Tag: politics
-
Do Unto Others Part 5: What This Means for Democracy
When Shared Reality Dissolves, Only Power Remains Introduction: The Foundation Is Cracking Democracy rests on three pillars that most Americans take for granted: Over the course of this series, we’ve documented how all three pillars are systematically eroding. Part 1 showed empathy has become transactional – Melissa Hortman gets “I don’t know who she was,”…
Written by
-
Do Unto Others Part 4: Flooding the Zone
When Lies Work Better Than Truth After documenting transactional empathy (Part 1), Stage 2 moral reasoning (Part 2), and asymmetric hypocrisy (Part 3), one question remains: How does this actually work in practice? The answer is documented. It’s called the “firehose of falsehood,” and it’s a propaganda technique pioneered by authoritarian regimes. Specifically, Vladimir Putin’s…
Written by
-
Do Unto Others Part 3: Both Sides Are Hypocrites
But the Hypocrisy Differs in Depth and Kind After two parts documenting transactional empathy and Stage 2 moral reasoning, a predictable objection arises: “Both sides do it.” This is true. Both parties exhibit hypocrisy. Both say one thing and do another. Both claim to represent working people while serving corporate donors. But the question isn’t…
Written by
-
Do Unto Others Part 2: “My Own Morality”
When the Only Limit Is Yourself ________________________________________________________________________________ On January 8, 2026, President Trump sat down with The New York Times. Asked about constraints on his power, he gave an answer that deserves examination: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I don’t need…
Written by
-
Term Limits: Why This Popular Idea Could Make Things Worse (And Who’s Really Pushing It)
I Used to Think This Was a Great Idea I’ll be honest: I was sympathetic to term limits. Like most Americans, I’m exhausted by career politicians who seem completely out of touch. The frustration is real: So term limits sound great, right? Fresh blood, new ideas, less corruption! But then I thought: With how things…
Written by
-
VOTING REFORM: Analyzing Every Voting System We Could Find. Here’s What Might Actually Work to Break the Two-Party Stranglehold.
We’re All Trapped Voting AGAINST Candidates Instead of FOR Anyone When’s the last time you actually wanted to vote for someone? For most of us, voting has become damage control. We’re not voting FOR our candidate—we’re voting AGAINST the one that scares us more. About 70% of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction.…
Written by
-
Do Unto Others Part 1: When Empathy Becomes Transactional
Who Deserves Sympathy? The Politics of Victimhood A Note Before We Begin If this feels like an attack on Trump, I need to address that upfront. I tried to write this like an outside observer would—documenting what happened without partisan spin. I looked for examples across the political spectrum. I stuck to things that actually…
Written by
-
Divided We Fall Part 10: The Freedom Fraud: Crime, Corporations, and Schools
When “Freedom” Means Government Control American conservatives claim to champion freedom. Small government. Individual liberty. Free markets. Get government out of our lives. Don’t tread on me. But look at what’s actually happening in Republican-controlled states: Governments telling businesses who they can hire and how they can operate. Governments dictating what teachers can teach and…
Written by
-
The Argument over ICE and Alex Pretti is bait. Don’t take it.
Before you react to this, before you decide whether you agree or disagree with me, I want you to understand what’s happening to you right now, psychologically. Research shows that the conformist instinct in your brain happens automatically. You’re literally unaware of it. You think your political beliefs accurately reflect reality, but they’re actually being…
Written by
-
Divided We Fall Part 9: Cancel Culture and “Woke”: Who’s Really Being Silenced?
What the Data Shows About Who Gets Canceled and Why Everyone claims they’re being canceled. Conservatives say they can’t speak freely without facing mob attacks. Progressives say they face consequences for standing up for justice. College professors say students are too sensitive. Students say professors refuse to update outdated views. Comedians say they can’t make…
Written by
-
Divided We Fall Part 8: Voter Fraud: Solving a Problem?
What the Data Actually Shows About Fraud and Election Integrity After the 2020 election, allegations of widespread voter fraud dominated conservative media and Republican politics. Dozens of lawsuits were filed. Investigations were launched. Audits were conducted. Millions of dollars were spent searching for evidence of fraud that would explain Donald Trump’s loss. What did they…
Written by
-
Divided We Fall Part 6: Immigration: The Wedge That Doesn’t Have to Be
Facts, Myths, and Solutions Beyond the Culture War For eventhatsodd.com – What Is Wrong With Us? No issue in American politics generates more heat and less light than immigration. Every election cycle, we’re told it’s a crisis. Caravans are invading. Criminals are pouring across the border. Or alternatively, we’re told that opposing illegal immigration is…
Written by
-
Divided We Fall Part 5: Public Media: What’s Actually at Stake
Beyond the Bias Debate, Here’s What NPR and PBS Actually Do In April 2023, a coordinated campaign to defund NPR and PBS reached fever pitch. Republican lawmakers introduced legislation to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting. Conservative media outlets ran wall-to-wall coverage of supposed liberal bias. Social media influencers urged followers to stop donating. Corporate…
Written by
-
Divided We Fall Part 4: CRT, DEI, and Trans Rights: Manufactured Crises or Real Concerns?
How Three Issues Became Culture War Flashpoints—And What’s Actually Happening In 2021, Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist, publicly explained his strategy on Twitter: “We have successfully frozen their brand—’critical race theory’—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural…
Written by
-
Divided We Fall Part 3: Guns: What the Data Shows About Violence and Solutions
Regardless of Where You Stand on the 2nd Amendment, Here’s What Actually Reduces Gun Deaths Gun ownership is deeply woven into American culture. For millions of Americans, guns represent self-reliance, personal protection, and a constitutional right they hold dear. Many families have hunting traditions going back generations. In rural areas where police response times can…
Written by
-
Divided We Fall Part 2: Abortion: What Happens After the Laws Change
Regardless of Where You Stand, Here’s What the Data Actually Shows For eventhatsodd.com – What Is Wrong With Us? The abortion debate is deeply personal. People hold strong moral and philosophical beliefs about when life begins and what rights should take precedence. Those beliefs are legitimate and deserve respect, even when we disagree. But regardless…
Written by
-
Divided We Fall Part 1: The Culture War
The Manufactured Outrage Economy Every morning, millions of Americans wake up angry. Not about their own lives necessarily, but about something they saw online, something Tucker Carlson said, something AOC tweeted, or some university policy they read about in a viral post. The outrage is real. The threat feels immediate. But the machinery creating and…
Written by
-
Let’s Stop Screaming at Each Other: How the Division Machine Keeps Us Fighting While Our Pockets Get Picked
The Name-Calling Trap Libtard. Right-wing nut. Snowflake. MAGA moron. Commie. Fascist. We’ve all heard it. Many of us have said it. And every time we do, someone wins – but it’s not you, and it’s not the person you’re yelling at. Americans have become increasingly polarized by design. When you’re pissed off, it’s hard to see…
Written by
-
Mamdani Madness: More of The Same From the System
So Zohran Mamdani was sworn in on January 1st as New York City’s first democratic socialist Muslim mayor, and the outrage machine on both sides has been in full swing. Actor Michael Rapaport has already announced he’s running for mayor in 2029 to “save NYC” from what he’s calling “Zohran the moron.” And I’m sitting…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 25: The Bottom 90% Agenda – How We Fix This
We started this series with a simple question: What is wrong with us? Why does the richest country in human history rank 44th in life expectancy? Why do we spend twice as much on healthcare as other developed countries but get worse outcomes? Why can’t people afford housing even though we have more vacant homes…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 24B: Rebuilding Worker Power – Why Unions Are the Key to Everything
We’ve spent 24 parts documenting how the bottom 90% are systematically extracted from: Healthcare, housing, education, prisons, military spending, taxes, monopolies, public service sabotage, media manipulation, environmental destruction, gig economy exploitation, financial system predation, and trade deals that ship jobs overseas. Every system is rigged against workers. Now here’s the question: How do workers fight…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 23: The Efficiency Lie – How Technology Could Make Public Services Better Than Private (And Why They Don’t Want You To Know)
“Government is inefficient.” You’ve heard this your entire life. From politicians, from think tanks, from media, from your uncle at Thanksgiving. “The private sector does it better.” “Government can’t run anything efficiently.” “DMV wait times prove government doesn’t work.” “Only competition and profit motive create efficiency.” This has been repeated so many times, by so…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 22: Media Consolidation and Capitulation – Why You Don’t Know Any Of This
We’ve spent 21 parts documenting how the bottom 90% are systematically extracted from: • Healthcare monopolies charging you double what other countries pay (Parts 1-6) • Housing financialization pricing you out of homeownership (Part 7) • Student debt trapping you in economic servitude (Part 8) • Employer-based insurance making you afraid to leave your job…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 21: Coordinated Sabotage—How They Break Public Services Then Blame Government
Let me start with the USPS example as the opening, since it’s the clearest case of deliberate sabotage. In 2006, a Republican Congress and a Republican President did something remarkable. They passed a law requiring the United States Postal Service to do something no other government agency, and no private company in America, has ever…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 20: Corporate Socialism
The Monopoly Scam Everyone Hates (But Both Parties Protect) You know what socialism looks like? It’s when the government picks one company to serve your area, eliminates all competition, and you’re forced to pay whatever they charge. You can’t shop around. You can’t choose. You can’t leave. You take what they give you or go…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 19: The Corporate Tax Dodge
How Corporations Profit from Our Tax Investment While Avoiding Theirs You’ve heard the story a thousand times: we need to cut corporate taxes to incentivize job creation. Lower the rates, reduce regulations, and watch the jobs flow. The “job creators” need their freedom and their profits, and if we just get out of their way,…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 18: The Rigged Tax Code
Taxation Without Representation (For the Bottom 90%) Why Billionaires Pay Less Than Teachers, and How We Let Them Write the Rules In 2007, Warren Buffett—then the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of $52 billion—made a bet with his office staff. He offered to pay anyone $1 million if their tax rate…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 15: In Whose God Do We Trust?
Religion as the Ultimate Control Mechanism Let’s start with a question that makes people uncomfortable: Which god is the real one? Christians say Jesus Christ is the son of God and the only path to salvation. Muslims say Muhammad is the final prophet and the Quran is God’s literal word. Jews say the Messiah hasn’t…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 14: Rooting For The Wrong Team – How Culture Wars Keep Us Fighting While They Rob Us Blind
How Media Ecosystems and Broken Norms Divide Us A number of years ago, watching news coverage of conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, and various African nations, I remember having a thought that now fills me with embarrassment: No wonder there are always conflicts in those parts of the world—they’re still organized around tribal…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 13: U.S. Politics: Not Functioning As Founders Intended—And How We Can Fix It
Part 13 of the series: How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% We’ve established that the political system maintains wealth extraction through bipartisan consensus. Both parties take corporate money. Both parties vote to protect extraction. The system works exactly as designed—just not for us. But here’s the good news: this isn’t how the system…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 12: The US Political System: The Republican and Democrat Consensus You’re Not Supposed to Notice
Part 12 of the series: How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% We’ve covered healthcare, housing, education, prisons, and military spending. Billions—trillions—extracted from the bottom 90% and funneled to the top 10%. Different industries. Different mechanisms. Same result: wealth flows up. And here’s what should be obvious by now: both parties perpetuate every single…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 11: The Military-Industrial Complex: $968 Billion in Wealth Extraction
Part 11 of the series: How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% The U.S. military budget for 2024 is $968 billion. That’s more than the next 10 countries combined. More than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, UK, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, and Ukraine combined. And here’s what makes this the perfect example of…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 10: The Incarceration Industry: How We Built a System That Profits From Failure
Part 10 of the series: How Systems Are Rigged Against the Bottom 90% Before we start, let’s address the elephant in the room: when we talk about criminal justice reform, we are NOT talking about “defunding the police” or “cashless bail.” These are real proposals that some activists made, and they’re bad ideas. But opponents…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 6B: How Universal Healthcare Would Save American Business (And Why Some Fight It Anyway)
This is Part 6B in our series on healthcare reform. Part 6: Healthcare Solutions covered the big picture. Now let’s talk about why universal healthcare is the most pro-business policy we could implement – and why some large corporations oppose it anyway. The Current System Costs American Business $1+ Trillion Annually Let’s start with a simple truth…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 5: Employer-Based Health Insurance: Modern Serfdom
This is Part 5 in a series exploring how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: The Rankings | Part 2: Language Manipulation | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4: Congressional Healthcare The Most Brilliant Trap Ever Designed Imagine if your grocery store access was tied to your job. You work at your current employer, you can shop…
Written by
-
“Make America Great Again” sounds obvious. So why is it so hard to define?
“Make America Great Again” is one of those phrases that feels like a statement of common sense. Who doesn’t want the country to be “great”? But MAGA isn’t just a campaign line. It’s a whole movement. People get labeled “MAGA” (or “MAGA enough”). There are hats, shirts, flags, slogans, and a strong sense of in-group…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 3: Follow the Money: How the System is Rigged Against 90% of Us.
This is Part 3 in a series. Part 1 showed where America ranks among developed nations (spoiler: badly). Part 2 explained how language is weaponized to keep you from noticing. Now let’s follow the money and see exactly who’s picking your pocket while you argue about Dr. Seuss. Now That You Can See Through The Language Game… Remember in…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking: How Language is Weaponized to Keep Us Fighting Each Other Instead of Those in Power
This is Part 2 in a series. Part 1 showed where America actually ranks. Now, before we follow the money, we need to talk about why you’ve been trained to stop listening the moment certain words appear. How I Realized We Needed This Post I was working on the next piece in this series – the…
Written by
-
Broken By Design Part 1: USA! USA! USA!
We’re #1!Are we though?Where Does America Actually Rank? The Complete Scoreboard America is the greatest country in the world. We hear it constantly. Politicians say it. We chant it at sporting events. We believe it. But what if we actually kept score? What if we ranked ourselves against other developed nations on the things that…
Written by
-
Who/What Actually is a Patriot?
Spoiler: It’s probably not who you think—or at least not for the reasons you think In contemporary American politics, “patriot” has become perhaps the most weaponized word in our vocabulary. Politicians invoke it to rally supporters. Activists claim it to legitimize their causes. Critics wield it to question opponents’ loyalty. Everyone wants to be one,…
Written by
-
Is the US Heading Toward Fascism? A Data-Driven Comparison to 1933 Germany
Some people say yes and some people say that’s ridiculous—opinions are pretty much split by political affiliation. So I wanted to do a test. I figured I would ask a large language model to provide a factual comparison based purely on news reporting from major outlets like BBC, CNN, NPR, ProPublica, NBC News, and The…
Written by
Even that's Odd 