The problem is that Trump's criminal propaganda is working. His shift from immigration to urban crime is working for him as poll after poll shows that Americans think urban crime, especially in big blue cities, is a serious problem. Facts about declining crime rates are not breaking thru the bullshit, and speeches like that of Chicago's mayor, who accurately pinned Chicago's gun problem on Republicans and red states are largely ignored by the corporate media. Unless and until that changes, we run the risk of Trump so changing the narrative that his MAGA collaborators survive the midterms with their majority intact.
American is becoming an Idiocracy. In the movie it happened five hundred years later in a dystopian anti-intellectual society. In America today it is happening much faster. In the movie the people are too stupid to use water to grow food they use a sports drink called Brawndo. In America today we are deciding to stop using vaccines. In the movie it is inferred that stupidity is genetic. MAGA is proving that stupidity is learned.
Learned? I am not sure there is much learning going on in front of Fox news. Maybe copying, but is that learning? Children go to school not to learn facts but to learn how to learn. Not having support at home and in fact voices decrying what you did in your liberal-taught school today cause atrophy and regression of the brain. By the time these kids become adults (at maybe 40), their brains are dry and flaky. Monkey see monkey do.
"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." Science is based on facts and reality. Stupid is based on lies and fantasy. Fox news teaches people how to be stupid. trump is an expert in stupidity, just like Einstein was an expert in physics. At Fox news they learn how to avoid learning.
Damn right mark. Your point about Mayor Johnson rightfully blaming red states for making firearms so freely available is spot on. The gun dealers know what they are doing.
I look at things a bit differently. A lot of very articulate people are hiding basic stupidity and innumeracy beneath all those words. They are incapable of understanding complex ideas or now much of life is like an interlocking series of spreadsheet pages where a single change on one page can affect multiple other pages. Such changes (unintended consequences) always catch them totally by surprise. In the same way, they have no appreciation for the wide variations in human nature. Much of life is incomprehensible to them as the result. RFK Jr. is one such person.
When you can't comprehend complexity, conspiracy theories make everything so much simpler and require no ability to understand where they come from or if anything true or accurate lies beneath them. You simply have to trust their sources (even when you don't know who that is). Along with most conspiracy theories comes a very comforting message that you're smarter than "the experts" if you believe them. Weasel news plays these people like a fine concert violinist plays a Stradivarius.
Sadly, too many people are functionally illiterate, but they can still read. They assume that statistics are made up, or that fancy people can concoct numbers to fit their narrative. Which does happen at times, I admit, yet that is another part of functional literacy - being rational enough to understand when data is valid or invalid. I do not mean the mathematical ability to interpret datasets, rather the source for the numbers.
I believe this is how for example Fox News operates. Sure, they could be seen as “propagandists”, but I think it is more accurate to say that most of their material is targeted toward the functionally illiterate. If you find Fox News confusing to watch, it’s probably just likely you’re a more rational person, while their audience tends to be more irrational. It’s also not exactly like they’re lying (though that also happens). What comes out sounds, to us, like it makes no sense. Except it does make sense to a functionally illiterate person.
ABC news is nothing but a trump regime apologist. Those “journalists” are a disgrace to the profession of journalism. They are feeding the disease of maga.
Hitler and Goebbels said if you repeat a big lie often, people will believe it. The idea was that people would not believe anyone would lie about anything important. That phrase was successful propaganda.
The Chicago Killing Fields is the 2025 version of they’re eating the cats they’re eating the dogs. It’s a vicious lie that his followers think is funny and owns the libs and our horrendous corporate media provides absolutely no pushback or scrutiny. Such a disgrace
I don't need to read the ABC articles to know that every single crime they wrote about was a gun crime. Even Judd here left that aside. If people had to beat each other to death, there would be fewer murders. Most people are not in good enough shape to kill with their bare hands. And sure, there are knife killings - many knife killings, but as we are told, run from a knife, rush a gun. Not sure why, but I'm running from both. IT'S THE GUNS STUPID. Reduce the amount of guns, fewer guns, fewer murders. Period. (Yes, I know your reply to that sentence because I taught about guns for 20 years in a NYC school room. I've heard them all.)
If the writers of the 2nd amendment could have foreseen what a weapon it would become and the mayhem it would cause, maybe they would have been more careful in crafting it, but they were creatures of their times just like we are.
They couldn’t possibly have conceived what future weapons would look like or that the Constitution would be violated without consequence. The founders did a pretty damn good job based on what they knew. They made the Constitution amendable knowing changes would be needed.
Parker Molloy also wrote about this subject, which is obviously of relevance to her as a Chicagoan and a media analyst, and I agree wholeheartedly with her that ABC News's framing here is journalistic malpractice. My mom, a registered Democrat, brought this story to our attention in our household, and when I pointed out that Chicago isn't even one of the 10 most violent cities in America and that violent crime is actually on the decline there, she sounded shocked.
Trump doesn't need any help spinning a narrative. This is shameful enabling behavior.
When 55% of those polled think it’s ok to have troops in the street, we’re fucked. The Dems should be bashing back against Trump’s lies, and not with statistics (most people don’t care). Trump is clearly ill and grasping onto power with both hands. Kick him when he’s down I say. This is no time for polite mumblings about his lies. The country is in the throes of fascism. Wake Up, People! No Kings protest coming again November 18. Bring your family and friends. It’s only the country at stake.
I've read more forceful objections, like yours, to this administrations actions in "Popular Information" than from the Democratic senators or reps. In this Congress, words are the only power they have.
Then why aren't they out there, every damned day, calling press conferences, not just in D.C. but throughout the country? Lift every voice. The "leadership" is rudderless, feckless and has to go. Now. I'm sick of sternly worded letters, embarrassing chants of "We will win!" and do-nothing, sitting around Dem Members who don't seem to grasp the gravity of the situation. Newsom's call to folks (including Dems) to "Wake Up!" is the closest I've seen to a national call to arms. Maybe when Trump deploys troops to Chicago, Pritzger will get the exposure he so deserves and the playing field will take on new contours.
I wish I knew for sure why the Congressional Dems aren't more forceful. One reason may be the Dem's leaders believe the party is so disunited that they can't afford to take strong actions that might alienate some in the party further weakening it.
True leaders would be able to corral their Members, lay down the law (no capture by the groups, just full speed ahead),, propose a vision and a plan, execute the plan, and turn Dems loose to implement it all. Schumer and Jeffries simply don't have the skills or the awareness of how effed up our country is right now. New blood, faces and energy are direly needed. As soon as the "leaders" are cast out, the better.
Here's something Dems can and absolutely do: shut the government down. No ifs, ands or buts. Make it the Republican's and Trump's fault, because it is.
Judd, I particularly appreciate your highlighting the role of news outlets in all of this. Their reports on crime have been devoid of contextual accuracy, let alone any sort of effort to debunk Trump's propaganda.
Trump does nothing that does not enrich his own coffers. I wonder how these statements impacted the stock market. Or, more specifically, I wonder which companies stand to benefit from these military occupations, and I wonder who their shareholders and investors are.
Statistics can be cited until one is blue in the face but what matters in the voting both is how people feel. As long as mainstream news media/entertainment plays the story for views the perception will not match reality. The American democratic experiment is a cruise ship, and public perception of our country and crime on our cruise ship (like its perception of so many things like the economy and immigration) is limited by our individual horizons. Most importantly, cruise ships don’t turn on a dime. There have to be captains and crew that consistently steer away from the shoals of misinformation and disinformation but under Trump, everything is chaos and confusion on purpose. At this point in history, I really don’t know what will kill our experimental democracy cruise first- the fires onboard out at sea or the final crash on shore where we are headed.
Trump’s brazen attacks on blue cities is so freaking transparent it boggles the mind. MAGA’s aren’t cheering it on based on reason, or news coverage, but because the right has demonized Democrats for decades. Hatred and scapegoating is what this is about, period.
Republican governors & mayors do not answer why GOP leaders were willing to send National Guard troops to Washington or LA in defiance of the mayors & the California governor while not inviting the same attention to their cities that have comparable or higher rates of crime.
Why won’t Speaker Johnson & the GOP call for Nat'l Guard in Shreveport (3-4X higher crime than DC, not “comparable" ) & other high crime red state cities?
Noting governor DeWine’s office response that there are “no current mayoral requests for National Guard assistance” while disregarding the fact that National Guard have been sent to Blue cities & plan to invade more in defiance of elected leadership is shameful journalistic failure typifying MSM normalization of weaponized lawlessness.
Meanwhile, Kristi Noem proudly proclaims: “We are staying here (LA) to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome (elected) leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
Clearly red states don’t need their National Guard, as they are happy to send them to liberal-leaning cities to walk around looking bored. I’m sure it’s doing wonders for recruiting. But hey, DOGE “saved us $200 billion,” we can afford it! (Oh wait, that was a typo, I meant to say “cost us billions of dollars.”)
The problem is that Trump's criminal propaganda is working. His shift from immigration to urban crime is working for him as poll after poll shows that Americans think urban crime, especially in big blue cities, is a serious problem. Facts about declining crime rates are not breaking thru the bullshit, and speeches like that of Chicago's mayor, who accurately pinned Chicago's gun problem on Republicans and red states are largely ignored by the corporate media. Unless and until that changes, we run the risk of Trump so changing the narrative that his MAGA collaborators survive the midterms with their majority intact.
American is becoming an Idiocracy. In the movie it happened five hundred years later in a dystopian anti-intellectual society. In America today it is happening much faster. In the movie the people are too stupid to use water to grow food they use a sports drink called Brawndo. In America today we are deciding to stop using vaccines. In the movie it is inferred that stupidity is genetic. MAGA is proving that stupidity is learned.
Learned? I am not sure there is much learning going on in front of Fox news. Maybe copying, but is that learning? Children go to school not to learn facts but to learn how to learn. Not having support at home and in fact voices decrying what you did in your liberal-taught school today cause atrophy and regression of the brain. By the time these kids become adults (at maybe 40), their brains are dry and flaky. Monkey see monkey do.
"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." Science is based on facts and reality. Stupid is based on lies and fantasy. Fox news teaches people how to be stupid. trump is an expert in stupidity, just like Einstein was an expert in physics. At Fox news they learn how to avoid learning.
Damn right mark. Your point about Mayor Johnson rightfully blaming red states for making firearms so freely available is spot on. The gun dealers know what they are doing.
I look at things a bit differently. A lot of very articulate people are hiding basic stupidity and innumeracy beneath all those words. They are incapable of understanding complex ideas or now much of life is like an interlocking series of spreadsheet pages where a single change on one page can affect multiple other pages. Such changes (unintended consequences) always catch them totally by surprise. In the same way, they have no appreciation for the wide variations in human nature. Much of life is incomprehensible to them as the result. RFK Jr. is one such person.
When you can't comprehend complexity, conspiracy theories make everything so much simpler and require no ability to understand where they come from or if anything true or accurate lies beneath them. You simply have to trust their sources (even when you don't know who that is). Along with most conspiracy theories comes a very comforting message that you're smarter than "the experts" if you believe them. Weasel news plays these people like a fine concert violinist plays a Stradivarius.
Mark, Spot on!
Sadly, too many people are functionally illiterate, but they can still read. They assume that statistics are made up, or that fancy people can concoct numbers to fit their narrative. Which does happen at times, I admit, yet that is another part of functional literacy - being rational enough to understand when data is valid or invalid. I do not mean the mathematical ability to interpret datasets, rather the source for the numbers.
I believe this is how for example Fox News operates. Sure, they could be seen as “propagandists”, but I think it is more accurate to say that most of their material is targeted toward the functionally illiterate. If you find Fox News confusing to watch, it’s probably just likely you’re a more rational person, while their audience tends to be more irrational. It’s also not exactly like they’re lying (though that also happens). What comes out sounds, to us, like it makes no sense. Except it does make sense to a functionally illiterate person.
Oh, and that ABC News headline? It was either written by a functionally illiterate person, or directed at a functionally illiterate audience.
ABC news is nothing but a trump regime apologist. Those “journalists” are a disgrace to the profession of journalism. They are feeding the disease of maga.
If the key to advertising is repetition, Fox News and Sinclair broadcasting provide the repeated backup and have for generations now.
How might investigative journalism and simply critical thinking achieve this kind of repetition?
Dress that investigative journalism up in a blond wig and a low cut blouse?
Hitler and Goebbels said if you repeat a big lie often, people will believe it. The idea was that people would not believe anyone would lie about anything important. That phrase was successful propaganda.
The Chicago Killing Fields is the 2025 version of they’re eating the cats they’re eating the dogs. It’s a vicious lie that his followers think is funny and owns the libs and our horrendous corporate media provides absolutely no pushback or scrutiny. Such a disgrace
I don't need to read the ABC articles to know that every single crime they wrote about was a gun crime. Even Judd here left that aside. If people had to beat each other to death, there would be fewer murders. Most people are not in good enough shape to kill with their bare hands. And sure, there are knife killings - many knife killings, but as we are told, run from a knife, rush a gun. Not sure why, but I'm running from both. IT'S THE GUNS STUPID. Reduce the amount of guns, fewer guns, fewer murders. Period. (Yes, I know your reply to that sentence because I taught about guns for 20 years in a NYC school room. I've heard them all.)
I wish they would talk more about gun control & stop gun shows where anyone can purchase any type of illegal weapon they please. No background checks.
Guns must go. We’re the ONLY developed country with this lunacy. REPEAT, the ONLY developed country. Time to follow the rest!
If the writers of the 2nd amendment could have foreseen what a weapon it would become and the mayhem it would cause, maybe they would have been more careful in crafting it, but they were creatures of their times just like we are.
They couldn’t possibly have conceived what future weapons would look like or that the Constitution would be violated without consequence. The founders did a pretty damn good job based on what they knew. They made the Constitution amendable knowing changes would be needed.
Parker Molloy also wrote about this subject, which is obviously of relevance to her as a Chicagoan and a media analyst, and I agree wholeheartedly with her that ABC News's framing here is journalistic malpractice. My mom, a registered Democrat, brought this story to our attention in our household, and when I pointed out that Chicago isn't even one of the 10 most violent cities in America and that violent crime is actually on the decline there, she sounded shocked.
Trump doesn't need any help spinning a narrative. This is shameful enabling behavior.
Have you tried sending this to The NewYork Times etc. and ask why they don’t publish it?
When 55% of those polled think it’s ok to have troops in the street, we’re fucked. The Dems should be bashing back against Trump’s lies, and not with statistics (most people don’t care). Trump is clearly ill and grasping onto power with both hands. Kick him when he’s down I say. This is no time for polite mumblings about his lies. The country is in the throes of fascism. Wake Up, People! No Kings protest coming again November 18. Bring your family and friends. It’s only the country at stake.
Trump is probably sedated after his stroke. He didn’t write that commentary. That much is obvious.
CORRECTION: The No Kings protest is October 18.
I've read more forceful objections, like yours, to this administrations actions in "Popular Information" than from the Democratic senators or reps. In this Congress, words are the only power they have.
Then why aren't they out there, every damned day, calling press conferences, not just in D.C. but throughout the country? Lift every voice. The "leadership" is rudderless, feckless and has to go. Now. I'm sick of sternly worded letters, embarrassing chants of "We will win!" and do-nothing, sitting around Dem Members who don't seem to grasp the gravity of the situation. Newsom's call to folks (including Dems) to "Wake Up!" is the closest I've seen to a national call to arms. Maybe when Trump deploys troops to Chicago, Pritzger will get the exposure he so deserves and the playing field will take on new contours.
I wish I knew for sure why the Congressional Dems aren't more forceful. One reason may be the Dem's leaders believe the party is so disunited that they can't afford to take strong actions that might alienate some in the party further weakening it.
True leaders would be able to corral their Members, lay down the law (no capture by the groups, just full speed ahead),, propose a vision and a plan, execute the plan, and turn Dems loose to implement it all. Schumer and Jeffries simply don't have the skills or the awareness of how effed up our country is right now. New blood, faces and energy are direly needed. As soon as the "leaders" are cast out, the better.
Here's something Dems can and absolutely do: shut the government down. No ifs, ands or buts. Make it the Republican's and Trump's fault, because it is.
https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/schumer-blinked-once-this-time-democrats?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3087318&post_id=172872096&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=15favz&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Judd, I particularly appreciate your highlighting the role of news outlets in all of this. Their reports on crime have been devoid of contextual accuracy, let alone any sort of effort to debunk Trump's propaganda.
Trump does nothing that does not enrich his own coffers. I wonder how these statements impacted the stock market. Or, more specifically, I wonder which companies stand to benefit from these military occupations, and I wonder who their shareholders and investors are.
Statistics can be cited until one is blue in the face but what matters in the voting both is how people feel. As long as mainstream news media/entertainment plays the story for views the perception will not match reality. The American democratic experiment is a cruise ship, and public perception of our country and crime on our cruise ship (like its perception of so many things like the economy and immigration) is limited by our individual horizons. Most importantly, cruise ships don’t turn on a dime. There have to be captains and crew that consistently steer away from the shoals of misinformation and disinformation but under Trump, everything is chaos and confusion on purpose. At this point in history, I really don’t know what will kill our experimental democracy cruise first- the fires onboard out at sea or the final crash on shore where we are headed.
Trump’s brazen attacks on blue cities is so freaking transparent it boggles the mind. MAGA’s aren’t cheering it on based on reason, or news coverage, but because the right has demonized Democrats for decades. Hatred and scapegoating is what this is about, period.
TRUMP MAKES UP THINGS, MAGA FOLLOWS. JUST LIKE HITLER
Imagine deploying an extra teacher in every classroom instead?
Good for you, Mike. We are screaming about the situation and you offer the best solution.
Thanks, Judd and gang, great takexdown of the Chief Liar, as usual. The mainstream news is absolutely craven, period!
The Guard are getting important raking practice in DC so they're prepared to fight wildfires? https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3lxq63apa7k24 #Resist authoritarianism & #Vote Blue!
Republican governors & mayors do not answer why GOP leaders were willing to send National Guard troops to Washington or LA in defiance of the mayors & the California governor while not inviting the same attention to their cities that have comparable or higher rates of crime.
Why won’t Speaker Johnson & the GOP call for Nat'l Guard in Shreveport (3-4X higher crime than DC, not “comparable" ) & other high crime red state cities?
Noting governor DeWine’s office response that there are “no current mayoral requests for National Guard assistance” while disregarding the fact that National Guard have been sent to Blue cities & plan to invade more in defiance of elected leadership is shameful journalistic failure typifying MSM normalization of weaponized lawlessness.
Meanwhile, Kristi Noem proudly proclaims: “We are staying here (LA) to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome (elected) leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rp_IcNIki8
I can't wait to see her in prison.
Maybe brushing each other's hair with Ghislaine.
Clearly red states don’t need their National Guard, as they are happy to send them to liberal-leaning cities to walk around looking bored. I’m sure it’s doing wonders for recruiting. But hey, DOGE “saved us $200 billion,” we can afford it! (Oh wait, that was a typo, I meant to say “cost us billions of dollars.”)
Dear President Trump,
Tell us the truth!
He wouldn't know the truth if it stood up in his soup.
Not soup, cheeseburger.
Followed by a yuge glass of that new cheese-flavored Koolaid (with hints of Aged Cheddar)!