Given the topic's surging presence in social media, I suppose by now you've heard of Project 2025.

That's the right-wing Heritage Foundation's vision for a second Donald Trump presidency. This vision is so out there, so frightening, that even the Trumpublican party's poster boy is claiming to know nothing about it. 

Right. 

The cretin is mentioned by name 240 times in the document. And CNN found nearly 140 former Trump aides and advisers who have contributed to Project 2025, including six former members of his Cabinet, four of his ambassadors, and Republican National Committee members appointed to their positions in coordination with the Trump campaign.

It's hard to think of an adequate way of responding to such a blatant anti-Democracy, fascist intention. Millions of our countrymen and women have fought and died to defend our country against such ambitions. And this one's taking place right here at home, right under our noses.

PHOTO: Mediadrum Images / NARA

Lacking a military option, we should be facing the threat with whatever weapons we do possess. Writing about it. Sharing it with friends. Flooding social media with it. Taking it to the streets...

...and calling to task major news media for what to date has been their paltry coverage of this existential threat to our democratic way of life.  To wit the letter to the editors I just submitted to the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

To Star Tribune editorial department:

Why is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 once again not front page news today? Why is it not every day?

This 900-plus-page document is chilling in both scope and detail—nothing less than a manifesto for a fascist, Christian nationalist Trump regime.

From a wholesale dismantling of hard-won environmental and consumer-protection regulations, to blurring the separation of church and state, to undermining longstanding safeguards against abuses of executive power, to supplanting capable public servants with regime loyalists, to gutting our government’s vital checks-and-balances design, to suppressing dissent, Project 2025 is a blueprint for the destruction of Democracy.

How much more disturbing would this ultra-right-wing playbook have to be before
the Star Tribune gives it the urgent coverage it deserves?

I urge you to consider Project 2025’s newsworthiness in light of other events and issues which would surely capture front-page, banner-headline coverage in your paper. Like a nationwide power blackout, a major airplane crash, or the U.S. Capitol being overrun by an angry mob of the same kind of traitors who would find new empowerment in Project 2025.

Please, I urge you to pick up whatever weapon of expression you possess and use it to expose the shocking reality of Project 2025. Your voice, your feet, your wit, or, as I have, your pen.

Our precious Democracy—the peace and freedom most of us have enjoyed all our lives and that we so dearly wish for our children and grandchildren—is at stake.

ILLUSTRATION: Norman Rockwell

THE REAL ENEMY – Overcoming Apathy In the Defense of Democracy

Less than five months from now we, the people of the United States of America, will either have affirmed our country’s precious values…or we will have trashed them, dishonoring the brave vision of the nation’s founders and the sacrifices of the millions of our countrymen and women who have fought and died defending those ideals.

        I implore you to take stock,
        take heart, take action.

The term “existential threat” is losing its potency for overuse, but that’s exactly what we’re up against. A large minority of our fellow Americans have renounced our democratic institutions and lent their blind allegiance to a man who’s all but promised oligarchy and dictatorship, and who clearly admires our worst adversaries’ ruthless rulers.

Yet, if we think this deranged man, this misguided movement, is our worst enemy, we must think again. Our greatest concern should be not for things beyond our control, but for our own lack of focus, the possibility that, while we Democrats and Independents waste our time venting our outrage, the MAGAts are quietly, methodically working their strategy to win (or at least proclaim victory) in November.

We must recognize and solve the problem of indifference, especially among younger voters— one of the voting blocs most essential to Democrats’ success. This isn’t an abstract threat; polls repeatedly show that Trump devotees are far more motivated, far more likely to turn out at the polls than Democrats.* And that many young people feel voting is an exercise in futility.

But we—we Americans who still believe in Democracy and this country’s “shining light on the hill” mantle—are not powerless. There are things every single one of us can do, and do right away.

So I implore you to take stock, take heart and take action.

We know they have cheated, are cheating and will cheat.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
Here’s what we must do:

First, we must know our adversary. Realize they’re unlike any political—and I’m inclined to say moral—affliction ever to infect this great country. 

Unswayed by proven facts, the glaring contradiction between their candidate’s pretentions of patriotism and Christian virtue and his actual behavior, or even the man’s unanimous felony convictions, they’ve fallen into lockstep with his march to destroy Democracy. In fact, the more proof of the man’s corruption, the stronger their support.

It’s not by accident that the new right in America has become a force. First, nothing brings and holds people together like fear. Like a common perceived insult. Like a common enemy.

Donald Trump and the brown-nose toadies who enable him have been very effective at stoking these emotions among a class of Americans who believe less in helping those not in their “tribe” than in controlling them. Immigrants, assertive women, non-straight folks, racial minorities, smart people...I could go on.

We know they stick together. We know they now control a significant pseudo-journalistic media network. More disturbingly, we know that they’re being helped by some of our nation’s sworn enemies—China, Russia, Iran and others—all of which desperately hope to turn their most feared adversary into their ally—something the Little Orange Man has all but promised them.

And we know they have cheated, are cheating and will cheat.

            More and more potential Democrat voters
            have simply given up.
 
OUTRAGE TO ACTION
So, knowing what we’re up against, what can we do to save our country from this dimwitted wannabe dictator and his groupies completing the butchering of democratic institutions they began in his first term?

First, I suggest, we need to turn our negative emotions—anger, frustration, discouragement—into a positive vision. Let us imagine how it will feel to restore our nation’s soul. To once again be respected by other nations. And then let us turn that vision into action.

Unlike our opponents’ fear-driven fervor, we progressives are motivated by hope. But let’s face it, hope isn’t quite the motivator that fear is. These people vote.

It’s no secret that, with the demoralizing impact of a polarized populace, a dysfunctional Congress, leaders no longer able to conceal their hypocrisy and corruption—not to mention a democratic candidate who, despite his undeniable policy successes, fails to inspire—more and more potential Democrat voters have simply given up, disappointed with both candidates, or unsure of whether their single votes could make any difference.

Our own personal resolve to vote is a good start, but it’s not enough. As our adversary continues to coalesce around its fears, how do we mobilize those progressive-minded, but disillusioned voters around hope and get them to the polls?

  They’ve persuaded somewhere between one and three
  percent of letter recipients to actually get out and vote.

A MORE EVOLVED AMERICA
For as long as I can remember, the go-to method for Jane or Joe average citizen to help get out the vote has been “door-knocking,” going house to house, talking with folks, asking them to step up on election day.

But for those of us too thin-skinned to face all the possible rejections—or even rancor—of face-to-face appeals, I’ve discovered the perfect alternative: Vote Forward.

VOTE FORWARD is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization empowering grassroots volunteers to send heartfelt, handwritten letters to unregistered and low-propensity voters in key districts around the country encouraging them to participate in our democracy.

The effort, which just before the last presidential election delivered some 6,000,000 such letters to potential progressive voters in key districts across the country, is evidence based. Analysis of Vote Forward mailing campaigns show they’ve succeeded in persuading somewhere between one and three percent of letter recipients to actually get out and vote. In direct mail that’s a remarkable success rate.

       I figure at least six of my letters proved to be
       the impetus some reluctant Biden/Harris voters
       needed to step up and vote.

10,000,000 LETTERS
Whenever a news story or a negative thought about the existential threat looming over our Democracy starts raising my blood pressure, I just reach for a pen and my stack of Vote Forward letter forms and start writing. More than good therapy, it’s a way to actually make a difference.

                            

And writing letters spares me the stress of having to face strangers on their own doorsteps. I can do it on my own time, day or night; I can do it while I’m traveling; and I know it’s effective.

Prior to the 2020 election I wrote and mailed 600 letters. Of those I figure at least six proved to be the impetus some reluctant Biden/Harris voters needed to step up and vote. That’s probably about six more than I could have convinced in months and months of preachin' to the choir on my blog and in social media rants.

This summer, I’m aiming for at least another 600 letters—so far, to people in Pennsylvania and Michigan. (If Biden’s chances take a big hit, I might just have to up that to 1,000.) And, overall, this year’s much anticipated Vote Forward Big Send (October 29, the day they instruct all of us letter writers to drop our boxes of letters at the post office) aims for a flood of 10,000,000 letters.

Please, won’t you join me? Check out the Vote Forward website. Start out with a list of just five or ten potential voters. If you like it, you can download 20 or 100 at a time. You create your own nonpartisan message describing why voting is important for you. You hand-write a salutation and that message onto the sheet, fold and insert it into an envelope which you then hand address, stamp, seal and store until the day of the Big Send.

C’mon folks, the stakes are literally life or death. But we are not powerless. We can do this!


* In much of the country, most experts agree that Trump is currently ahead. Even here in staunchly Democratic Minnesota, Biden currently holds just a five percentage point lead.

GUILTY! But Not Gone

I told myself if this slimy bastard got tried and convicted of multiple felonies, I'd mix up a batch of my famous mango margaritas and go dance in the street.

And today, Thursday, May 30, 2024, the jury in the Orange Turd's New York hush money trial handed down its verdict: guilty on every single one of the 34 charges in the indictment. As CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell slowly read off the verdict on on each count, I felt a chill of relief and, dare I say, delight.

This slam-dunk outcome shines a glint of hope in a world that seems to be seriously considering if fascism might be the way forward. Hope that there's still a cross-section of people in this country who can think for themselves and actually believe thoroughly documented, damning evidence, even against the conman of our generation.

But that's really all it is, a glint. For we all know this creep. He's a cockroach, and cockroaches are really tough to catch and squash.

                      Each and every decent American…
                      must make a solemn commitment.

IT’S NOT OVER
Before the cretin even leaves the courthouse he's pulling out all his tattered cards. Poor me! Rigged. Conspiracy. Travesty. And, of course, he'll appeal…for as long as any court—some of their judges hand picked by him--will hear the case.

So yes, I'm enjoying my margaritas, but I'm not dancing in the street. Because this isn't over.
But a taste of justice, even if it's just on paper, should inspire us to start and continue the hard work of making sure this vile little man can no longer pretend to lead this great country toward the collapse of our Democracy—a way of life that’s the envy of the world, and which millions of our countrymen and women have fought and died to defend.

Each and every decent American—those of us who believe our president should defend and bolster Democracy, not sabotage it; those of us who think it’s about hope and helping people, not fear and controlling them—must make a solemn commitment.

                 During the last campaign we mailed some
                 6,000,000 letters…with a phenomenal success
                 rate ranging from 1% to 3%.

TAKE THE PLEDGE

We must pledge not just to vote come November; that’s the easy part. We must also find ways to encourage others to vote, especially those who might otherwise be unlikely to do so. Maybe they don't believe their one vote can make a difference. Maybe they find both candidates lacking. Could be they're just worn out by the vitriol that Donald Trump has stirred up in our politics.

I've taken that pledge. I looked for a way to turn my outrage into action, a hands-on way of turning out potential progressive voters who might need a little encouragement to speak up for Democracy. It had to be something I knew I could stick with and that would bear results.

What I discovered was VOTE FORWARD, a 501(c)(4) non-profit that empowers grassroots volunteers to send handwritten letters encouraging fellow Americans in key districts to vote. During the last presidential campaign we mailed some 6,000,000 letters—600 of them were mine—with a phenomenal success rate ranging from 1% to 3%.*

This time, we’re aiming for 10,000,000.

PIECE OF CAKE
It's easy. I craft my own (non-partisan) message. I can write letters just about anywhere and in my own time. And it risks none of the face-to-face, slamming-door rejection one encounters with that old reliable get-out-the-vote go-to: door knocking.

Let’s make sure this charlatan, this proxy hoodlum for a generation of bloated billionaires and bitter Billy-Bobs, never again controls anything more than his own miserable, fools-gold life and those of his NDA-muzzled spawn.

¡Salud!

* Vote Forward impact

FOOL YOU ONCE…

I really thought Pop This Boil would be winding down by now, after the inept, chaotic first term of the worst president in U.S. history mercifully came to an end. That the guy would run out of obnoxious stunts, fade from the headlines and disappear into the trash can of irrelevance.

Alas, Donald Trump—the only person ever to ascend to the presidency of the United States of America with not one redeeming quality—is running again. Incredibly, even after deeply embarrassing intelligent Americans and even inciting insurrection, he continues to command the blind allegiance of a significant minority of my countrymen.

Whether from an intentional ignorance of history, a warped sense of entitlement, a need to vindicate some dystopian vision, or out of sheer spite, these fools somehow still see this utterly unimaginative little man as the answer to their prayers. As giving voice to the thoughts they so staunchly believe have been stifled by those fucking liberal elites—thoughts that reflect their worst instincts.

What these poor folks don’t realize is exactly how badly they’re being conned.

OUR BULLY
It’s like the old adage: What do you get when you marry a man who cheats on his wife? In this case, what do you get when you elect a man who’s spent every waking hour since he was ten cheating, lying and bullying?

But that’s okay, they must figure; at least he’s our cheating, lying bully.

But do they really think, after the Brat Man demolishes all the hard-won laws enacted to protect the rest of us from tyrants like him and the insatiable tycoons who fund and flatter him—and that restrain Joe Sixpack from four-wheeling through nature preserves and beating the missus—that he’ll stop there?

Do they believe this Putin groupy who’s touting the ruin of democratic institutions will keep acting that out on their behalf? That his aggressions will target just those they fear or hate? That’s where my  Shame on Trump turns to Shame on you, MAGAts!

     …he’ll turn on you like the self-
     obsessed, loyalty-or-death Kim Jong
     Un wannabe he is.

HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY
What he’ll really do—he’s as much as promised it—is establish himself as a virtual dictator. And then, as every such autocrat in history has done, he’ll turn from controlling those you fear to controlling you. Eventually, he’ll ask something of you you don’t want to give. And then he’ll turn on you like the self-obsessed, loyalty-or-death Kim Jong Un wannabe he is.

And there you are, knowing you threw our precious Democracy away, trashing the sacrifice, soiling the honor, of all our courageous countrymen and women who’ve fought and died defending it. And all for your little “pick me or I’ll steal the ball” tantrum. Hope you’re happy.

OUTRAGE TO ACTION
If you want, as I do, to turn your outrage with this traitor into action, please consider volunteering with VOTE FORWARD. Vote Forward is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit empowering grassroots volunteers to send handwritten letters encouraging fellow Americans to vote.

Vote Forward’s considerable, evidence-based success hinges on their brilliant mailing list, which targets people deemed unlikely to vote, but who, if they were to vote, might tend to vote blue.

It’s the perfect opportunity for introverts like me to avoid that ol’ reliable get-out-the-vote effort, the door-knocker, and still make a difference. It’s easy; there’s zero risk of face-to-face rejection; and we can do it where and when we like, even in pajamas.

For more information and to download your first list of recipients, visit VOTE FORWARD. And, if you like it, tell your friends.

        “Democracy means not ‘I am as good as you are,’
          but ‘You are as good as I am.’”
              REV. THEODORE PARKER

BRATMAN RETURNS

It's been eighteen months since my last rant here. Oh, how I've prayed that an upwelling of Americans' disillusionment and outrage—not to mention the legal system—might have rid us of a tyrant so vile that neither the Founding Fathers nor any lawmaker since thought to protect the country from him.

Alas, that hasn't happened, so here we go again.

The Bratman seems bound for another run at the office he so thoroughly defiled just a few years ago. Apparently, millions of fans of the reality TV star-turned-dictator simply don't care that: 

    • he made our country the laughing stock of the free world;

    • he's openly expressed his admiration for dictators...and refused to rule out his becoming
      one if re-elected;

    • he's demonstrated, in virtually every action of his personal and business life, that he's
      the antithesis of both a "true American" and a "good Christian."

    • he faces four separate prosecutions, and no fewer than 91 criminal charges;

    • his company's been convicted of 17 felonies;

Incredibly, somewhere around 35 percent of my fellow Americans still think he's the guy they want their kids looking up to.

   I wrote, stuffed and mailed 560 of those hand-written notes.

MENTAL HEALTH MANTRA
So here I am resurrecting the same mental health mantra I employed nearly every day of his four-year fiasco: Is there something I can do about it right now? If so, do it. If not, let it go.

Back then what I did about it was to enlist in Vote Forward, which organizes volunteers to write millions of get-out-the-vote letters, and then send them to individuals it's identified as inclined not to vote, but, if they did vote, would be inclined to vote democratic.

I wrote, stuffed and mailed 560 of those hand-written notes. It was good therapy. Every one of them kept my brain and hands busy for a while, spared me having to see or hear another of the twerp's ego ejaculations, and afforded me, between bouts of hand cramping, five to ten minutes of relative peace. 

Another thing that helped was my venting here at Pop This Boil. I don't consider myself at all politically astute, but I do love democracy and worry deeply about losing it. Being able to express that concern—even to the limited audience this blog reaches—was liberating.

    I'm assuming the candidate will be good ol' Joe.

SIGN OF THE TIMES
Now that election day 2024 is less than a year away, I plan to employ the same strategies, writing letters, blogging...and praying. So keep an eye out here and on my Facebook page. I also want to apply my modest gifts as a graphic designer to show as many people as possible who's the better presidential choice.

(I, like many other folks I know, would very much like to see a younger, more dynamic candidate emerge on the democratic ticket. Someone like Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg or even—don't laugh—Duane (The Rock) Johnson. But since that seems not to be happening, I'm assuming the candidate will be good ol' Joe.)

So, based on that assumption, here are a few of my ideas for a bumper sticker and/or lawn sign campaign: 

 

Let me know what you think. If you could get one of these signs for your car or lawn (free, or let's say for a small donation to the candidate), which, if any, would you pick?

HALF GLORY

More children slain.
Thoughts and prayers.
Flags half staff.

If every massacre earned headlines
They’d fly that way every day.

We’re so used to it,
Why not just make the poles shorter?

Then the Stars and Stripes would wave
Where they should for a country
That values guns more than kids.

Half as high.

 

NO TWO WAYS – Drawing the Line On T***pist Absurdity

[With my previous post here, I thought—and prayed with all my heart—that we were through with Donald T****. (I've vowed, following Stephen Colbert's lead, to never again soil a sheet of paper or an LED screen with the man's name.) But, though his own antics have been mercifully absent from the media for a few weeks, those of his disciples have muscled their way back into our consciousness. 

And, as the necessary but futile efforts to convict the scumbag in his second impeachment proceed in the Senate, it appears his influence will continue to infect many of our countrymen for a long time.

Thus, the fight—and this modest effort to resist—goes on.]

                                                                   ~  •  •  •  ~

As I contemplate the deadly disease running rampant across my country, I keep wondering, how did this happen? Why weren’t we better prepared? Will we eventually subdue it? Or will it just lay low for a while and then come creeping back and once again lay waste to all we hold dear?

Oh, you thought I was talking about the coronavirus? Nope, the disease I’m more concerned about is the plague of resentment and conceit, the mass delusion, that enabled a bumbling tyrant to hijack the American presidency and rather systematically dismantle our democracy for the last four years.

In my more charitable moments, I might say to people who still support that demagogue alright, you’re entitled to your opinion. I suppose you’re even entitled to your own lies.

Go ahead. If you want to look at a man who’s spent his entire life proving what a narcissistic, corrupt, racist, amoral total asshole he is and see the answer to your prayers, fine.

Care to keep those forward-view blinders on, denying the future for your addiction to a past we’ve long since outgrown both as a country and as human beings? Clutching to your breast those good old authoritarian sacred cows: law enforcement, “the troops,” the Bible, Old Glory—whatever—instead of embracing the glory of possibility? Be my guest.

Question a thoroughly-validated election simply because your guy lost? Sadly, that’s your right too.

     Those who expect to have it both ways deserve neither.

CAUGHT IN A LIE
But what you’re not entitled to is extolling one set of truths when things are going your way and another when they’re not. Rules that apply to folks you’re afraid of, but not to you.

Seems to me a “principle” that applies when you want it to, but not when you don’t isn’t a principle; it’s a ruse. As aggrieved and entitled as you may genuinely feel, you don’t get to have it both ways.

I’ll call you out on that duplicity every time. Why? Because we’re political enemies? To settle some perceived score? Because I’m “elite” and you’re “deplorable?” No, those are your kinds of reasons.

The reason you’ll get caught is because any fourth-grader could tell you it’s plain bullshit. Because it defiles the trust that’s the stock-in-trade of a functional democracy. And because it’s intellectually and morally indefensible.

DISAPPEARING ACT
You can’t be for authority when it’s used to control and punish others, but defy authority when it applies to you. Like flaunting COVID-control mandates because they deny you your “individual liberties?” Don’t get me started!

And you can’t be a Christian to justify your passing judgement on others, but then treat them in ways Jesus would never have condoned. (So there goes your cherry-picking from the Holy Bible for reasons why its teachings don’t apply to you.)

       A leg to stand on is not the only skeletal part you lack.

You can’t pretend to see tens of thousands of people who didn’t attend your esteemed leader’s first and only inauguration, and then pretend not to see the 81,283,098 certified voters who did indeed make him, for once and for all, a loser.

Nor can you claim to be a patriotic American and then cheer on a petty demagogue who clearly admires our country’s most ruthless enemies. And you can’t love the electoral process when it delivers your popular-vote-losing candidate, and then hate it enough, when both the popular and electoral votes decisively reject him, to desecrate the U.S. Capitol and threaten not just members of Congress, but the Vice President you adored just last week.

And now, during the second impeachment trial in the Senate, we see your T***publican representatives stooping to a new having-it-both-ways low—as if that were even possible. They say the first time your muck-raking messiah got caught red-handed he couldn’t be held responsible because he was president. Now they insist he’s immune because he isn’t president.

You just can’t make this stuff up. A leg to stand on is not the only skeletal part you lack.

SURVIVING ON SCRAPS
To all you poor schmucks locked in a death spiral with this despicable man: I’d love to see you evolve, along with the rest of us, to ways of thinking and acting that embrace a kinder, gentler, smarter future. To restoring the kind of democracy where individual liberties are balanced, as intended by the country’s founders—and God, I should add—by collective responsibilities.

But somehow I just can’t see that happening.

So if you can’t overcome your mass inferiority complex and join us, then I guess you’ll just have to slither back into those dank recesses where you and the rest of the cockroaches skulk till your next opportunity to scurry out and terrorize those of us on whose scraps you’ll, sadly, have to depend.