the case, then we have a replay of Cool Hand Luke: "What we've got here is failure to communicate" — Strother Martin & Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967)
What to do. Know the situation and its full implications. You have lost weight, your hemoglobin has dropped in a serial fashion, and you have noted a change in your bowel habits. Moreover, your stool test shows internal bleeding. Do you want to know more or just stop here?
I have seen over diagnosis in my 63 years as physician. But it is far more common to see missed diagnosis and under diagnosis. This has led in recent years to improved STAGING, (i.e., determination of the EXTENT of disease.
Brock is doing exactly that ⇢ Telling us our reality. We have seen SCOTUS make decisions that granted Trump absurd powers. We have seen SCOTUS take a year to make a decision that a tribunal of scholars could make in a week. Justice delayed is justice denied is a crock of shit in our current system-- we need to change this.
And what we see with virtually every Department head, appointed by Trump, is outright violation of liberty, freedom, good health, proper education, etc etc.
If you want evidence of that, I would say, Vincent, what cave have you been living in. I say that not to demean you, but as a fellow citizen, as a fellow member of this planet, as one purportedly of a species called Homo sapiens, with a full understanding of what that means. Every loss of patience diminishes me. Every life that is lost in the world sucks out a part of me. To hear today that our American bombs killed 57 people in a girls' school is heartbreaking. All I can think of is "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do."
Do you not see this, Vincent? And your name, Vincent, is one that is part and parcel of my every fibre. Since boyhood, the life of Vincent van Gogh and his love of the poor people and his living the gospel as it was intended has always been a modus operandi for my behavior as a human. You need to live up to that name, Vincent. And you can see what this 83-year-old medical oncologist, Vietnam vet, afflicted with a horrendous malignancy, has done in this last chapter of his life. Read What We Must Demand For Our Democracy to Survive.
http://tinyurl.com/2j4b3acd
Read Maniacs, Malignancy & Medicine: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18RPPPfkHKdyvUSnobZ5qjRekxmJ20iap/view?usp=drive_link
And then let's talk some more and interact because this is the value of these substacks to my way of thinking. And if our conversation leads me to my being wrong, no big deal. I can accept that.
Stephen, I respect your age, your service, and your work more than I can easily convey in an online thread. I am genuinely sorry you are dealing with serious illness on top of watching all of this unfold. Nothing I’ve written is meant to minimize the gravity of what is happening or the human cost of the decisions being made.
Where we differ is not on whether Trump is corrupt, whether Republicans have behaved cynically, or whether institutions have failed. On those points, we are closer than you seem to think. Where we differ is on the jump from ‘grave constitutional and moral failure’ to ‘the republic has been couped, the government is now an alien regime, and our institutions no longer function in any meaningful sense.’
Your medical metaphors are exactly why I am pushing on that. In medicine, staging matters, but so does accuracy. Calling Stage II disease Stage IV is not “telling reality straight,” it is a mis‑staging that changes how the patient thinks, chooses, and copes. My worry is that when we describe a battered, degraded republic as if it were already East Berlin or the USSR, we encourage people to give up on the very tools that are still available: elections, legislation, litigation, organizing, persuasion.
You ask whether I see the abuses, the deaths, the girls’ school. I do. That is precisely why I want us to keep a clear distinction between ‘this is intolerable and must be fought’ and ‘the system itself is already illegitimate and overthrown.’ If you truly believe the latter, then the logic points away from constitutional politics entirely. I’m not prepared to say we are there yet, and I don’t think it’s responsible to talk as if we are.
You are entitled to think I am under‑diagnosing. I think you and Mike are over‑staging. Reasonable people who both care about the country can still disagree on that without accusing each other of living in caves or failing to live up to their names.
In any case, I appreciate that you engaged in good faith. I’ll leave it here so we don’t just start repeating ourselves, but I’ve heard you.
Show me the clause of the US Constitution where Iran's moral crimes act as supervening concerns upon the question of legal status. I'll wait.
Mike, that’s exactly my point. The Constitution doesn’t have a clause about ‘Iran’s moral crimes’ because that’s not how we judge legality at all. Article I and the War Powers framework are about *our* process: when, how, and by whom force is authorized, not whether the target is virtuous.
So let me ask the question you keep skipping: set Trump aside and set ‘coup’ language aside for a second. As Iran has actually behaved over the last decade — nuclear work, missiles, proxy attacks, shipping, strikes on U.S. forces and partners — do you believe it poses a serious threat that could ever justify military action under any lawful administration?
If your answer is no, then make *that* case and say plainly that even a properly authorized strike would be wrong. If your answer is yes, then the real argument is about whether this particular use of force is proportionate and legally authorized, not about pretending the threat question is irrelevant.
So you agree this is extra-constitutional, by your very words and by implication. But suggest I err in noticing that a government operating outside its own establishing laws is a government in coup. I must say, at this point, I really don't know what the hell you're talking about here.
That works as a clean exit, but you can sharpen it just a touch:
OK Mike, I can see you’re not interested in taking this seriously, so I’ll leave you to it. One suggestion before I step out of your feedback loop: try getting outside the circle of people who only confirm your priors. You might see things a lot clearer.
Thank you for spelling it out so clearly!