A Newer Deal Part 9: Fix politics! And a (very) few people who seem to get it.

I'm close to finishing my Newer Deal series, a ten-part – (“tl;dr”) -- array of thirty-five proposals for Democrats and their allies, that might empower them to save America and the world, during the year ahead. 

(Folks who’d rather view it through Substack might start here.)

Yes, I waste time in forlorn hope that fresh ideas will influence a party that – while they are the good-guys in this era of vicious national strife – are arthritic/calcified in their tactical and polemical rigidity. Still, a few folks out there appear sufficiently immune to the Zorblaxxian Lobotomy Ray to actually read and comment cogently. 

Here’s one fellow whose Substack appraisal of my “Newer Deal” is not just coherently lucid. It riffs fresh perspectives about what's happened to American conservatism, plummeting from the erudite honesty of William F. Buckley to the clever hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich, to Sarah Palin's dizzy unsapience, to the vile purity of Trumpism. 

Heck, go read him instead of me. While flattering -- he calls me a "political gadfly with a blog that reads like Thomas Paine crossed with a frustrated systems engineer" -- the fellow is also incisive: "if you can’t get 60% of Americans to nod along, you’re not doing politics. You’re doing wishful thinking. And wishful thinking, however righteous, loses elections."*** There's even a short summary of some of my proposals that impressed him most. 

But on with this slog! I gave the full list of proposals in Part Three. Then, in parts 4-8, I dissect and appraise most of them - from IGUS (Inspector General of the United States) to subpoena powers for the Congressional minority, to sunsetting secrets and NDAs, to restoring in-Congress expertise that Newt Gingrich banned, so that uppity nerds could not utter the words that no Republican wants to hear: "Um, sir or madam, that's not true."

Now in Part 9 let's serve up a few more, so we can wrap up my year-end daydream... that anyone will listen.

 == Gerrymandering ==

By now we're all familiar with the desperately-evil way politicians steal powers that belong to the People. I cheered when Californians - urged by moderate GOP governor Schwarzenegger - ended the vile practice by popular referendum, as have a number of other blue states... but effectively no red ones. And those lopsided efforts put the absolute lie to Republican claims that 'everybody does it.'  (As it's been blue states leading the way in ending the damned Drug War.)

So, Maryland and Illinois gerrymander too? And now California has retaliated vs. the obscenely shameless voter rape by the Texas GOP? 

BFD. Just watch. If they ever get a chance, Democrats will ban it, nationwide! As I propose here:

END GERRYMANDERING!  We shall return the legislative branch to the people, by finding a solution to an indefensible cheat that lets politicians choose voters, instead of the other way around.  We shall encourage and insist that states do this in an evenhanded manner, either by using independent redistricting commissions or else by innovative and inherently fair means, like minimizing overlap between state legislature districts and those for Congress. 

 

Since in many districts, the majority party primary is the only election that matters, we shall act to see to it that all citizens in such a district may get to vote in that election, regardless of party registration.

 

Newly elected members of Congress with credentials from their states shall be sworn in by impartial clerks of either the House or Senate, without partisan bias, and at the new member’s convenience. 

The House may be called into session, with or without action by the Speaker, at any time that a petition is submitted to the Chief Clerk that was signed by 40% of the members. 

That last couple of paragraphs was added to address recent, outrageously turpitudinous behavior by "Speaker" Mike Johnson in the fall of 2025.

Note: 1) The Senate remains inherently gerrymandered to favor small states with extra power. (We needed TWO Dakotas?) Forget changing that, for now. Concentrate on reminding farmers why their grandparents loved Franklin Roosevelt.

2) John Roberts and ilk will continue concocting contorted rationalizations to allow continuation of gerrymandering's massive cheat. Hence, elsewhere I offer innovative ways to get around the "Roberts Doctrine" that wriggle-justifies letting state legislators rob their own citizens of voting power. See a general deep-dive ... and this never-seen-elsewhere proposal!

== Defend the enemy they hate most 

      -- their enemy called fact ==

Some years ago the Internet Caucus of the California Democratic Party asked me to write -- and publicly present -- a piece of 'futuristic legislation." While tempted to address changes in the Outer Space Treaty that we discussed at NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC) - or at the Space Development Conference...

... I chose instead to try out something hugely science fictional... encouraging Americans to rediscover something called Objective Reality!  

Summarized and condensed, here it is.

 THE FACT ACT: The Fact Act will begin by restoring the media Rebuttal Rule, prying open "echo chamber" propaganda mills so that assertions may at least be briefly challenged by opponents. 

Any channel, or station, or Internet podcast, or meme distributor that accepts advertising or reaches more than 10,000 followers will be required to offer five minutes per day during prime time and ten minutes at other times to reputable 'vigorous adversaries.' Until other methods are negotiated, each member of Congress shall get to choose one such vigorous adversary, ensuring that all perspectives may be involved. 

Those 535 groups will get equal numbers of subpoenas to forge forth and challenge echo chambers, so that they may then supply further material evidence on their public sites. And those adversary sites will be subject to this same rebuttal rule.

 

The Fact Act will further fund experimental Fact-Challenges, where major public disagreements may be openly and systematically debated and adversaries reciprocally confronted with demands for specific evidence.

 

The Fact Act will restore full funding and staffing and autonomy to both the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the executive Office of Science and Technology Policy (OTSP). 

Every member of Congress shall be funded to hire a science and fact advisor from their home district, who may interrogate the advisory bodies – an advisor who may also answer questions of fact on the member’s behalf. 

 

This bill further requires that the President must fill, by law, the position of White House Science Adviser from a diverse and bipartisan slate of qualified candidates offered by the Academy of Science. The Science Adviser shall have uninterrupted access to the President for at least two one-hour sessions per month.

^{And yes, I know parts of this will never pass. But notice the common theme for at least half of my proposals. Not only will they sound reasonable to 60%+ of average, voting people, but they are nearly all about ensuring the continuation of the 'secret sauce' of our enlightenment experiment.}

^{Accountability.}

                      ^{== VOTER ID ==}

^{STOP OPPOSING THIS! It's a trap to make us look bad.} 

^{Sure, confederates want to use Voter ID laws to repress voting by poor US citizens, as with their old tricks like poll taxes. (They have never shown appreciable evidence of significant non-citizen voting.) Still, blanket rejection of voter ID is just walking into a trap.  Stop reacting out of reflex!}

^{Instead, we must point to the hypocrisy! That these same states are currently closing DMV and state services offices in districts with Democratic voters.  The exact places to get that ID they need!}

^{Hence, the GOPper cheaters aren't aiming at honesty or verification, but repression!} Moreover, when it is put to folks this way, you can be sure that millions will grasp the difference. And give us that 60%+.

^{Also note, helping poor US citizens to get their ID resolved is a great way to help them stop being poor! Helping them to rise up in the world. And also, it will help protect U.S. citizens from abuse by ICE!}

^{Let's be seen as the ones offering fair and just solutions.}

 

THE VOTER ID ACT: Under the 13th and 14th Amendments, this act requires that states mandating Voter ID requirements must offer substantial and effective compliance assistance, helping affected citizens to acquire their entitled legal ID and register to vote. 

 

Any state that fails to provide such assistance, substantially reducing the fraction of eligible citizens turned away at the polls, shall be assumed to be in violation of equal protection and engaged in illegal voter suppression. 

If such compliance assistance has been vigorous and effective for ten years, then that state may institute requirements for Voter ID.     

     

In all states, registration for citizens to vote shall be automatic with a driver’s license, or passport, or state-issued ID, unless the citizen opts-out.

Any state that 'purges' its voter rolls must first attempt to contact affected voters, both via their registered address and, using modern technologies, conveying such notification to them via any accessible change-of-address process, such as used by the Postal Service.

Note that "compliance assistance" has long been a demand by Republicans, whenever a new regulation puts any kind of burden on corporations or rich individuals. There's ample precedent for insisting that the principle also apply, when burdens are imposed upon the poor.

Dig it again: do not fall for their traps!  They are the ones doing electoral cheating of all kinds. Don't give them a chance to point at us.

            == EQUAL VOTING RIGHTS FOR THE HOUSE! ==

As I said, there is an inherent 'gerrymander bias', imposed upon us by the Constitution, in apportionment of seats in the U.S. Senate. And while I'd amend that bias away, if I could, I can't... we can't... so stop whining about it. OR about the Electoral College!**

But the the House of Representative is a different story. As the Senate represents states, the House is supposed to represent the People with utter fairness. And it doesn't, because of a silly law (not in the Constitution) from the 1920s. Which was incidentally the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan.

 And so...

THE WYOMING RULE: Congress shall end the arrangement (under the  Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929) that perpetually limits the House of Representatives to 435 members. Instead, it will institute the Wyoming Rule, that the least-populated state shall get one representative and all other states will be apportioned representatives according to their population by full-integer multiples of the smallest state's population. The Senate’s inherent bias favoring small states should be enough. In the House, all citizens should get votes of equal value. 

Note a few things. The newest members would be tight for office space! But technology should let up to 600 representatives vote, just fine. It would bring reps closer to their now-fewer constituents. And yes, urban voters would see some relief from their wholly unjustifiable under-representation in the House.

Oh, and yes, this would affect the Electoral College. By a bit. Not tons. But some.

** And there are things we can do about the Electoral College other than the silly National Popular Vote Compact. We can discuss those elsewhere. But they do not fall under the 60%+ Rule.

          == Housing and Rural Citizens ==

 

THE RURAL AMERICA AND HOUSING ACT: Giant corporations and cartels are using predatory practices to unfairly corner, control or force-out family farms and small rural businesses. We shall upgrade FDR-era laws that saved the American heartland for the people who live and work there, producing the nation’s food. Subsidies and price supports shall only go to family farms or co-ops. Monopolies in fertilizer, seeds, machinery and other supplies will be broken up and replaced by competition. Living and working and legal conditions for farm workers and food processing workers will be improved by steady public and private investments.

Cartels that buy-up America’s stock of homes and home-builders will be investigated for collusion to limit construction and/or drive up rents and home prices and appropriate legislation will follow. 

These final two are pretty much self-explanatory. And heck yes, the Rural America Act is a blatant effort to persuade farmers and such to ask their grandparents about FDR.

The next one speaks for itself. If expressed right, sustainability can come under the 60%+ rule.

                      == Sustainability ==

THE SUSTAINABILITY ACT will make it America’s priority to pioneer technological paths toward energy independence, emphasizing economic health that also conserves both national and world resources.  Ambitious efficiency and conservation standards may be accompanied by compromise free market solutions that emphasize a wide variety of participants, with the goal of achieving more with less, while safeguarding the planet for our children.

        == Getting near the end ==

Okay, enough for this session. But me reiterate a core point...

... that our biggest problem right now is to patch the damage done to America's systems of accountability, deliberation, negotiation, resilience and pragmatic problem-solving! Problem solving by the People and by honest representatives, who are adults and sincere citizens.  And hence, most of these proposals are about that...

..while passing the 60%+ test. Reforms that are so blatantly reasonable that they might bridge simplistic partisan chasms and draw nods of support from most decent folks.  And hence... their votes.

Do we want more?  You'll get more! As in the miracle year of 2021-22, when Pelosi+Schumer etc. allied with Bernie, Liz, AOC and their wing to pass some really excellent bills!  They concentrated mostly on governing -- infrastructure and taxation, better bureaucracy and bringing home domestic manufacturing. All of them great priorities!  And if you get all children under Medicare (one of these proposals) then the rest becomes inevitable.

Only, alas...

...what we need right now, above all, is a heap of reforms to save the very notions of democracy and accountable law, themselves... and even the very concept of things called facts.

Hence, those aims have been our top emphasis, here.  We'd be weathering the Trumpian psychotic episode far better, if some of these simple measures had been in place, when a perverted tyrant-toddler took over the helm of our great ship-of-state, steering it toward rocks.

 In Part Ten we'll round out some of the last items from the agenda that I've offered in this series. Including -- yes -- some of the stuff you hyper-liberals want on the agenda.

And sure. Some of those things are pretty urgent, too. Just as soon as we cement-in the survival of any sort of decent republic, at all.

======================================

======================================

*** When "Mongoose" says that you need 60% to 'do politics' he's talking about now, amid phase 9 of the US Civil War, when we have deeply opposing 'sides' and the art of negotiating has long been shredded by one of those sides. And one of those sides is entirely responsible. Look up Dennis "friend to boys" Hastert, the criminal perv whom Republicans elevated to head of their party and Speaker and two heartbeats from presidency. The "Hastert Rule" forbade any Republican officeholder from ever again negotiating in good faith with a Democrat, or even having one as a friend. And politics - as an art of listening, negotiating and occasional compromise - died that day in America.

Perhaps someday we'll return to the maturity of when Americans with just 40% support will be heard and get to make practical tradeoffs with their neighbors in positive sum ways. It may take a space mission to destroy that Zorblaxxian Lobotomy Ray that's been shining down on this country for some time, now.

Science Fiction: big picture perspectives - and potential nominees for YA fiction!

Diverting attention from rumors of war... and even Cool War scenarios predicted by our genre, (ignored by today's press), let's dive into aspects of the state of science fiction today.

First announcing: I am pleased to be a guest speaker and teacher at the 2022 Odyssey Writing Workshop for rising authors of science fiction and fantasy! Six scholarships available; application deadline is April 1. And I again I offer free advice for rising authors on my website.

And here are eight books about what it means to be human, including Sarah Galley's The Echo Wife, Mur Lafferty's Six Wakes, Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, as well as Kiln People: "The plot hits all the high points of a standard P.I. pulp novel in an entertaining way, but to me the fun part is the way Brin wrestles with the morality of creating armies of sentient creatures whose only hope in life is to live long enough to contribute a few memories back to their creators."

 == Does greater acceptance of SF threaten it? ==

Should we be both pleased and worried that science fiction is now in very good odor, in the literary-arty communities? 

Until very recently, the New Yorker and Harpers and The Atlantic would regularly run hit pieces dissing the genre! Now, hardly a month passes without them - and NPR - doing SF roundups or glowing reviews! (Such as this recent New Yorker one on K.S. Robinson.)  Is it related - or coincidence - that similar grand toutings of SF pour across media centered in Beijing?

I do not draw simplistic conclusions. There are many factors. I'll only posit that SF has always been the genre most-welcoming of diverse creators of impudently questioning art. Its continued work, pioneering that trend is a central feature and pride.

What I will do is announce to Worldcon voters that I have two series of YA or Young Adult novels that qualify for consideration for for the Hugo Awards. Nominations are now open, to be given at the much anticipated World Science Fiction Convention, Chicon,

These two optimistic and enthralling YA series are also eligible for SFWA members to consider for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction!  

In the "Out of Time" series only teens can teleport through time and space! Dollops of fun, adventure... and optimism for a change! Out of Time novels so far have been written by SF legends Nancy Kress and Sheila Finch along with newcomers October Santerelli and Patrick Freivald, emphasizing diversity, progress, adventure, friendship, courage and hope.

In my more personal YA series...The Colony High series... aliens kidnap a California high school and come to regret it! 

SFWA members -- and Hugo nominator-members of Worldcon -- write to me and I will happily send over all five published novels in the Out of Time series. And more are in the queue, by a diversity of young talents!

== Getting serious! ==

"We need more parables of what’s possible.“ So begins a list of novels that portray humanity rising to meet ecological challenges, instead of just wringing hands in despair. An excellent compilation in Forbes! I feel in good company. Guess about-which book the following is said?

“A large cast of colourful and carefully outlined characters help us navigate a world where the planet’s days are numbered. An artificial black hole has fallen into the Earth’s core, prompting a story that addresses issues including endangered species, global warming, climate refugees and how we adapt and still find adventure. Woven into its pages are many predictions, many of which – tablet computers, sea level rise, eyeglass cameras – have already come true…” writes Solitaire Townsend of Earth.

Meanwhile, an interesting essay and reading list on The Strategy Bridge site appraises how useful and liberating science fiction can be to the strategic thinker. The authors touch upon several topics I explore in Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood, such as the role of dire warnings in helping prevent bad things (like nuclear apocalypse) but also the role SF can play in offering scenarios for hope and positive outcomes:

“Reading science fiction nurtures hope that there is a better future. While conflict, catastrophe, and climate change feature in many of these novels and movies, much science fiction is highly optimistic in nature. Uplifting stories of positive futures—or of hope and agency in the face of dystopian futures—fill national security professionals with optimism that we can drive our services to make positive possibilities happen.

“… Science fiction permits individuals and organizations to nurture innovative thinking without running afoul of organizational cultures. Because it is fiction it does not interfere with current policies, providing a safe place for ideas that do not threaten current institutional rice bowls—but they might and should in the future.”

While I might have suggested some additions and changes to the suggested reading list, it is nevertheless a very good sign that leaders in so many sectors of life - including defense - now understand the importance of the literary genre that contemplates change.

== More sci fi news ==

In Mashable, Chris Taylor offers an exceptionally cogent comparison of the recent hit Station Eleven (based on the novel by Emily St. John Mandel) to The Postman and much else in the post-apocalypse genre. This Mashable review is interesting in its discussion of what it might take to bring down civilization with, say, a virus. And how our Covid Trauma was so vastly milder than any pandemic of science fiction. And even at worst, a mere plague seems unlikely to do the job, all by itself. I do quibble over one thing, though...

... that in The Postman the fall was not ONLY due to nuclear war. That calamity merely slays 70% or so. But it does wreck our deeply competent institutions, so we become vulnerable to a triple whammy of following blows - disease and climate chaos... and finally onslaught by waves of ultra right-wing militias, bent on recreating feudalism... what the worst males always have done, in rocky times.

That it would take all four to blast everything down was a key point to my story, because I always deemed 'single failure' apocalypse tales to be simplistic, under-rating our civilization's inherent resilience.

And so, in a way, I suppose I agree with Mr. Taylor. We are much, much tougher than the romantic extremes of far left or entire right say we are. At least... we had better be.

== Repeating an appeal ==

We already have plenty... but if you are both a video game player and a reader of fine SF novels, it would be a favor to write to me with any specific overlaps you spot between The Postman and the hugely lucrative game Death Stranding. Specifics in the details, please. We already have a pile, plus dozens of published reviews commenting on the overlaps of themes and plots.

== SF Miscellany ==

Advance order this short story collection: The Best of Harry Turtledove. It’s coming out in April from Subterranean Press. Sub press is on a roll! I'll post about this. Six months ago they did The Best of David Brin stories... my best stuff! 

A pretty good list of “the 20 best apocalypse novels.” Though with some inaccuracies. Like 1997 was the year of the Postman movie, not the 1986 novel. Still, you can do worse in picking beautifully depressing (or in a couple of cases inspiring/elevating) winter reading.

Tales From The Bridge: All Things Sci-Fi: Episode 23: A Conversation with David Brin. A pretty good recent interview about SF trends and SETI and METI and the future and whether we're going to save the worlds ourselves.

At times I get to announce fine new authors who get overlooked by the righteously narrowly-focused SF community and media leaders of this decade. I was pleased to praise Sue Burke’s Semiosis, a few years back, which boldly used a sequence of varied character-novellas to trace centuries of human adaptation to a planet whose top, intelligent life forms are plants. 

Last year I praised The Last Human, by Zack Jordan, set after our species terrified the galaxy and went deservedly extinct, as an indomitable girl and her unlikely foster mother navigate a hugely diverse civilization seemingly determined to finish the job.

Now another – Run Lab Rat – impressed me with the sheer vigor of its extrapolation of human augmentation, a topic I’ve been talking a lot about lately to fretful leaders in industry, defense and governments.  Shawn Butler’s novel has a dystopian premise… that our children give up on the 250 year notion of inherent equality. But this sets up a better-than-hunger-games plot for its perseverant heroine to overcome.

Oh, another. The thing about Howard Hendrix’s short fiction collection The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes, the writing is first rate! But yeah, sure. These truly are sense-a-wonder Analog Stories!

Almost done posting POLEMICAL JUDO! But here are some vital final features.

 I had hopes that self-publishing my book of 100+ unusual/agile political tactics a year before the 2020 elections would give time for some of the ideas to percolate to the political and punditry castes who might use a few effectively. I should have known better. There are no stronger guild-protection rackets going than the corps of political advisors surrounding every representative, senator and candidate... even the good guys. And they are pikers compared to the closed-shop enforcers who rigidly control the op-ed pages.

That complaint is orthogonal to our current crises, but it exacerbates the dullard incompetence of the democratic/moderate/liberal, scientific-ethical coalition's leadership at turning what could have been a tsunami into a nail-biter. Even if this election turns out to be a 'landslide" against the Putin-Murdoch cult... it could have been spectacularly better.

But we persevere. I'll be finishing these chapter postings and spend the last two weeks ranting and praying, along with everyone else, looking forward to the scenes of celebration November 4, when a billion people around the world spill into the streets in celebration.

Last time we finished Chapter 13... 'What would adults do?' laying out dozens of concepts for governance that could efficiently achieve reform and end the cheating, some of them both surprising and trivially easy.

 Next would be Chapter 14: Our 250 year Family Feud -  Phase 8 of the Civil War? where I explain how this recurring national fever has erupted many times, ever since 1780. (What we call the "Civil War" was only phase 4, though a bad one... as is this phase we're in.) But that topic was already covered in a blog posting, and many of you have seen it before, so let's move on.

This time let's post from the "mini-sections" I arrayed between main chapters of the book. Again remember this was published last November 2019... This one offers capsules that might yet - even this late - help in some polemical battles over the remaining supply of undecideds or sway-ables out there.

Mini-section #1 for…

One-Liners, Zingers and “tl;dr” Quick-memes

  

I. ZINGERS & ONE-LINERS: Meme grenades distilled from chapters.

 

-  “MAGA? Okay wise guy, when do you claim America was greater than today?” Hint: when they say “the 1950s….” pounce! (See Polemical Judo Chapter 3.)

 

- “Fake News problem?” Why do no voices on the right offer to help moderates and professionals to set up an impartial fact-checking service? If all current ones are ‘biased,’ will you name ten eminent and widely respected conservatives to join a commission, charged with helping design acceptable and competing fact-services? What, you can’t name any? (Chapter 5.)

 

- “Fake News Fix.” If you hijackers of the right won’t propose august, respect-worthy American conservatives to serve on such panels, then we will. Retired justices, retired admirals, Nobel winners, or almost any citizen of Utah![1] Folks who may differ from us over markets and regulation – even about guns – but who agree that ‘facts are things’ and Nazis are bad… and that we need a way out of the poison fog of lies. (Chapter 5.)

 

- “Deep State?” Which seems more likely? A ‘conspiracy’ by ten million scientists, journalists, teachers, doctors, civil servants, FBI agents, intel and military officers - the same folks who defeated Hitler, stymied Stalin and won the Cold War and the War on Terror? Or that just five thousand golf buddies in an incestuous CEO caste connive secretly with Wall Streeters, casino moguls, foreign despots and inheritance brats? (Chapters 8 & 10.)

 

- Adam Smith, the core founder of both market economics and liberalism, would today be a flaming Democrat. (Chapters 3, 10 & 11.)

 

- Who’s a commie? How many times must Donald Trump hold secret debriefing sessions with communist despots - or conveniently "ex" communist dictators who grew up reciting Marx - without any reputable U.S. officials present - before you'll admit something fishy is going on? 

 

- Vladimir Putin called the fall of the USSR “history’s greatest tragedy.” All of today’s Russian oligarchs were raised reciting Leninist catechisms. The KGB transitioned without a hiccup. But you folks call them all great guys.[2] Sure, they dropped the hammers and sickles, but surely you didn’t fall for a trick of symbolism? Because nothing else changed. (Postponed for Volume 2.)

 

- Wanna bet? Oh, glaciers are advancing? Would you put an actual money wager on any of your ravings, from climate change to inaugural crowds to those mighty Trumpian accomplishments? (In Chapter 15 we’ll see that demanding wagers, rather than being an immature stunt, actually works ferociously well.)[3]

 

-  Wrong, almost always. "Tobacco is harmless,” “Cars don't cause smog,” “No seat belts in cars!” and “Keep lead in gasoline!” then McCarthyism, Burning Rivers, the insane War on Drugs, mass incarceration and Supply Side voodoo... the list of wrong, wrong, wrong is endless. Can you offer times when the GOP was provably/decisively right? Actually, I can! A couple of times. But there’s been so much more wrong. (Chapter 6.)

 

- Conspiracy Theories: show us any of the ones you keep changing and then dropping, that ever proved decisively true? There are conspiracies that pass half a dozen “sniff tests.” But not many. (Chapter 7.) 

 

- IGUS. The recent Whistleblower Crises revealed weakness in one of our major bulwarks of clean government, as the seventy-four Inspectors General of federal departments and agencies endure unprecedented meddling and bullying – or else mal-appointment – by Republican politicians. In Chapters 5 and 10 we’ll see how to restore autonomous oversight by bringing them all under an independent office of the Inspector General of the United States[4] (IGUS), along with other reforms including the Fact Act.[5]

 

- Obamacare was the Republicans’ own damn plan! Cooked up by the Heritage Foundation,[6]it was on GOP platforms through the 90s and enacted in Massachusetts by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney.[7] Now Republicans call their own plan satanic. Which is worse? That hypocrisy? Or failure of any Democrats to mention it?

 

- And by the way… where’s the alternative health insurance plan that Republicans have promised for … what now? Eleven years? Any day now.

 

- Judges and taxes? Millions of U.S. conservatives who are ashamed of all the rest – Trumpism, bigotry, climate denialism, cheating, lies, trashing our alliances and blatant cozying with tyrants – justify their hold-my-nose loyalty to the GOP in one incantation: “judges and taxes.” But if every other fruit is poisonous, might the whole tree?

 

- Aren’t you curious… even a little… about those tax returns? Or Deutsche Bank funneling Trump loans from Russian oligarchs? The contents of David Pecker’s National Enquirer safe ought to fill any American with flaming, nonpartisan curiosity, along with the scores of Non Disclosure Agreements (NDA) that Donald Trump openly brags about.[8] What happened to “We deserve to know!”

 

II. TACTICS DEMOCRATS COULD TRY… TOMORROW:

 

- Some congressional committee could unleash a tsunami of revelations just by offering full protection and immunity for testimony from anyone who has an NDA - or Non-Disclosure Agreement - with Donald Trump. Trump has bragged about his Great Wall of punitive-protective NDAs. Shatter it and let the revelations spill. (Michael Cohen will tell you whom to approach.)

 

- Assume Chief Justice John Roberts will use the Court’s right wing majority to uphold his clever new Roberts Doctrine of "no-interference between the legislative and executive," or non-justiciability, thus allowing GOP henchmen to passively refuse House subpoenas on lame and unprecedented excuses. They think fait accompli resistance will stymie investigation and oversight. But there's a judo move that Schiff and Nadler and Pelosi can try. It means appealing to the Fourth Branch of government. It would work.[9]

 

- Immaturity alert! This one is almost… Trumpian. But imagine if one mid level Democratic politician were to hold a news conference denouncing fellow Democrats for their unsympathetic pestering of an addled-volatile old man who clearly qualifies for extra care and kindness under the Americans with Disabilities Act... I mean it. Paul Krugman and Nancy Pelosi have come close. But go all the way.[10] Close your eyes and imagine that being drawn out, again and again. Even those who don't 'get it' at first will catch on when Trump responds with volcanic fury, ironically proving it's true! What a tweet-storm that would trigger, hysteria that undermines his one pillar of support – the superficial appearance of “strength.” (Chapter 15.)

 

- More immaturity: Bush and Trump and others on that side love to hurl nicknames. And yes, as grownups we avoid schoolyard bully ploys. Still, if you go there, I recommend using “Old Two Scoops.” It’s not overtly sneering or mean or obscene. But it mocks the pompous preening of a narcissistic character trait – emblematic of aristocracy – that even the reddest booster can’t defend.

 

III. WAGER DARES FOR TRUMP: Hey you major public figures or late night hosts: instead of reacting every week to the next distraction outrage, then the next, try openly and repeatedly challenging Donald Trump to:

 

- accept a medical exam by skilled doctors he can’t control, 

 

- prove his “stable genius IQ” with a panel of simple tests applied by professionals chosen randomly,

 

- waive IRS privacy rules enough for them to at least say publicly whether or not there’s an audit, 

 

- roll dice and randomly pick any week’s top five accusations of “fake news” for a jury of respected Americans to audit in detail (see Chapter 5). Or even randomly chosen Americans. 

 

- prove the birther thing, at long last. That Obama’s parents planted – all the way from Kenya – birth announcements in Hawaiian newspapers, or to  golf less than Obama.  Or to pay the money he owes every city where he held a rally.[11] Make that a money bet, right now, 

 

- or swear never again to be alone with foreign despots without trusted American witnesses present.

 

It’s not that any one such demand will be transformative, or even become an actual wager – none of them will (for reasons given in Chapter 15). Alas, no Democratic politician or pundit seems to understand the power of repetition and persistent hammering, despite having witnessed Trump use that method to great effect. 

 

 

IV. WAGER-DARES FOR OTHER REPUBLICANS: A bit different, these in-yer-face challenges are for your confederate cousins. Demands for real-money bets will send most of them backpedaling. Or else (rarely) persuade one to resume viewing at facts as real things. (See Chapters 5, 11, 13, and especially 15). And yes, some of these will be repeated, later in the book.

 

- How many Trump appointees and associates started out described by him as 'great guys,' who later 'betrayed' him? I bet it’s more than any ten other presidents. Whatever the anecdotal merits or turpitudes of any particular case, will you admit it proves he's a lousy judge of character?

 

- Put money on military readiness. Which political party generally leaves U.S. defenses, alliances and resilience in better shape than how they found them? Which party nearly always leaves the American military worse off than before they took over? (And yes, it is the GOP. See pause#10.)

 

- Quick, name a Republican top leader between Reagan and Ryan who was mentioned at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Neither Bush president, nor Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Hastert, DeLay, Romney, McCain… not even mentioned. All “ancient history.” But if you disavow those past Republican administrations, then where is your party’s credibility?

 

- I bet you can’t name a fact-profession not being warred upon by Fox & Accomplices. Even one. (Chapter 5.)

 

- Name one Supply Side “economics” prediction that ever came true. That tax cuts for the rich would be invested in R&D and new factories? That they result in increased revenue and reduced deficits? That they achieve anything other than asset bubbles, collapsed money velocity and skyrocketing wealth disparities? Name one reason we should trust a supply sider with a wet match? (Chapter 11.)

 

- The rate of change of the rate of change of debt was positive (toward reckless acceleration) during almost every year of every Republican administration (post Eisenhower). It was negative (braking the rate of deficit growth gradually toward prudence) in every year of every Democratic administration (post Johnson). How does that fit the GOP’s last ditch justification… that they are the prudent, pragmatic ones?  (Chapter 11.)

 

- Across the last 25 years, the GOP either controlled Congress, or else could thwart it, for all but two. Care to name any positive accomplishments? Not wars or tax gifts to the rich, but major adjustments to law or even major de-regulations? (Chapter 10.)

 

- And again and again. Put money on Trumpian lies for any given day. Pick at random day in the near future.

 

 

V. SLIGHTLY LONGER MEME BOMBS: Also in chapters, with longer summaries.

 

- What if Obama did it? “WODI” can be effective. Every day, your “ostrich” Republican shrugs aside some antic that would have sent them ballistic, if done by Clinton or Obama. A decent bar bet would be to say in advance “Next Thursday let’s try out WODI on that day’s Trump travesty.” It only works on a gal or guy who has a shred of remaining honesty or honor.

 

- Clinton or Obama-related “investigations” – after a quarter of a century and half a billion dollars – and never a stonewalled refusal of testimony – congrats. You proved a husband fibbed about some adult-consensual (while still inappropriate) infidelity and the wife was caught using the same sort of somewhat improper email system as Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Mike Pence, George Bush, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. That’s it. After 25 years without proof, where’s your cred?

 

- Answer both right and left critics of Pax Americana. If the U.S. had behaved like all other empires and imposed mercantilist trade patterns after WWII, then America would have no debt today. Its cities would gleam and factories hum. The country would swim in gold...but hope and prosperity in the larger world would be ruined by the same short-sighted greed that brought down Babylon, Persia, Rome, Pax Sinica, Pax Britannia etc. And when we finally fell, it would be in a tumult of well-deserved wrath. But we didn’t do what all those empires did. We did something very different. (Chapter 9.)

 

- Mitch McConnell’s declaration that no judges should be appointed or confirmed in an election year, then chortling he’ll pass anyone nominated by Trump in 2020… a perfect example of how one complaint – or a few – can be shrugged off as whining. But a concerted campaign of mockery….[12]

 

- Offer an amnesty for Americans now enslaved by blackmail.  It’s speculative! Perhaps no one will step up… or perhaps too many to count… in which case it’s unlikely, amid a tsunami of revelation, that our scheming enemies will survive. As we’ll see in Chapter 8, the long range victory condition for our kind of civilization is a future world that’s filled with open-fair competition, calm negotiation, but above all… light.

 

 

 

* DON’T FOR A MINUTE THINK WE’VE FORGOTTEN…

 

That’s but a sampler list, offered for those who find an actual book “TLDR.” 

 

For the rest of you, hang in there. Chapter 15 will dive into the effectiveness of wager-demands, even – especially - when the other side weasels and refuses to bet! The tactic corners them anyway, by their own macho standards.  It destroys the illusion of macho “strength.” And there will be other distilled “meme bomb” collections, especially near the end of the book.

 

Finally… here’s a challenge that I’ll reiterate many times – in chapters 6 and 12 and 13 – aimed at every dogmatic purist out there:

 

Are you actually asserting that you are absolutely 100% right, with no margin of error?

 

And yes, this question can bedevil purists of the left as well as the right. Dig it (and this is good news!) Your enemies are likely no more than 99% wrong! Possibly as little as 90%. Moreover, have you the character strength to sift through your opponents’ maelstrom of “wrongness” for those slivers where they actually have a point? 

 

We’ll come back to this. It’s not just about being the mature person. Entering and understanding your adversary’s head is a key ingredient that Sun Tzu recommended… for achieving victory.

There's still time to use some of these!!

footnotes

---

[1] This will come up again. Utah is probably the largest concentration of RASRs – Residually Adult Sane Republicans –disgusted, even outraged, by the Trumpian travesties. Outreach by moderate-liberal America would seem timely, even overdue. 

 

[2] The Right’s romance with Russia: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/false-romance-russia/603433/

 

[3] As Christopher Walken’s character in Blast From The Past dubiously observes, when told that the Kremlin had simply dropped communist revolution – or at least all the surfaces and incantations: “You got to hand it to them,” he said, with errie brevity.

 

[4] The Inspector General of the United States http://davidbrin.com/nonfiction/inspectorgeneral.html

 

[5] The FACT Act: http://davidbrin.com/nonfiction/factact.html

 

[6]  See the signing ceremony, April 12, 2006, for the crowning achievement of Mitt Romney's governorship – a health insurance plan that was the template for the Affordable Care Act. The head of the Heritage Foundation crows over the role his group played in designing "Romneycare" based in the earlier Republican Party Health Plan for individual mandates and insurance buying markets or "exchanges" that originated at the Heritage think tank and that was touted as a way to use market forces to solve the problem of the uninsured.  http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/04/10/90621/heritage-romneycare/

 

[7] Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/04/10/90621/heritage-romneycare/

 

[8] Karen McDougal released from her NDA: https://www.spin.com/2018/04/karen-mcdougal-nda-agreement-american-media/

 

[9] As of pub date, 10-25-19, it appears that civil servants are taking matters into their own hands, not waiting for Congressional subpoenas to step forward. I don’t mind seeing some of my “judo Suggestions” bypassed in such ways. We’ll be saved by heroes.

 

[10] In October 2019, Nobelist Paul Krugman wrote: “I don’t mean that Trump is stupid; a stupid man couldn’t have managed to defraud so many people over so many years. Nor do I mean that he’s crazy, although his speeches and tweets – ‘my great and unmatched wisdom,’ the Kurds weren’t there on D-Day – keep sounding loonier.” Krugman adds, however, that Trump is “lazy, utterly incurious and too insecure to listen to advice or ever admit to a mistake. And given that he is, in fact, what he accuses others of being – an enemy of the people – we should be thankful for his flaws.” Well… we’ll see. The same week, on Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update host Michael Che voiced (brilliantly) a meme I had been spreading about a new and clever way to deal with the weird-crazed phenomenon of Donald Trump. ““I don't know how to ask this, but are we sure that it's OK to make fun of this guy?” he asked. “Did you ever read Of Mice and Men? Remember how Lenny was really ‘strong?’ What if Trump is really strong? I've got a cousin who is also strong. And he loves alligators too, but we don't make fun of him.” https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/paul-krugman-trumps-mental-deficiency-may-actually-save-us-from-disaster-as-he-keeps-sounding-loonier/

 

[11] Minneapolis mayor: We saw Trump stiffing cities for his rallies, so we told him to pay up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/12/minneapolis-mayor-we-saw-trump-stiffing-cities-his-other-rallies-so-we-told-him-pay-up/

 

[12] Old fashioned terms like honor, courage, dedication, devotion, integrity, etc. These are core values for a lot of people. And they await rescue from hypocrites who have stolen them.