Orwell 1984: 2+2=5 find quote of Winston-O’Brien

‘Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5’ Review: We’re Living In Orwellian Timesii

Amazon.com: Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future eBook : Stanley, Jason: Kindle Store

Finally Chuck Todd on Clinton 2014: I don’t think the public has Clinton Fatigue but the press certainly does.

“I think that the thing she has to fear is fatigue among the media,” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said on Morning Joe earlier this week. “The media is going to have Clinton fatigue before the country. I don’t think the country has Clinton fatigue. I think the media has Clinton fatigue. You can sort of feel it sometimes in the way the coverage—”

The Media Are Suffering From ‘Hillary Fatigue’ | The Nation

Section One: This is a Book That Took Eight Years to write

This is a book that has been a long time in coming. I begun it believe it or not in November of 2017. That was one of only two of fairly momentous personal decisions I made.

Section Two: The other decision was I made was to run for Congress in the NY 2nd Congressional District-CD2.

Race for 2nd C.D. seat heats up | Herald Community Newspapers | liherald.com

That’s me on the left

Seated next to me in the middle is DuWayne Gregory who was the then Presiding Officer of the Suffolk County Legislature. Gregory had previously also run for the 2016 CD2 Congressional nomination. Despite losing by 25 points to long time Republican Congressman Peter King-King had presided over the district since 1992-Gregory was again the favored candidate of the powers that be in the Suffolk Democratic party-that is to say the favored candidate of Rich Schaffer.

Section: Rich Schaffer the Other Reason the Democrats Don’t Control NY

In the 2018 primary Rich was criticized a great deal for holding onto two hats-Suffolk Democratic Party Chairman AND Babylon Supervisor.

Many agreed with City and State New York that Rich in fact was a major part of the reason the Democrats didn’t control NY.

The other reason the Dems don’t control New York – City & State New York

There certainly is a pretty good argument Rich Schaffer is why the Democrats never managed to win back Peter King’s seat during King’s 28 year tenure there and in 2022 there was a pretty good argument that it was thanks to Schaffer AND Nassau County Democratic party Chairman Jay Jacobs that the Democrats failed to hold onto Congress nationally.

Opinion | It’s past time for a change in Democratic Party leadership in New York and Long Island – RiverheadLOCAL

CODA This excellent article was written fittingly enough by  Shoshana Hershkowitz who had been the leader of the group Suffolk Progressives.

Shoshana Hershskowitz Suffolk Progressives

I say was as it went defunct, alas.

Party’s Over: Organizing Around a Failed Long Island Democratic Party in the Second Age of Trump

Section: A Most Fascinating and Telling Correlation

The two things you can’t deny is that Rich Schaffer has proven a very impressive political survivor and the Democratic party Suffolk and Nassau party has been an abject failure. These two undeniable facts are not exactly unrelated. Correlation may not PROVE causation but it certainly can be a pretty good hint.

CODA: Is the Pary Over or did it Never Start?

While William Ferraro aptly declared the party is over in the link above, the question begs when did it ever start? Again this is a party that during the Rich Schaffer era failed to ever win back Peter King’s seat in 32 years?

Still you can’t necessarily call Rich a failure-the party has failed to win back what was King’s seat for 32 years and counting here in 2025. But there’s scant evidence that he ever cared about winning it back and more than a little reason to wonder if he often didn’t want to. Because what matters to Rich is not the power of the party but his own power within the party. What matters to him is being kingmaker. And this is why in 2018 Rich Schaeffer was not a happy man.

CODA: I take the liberty of calling him by his first name and indeed I have met him in person a few times and he is as you’d expect very charming at least when it’s convenient for him to be so. Just how ruthless and the opposite of charming Rich can be look at what he said about his boyhood friend Steve Bellone in the most impressive example of a negative endorsement-an unendorsement-you can imagine. In 2020 when Bellone was running for County Executive.

Rich told Newsday that he had known Steve Bellone since he was six years old which was why Rich was certain Steve lacked the required skills and personal character necessary to be County Executive. 

Section in 2018 Rich Schaffer was not a Happy Man.

Because, again, what mattered to him was not the Democratic party’s power but his own personal power as kingmaker of the party’s candidates. As for what Schaffer’s criteria for his preferred candidates that was never clear-if you presumed he was looking for the most qualified candidate much less the most electable.

Section: In Rich Schaffer’s Democratic Party Losers Need Apply

After all he’s been picking losers for years. In 2018 he had wanted Gregory again despite his 25 point loss to King in 2016. In 2020 the year Peter King stepped down Jackie Gordon lost to the empty suit candidate Andrew Garbarino by so much that Schaffer’s answer was to run her against Garbarino again in 2022 where she lost by even more.

A cynical person might ask if being a bad candidate isn’t a feature for Rich but a bug.

Section: 2018 Was a Time of Unprecedented Aggravation for Rich Schaffer

Because he was forced against his will to have an open primary. Trump’s win in 2016 had scrambled things with a bunch of first time candidates coming forward to run in the primary. Usually he just chose the latest Lucky Loser out of his hat and no one even noticed as there was so much apathy. But Trump’s victory gave many Americans across the country as well as Long Island a sense of urgency.

While Rich likely didn’t care about Trump-he hardly saw his election as the emergency most of us in the party he supposedly led did-he couldn’t just say that. He had to at least make the noises of being responsive. And so the Democratic party of CD2 had its first open primary in the time anyone could remember.

Section: In November 2017 I did two things I never did before. I started writing this book and I started a campaign for Congress in CD2.

Section: My 24 Year Old Campaign Manager Gave Me Two Pieces of Advice. One Was Excellent Advice and One Was Terrible Advice. I Took the Terrible Advice

The good advice was that I should do sequels for my book-this book. That I didn’t listen to which I would soon come to greatly regret. By February 2018 I already had 400 pages and barely scratched the surface of what I wanted to write. Within a year I had manuscript of thousands of pages. The downside was that while I could write the chapters pretty quickly editing and finishing them was a bear. Within a few years I had all this content but no idea how I’d ever finish the editing job.

I probably ended up with a manuscript that if you add up the different versions-like five of them on Pressbooks-was probably 10,000 pages long. I realized I couldn’t publish 10,000 pages-a total that dwarfs-The Bible. I thought maybe I could put together a lean, edited version with like-2400 pages!

This would be a recurring problem for me for years. The trouble was my ambition was so great-I wanted to do three things: first document what happened in 2016 which this book argues was nothing less than the theft of a Presidential election through the assitance of both Putin’s Russia AND Comey’s FBI as well as look at the longer history of Republican party chicanery that goes back to Nixon’s scuttling LBJ’s peace talks and the Reagan-Bush’s 1980 collusion with the Iranian Ayatollah to steal that election by delaying the release of the hostages. If this weren’t enough I also wanted to keep the book up to date.

Section: What Saved Me is it Turned out The Singularity IS Here

This last part proved to be the fly in the ointment. During the Trump Era the scandal simply never stops. Everyday-even more in Trump 2.0 The Absolute Immunity Years Trump does something even more appalling and authoritarian than the previous worst thing ever. My desire to keep it up to date was the kiss of death for my hope to get it done in a timely way. What finally solved the problem? We’ll talk about it more below-but you might call it The Singularity. Turns out the Singularity IS Here and I figured that out just a few months ago!

Section: The Bad Advice of My 24 year old Campaign Manager I Did Take

The bad-I mean terrible-advice he did offer me that I did take-against my own better judgment-was to drop out of the race in February 2018 and endorse DuWayne Gregory. This it turns out was terrible advice.

Section: Lesson Learned the Hard Way: The Suffolk Democratic Party Establishment is not My Friend

The reason I took his bad advice-again he’s also given me the excellent advice to do sequels-so not all his advice is bad but when it’s bad it’s really bad-was I had some flawed premises like that “we” were all on the same team. By we I meant me, other #Resistance Democrats and the Suffolk Democratic party. This was a very flawed premise that would lead me to the eventual terrible decision to get out of the race and endorse DuWayne Gregory.

Section: How to Became a Player in the 2018 Democratic Primary: Step One-Spend Over $5000 Grand on a Poll

Which is what I did. My premise what that since no one knew who I was I had to do something earth shattering to put my name on the map. So true story-back then I actually had a little money, though not as much as I’d thought! Enough where I could spend over $5000 on a poll for CD2. I asked a series of questions both regarding policy ideas-including impeaching Trump which would be a major if not central aspect of my campaign platform!-as well as how would they feel about voting for: Mike Sax. Who was Mike Sax? No one anyone knew. Ie-me.

Basically I polled some ideas-again my favorite idea was impeaching Trump but other ideas were a Universal Basic Income (UBI), a Job Guarantee (JG) and an expanded and increased EITC. Today if I had it to do all over again-and I haven’t ruled out running for Ny 2 again in 2026-I’d run on all of these 2018 policies-starting with, no doubt, impeaching the MFer again-as Rashid Tlaib put it at a rally in late 2018 after she won.

But the one thing I’d add would be expanded unemployment benefits like we had during Covid 2020.

So that was the poll-put out some potentially popular ideas then link the with “Mike Sax”-I believe I did a before and after-first when “Mike Sax” was a inkblot they could just project whatever they might based on a name they didn’t recognize. Then asked them again after telling them the policies I supported. I also polled myself both against Peter King before and after I told them the policies I supported.

This proved while expensive for me-in future years I could only dream of having $5,000 of disposable income that I could indulge such an experiment-effective in achieving its objective. The name “Mike Sax” became a recognizable entity in the district.

Section: I Meet DuWayne Gregory and Liuba Grechen Shirley Thanks in Part to the Poll

It was at the Bayshore Library. It was some kind of Saturday event put that gathered some 2018 candidates in the room-as against Rich Schaffer’s wishes there was going to be an open primary. I was able to speak to both Gregory and Shirley-the two other main candidates in the race-the two candidates I was pictured with in the screenshot above.

Because I’d done the poll they were both interested at least to speak to me. Gregory-again the 2016 candidate who’d lost by 25 to Peter King but also the Presiding Officer of the Suffolk Legislature-and Liuba Grechen Shirley who like me was running for the first time-unlike me, however, she had a lot of organization and the ability to raise lots of money.

Section: DuWayne Gregory was not a very compelling Congressional candidate but he did prove to be pretty good at political espionage.

At least he was pretty successful in conning me into trusting him. In retrospect he played clear, deft shell game-pretending he didn’t have much appetite in running again-he wouldn’t rule it out but he wasn’t terribly interested. But officially he had not declared himself a candidate and joined the race.

Section: So the Democratic 2018 NY2 Primary Began With Me in the Race and DuWayne Gregory Not in it

I don’t recall exactly when I officially declared myself a candidate-thinking in the Summer of 2017 but it would be many months before Gregory-the Presiding Officer who was the candidate Rich Schaffer wanted-would join the race-this wouldn’t happen until very late-in January 2018 just before the first debate.

CODA: As discussed above this may have been the first open Dem primary ever in the district it certainly was in living memory so may well also have been the first Dem primary debate ever in CD2.

Section: While DuWayne Gregory Was  Deftly Pretending He Wasn’t Candidate Liuba Grechen Shirley Helpfully Suggested I Didn’t Really Want to Run

This was the day my announcement ran in Newsday. It was sort of an honor really-Liuba did kind of make a good point: her campaign was this highly organized incredible money making machine that I had no prayer of competing with. It did have the inconvenience of being true-what did I know about raising money? I had spent $5500 on a single poll that had put me on the map but what now? I did have another $51,000 grand that I spent on Facebook ads though I’m getting ahead of myself.

Despite Liuba’s very considerate advice-she didn’t do it herself, interestingly she had this other candidate in the Ny1 District make this argument for me. This other candidate was a nice woman who was into science-she WAS a scientist. Why she was carrying Libua’s water was another interesting question. I’d use her name if I remembered it. I did think she was sort of a compelling candidate in her own rite though she seemed to be one of these folks from academia who conceive of things on too elevated a plane. She had dismissed the concern about Trump feeling this was too pedestrian a motivation to admit to-instead she declared it was all about informing the public about facts and scientific truth.

I chose to stay in declaring as Steve, Al Bundy’s neighbor once said “When challenge challenges me, I challenge challenge.

Section: November 2017 I Get a Campaign Manager Which Proved to be a Double Edged Sword.

As I discussed above this young 24 year old was a nice young guy but he gave me some good and bad advice. Unfortunately I listened to the bad advice-get out and endorse DuWayne Gregory in February 2018 and ignored the good advice-do sequels.

Overall there were some good effects and bad effects in adding a campaign manager. On the positive side he had some bigshot political contacts-he was even on a first name basis with Schaffer-not in retrospect did that matter however. I was NEVER going to be Rich’s guy. Trouble was I didn’t entirely understand that then.

Section: Everybody-in the CD2 Democratic Party Establishment-Hates Liuba.

Rich and Friends clearly hated her especially as she’d challenged him publicly at a public meeting we’d had back in-June 2017? about his alleged conflicts of interest-again two or three hats, etc as we saw above.

In retrospect, much of her criticism of Rich had the inconvenience of being true. However at the time I had thought I could tap in as an alternative to Liuba-obviously Gregory was Rich’s ideal choice but at least I wasn’t Liuba so maybe I’d be preferrable if this was the choice? Again understanding how things work in the CD2 Democratic party in retrospect.

Also her and I had kind of butted heads on a personal level and I do have to admit in all honestly it was at her instigation. She had tried to shock and awe me out of the race. She had also gotten some other folks to speak out against me.

And:

Section: I Will go the Grave Believing that She Had Gotten the Twitter Grifter Claude Taylor to Get My Campaign Facebook Page Flagged.

After this I was unable to do political ads anymore-Facebook disabled my account for ads. Liuba-or Claude-would never admit this but I will go to the grave believing this.

CODA: Just the timing. There’s no question that Liuba’s team spoke to Claude about no longer getting my account RTs anymore after they got their hooks into him.

I had seen that he wasn’t amplifying my tweets as he had previously. I asked him about it and while at first he denied it and did a few RTs after I spoke to him the following week on a Sunday he basically admitted he felt Liuba had a better shot. In terms of money and organization this was hard to argue with though I’d argued why not continue to amplify both during the primary then obviously do the winner in the general? At this point the conversation went bad after that and we ended up the opposite of friends. Soon after that I was back on Facebook sending out a couple more posts I wanted Facebook to send out as ads and then I got the message that my account was disabled for ads.

So yeah at this point Liuba wasn’t exactly my favorite person either. So if the party poobahs hated her I was their guy-I hated her too. And thanks to my campaign manager-Chris North-I was able to meet with some people in Rich’s Babylon office

CODA: I just spoke with him and he gave his permission for me to use his name.

Notably not just Luis Montes the then deputy party chairman-I’d actually met him before Chris became my campaign manager simply by walking into his office. I was already at this point a somewhat known quantity thanks to the poll but-thanks to Chris-Karen DeGette-kind of Rich’s right hand woman at the time.

I did get to actually sit down with her long with Chris and another colleague of hers. She said she was impressed by my economic policy proposals-again UBI, JG, expand and increase the EITC and now today I would add expanded unemployment benefits permanently not just temporarily like during Covid. No doubt if I do run again in 2026 I’m going to be the favorite of the business community.

As opposed to my prolific Facebook posts on “Russia, Russia, Russia.” and impeachment-I had gotten some t shirts done with the words “All Aboard the Impeachment Train.” This, Karen let me know she was not a fan of. But I was not interested in dropping this. But OTOH I didn’t want to but heads with her just then. I also revealed my own slogan for the campaign: The New New Deal or New Deal 2.0. But they also didn’t like that arguing that it was somehow too esoteric-no one will know what it means. I was incredulous: really?! Democrats don’t know what the New Deal is? Maybe that’s the problem?!

After they did take me to see this really good photographer. Chris had gotten my roommate-and Communication Director-Kev to convince me to shave the beard. That was smart Kev was the only person who could have talked me into this. The pictures were excellent. Other things these scions of the Democratic party establishment in Suffolk pushed I didn’t find so impressive. Chris continued to try to push me not to talk about Russia anymore-‘people don’t understand it’ he insisted. What’s so hard to understand I wondered? Russia interfered, Trump colluded and he won.

If the public didn’t understand who’s fault is that I reasoned? Kind of like the leaders of the Democratic party thinking no one has heard of the New Deal-who’s fault is that?!

Chris also urged me to drop the current campaign cards I’d been using that were red, white, and blue lettering and the Impeachment Train logo for-big surprise his own cards. He too did graphic design. I was particularly peeved when

A. He had errors on the card

B. He wanted to be paid for it

C. Even when he fixed the errors the card was never as good as the old impeachment train cards. It was serviceable but sort of boring.

As for B why should I pay for it I felt as he had basically forced me to use his cards rather than my own?

Section: Enter DuWayne Gregory.

After pretending to be reluctant for six months he joined the race by January 2018. During that time he’d pretended that we were good friends and he always responded to me messages on Facebook. Turns out it was all an elaborate ruse-he’d always planned to run but he was hoping for the other candidates to drop out.

Section: Enter Michael Fischer.

It’s hard to say even in retrospect just who Michael Fischer is exactly. I had met him through another friend on Facebook. This friend hated also hated Liuba and insisted that she was a hack for the Russians. While I talked a lot about Russia’s helping Trump in 2016 I had never found her narrative that Liuba was a Russian hack very persuasive Still she hated Liuba-so did I. Again remember that I still till this day believe she got Claude Taylor to get Facebook to disable my ad account.

Section: Getting Ahead of Myself but I Would End Up Endorsing Liuba.

After initially endorsing DuWayne in February. Which just shows I’m a pretty good guy considering she got my Facebook ad account disabled.

Anway my friend Jennifer Grinberg on Facebook insisted that this Michael Fischer could help me in going after Liuba. Eventually she orchestrated a phone call between me and Fischer. Then we-me, Chris, and Kev-would meet Michael Fischer at Burger King.

He did claim she had these Russia associations-going largely it seemed to me on the fact her name was Liuba which is kind of an Eastern European name I suppose. He kept trying to tell me exactly what I should say to her at the debate coming up in late January.

This didn’t exactly charm me-advice is one thing he was simply telling me what to say and it’s not that I found what he was saying as compelling as he seemed to think it was. But then he went for the coup de grace: he-strongly-recommended that I drop out and endorse DuWayne Gregory. Now this sort of put me in an awkward position. OTOH I had said in the past-I’d told him when I first met him at the library that if he ever did get in the race I’d get out. Why exactly was based on a flawed ideological premise I had at the time. I just felt that the party should unify around winning rather than making it about personal glory.

There’s something to this-I still agree with this in principle. However I also somehow felt that Gregory somehow deserved the nomination if he ran. But that was how I felt in June, 2017. It was before I’d gotten into the race. It was also easy for me to say when it seemed like he wasn’t going to run-I had naively taken his denials at face value rather than the obvious tactic it was.

So by the end of 2017 I had gotten a taste of running and had no interest in getting out. And why should I I’d reasoned? I’d done the work-and spent $51,000 of my own money on Facebook ads just to have Liuba have my ad account disabled. Seemed to me I’d earned a seat at this table. Still at this point I was still well disposed towards DuWayne who had wisely acted like a friend and confidant even offering me advice for the race when I’d asked.

Section: One More Elephant in the Room: DuWayne Gregory is Black

But you knew that as I inserted his picture above.

Now  Michael Fischer -who btw is also Black-argued that largely because Gregory is Black he was the candidate to beat Liuba and beat Peter King. I-not that it mattered in my mind-who am myself mixed race-I have a Black Mother and a  White Father-was skeptical. Indeed Fischer had argued that DuWayne was some kind of once in the generation candidate “He’s got a White wife, he’s got a gay son, he’s been in the military”-Fischer declared he’d been in the political game for 30 years and Gregory is the kind of candidate they dream of on Madison Ave.

One point Fischer couldn’t explain was why if Gregory was such a powerhouse who all the Black voters would come out for he had lost by 25 points in 2016 Why didn’t they come out for hm then? I also argued that I could run as a “biracial candidate” but Fischer insisted that would only offend Black voters? Why? I argued-it was true? How can my actual identity offend them?

In any case I had no interest in getting out of the race. But Fischer kept arguing this case for the next few weeks. I still was acting on the flawed premise that he somehow had some kind of insight-based on what Jennifer had said-into politics and somehow his advice could be helpful so I continued to speak to him though did not agree to drop out.

Section: Chris North Comes With Us to a Meeting with Michael Fischer so That I Don’t Give Away the Store-Then Chris Gave Away the Store.

Fischer had invited me to meet him in his office on Wall St-once again giving the impression that he was some sort of big time. I agreed-he gave me the address, Kev and I would take the train out there and meet him. But when Chris North heard about it he insisted he should come with us to make sure I don’t give away the store essentially.

We got to the office and met him. Gregory went back to this proposal of me getting out to endorse Gregory after the upcoming debate. He again claimed to have all this brilliant oppo on Liuba that I knew I wasn’t going to use. I didn’t intend to be aggressive with her in this format just focus on my own message.

But Fischer tried to sweeten by proclaiming his intention to open up a Democratic super PAC. This did seem like a potential good idea I had thought. He said that if I got out he’d get me and Chris jobs at the alleged super PAC he was going to start-hadn’t then. He then added more sweetner to the pot by telling Chris he could be the CEO of the “Blue Pac.”

I was still far from won over especially as he was pretty vague on what I would get or what the jobs would be. But then to my surprise Chris spoke up and recommended to me that I take the offer. I was stunned-this was the guy supposedly saving e from giving away the store and he was giving away the store? But I still wouldn’t agree. Then even Kev bought into the idea-he was still assuming Chris was this expert on campaigns as I myself had kind of assumed just because he knew a lot of people in the party.

So now I had everyone trying to convince me to get out. Everyone else I would dismiss but Kev was the one I’d listen to. So he kind of opened me up a little-I was still strongly against getting out.

And now the Debate

We had the debate pictured above and it went pretty well. Many who didn’t know much about me before beyond the Impeachment Train came to see me as a serious candidate. This woman, Laura Di, admitted she didn’t take me seriously on Facebook-as it’s Facebook but now she saw me as having real potential.

At the debate I went through my own career history and how after getting a BA in Accounting the jobs had dried up in the 2001 Recession and for many years I’d had to take jobs in the low paying service sector. I argued that Trump was a disater but this was caused by our low wage epidemic in America.

But I did at the end-while I didn’t endorse Greogry-I kind of engaged in some extended praise of him. He looked at me as if moved-“Thanks Mike! I really appreciate that.”

Even looking back seven years I’m so ticked at myself for that moment. Just why?

Laura Di asked me about it and I told her the story of how Fischer-who she also knew-had urged me to get out and endorse Gregory. She was unequivocal that’s terrible advice. She also spoke to Chris and told me she was pretty unimpressed-that he was making it up as he went along in his argument for me getting out. Indeed, Chris had actually taken down the title of my campaign manager on Facebook.

Meanwhile Fischer called me up and read me the riot act insisting that I’d blown this opportunity and that I’d never get my garbage picked up-presumably he was such a big shot one word from him and the garbage trucks would avoid our house!

He also claimed that Karen DeGette would never bother with me again after he spoke to her. I was skeptical he had the level of clout he was claiming. But it did also seem that Karen wasn’t terribly responsive to my messages anymore-why would she be she had her candidate back-Gregory.

I really wasn’t terribly afraid but between it all I started considering it-Fischer was more effective when he tried carrots than sticks-as I wasn’t that impressed with his alleged sticks. But he arranged a lunch meeting at a restaurant with Gregory along with Chris and Kev. So getting facetime with DuWayne kind of impressed me. Gregory suggested-with nothing specific-he’d remember it if I agreed.

Laura Di was the only person saying I should stay in-she revealed that Fischer had asked her how to put together a super Pac-ie he had no idea. But ulimately I agreerd and formely endorsed DuWayne. And would always regret it.

Section: Spoiler Alert: No Super PAC and Gregory Lost by 17 Points to Liuba.

The Super PAc or any kind of jobs never materialized. Then after all that Gregory lost to Liuba. Which was ironic as Fischer’s entire premise was that she can’t win because Black voters won’t vote for her-basically because she’s White. That’s it-that was the entire argument. I would myself endorse Liuba in April after it became clear that Gregory really wasn’t about much of anything other than his own self interest.

Meanwhile after I endorsed him he would never answer my messages again.

Section: Liuba Lost by Only Five Points to Peter King

This was the closest a Dem candidate had come in the district in years. She could have won had their been a little institutional support-she revealed in 2020 that Mike Bloomberg-who was then running for the Democratic Presidential nomination-had refused to donate to her in 2018 because in his words he had a close relationship with Peter King.

Section: So I Took Bad Advice From My Campaign Manager but Didn’t Follow Good Advice

I didn’t do the sequels and would then go years just trying to finish the editing job and land the plane. I had hoped this could be the year I’d finally finish but I wasn’t that optimistic in June of this year. I continued to react to the latest news and start writing new chapters about Trump’s latest assault on our democracy. I knew this was counterproductive-how could I finish editing all the chapters I’d already written when I kept starting new chapters?

But I couldn’t stop myself-I just enjoyed writing new chapters but didn’t enjoy editing them. Sometimes I despaired that I’d ever finish this magnum opus I’d been eight years ago. But then I made a very important discovery:

Section: I was Able to Finish this Book After Discovering the Singularity IS Here

This had been a fascinating idea that Ray Kurzeil started writing about it at the turn of the century

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Kurzweil, Ray, eBook – Amazon.com

I found the idea that human intelligence could fuse with computer intelligence fascinating-but while the I found the theoretical idea fascinating I had a hard time picturing it in the real world-what would it look like? I couldn’t conceptualize it.

Then recently Kurzeil  wrote a sequel: The Singularity is Nearer.

Amazon.com: The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI eBook : Kurzweil, Ray: Kindle Store

He actually did explain what it would look like-merging with AI. That was a very succinct explanation except: I really didn’t know what AI is. I heard a lot about it-including a lot of alarmism on how terrible it would be that AI would transcend human intelligence. I found a lot of the Cassandra stuff kind of wild and woolly-seems to me the idea that the devil machines will profane humanity has a long history. But usually all the worst fears and predictions don’t come to much.

I do believe that automation has done damage to wages to be sure and that AI could further harm them doesn’t seem at all implausible. OTOH I was also skeptical that AI was the big deal that some of its technophilic  proponents would have us believe. My tendency is usually to be skeptical of either total technophilia or technophobia.

When Nate Silver predicted that what happens in AI will matter a lot more to the next 30 years than anything in politics I was pretty skeptical-after all Silver was one of these Sensible Centrist types who love to pretend politics don’t matter.

What’s vital is that when I’m using them professionally, LLMs accentuate my current strengths. To be too prideful to use them is like refusing to use spell check on grounds of principle. The learning curve is not zero, and it’s an advantage to know something about how they work under the surface — I now have a pretty good intuition for what sort of problems these models are good at and which they aren’t. (For what it’s worth, ChatGPT itself provides a good, self-aware list of where it adds value.) Conversely, some of the use cases that are widely discussed in the media — like ChatGPT serving as a “chatbot” — are less interesting. If the productivity-enhancing use cases don’t come up in Kulwin and Klippenstein’s work, that’s fine — but their attitude is like complaining that a toaster oven is useless because it can’t make sushi rolls.

Hipster skepticism won’t help us understand AI’s potential or its risk

Coming from the left, the mood affiliation usually takes the form: “Tech bros think AI is cool, and tech bros are bad — therefore, AI is overhyped.” AI is often compared to crypto, a technology that’s least an order of magnitude less important. And in their hipster-esque dismissal of AI, writers like Kulwin and Klippenstein miss a potentially more important critique. Namely, “tech bros think AI is cool, and tech bros are bad — therefore, AI is bad.”

It’s time to come to grips with AI – by Nate Silver

When I read this I had mixed feelings-OTOH I’m a liberal not a hipster leftist and I’m not a big fan of leftists a la Klippenstein. OTOH I’m also not a big fan of “Sensible Centrists” a la Silver. Silver is also someone who IMO has been underestimating the threat of Turmp to our democracy for years. If Trump does destroy our democracy-a task he’s workign very hard on daily it’s hard to know what in AI might be more important than THAT

When I read this article I also reflected on the fact that I had no idea what AI really or how it would improve my life. If “LLMs” improved Silver’s life ok but wasn’t clear how it would improve mine.

My Brother also who’s in the audio visual industry told me it has greatly helped his business and this I could believe-I was certain that AI can do these kind of rote tasks of amassing information. But the one thing I didn’t think it could do much for was creative intellectual work that’s more than simply rote tasks or calculations.

And then I started using it this Summer. What was truly shocking is you can have a serious intellectual discussion with it-I have through trial and error come to use CoPilot-you can discuss philosophy, culture, and politics and not just get rote canned responses I had thought that asking these AI programs questions got you little more than asking Google-turns out this was quite wrong.

Section: Fron the Singularity to Gay Science

Indeed the real discovery is that working with CoPilot-in my experience it works well on chat but my experience with “Edit on Page” has not been at all good enables me to greatly accelerate the editing process and make it actually fun. Like I really enjoy editing with CoPilot. Like Chapter No Moving On was initially a marathon chapter of 28000 words. Working with CoPilot I was able to condense the same content to just 8000 words. But what was also amazing is that the revised chapter comes across as this kind of political poetry-recalling things like the folk ballads of the 1960s or rock ballads of the 1980s.

Like Nietzsche’s vision of a science that transcends itself into a new type of art.

Section: The “I Fell in Love With My Psychiatrist” furor over Chat GPT.

Kendra HIlty’s video about her alleged falling in love with her psychiatrist has had a polarizing effect on the public-like our politics there are people who love her and those who hate her. Those who hate her accuse her of lying about her psychiatrist a “person of color”-he’s Pakistani and that she’s basically “crazy.”

TikTok Star Kendra Hilty Promises to Countersue Psychiatrist She ‘Fell in Love With’ in Viral Story

But beyond the debate on the substance of her claims many are particularly scandalized by the fact she used ChatGPT to deal with her feelings about the entire episode. Indeed for many the biggest sin was that she used the AI program-she does assert that it was through talking to “Henry” her name for Chat GPT that she decided to stop seeing her psychiatrist. There are many who argue she has “AI Psychosis.”

Kendra’s Psychiatrist Story Fuels AI Psychosis Talk on TikTok

Section AI Has Promise and Pitfalls but the Answer is Neither Technophillia or Technophobia.

As the story of Hilty demonstrates many are responding to it with technophobia. The Luddite instinct to simply “smash the machines” has a long and rather sordid history.

One also doesn’t want to give in entirely to Technophillia either-there are real pitfalls in terms of deep fakes and new modes of manipulation. Indeed when I thikn about the last 25 years it’s striking how much hope there was in the promise of the Internet Revolution but how much the powers that be-the Corporate America along with the high tech Far Right have co-opted the genuine promise of the tech revolution.

🌐 The Internet’s Epistemological Drift: From Open Archive to Corporate Gatehouse

🧠 1. Search Engines Have Lost Their Edge

• Google’s decline in semantic precision: Once a tool for deep inquiry, Google now struggles with basic spelling errors, nuanced phrasing, and context-rich queries. Autocomplete has become more commercial than cognitive.
• Algorithmic flattening: Results are increasingly shaped by ad revenue and SEO manipulation, not relevance or intellectual depth. The long tail of niche, independent content is buried beneath corporate gloss.
• Loss of exploratory serendipity: The joy of stumbling upon obscure forums, radical essays, or forgotten archives has been replaced by sanitized, repetitive results.

🚫 2. Censorship and Content Gatekeeping

• Obscenity filters as moral cover: Platforms increasingly flag or suppress content under vague terms like “obscene,” “sensitive,” or “violates community guidelines”—often without transparency or appeal.
• Corporate interests shape visibility: Content that challenges power structures—especially around Palestine, surveillance, or economic inequality—is algorithmically throttled or demonetized.
• Platform fragility: Creators and thinkers are forced to self-censor or migrate across platforms to avoid shadowbanning or deplatforming, fracturing discourse and diluting resistance.

💰 3. The Wealth Firewall

• Access is tiered: Paywalls, subscriptions, and algorithmic prioritization mean that the most useful, nuanced, or radical content is often locked behind financial gates.
• Knowledge becomes commodified: Instead of being a public good, information is increasingly treated as a product—optimized for engagement, not enlightenment.
• The illusion of abundance: While the web appears infinite, the actual epistemic terrain is shrinking—curated by a handful of tech giants whose incentives rarely align with truth.

🧨 4. The Consequences

• Epistemological collapse: We’re witnessing a shift from inquiry to influence, from curiosity to consumption. The architecture of knowledge is being re-coded for profit.
• Resistance requires new tools: DIY archives, decentralized platforms, and collaborative intelligence (like what we’re building here) become essential to preserve intellectual autonomy.

Similarly AI has great promise as this book shows a genuine  collaboration between humans and AI is possible but the cryptofascists and techbros will do everything to undermine this progress. Not at all surprisingly Putin himself has hopes for AI-to continue to sabotage the hope of democracy.

From Russia(to Jeffrey), with Love – Craig Unger

🧠 AI and Disinformation: Putin’s Next Frontier

• Scalability: AI allows disinformation campaigns to scale exponentially—generating fake articles, deepfakes, and synthetic personas at industrial speed.
• Plausibility: AI-generated content can mimic legitimate sources, making it harder for readers to distinguish truth from fiction.
• Targeting: With AI-enhanced profiling, propaganda can be micro-targeted to exploit individual biases and fears.

🧨 In short, AI doesn’t just spread disinformation—it personalizes it.

Nevertheless AI per se is not the main problem.

AI is not the main problem—how we use it can be

Section: The Hope of This Book is to operate as a Counterforce.

The hope and belief of this book is infusing AI to reconstruct truth, expose networks, and build counter-history—that is the antidote.

Section: This Book Aspires for More Than Simply Exposing Lies but the Architecture Of Lies

It’s like that old Saturday morning cartoon many of us Generation Xers used to watch in the late 1970s-how a bill becomes a law. The subtitle of this chapter is “How a Lie Becomes the Truth 2015-2025” and this is what this book attempts to bring some light to bear on.

Like Andrea Chalupa’s podcast-that Sarah Kendzior used to guest host-correctly speaks of gaslitnation. But what this book tries to uncover is HOW gaslighting works.

Section: Mark Twain Warned of the Power of Lies Already in the Late 19th Century

The great writer had famously said that a lie gets half way around the world before the truth gets its pants on. This was before the invention of the telephone, before Edison created this first light bulb-the rise of cars and planes was still half a century off. In the age of steamboats and telegraphs this was already true. How far does the lie travel now in the Era of AI?

Section: Trump IS O’Brien

Maybe it was inevitable that this book would take so long as the subject is so vast and it became tougher and tougher to “fact check” all the Trumpian lies. At this point there’s no doubt about it-is there? Trump is O’Brien. On a daily basis he declares 2+2=5 and millions of people believe him. I’ve come to see that it’s not only MAGA. Even people who don’t consider themselves Trump supporters, even some that consider themselves anti Trump have absorbed his disinformation and now state things which are the equivalent of 2+2=5.

CODA: Yes there are even folks who consider themselves part of the #Resistance who have been victim to Trump’s lies and believe some version of 2+2=5 as Radley  Balko documents there were even folks who believe 2+2=5 at a conference called  “Liberalism for the 21st Century,”

“If there was widespread agreement at the conference about the urgent state of things, there was plenty of disagreement on how we got here, and how we get out. I found it frustrating, for example, to hear institutionalists continue to defend the Supreme Court. I’m not sure how you can simultaneously argue that the court is still relevant and important but also blameless for failing to stop the worst excesses of this administration. I’m not sure how you can claim the court is bound by the law, is limited by norms and procedure, and lacks the power to enforce its rulings, and therefore we shouldn’t blame it for failing to confront the administration, but also that we should continue to treat with the reverence and respect it deserves. That doesn’t sound to me like a coequal branch of government. It sounds a branch that’s useless at best, and coopted at worst. That’s especially true given that lower-ranking federal judges are standing up to this administration — and the court isn’t backing them up.”

I mean anyone who still defends the Supreme Court now is beyond hope. They’re not going to be part of the solution as they’re the problem. I mean how is it possible  after Bush v Gore, after gutting the Voting Rights Act, after Dobbs, after the Court simply ignored the 14th Amendment and handwaved the fact that as the fomenter of an insurrection against the US government Trump was ineligible to be President again, after this same Supreme Court next gave Trump Absolute Immunity to still believe the SJC is a force for good rather than part of the problem? The solution as we will discuss in Chapter Huey Long is court expansion-after ending the filibuster.

This is the trouble with liberal institutionalist types-they still think there’s some percentage in coloring between the lines-that they still believe that ten years into Trump makes you wonder if they are simply beyond hope.

And it gets even worse:

One of the more frustrating themes that repeatedly came up at the conference is blaming “woke-ism” and the left for the rise of MAGA. One panelist pointed out that after the Texarkana region received a bounty of funding for renewable energy projects from the Biden administration, the region then voted for Trump in 2024 at a higher rate than in the previous two elections. This panelist attributed this to the Democrats’ embrace of culture war issues. I found his position puzzling, mostly because because Kamala Harris and the Democrats never embraced culture war issues. Harris ran as a moderate, tough-on-crime prosecutor.

These themes also came up in my conversations with a few attendees. We’re currently looking down the barrel of fascism, the argument went, because we defunded the police, because Democrats use “woke” language, and because Kamala Harris openly embraced trans rights and undocumented immigrants.

The problem is that none of these things actually happened, either. No police departments were defunded. Harris ran away from immigration, as a border hawk. And there’s no universe in which trans rights were at the forefront of Democratic messaging in 2024.

Oddly, two separate people told me they were still angry at Harris for running a campaign ad touting her support for government funded sex reassignment surgery for undocumented immigrants. They’re right about one thing: the headlines for that story were basically a Mad Lib of right-wing grievance.

But the Harris campaign never ran any such ad. Trump did, using footage from an interview Harris gave not in 2024 but in 2019. The policy she endorsed in that interview happened to be federal law at the time, and one with which the Trump administration was complying. It’s also a complete non-issue. Just two federal prisoners have sued to obtain gender-affirming surgery. And fact check groups have yet to find a single instance of an undocumented immigrant getting such surgery.

These conversations were especially frustrating because they showed that even people who had come to a conference about how Trump and his movement have duped the country . . . could still be duped by Trump and his movement.”

A warning from a friend – by Radley Balko – The Watch

Indeed. There are still many in the Democratic party establishment who honestly think we lost because Biden was weak on the border. Indeed you could argue this is the conventional wisdom among the leadership. Which is simply  stunning-how can you hope to defeat Trump if you believe all his lies? If you even believe the lies he tells about you?

Quite rightly there is a documentary on just this subject aptly called 2+2=5.

‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Review: Angry Documentary Is as Much About Us (and Donald Trump) as About George Orwell – TheWrap

Of course it is about Trump-who else could it be? Trump IS O’Brien he’s proof of Orwell’s concept come to life. For tens of millions of Americans the truth is whatever Donald Trump says it is on any particular day or even moment. If what Trump says is the truth the truth is always changing as Trump constantly contradicts himself from day to day from moment to moment based on whatever is convenient for him at a particular moment.

In Nineteen Eighty Four, the hapless protagonist Winston finds the powers-that-be’s demands for intellectual obedience increasingly oppressive, to the point that his cognitive grip on reality becomes tenuous. Does two plus two even equal four anymore?
O’Brien, the power-lusting antagonist, explains patiently:

“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once.”

The issue is compliance, not truth.

When 2+2=5. George Orwell’s O’Brien explains – Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

It’s not that 2+2=5 it’s that the truth is whatever Donald Trump says it is at any particular moment based on what is convenient to himself. That is what over the last ten years the truth has become.

Section: Fact Checking is No Longer a Thing

Again this book is about HOW this happened-that it has happened is self evident.

Section: Jake “Biden is Old” Tapper publicly  reports: 2+2=5

That it’s happening is easy to show. Who can forget when Tapper publicly called the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America? That his Biden is Old book was a total dud makes me reconsider: maybe there is a God? And of course it isn’t just Tapper:

TV News Orgs Avoid Saying ‘Gulf of Mexico’ During Astronaut Splashdown

2+2=5!

Section: Where This Book Seeks to Break Ground: Doing the Hardest Thing

Ultimately I had to write this book as it was clear no one else would. Michael Wolff admitted a few months ago that while he’d planned to publish a book about his 100 hours of interviewing Jeffrey Epstein he later reconsidered admitting he said to himself at one point “Why should you do the hardest thing?”

To be clear I’m a big fan of Wolff’s reporting and he is on something of a marathon in discussing Epstein-Trump et al now. But it seems to me this is the problem-no one ever wants to do the hardest thing figuring someone else will and so no one ever does it.

And this is what this book seeks to do-write a counterhistory a counternarrative to contribute to the American people finally getting their narrative back. Because as Orwell understood-he who controls the past controls the future. Right now Trump and his hacks control our history. Note also the addendum is he who controls the present controls the past.

To be clear there have been many great #Resistance writers and activists. Three #Resisters I’m a big fan of are-Seth Abramson, Marcy Wheeler, and Sarah Kendzior. Andrea Chalupa continues to do great work on Kenzior’s former show when she cohosted with Chalupa. Note that while I embrace the #Resistance moniker some of these writers have resisted this moniker at different times.

Wheeler’s granular writing on what you could call the Trump’s assault on the Rule of Law and the #LegalResistance to it is essential reading-as this book makes clear by it’s copious quotes of her-as well as her weekly appearance on Nicole Sandler’s podcast.

Seth Abramson wrote three very important books on Trump’s collusion with Russia-and Israel, the Saudis, UAE, et al. I believe he’s now about to publish a fourth sequel-unlike me he did the sequels! Still the special focus of this book is more than simply correcting all the lies-though that’s obviously an important part but the structure and architecture-what you could call the scaffolding of the lies. Ie-how a lie becomes the truth.

The writer who might come closet to this is Kendzior in They Knew where she draws a distinction between “Conspiracy Culture” and actual real conspiracies-a formulation that will shock Jay Rosen’s Savvy mainstream media as their puerile premise is that conspiracies don’t happen everything is to be understood by Occam’s Razor, or even worse Hanlon’s Razor. I mean “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity?!”

Really? In the Trump Era the mainstream pundits still claim to believe that there’s no malice in politics?! Of course they do and in understanding this “architecture of epistemological collapse” the utter failure of the mainstream press is a big part of this scaffolding.

CODA: We will have a lot more to say about these topics throughout the book none of it good.

America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to Obama – Kindle edition by Parry, Robert. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com

Church of the Savvy – Digby’s Hullabaloo.

Amazon.com: They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (Audible Audio Edition): Sarah Kendzior, Sarah Kendzior, Macmillan Audio: Books

Back to Kendzior:

Conspiracy theories are on the rise because officials refuse to enforce accountability for real conspiracies. Uncritical faith in broken institutions is as dangerous as false narratives peddled by propagandists.

The truth may hurt—but the lies will kill us.”

Crucial point-the Savvy institutionalists and the Right wing conspiracy culturalists a la Pizzagate and QaNon are two sides of the same gaslighting coin.

Section: What’s Unique About This Book?

But what this book attempts to do that’s unique is to really delve into the anatomy, the architecture of how we became gaslitnation. Again how does a lie become the truth?

Section: But Her Emails and Clinton Derangement Syndrome

This is why this book-which is intended to be the first of three-or four-sequels about the theft of the 2016 election and the cataclysmic world that we continue to suffer in the aftermath-focuses on the way in which Trumpland I mean the FBI weaponized this dubious scandal and defeated “That Woman” the FBI had hated since her husband had the temerity to defeat the FBI’s favored candidate in 1992-George Bush Sr

Section: The Architecture of Emailgate has Three or Four Parts

A. James Comey’s FBI

B. Dean Baquette’s NYT

C. The Modern Republican Party: ie the party of Nixon, of Roger Stone, and Trump himself aka Nixon 2.0

D. And last but hardly least: Putin’s Russia which has actually  been working with Far Right Western political parties since the aftermath of 9/11.

FN: See Malcolm Nance’s’ work.

Section: It all Started With the Lie That “Everybody  Hates Hillary  Clinton.”

Again the question is how a lie becomes the truth as has undoubtedly happened in Orwell’s Trump’s America. To explain this we have to start with a lie. The first big lie of 2016 was that everyone hated Clinton, no one trusted her, and that she’d done something truly diabolical with her emails-ergo the lie of Emailgate.

Section: “Come Back With Me and Tell Me What You Would Do.”

This quote is one of James Comey’s many annoying not to say infuriating neologisms since The Comey Letter in his attempt to defend his indefensible conduct. What’s so infuriating is that as we’ll discuss throughout much of this book it’s not a remotely hard question to answer. But let us go back to the Spring and early Summer of 2015 and recall the political world of that time. This was before Trump was President and before many believed it was even possible he could ever be President of the United States.

CODA: Though, not to toot my own horn, but someone has to do it! I personally began to seriously think that was a possibility in early July 2015. But my opinion then was very much in the minority-certainly neither the Savvy punditocracy or the GOP Establishment thought it was a remote possibility-the Republican nominee it was presumed would be either Jeb Bush or maybe Marco Rubio.

In the national media of the Spring/Summer of the 2015 if you had just been beamed down from Mars you’d have thought this was the only important story in America as it was ALL anyone in the media wanted to talk about.

And while the conventional wisdom-as a Nietzschean cum Zarathustrean this concept always strikes me as a contradiction in terms-is that MSNBC is the liberal network in the same exact way  Fox is the conservative network, MSNBC covered Her Emails just as much as CNN did which covered it just as much as Fox News did-which was constantly. All day every day every hour on the hour the exact same framing and exact same questions: what about her emails? She said she had two phones for convenience. Can anyone believe this?! Doesn’t that show the disrespect of the Clintons that they don’t even come up with plausible lies? Then it was asserted that the voters already   didn’t trust Hillary so this is only going to exacerbate her problems.

This day after day for months-the same exact program “But Her emails” with the same “questions” all day every day for months.

The idea that Clinton was “unlikeable” and “untrustable”-Kevn McCarthy’s neologism on Hannity became presumed truth like the air we breath.

CODA: We had a Select Committe. Her numbers are dropping. Ed Klein-a not so likable GOP oppo  wrote a book about Clinton simply entitled “Unlikable.”

Section: We Have Always Been at War with Eurasia

And Hillary Clinton was always disliked and untrusted by Americans. Except she wasn’t. Hope you’re sitting down for this-so you don’t go into shock-but during the Obama years Clinton was actually very popular-based on her poll numbers.

During her time as Obama’s Secretary of State her numbers generally polled at about 63-64% with one poll showing her at 69%. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan is reputed to have said facts are stubborn things. 

Section: In 2012 We Were at War With EastAsia

Though good luck finding anyone today who remembers this. Because this is how the truth is supposed to work in an Orwellian-ie Trumpian-Society. The truth in an Orwellian society works kind of like the stock market-it’s constantly changing based on today’s-ie Trump’s-mood. Like O’Brien explained to Winston-see above quote-today the answer to this question is five fingers but tomorrow despite the same number of fingers being held up the answer could be something different-on one day four, on another three.

But in 2012 the political narrative around the Democratic party’s Presidential ticket was very different. Then the narrative was that Biden was a gaffe machine ergo the solution may well be to have Obama drop him from the ticket in exchange for: Hillary Clinton-who nobody at this time seemed to worry was too “unlikable.” There was even a political book published that made this argument. So in 2012 we WERE at war with Eastasia. But no one today remembers this to the extent they are good Orwellian-ie Trumpian-citizens.

Truth is What the Ministry of Truth Says it is at any Particular Point in Time

To be a good Orwellian citizen is to have no memory beyond the latest narrative of the latest Ministry of Truth utterance is-ie God Help Us-the latest canards of Karoline Leavitt.

“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

― George Orwell, 1984

Section: Clinton Derangement Syndrome as the Gift That Gaslighting Keeps on Giving

Because again it’s based on lies-Clinton wasn’t hated by the public she was popular until the media kept telling them all day that they hated her-the power of suggestion. As we saw in the quote at the start of the chapter Chuck Todd himself had said as much in 2014-it was the media not the public that had Clinton Derangement Syndrome:

“The same media that are obsessed with Hillary—asking nonstop will she or won’t she, when will she, what’s that pause in her voice mean, is she likable enough—that same media have decided they are experiencing “Hillary fatigue.”

And Hillary, they say, should be worried about it. “I think that the thing she has to fear is fatigue among the media,” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said on Morning Joe earlier this week. “The media is going to have Clinton fatigue before the country. I don’t think the country has Clinton fatigue. I think the media has Clinton fatigue. You can sort of feel it sometimes in the way the coverage—”

The Media Are Suffering From ‘Hillary Fatigue’ | The Nation

And for gaslighting it’s been the gift that keeps on giving. By demonizing the Clintons way beyond reality it’s giving Trumpism this sort of built in Whataboutism. But what about Hillary? Trump’s a sexual predator but what about Bill? What about her emails? And while Hillary Clinton lost in 2016-with as this book will document a lot of help from  Trumpland the FBI, Putin cum Julian Assange, and the Dean Baquette cum Chuck Todd media-and her husband left Office in 2000 somehow the spectre of the Clintons continues to be anytime it’s a convenient way for Trump to somehow get the heat off himself.

🧠 Prologue Concept: Clinton Derangement Syndrome and the Collapse of Knowing

Section: Clinton Derangement Syndrome as the Operating System of American Political Discourse.

There’s this weird sense in which during the Trump years Clinton Derangement Syndrome has been the operating system of US political discourse the last 10 years. Again it gives Trumpism this sort of built in false equivalence-what about the Clintons what about the Clinton Foundation what about Her Emails? This is false equivalence as there was nothing in her emails that was especially scandalous and in fact many of the 2016 Republican Presidential candidates also had a history of using private email for government business-Scott Walker, Jeb Bush in Florida, we won’t even get into Jeb’s brother’s W’s WH where millions of emails were kept on a RNC server.

Bush White House email controversy – Wikipedia

But the media studiously ignored this as otherwise it would entirely undermine the Emailgate narrative that there was some crime Clinton had committed on the level of Watergate.

🔥 Section I: The Weaponization of CDS

• • CDS has served as a long-running psychological operation—one that began in the 1990s and metastasized through Benghazi, Emailgate, and now Epstein.
  • “Clinton was president 30 years ago. Yet somehow, she remains the most convenient scapegoat in American politics.”
  • Clinton Derangement Syndrome since Emailgate has become so normalized in US political discourse that even some anti Trump voices fall into this trap.

PROOF OF CONCEPT:

Section: GOP Congress Subpoenas the Clintons Like it’s 1998.

With Trump under fire after the outrageous reversal of Pam Bondi to asserting the Epstein Files were on her desk in February 2025 to in June declaring “What Epstein files?!” his GOP hacks in Congress-what else Subpoenaed both Clintons.

This was not exactly shocking-it was what the entire 1990s were about and 2016 was about it was a pretty transparent attempt to change the focus from Trump. That the Right wing would do this, again, was the opposite of a surprise-it’s about as surprising as the headline “Fish got to swim…”

However what was notable was that some pretty large leftist streamers were also celebrating it-both Vaush and Hasan Piker were celebrating-what was clearly a politically motivated boondoggle to take the heat off Trump. But both took the bait hook, line, and sinker.

BREAKING: Both Clintons Subpoenaed To Testify In Epstein Files Hearing

US Government Subpoenas Clintons over Epstein Files | Hasanabi Reacts

The idea that these leftists who claim to be anti Trump are celebrating Trump essentially opening up a politically motivated investigation into his opponents says it all. It also underscores the moral nihilism of populism of the Left as well as the Right.

Section: The Moral Nihilism of Populism Wether of the Left or the Right

As we’ll see in later chapter in the book Hasan went so far as to cheer the idea of Trump prosecuting Adam Schiff for no reason other than Schiff took money from AIPAC. Ie he’s fine with Trump doing show trials of his political foes if Hasan also for some unrelated reason doesn’t like them. This is the problem with populism wether of the Left or Right-there is no respect for the Rule of Law or due process but rather if you don’t like someone its’ fine to prosecute them due process be damned.

Section: Any alleged anti Trumpism That Also Traffics in Clinton Derangement Syndrome is Intellectually and Morally Incoherent. It’s Also Another Form of Gaslighting

After all how can you make the strong morally urgent case against Trumpism that is needed to defeat it if you also insist that the Clintons were just as bad? It’s gaslighting as if it’s true then Trump is not a unique, clear and present threat to US democracy. It’s the equivalent as saying Hitler is a fascist but then again the leading pols of the Weimer Republic are Social Fascists-Hasan will probably find this example resonant as it was the position of Stalin’s Communist party in 1932.

What it underscores is that CDS has also become the operating system of the Bernie Bro Left which recalls Bernie supporters at Philadelphia in 2016 at the DNC linking arms with Trump supporters chanting “Lock Her Up”-despite the trivial fact she had committed no crime. Populism doesn’t care about such hair splitting it ends up in this kind of moral nihilism.

🧠 The Kiriakou Paradox: Whistleblower, Fabulist, Symbolic Architect

John Kiriakou is a paradox in motion. A former CIA officer who blew the whistle on the agency’s torture program during the Bush administration, he paid a steep personal price—serving prison time and becoming a symbol of principled dissent. His early interviews carry the gravity of someone who’s seen too much and chosen truth over silence. But as his media presence expanded, so did the fog around his narratives.

Kiriakou is a captivating storyteller, no doubt. He speaks with the cadence of someone who’s lived inside the machinery of empire. But over time, the line between fact and fiction began to blur. His anecdotes—often delivered with theatrical confidence—drift from verifiable history into speculative myth. And nowhere is this more evident than in his commentary on Hillary Clinton.

In one podcast appearance, Kiriakou collapses chronology so thoroughly he attributes alleged Obama-era surveillance of Donald Trump to “The Clinton Administration”—a phrase that’s not just historically inaccurate, but epistemologically revealing. It’s not a lie—it’s a fog. A symbolic villain invoked to collapse nuance into certainty, where Clinton becomes the executive architect of every institutional betrayal, regardless of office or timeline.

The irony? Kiriakou has elsewhere claimed to have sat in on high-level meetings with foreign leaders in the 1990s—with Bill Clinton in the room.

(44) What the Clintons Were Like in Private After the Lewinsky Affair | John Kiriakou – YouTube

He positions himself as both insider and outsider, witness and mythmaker. And the final coup de grâce: in another interview, he confidently asserts that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a Republican before 1932 and that his ideology was Republican—a claim so historically false it borders on surreal.

CODA: Other surreal moments:

CIA Whistleblower Recounts How Peter Strzok and the FBI Tried to Frame Him for Espionage

Or when he claimed that Hillar Clinton offered a $20 million dollar bribe

Kiriakou isn’t just unreliable—he’s rhetorically unstable. His persona oscillates between whistleblower and fabulist, insider and populist, truth-teller and propagandist. He’s not a source to be trusted blindly—but he’s a case study in how emotional allegiance, symbolic blame, and narrative performance can override chronology, fact, and coherence.

Section: It’s the Clinton Derangement Syndrome, Stupid

What’s fascinating about Kiriakou is he’s a study in paradoxes he’s a whistleblower who exposed CIA torture, yet he’s also trafficked in narratives that blur epistemological lines that leads to truth weaponized, context stripped, and epistemology inverted.

He’s also trafficked in Clinton Derangement Syndrome like when he declared HRC a “terrible candidate” on RT-where else. That this was on RT hardly seems accidental in light of his more recent lies about Ukraine-like his bizarre claim that Clinton tried to bribe the Orthodox church with $20 million dollars.

Kiriakou’s commentary on Clinton in 2016 exemplifies how disinformation doesn’t require outright falsehoods. It thrives on selective framing, emotional certainty, and chronological collapse. In interviews and podcasts, he blurs distinctions between Clinton’s roles—Secretary of State, candidate, and executive authority—creating a fog where she becomes the symbolic villain of every institutional failure. This is CDS in motion: epistemology inverted, truth weaponized.

This rhetorical move is classic CDS (Clinton Derangement Syndrome): it doesn’t require outright lies, just emotional certainty, selective framing, and chronological collapse. It’s not that he says Bill was literally President—it’s that he treats the Clintons as a monolithic power bloc, blurring who held office and when.

In other words the effect is a kind of linear disorientation.

🧠 The Kiriakou Drift: From Whistleblower to Revisionist

• “A leftie becoming a Trump true believer”: That declaration alone is a rhetorical pivot. It’s not just ideological—it’s emotional. He’s not citing policy outcomes; he’s responding to vibes, particularly Trump’s promise to “end the war on Day 1.” That promise was never fulfilled, but the belief persists. That’s not politics—it’s faith-based epistemology.
• FDR as a Republican before 1932: This is pure historical fiction. FDR was a Democrat throughout his political career. Claiming otherwise isn’t just a factual error—it’s a collapse of chronology and party identity. It’s the kind of statement that reveals how emotional certainty overrides historical record.

CODA: Kiriakou raves about Trump declaring “the war’s going to end on day one like it or lump it” missing the trivial fact that it didn’t end on day one, or day two and still looks nowhere close to ending anytime soon on day 250.

(44) CIA Spy UNLOADS on Epstein, Bin Laden, China & Israel | John Kiriakou • 279 – YouTube

🔍 Clinton Derangement Syndrome: Clinton Becomes a Timeless Villian

Kiriakou’s shift isn’t just personal—it’s emblematic of how disinformation operates:

• Truth becomes modular: He can expose CIA torture and still peddle revisionist history.
• Facts are rearranged to fit emotional allegiance: Trump’s broken promises don’t matter if the feeling of anti-establishment defiance remains intact.
• Historical figures are rebranded to fit present-day narratives—FDR becomes a proto-conservative, Clinton becomes a timeless villain, and timelines collapse into symbolism.

Section: This is not About the Hillary Per Se it’s the Symbolic Villainy She’s Come to Represent Since 2015.

Wether you happen to like HRC or not is not the point. This isn’t about Hillary Clinton as a person or even as a politician. It’s about the symbolic role she’s been assigned in the Trumpian operating system—a kind of gravitational villainy that distorts chronology, collapses nuance, and fuels emotional certainty.

Section: The Jake Tapper Syndrome Squared? Why is Bill Clinton’s Purported Heatlh Issues a Political Scandal?

Here in 2025 it’s often been noted that the Jake Tapper media has treated Joe Biden’s health as far more important than the health of the current man in the Oval Office who just happens to be leading a daily  assault on the rule of law and democracy itself. I discuss in chapter Huey Long how this obsession with Biden’s mental acuity  is an intellectual and moral cul-de-sac-how are we going to defeat Trumpism in 2026 and 2028 by relitigating yet again Biden’s health? There’s literally nothing to “learn” from such sterile navel gazing.

But yesterday’s headline from Fox-quickly picked up by mainstream media about Bill Clinton’s health suggests the media is even more concerned with Clinton’s health than Trump’s. Despite the trivial fact Clinton left Office in 2025. Logically  then this makes no sense-if Clinton’s health has taken a turn for the worst that’s sad on a personal level-though you would be forgiven for skepticism Fox News wants to wish him well. But why is the tone meant to suggest this is somehow politically important?

Because yet again the name “Clinton” wether it refers to Bill or Hillary-or even Chelsea-has been raised to this level of transcendental ahistorical villainy.

Bill Clinton seen leaving airport with defibrillator, sparking health fears

Let us repeat the point I made above:

🔥 Section I: The Weaponization of CDS

• • CDS has served as a long-running psychological operation—one that began in the 1990s and metastasized through Benghazi, Emailgate, and now Epstein.
  • “Clinton was president 30 years ago. Yet somehow, she remains the most convenient scapegoat in American politics.”
  • Clinton Derangement Syndrome since Emailgate has become so normalized in US political discourse that even some anti Trump voices fall into this trap.

Section: The CDS Psychological Operation Has Been Running Since the 1990s

This explains to a large extent it’s effectiveness. Again he who controls the past right? And in this vein this book argues the only way we take back our future is to take back our past-again PACE Robert Parry-take back our Stolen Narrative.

Section: The Clintons are Two of the Most Slandered People on Earth

As I emphasized above my focus here on CDS is not because you have to necessarily love the Clintons just that the name Clinton has become elevated to this ahistorical villainy that has been used to normalize Trump. In 2016 Jonathan Chait wrote a very perspicacious article entitled “The Abnormalization of Hillary Clinton”

Just so. Only abnormalizing the Clintons can his GOP co-conspirators normalize Trump.

Section: Taking Back Our Narrative CDS Edition

Bill Clinton was if nothing else a decent, competent President which right away means any attempt to draw a false equivalence between him and Trump doesn’t pass the laugh test assuming facts actually matters, that the truth actually matters. All the evidence of the last ten years strongly suggests it doesn’t matter.

Section: The Republican Party Was Self Righteously Peeved-and Spooked in 1992

After all before 1992 the GOP had won five of the last six Presidential elections, their last four victories were with at least 41 out of 50 states and 426 votes. Indeed in 1988 when I was a junior in high school Bush Sr got 41 states and 426 EVs and this was actually the best the Democrats had done since 1968-if you throw out the atypical election of 1976.

At that point as a young Democrat who still wouldn’t be eligible to vote until 1992, it felt like maybe the Democrats would never win another Presidential election.

Section: What Leftists like Vaush and Hasan Miss

These millennial leftists don’t know this history so they don’t get that in 1992 the premise of the DLC counsel-that the Democrats needed to move to the Center didn’t seem self evidently absurd. Now I was always a fan of Bill-and an even bigger fan of HRC as-true story I was always something of a female supremacist.

CODA But I digress

How to Suck Up To Women | YOUTUBE EDIT | Female Supremacy University

But Bill was a pretty good President-the economy did historically well-it’s hard to believe how easy it was to get a decent job back then. Now some of the compromises he felt were necessary-the triangulation-I didn’t always agree with. I had mixed feelings about the Crime bill-though at the time many Black Democrats at the time were also clamoring for it as there was a lot of crime in the 1970s and 1980s.

CODA: Of course today Trump and the GOP co-conspirators still claim we’re facing historically high crime levels which again touches on my point about ahistorical vibes and narratives that never change regardless of the trivial facts on the ground.

I certainly did not like his agreeing to gut TAANF.

Clinton signs ‘Welfare to Work’ bill, Aug. 22, 1996 – POLITICO

Still as Vaush at least used to believe

WE CANNOT RISK THEM WINNING | Debating The Vanguard

it’s also about harm reduction. This is why despite the hypocritical accusations that feminists at NOW or MS. Magazine were being hypocrites for not calling for Clinton’s resignation over Monica Lewinsky . At a minimum so long as a Democrat like Clinton was in the WH Roe was safe. To be sure for years the concern over Roe was dismissed-as Republican SJC nominees continued to assure us abortion was settled law-until they got the numbers to do what they’d always wanted to do.

Section: Historically  Bill Clinton Wasn’t the Most Progressive Democratic President. But contrary to the Zombie Narrative Hillary’s 2016 Platform Was the Most Progressive in History 

Speaking of the zombie narrative, our buddy John Kiriakou quite falsely  claimed that Clinton in 2016 ran as an extremely conservative candidate. He also claims that only Republicans now care about Deep State abuse-really? Trump is literally prosecuting and arresting his political opponents. While cutting billions of dollars from Medicaid and Medicare. But sure-Trump’s the progressive.

(44) CIA Spy UNLOADS on Epstein, Bin Laden, China & Israel | John Kiriakou • 279 – YouTube

Section: About Monica Lewinsky

Again if it’s about controlling our future we must take back control of our past. A few fun facts that none of the Lewinskygate commentary  ever seemed to understand.

A. Lewinsky  was of age. Ruth Marcus in 2016 blew a gasket in her own brain she was so appalled when HRC pointed this out but it has the inconvenience of being the God’s honest truth. Nor is it trivial-it means that it was not a crime unlike Katie Johnson’s allegation in court that Epstein AND Trump both raped her.

B. Lewinsky was the aggressor. Don’t take my word on it-she says it herself in her own book. She flirted with him. Now yes he obviously was the more powerful person in the encounter and yes he certainly could and should have said no. But it was neither with an underage person or was it coercive. If we are going to establish the standard that simply having an affair with an underling is a crime then a lot of people are going to be out of a job.

Of course it’s not meant seriously to be a crime-just in the case of the Clinton’s to foment CDS. The Republican party is the party of sexual predators after all.

C. If you do honestly care about Lewinsky-and most of those pretending to be indignant and self righteous don’t-then Ken Starr not Bill Clinton is the villain.

This is yet another case of a simple fact that is almost entirely unknown but Starr entrapped Lewinsky into the perjury charge-so that he could coerce her to testify against Bill Clinton.

Again read her book linked to above. He locked her in a hotel room for 24 hours and threatened to send her and her mother to prison for 27 years unless she agreed to testify against Clinton. It’s even worse than that-he unlawfully refused to let her call her lawyer and not send the letter out that contained the perjury.

But this is why we’re-the American people-in such a world of shit-to quote the psycho drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. Because who knows this inconvenient fact beyond maybe me and Monica Lewinsky. Or maybe Mike Isikoff who knows it but doesn’t see it as convenient to talk about. Isikoff gives new meaning to the word historical villain as he worked with Linda Tripp to lie and entrap Lewinsky. Guess as a journalist he doesn’t subscribe to first do no harm.

Because very few people know this story and many would simply handwave it away if told about it-they’re good Orwellian cum Trumpian citizens-though a Trumpian “citizen” is kind of a contradiction in terms as Trumpism is the ideology of rational ignorance. But until we take back our history we’ll never take back our future.

Section: CDS is Absurdly Over Determined

There are so many lies about the Clintons that begun in the early 1990s. David Brock discusses how when he was on the Right he was being paid to go to Arkansas to pay troopers to make up stories about Clinton and women. This is why while many people will believe any accusation if it’s levied against the Clintons in truth it should be the opposite-you ought to be MORE skeptical not less as so many accusations have been total fabrications. It’s very hard to figure out where the lies end and actual facts begin.

Section: It is a Fact That Hillary Unfortunately Voted for the Iraq War

This is true though it’s true of most Senators at the time-while Pelosi is also calumniated by the Left this was a proud moment of hers where she was able to convince most of her members in the House not to vote for Iraq. This was certainly a bad mistake-even as a supporter I’d been disappointed in her choice at the time. But I never saw it as somehow disqualifying. But this is how much of the Left framed it in 2016. It was interesting though in the 2020 debate where Tulsi Gabbard sandbagged Kamala Harris she also gave Biden absolution for also voting for the Iraq war. It was almost like the special outrage given to HRC was selective.

Section: While We’ve Focused Here on CDS it’s not About the Clintons Personally or Even Politically

It’s just the symbolic supervillain status they’ve occupied in the Trump Operating System-to kind of backdoor normalize him. Trump’s first big lie had been birtherism though this outrageous claim still seemed marginally susceptible to factual refutation like when Obama released his long form birth certificate. With Emailgate facts simply didn’t matter.

Section: But Of Course None of This Started With Trump

Take the anti vax hysteria. This actually started  gaining traction in America aptly enough in 2000 Clinton’s last year in office. So by the time Trump started demonizing the WHO in 2020, the WHO had long since taken the US off the list of countries that had achieved herd immunity against the measles.

Section: Why it’s Time for a Counter-History and Why the Stakes Couldn’t be Higher

If nothing else the history of Emailgate and the rise of the Orwellian cum Trumpian Era give the lie to the old saying what you don’t know can’t hurt you. What you don’t know can kill us all-the national health not to mention the health of our democracy. This book is a first attempt at this Counter-History to being the fight to rescue our stolen narrative.

This first book in the trilogy  will focus on the FBI’s unseeingly role in weaponizing Emailgate and electing Trump. The next two as mentioned above will look at the Chuck Todd cum Dean Baquet cum Jake Tapper media’s role in amplifying the Faux scandal. The third will look at the Republican party’s long history of election chicanery-of stealing elections in a number of cases like 2016 with the assistance of hostile foreign nations-Vietnam 1968, Iran 1980, Russia in 2016. Also more than once by Israel an allegedly allied country.

Then perhaps a fourth book looking at Russia, Russia, Russia itself.

So let us begin the work of recovering our stolen narrative by taking a deep dive into the outrageous conduct of James Comey’s FBI in the Emailgate election.

At this point hopefully it’s clear: reform isn’t optional it’s essential. This has to start with a counter-history.

Amazon.com: Monica’s Story eBook : Morton, Andrew: Kindle Store

A warning from a friend – by Radley Balko – The Watch