Chapter 19 - Year 76

1/3

2023 began with some breathing room financially because of the “gifts” I got from friends supporting the Vital Signs work. This funding however was never intended to provide stable income for the long run.

What I thought I was getting ready for was launching a VSD crowd sourcing funding campaign like we had done for Ken Wilbers biography project. At this point because of VSD I had large extended networks both the in the “save democracy” movement of 600+ Bridge Alliance organizations, and the podcast Debilyn and I were doing for Fulcrum magazine.

I also still had contacts in the Integral Life network.

I reasoned that the verbal support I was getting concerning the value of the VSD work to awakening the pro-democracy crowd to the very real dangers we faced as a nation in the 2024 election would translate into people wanting to help me with the crowd sourcing campaign by sending the promo out to their email lists.

However, something odd started to happen that I did not expect. In the “save democracy” networks I started to get push back that the threat levels to democracy we were reporting on every two weeks were too “extreme.” They were considered a “negative” view. I certainly understood it was hard to take in that we were in a period of American history that might require all of us to move out of our comfort zones but the push back surprised me. Apparently, the notion of having to defend democracy seemed daunting to some. The save democracy network for years had tried to get moderate Republicans and Democrats in the same room to talk to each other. Their goal was to get back to the days when both parties compromised for the good of the nation. Good intentions but…

Since the emergence of Trump and the MAGA movement taking over the Republican party, all these so called “moderate” GOP politicians were scared to go anywhere near Democrats for fear that MAGA would primary them as less than “true believers.” They believed they could lose their jobs as House Representatives and Senators. Although privately many of them deplored Trump, publicly they aligned with the MAGA party line. These ‘talking” events over the four years leading up to 2022 had come to nothing. Yet, the core leadership of this group still believed that “talking” was going to bridge the polarization gap and they saw me as someone that was shouting in effect…”the sky is falling.”

The Integral Life network crowd were something else. For years Integral had prided itself on having some elevated view of all things human including politics. In my 10 years directing IL I would listen to those that would take a shot at defining Integral politics, but it all seemed too theoretical to be practical in such a polarized environment. The other thing that plagued the Integral crowd was their Postmodern spirituality.

The emergence of the Postmodern stage of cultural development in the late sixties and early seventies had been successful in re-introducing the traditional religious traditions to the contemplative path they all had ignored for years. The reason most of these techniques had been buried by the traditional church was… if you meditate to source, you don't need a representative of the church to be some sort of middle man for your interactions with god/spirit. In the eyes of the traditional church a direct connection with spirit lessened their power over their flock and certainly their basis for requests for money from their followers.

So, the re-discovery of the contemplative spiritual practices was a positive emergence in that it gave all of us who no longer could align with the traditional church an alternative way to interact with something larger than ourselves. However, all stages of cultural development according to the Integral view also have shadows. Things these "advances" push down into their subconscious, knowingly or not. In this case, the downside of meditation, no matter whose technique you used, is that you could get just as attached to the interior state experience it provided as any other addiction. We called this state in the extreme… “asleep on the cushion.”

And it was no wonder Integral folks were attracted to this state of quiet, peace and grounding. The simple act of taking a breath was a revelation in getting one to relax. Yet, all things in moderation are a good thing, yet extreme attachment to anything can be harmful. In a sense, the state experience provided by meditation could become a type of addictive state. Thus, it turned out that many of my friends in the Integral network also saw the Vital Signs work as to disruptive to the bliss state they wanted to live in. They literally retreated to their cushions and prayed for deliverance.

As a result, I did not get the crowd funding support I thought I would for the Vital Signs work and that did not bode well for us financially past April. AND we were still coming out of the isolation of the Covid pandemic and all the uncertainty it had caused.

The World Health Organization had declared the end of the pandemic phase of COVID‐19 on May 5th 2023. They did this having considered the current COVID‐19 numbers were less and deaths were down and long pandemic impact on social and economic life was subsiding. However, any thought that our world was going to come back the way it was prior to March 2020 was a pipe dream, although the long term impacts on me were not completely clear yet.

Following Your Curiosity

All my work life of over 50+ years I had been lucky enough to have whatever I was curious about offer ways it could pay me for my time. Sometimes very abundantly. That was true of my idea of being a songwriter, an inflatable learning environment designer, a pioneer in defining what interactive entertainment could be and 20 years of documentary projects that included Random 1/Lost in Woonsocket, Google Ocean and Integral Life.

That was why when my curiosity shifted to finding ways you could measure which way our democracy was leaning through narrative analysis I was unprepared for a world that would not sustain that work through the last chapter of my life. It seemed I was out of sync with the culture AND it was possible my instincts as an older person were not as attractive to younger folks as they might of been.

Would I have changed any of that if I knew in advance of the funding issue. Probably not. My curiosity and my storytelling skills had served me all those years, but I think I could have been quicker in picking up that my interests at this point in my life were not going to sustain me financially for this final chapter, and come up with another plan to support myself. By the time I realized this, I was too old for most everybody too fund or hire.

Seeing Old Age Coming

At this point the question of our financial survival after the pandemic was a new challenge. As it kept getting worse I wondered why I had not prepared better for this eventually. The answer to that in hindsight is twofold.

Numerous times since the mid-nineties I had been involved in work that was supposed to have “retirement” money included on the back end. In each instance, it did not happen with the exception of a period of two years when I left the studios. Part of this was just plain bad luck. In addition, I couldn’t really tell you why for 50+ years I had very successfully supported myself and my family doing something I loved had worked and seemingly wasn’t now.

The other reason was my belief that something unseen at this point would happen that would offer the possibility that a nest egg for “retirement” could still be created. In those other transitions, something had always emerged that was better than what had come before it.

At the beginning of 2020, it looked like there was big investor pool available to me to support Story Studio doing the VAD work and the larger mission of creating stories about the future that were positive.

However, the network that I had just started raising money from for VSD got hit hard by the pandemic. Some lost their investment funds. Some pulled back from anything that seemed like a risk not knowing what the long term impact of the pandemic would be. And to top it all off it was not like the world was in a stable place either in addition to the pandemic.

In the World

The MAGA Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2023 after the mid-terms. They immediately plunged the lower chamber into chaos and confusion. Part of the dust up involved the extremely volatile selection of Kevin McCarthy as the new speaker.

Even though McCarthy had come out strongly against Trump after January 6th, he, like so many other former Republicans, made the trek to Mar-a-Lago later to kiss Trumps MAGA ring. I always thought that Trump had something on him. Even then, Trump did not strongly support him for speaker, so the process of choosing McCarthy became a live shit show on TV.

Super radical MAGA crazies like Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz extracted promises from him to support their childish positions on legislation that all but ensured that nothing would get done for the country as long as the Senate was run by Democrats. That first session of Congress led by MAGA folks passed the fewest bills in history to help the American people. In the end, even though McCarthy was elected Speaker, the MAGA crazies turned on him at the first sign he was “compromising” with Democrats on things like passing a budget.

The thing about these MAGA true believers was that they really weren’t interested in doing any of the normal things a House representative would do. It wasn’t like they had any real plans for moving the country forward. When they realized they could get elected in their deep red districts no matter what they did, their job description as they saw it was to get noticed on social media and create chaos that would distract others from looking at what they were doing with fundraising etc. The MAGA GRIFT was everywhere.

The question we were most interested in at the point was … “who would learn the most from the 2022 mid-terms” that had been an unexpected win of sorts for the Democrats?

It turned out however, the MAGA folks doubled down on the 2020 election fraud claims and gave no sign they were interested in doing anything besides making noise on Fox News.

Social media news platforms also continued struggling to find stability as Elon Musk accelerated his efforts to take Twitter apart and META/Facebook continued to allow Neo-Nazi, white supremacist alt-right groups and online businesses to maintain a presence on Facebook.

It did not appear that America was coming together after the mid-terms. Instead, the polarization was getting worse and would heat up even more as we headed towards the next presidential election in 2024. I sometimes wondered as I watched Fox News pundits sow this division, how they would feel at the end of their careers when their one big contribution to this country was to tear America apart to make more money.

There was also the danger that triumphant Democrats were over-reading the meaning of the mid-term election success. Even though they did better than expected, their margins of victory in key battleground states running against unattractive radical election deniers was very small. We stood by our prediction at that time that the party that learned the most from the actual results of the midterms would have an advantage as the 2024 Presidential Election campaign began at the beginning of 2023, but these were strange times and the past didn’t seem like a likely predictor anymore.

The predicted demise of Donald Trump’s power within the MAGA Republican party also proved premature.

Focus groups made up of Trump voters still believed he had nothing to do with the attempted coup on January 6th or that he should be held accountable for stealing classified national security documents and lying about it to the FBI. Unless, a much more attractive MAGA candidate for president emerged without Trumps baggage, they planned to vote for him again in 2024.

I want to pause here to note something. A question that had been in the wind since Trump’s surprise victory in 2016 was…. How could this be happening in America? It was not like Trump was hiding who he was. He clearly wanted imperial power and had appointed Supreme Court justices that supported that notion. But still… how were the 2016 and 2020 elections even close?

You can point to Hillary in 2016 as being less than an ideal candidate. Her arrogance in assuming she was going to win didn’t help. In addition, Comey, the boy scout FBI director, broke every convention of the Justice Department by announcing he was reopening Clinton's email investigation five days before the election. The fact that three days later he said they hadn’t found anything new didn’t even make the front page.

And you could point to Fox News and the rest of the alt-right media ecosystem. They had found an audience of disaffected angry white people that were attracted to the lies and disinformation they promoted every day. Fox gave this audience someone to blame. This “strategy” was so successful that Fox News often drew more viewers than MSNBC and CNN combined. Fox also became a big promoter of unfounded conspiracy theories that normally would have only existed on radical websites and blogs.

You could also point to systemic challenges in the system like the Electoral College. Originally seen by the founders as protecting election results from illiterate mobs, in these modern times, the system had skewed the advantage in national elections towards the Republicans as a minority. They had not won the popular vote in years yet kept winning elections by focusing on 3-6 battleground states where they enjoyed competitive numbers that could decide close elections through the electoral college format.

Even then, it took bad actors like the MAGA crowd to see that they could win national elections as a minority if they did everything they could to suppress the votes of the majority. So, instead of expanding the Republican party to appeal to a larger group of voters, they doubled down on strategies, some illegal or unconstitutional, to impact vote counts and certification methods in those crucial battleground states. And they started the process of getting their people into positions as election officials at the local, county and state levels years before Democrats woke up to what was happening.

So, all that is true, but there is also something larger that I want to mention here. Sometimes when you look at history you see major changes emerge unexpectedly. One philosophical question being asked in America was… “Was Trump a necessary disruption that would force the evolution of our democratic system to meet 21st century challenges?" I don’t want to say this notion means the rise of Trump was “fated,” but I don’t think many saw the extreme backlash coming among some white people following the promise of the Obama years.

So, when you look at patterns of change there are two primary ways that it takes place. It can happen suddenly, sometimes violently, ensuring the world will never be the same again in the blink of an eye. Or it can happen in more subtle incremental stages that are hard to see when they are happening and usually only reveal themselves when you look back. The analogy of the crab in a pot where the water is slowly being brought to a boil over time is the second way it is sometimes stated. The crab boils to death before they realize the water they seemed comfortable in is now hot enough to kill them.

According to our VSD narrative analysis the impact of the two Make America Great narratives was unfolding in this second way…incrementally. In the beginning it was hard for us to believe that the system that had protected us for years against radical folks on either side of the spectrum turned out to be more procedures than rules or laws that could be enforced.

Bad actors like Trump and his allies discovered the holes in these procedures early on while the Democrats seemed unable to counter their moves. So, the threat to democracy in America did not happen overnight. Slowly MAGA chipped away at our protections aided by Trump appointed judges. You could see the pattern when you looked back, but it was hard to pick up the seriousness of it to the level of becoming “alarmed.” And the story that “the system would protect us” continued to be popular with many Americans as we headed towards the 2024 election. It was challenging to ask them to step out of their comfort zones to take action against the seemingly autocratic moves of the MAGA movement.

Other Cultural News

In the first quarter of 2023 the South Carolina State Supreme Court ruled that a reasonable right to an abortion for women was included in their states constitution. That decision overturned the state’s six-week ban on abortion, a major victory for abortion rights in the South, where women’s health choices were strictly limited thanks to the MAGA judges on the Supreme Court. A majority of Americans (70%) had always believed that women should have access to abortion within reason and didn’t think states had any business telling a women what she could do with her body, yet here we were.

The danger of social media’s unregulated news ecosystem was also on display in early 2023 as a University professor sued a TikTok influencer who accused her of having a role in the grisly killing of four University of Idaho students. I guess the influencer saw it as a strategy that would get her noticed, no matter the damage it caused to the professors life.

(link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/idaho-college-student-killings-summary-timeline-rcna63818)

Even after the professor sent cease and desist notices to the influencer, she continued to make videos that claimed the professor was in on it. These postings should have been taken down as soon as they came to light, but you can still find them on TikTok. They represented a clear and present danger to the professor and to the rest of us. And it seemed there wasn’t any way a influencer caught lying like this could be held accountable. It was truly the “wild west.”

The Weather in Early 2023

'Rivers in sky' continued to slam California with unprecedented rain, snow and floods as the new year dawned. The massive atmospheric flow of back to back storms was an example of the increasing severity of weather events caused partially by climate change.

In a related news story, the Pentagon released a threat assessment for 2023 that concluded cultural stability is threatened by many more factors than just military threats foreign or domestic. They concluded that the severe impacts of a pandemic, economic uncertainty and severe climate events could also de-stabilize a democracy.

On the gun reform front the Illinois State Legislature passed a law outlawing the sale of assault weapons. Observers said it could be a model for Federal regulation that would ban military weapons on our streets as they had been before. The NRA and its Congressional allies promised to appeal the law as unconstitutional. This fight was far from over.

On the global stage the continuing war in Ukraine, provocative military threats made by China towards Taiwan and the continued buildup of North Korea’s nuclear missile program were just three factors that were contributing to a lack of stability worldwide. Plus developing countries had really not recovered as fast as the prosperous nations from the pandemic. And the problem of “climate” refugees was already overwhelming many nations in Europe.

Western Nations continued to support Ukraine against the illegal Russian invasion, the US continued to arm Taiwan against an invasion by China and North Korea's neighboring countries like Japan and South Korea were beginning to prepare plans to repulse a North Korea strategic nuclear attack. The danger represented by the close proximity of these warring forces made it much more likely that a mistake could be made by either side that could lead to a wider conflict.

The more hidden story we were tracking at VSD as 2023 began concerned events emerging in the Middle East. Israel has struggled to elect a stable, democratic government for the past four years. However, in their last attempt, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a very close majority by aligning with more, radical right wing politicians. One of his first acts was to attempt to limit the power of the Israeli courts to hold him accountable for crimes he had committed. Sound familiar?

His return to power raised more concerns about the impact these far right politicians would have on attempting to work out a two state solution with the Palestinians. The ancient conflicts that had crippled the middle east for years continued. It was as if both sides still believed that if they just got rid of the “other” they would be safe. This notion had never been true, yet it seemed new generations were forgetting this and repeating the pattern again and again.

There was some good news. The US Justice Department continued to convict individuals that participated in the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, including members of the Proud Boys on very serious sedition charges. Also some of the investigations into Trump and his allies seemed to be moving closer to charging the former president. Yet again Merrick Garland, as the US Attorney General, still seemed very cautious about charging Trump and co-conspirators that had planned and supported the attempt to overturn the certification of the legitimate results of the election.

Back to Us

I had always hoped that when the pandemic subsided that Matt would move back out into the world and Jennifer and I would get a chance to see who we were as a couple after 26 years. It was not to be. Although Jennifer said she wanted it just to be the two of us, when Matt made no effort to move out or get a job, she went along. As we say… you make plans and God laughs.

When I saw what was happening I should have forced the downsizing move while we still had some money to soften the transition, but I hung on… hoping against hope Matt would wake up and Jennifer and I would get our chance just the two of us. I also knew WHEN we downsized it would be a major disruption in our lives and that was daunting proposition.

When I looked back later at why I hadn’t made the decision earlier in 2022, it partially had been due to my relationship history. My extensive therapy in 1995 had taught me that I had a deep seeded fear of being left. It had to do with some traumatic stuff I had gone through with my mother (not her fault) as a young child.

As a result, my pattern was when I felt a close relationship start to run into problems, I pulled the plug quickly and left. I had done this in my marriages to Jane and Joyce. They had also made their contribution to us failing, but I swore when I understood and could manage my fear that in my next relationship (with Jennifer) I would stay even when it got challenging. And I certainly did for years, through our challenges and Matt’s addiction. And it appeared now… possibly to a fault.

There was also part of me that wanted to believe that it would get better for us financially, but in addition to obvious issues like Covid impacting my funding network, I unknowingly crossed some invisible line concerning my age during the latter stages of the pandemic. Instead of still working a lot at 72 as I had been, at 75 and then 76 things got real quiet. This would take me a while to figure out, but there wasn’t much I could do about it except get ready to downsize in July 2023 when the lease was up. My life unexpectedly was as unstable as the world seemed to be.

Can Bad Actors Be Held Accountable?

Meanwhile, the Effectiveness of Our System of Justice news category at VSD heated up because of all the court activities concerning Trumps myriad of indictments. The January 6th criminal case charging Trump with obstructing the peaceful transfer of power was now at the Supreme Court. They were looking at his claims of having complete immunity as president for all the crimes he committed while in office.

IF the court chose NOT to take up the Appellate Courts unanimous decision to decline his appeal or they ruled quickly that presidents do not have complete immunity from crimes they commit while in office, we could have seen this case in court before the election.

On the other hand, if the six MAGA judges nominated to the Supreme Court by Trump decided to sit on this case for a while…

... it could delay the scheduling of the one federal case that could go to trial before the 2024 election. Exactly what Trump wanted. This upcoming decision from the court was one to watch.

Mitigating Climate Change

One of the sidelights of the chaos and confusion swirling in the 2024 election campaign was we were distracted from the very real challenges that faced us no matter your political orientation. In early 2023 the global temperature report for 2022 was released. It was again the hottest year on record continuing an overall steep warming trend. At the same time, another study reminded us of the very real possibility the Atlantic warm ocean current could shift southward because of the rapid melt of Greenland fresh water ice. This could mean a new ice age for Europe and parts of North America.

A Women’s Right to Choose

There was a narrative emerging in red states that had been gaining traction since the overturning of Roe V. Wade. It was being promoted by anti-abortion forces, emboldened by the unprecedented ruling by the Supreme Court. This narrative insisted that State governments had the right to deny abortions to women. In other words, for the first time in the courts history, they were taking rights away from individuals instead of broadening them.

The latest chapter of this fight was the pending ruling by a conservative Federal judge in Texas to halt the sale of the prescription medication mifepristone.

This was one of two medications that women used safely for over 20 years to induce an abortion at home without a surgical procedure. Mifepristone had been thoroughly tested and approved by the FDA twenty years ago. It had a very good safety record. Yet, this foolish case got traction because the judge had been a big supporter of anti- abortion efforts. He ruled on his beliefs not the facts.

Drill Baby Drill

MAGA Republicans in the House had been criticized for not proposing actual policies on issues of interest to Americans like energy production, immigration and gun reform. In March, MAGA Republicans introduced their sprawling energy package that cut way back on green energy development and promoted more drilling for oil and gas.

At the same time, the Biden administration approved the controversial Willow Oil project, clearing the way for one of the largest new oil and gas developments on federal land in Alaska in 20 years despite fierce opposition from environmental activists. It was thought he was positioning himself for the 2024 election campaign.

And certainly we had been tracking the fallout from Fox News executives and personalities admitting “in writing” they lied to their audience about the results of the 2020 election and the violence of the January 6th insurrection. It had been hoped it might make a difference in the way they covered events in America, but to date there was no evidence of that. The nearly 1 billion dollar fine levied against Fox News apparently was considered by them to just be the cost of doing business. I wondered in the future IF Rupert Murdock, who was not an American citizen, would be the most responsible for democracy failing in America just to make more money.

Also, Kevin McCarthy’s latest move as House speaker was giving exclusive access to the Capitol security footage from January 6th to insurrection denier Tucker Carlson.

After the usual hype that he would uncover the deep state conspiracy, Tucker in the end went away quietly. He couldn't offer anything that supported the conspiracy theories he had been touting. Shocking!

There was also a growing Chatbot AI app controversy. As the story went, a reporter for the New York Times was shocked when the Chatbot AI he was interacting with started touting fantasies about erasing all human data and even told him in another awkward moment that it loved him. The unpredicted results of these AI apps being in the world was worrisome as Big Tech charged forward turning it loose.

The Private Space Plan B Front

Space X continued to move ahead with an impressive number of accomplishments.

It launched 96 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets in 2023, which was a significant increase from the 61 launches in 2022. This made SpaceX responsible for 43% of all launches worldwide, with only China coming close with 67 launches.

Starlink

SpaceX launched 1,985 Starlink satellites in 2023, and the service expanded to over 70 countries and the entire US. Starlink also achieved cash-flow breakeven in 2023. The US military had also starting to depend on it in certain areas of the world which was disturbing considering the volatility of Elon Musk.

Reusability

SpaceX landed its 250th orbital rocket booster and launched and landed a single rocket 19 times.

On the other side of the ledger the FAA proposed a $633,000 fine against SpaceX for allegedly failing to comply with regulations on two launches in 2023. SpaceX vowed to challenge the fine and file a lawsuit against the FAA. This was in keeping with Musk considering himself above the law or federal regulations.

Blue Origin

With somewhat less fanfare, the Jeff Bezos company "Blue Origin" launched its first New Shepard flight since its 15 month grounding after an accident. Blue Origin's suborbital New Shepard rocket lifted off from Texas carrying research payloads,. The company's only active rocket can carry humans and cargo on short trips to and from the brim of space,

It seemed Space X was far outdistancing all its competition including NASA to be the space program that would take us to the moon and Mars. It was too bad it was owned by such a dangerous, impetuous child.

Now for Something Completely Different

There was also increasing talk on the right about the possibility of another civil war in America if Trump was not re-elected. The general consensus of experts was … it was not likely on any meaningful timeline in spite of our current polarization, yet such narratives could be self-fulfilling. But unlike, our 1860’s civil war that clearly pitted northern states vs southern states concerning the issue of slavery, red and blue individuals currently resided in a mixture of states. In some cases, a deep blue state like California had whole areas of its territory populated by deep red conservatives. Sometimes these areas were also home to armed militia’s that were not friendly to the Federal government. Here's a map of how California might get divided between red and blue.

21 New-California_Anna-Gorman-672x900.jpg

The fantasy of a Civil War between red and blue states seemed unlikely, yet potentially increased levels of violence committed by those that would be unhappy if Trump was not re-elected again could cause enough chaos to insure the nation would struggle to function.

Other narratives of note in the first half of 2023...

• Presidential candidate Gov. DeSantis, in Iowa, said Republicans’ focus on “WOKE” would help THEM win elections.

• San Francisco Board of Supervisors announced they were open to reparations to black citizens for damages their occurred as slaves with $5M payouts.

• A Texas man sued his ex-wife's friends for allegedly helping her get abortion pills.

Others…

Ohio withdrew from a revered election commission because it was targeted by MAGA conspiracy thugs.

An election official in New Jersey sued the Democratic Governor because of a new state policy that would loosen restrictions on anonymous PAC contributions.

The State of Georgia passed a law that allowed state representatives to remove any state district attorney bringing a case they didn’t approve of.

The hidden story we began to see emerge in the first half of 2023 had to do with our jury system. The American system of justice relies on our jury system to offer defendants the opportunity to prove their innocence. 12 impartial men and women are picked to hear the case for and against the defendant and render a verdict of guilty or not guilty.

We were starting to see anti-democracy forces attempting to harass jurors that were sitting on cases that involved Donald Trump. This resulted in some jurors receiving death threats if they voted to convict. Some asked to be recused from serving altogether. Who could blame them.

In New York, this type of harassment had already resulted in the judge presiding over Donald Trump’s rape trial to say he would protect the identity of jurors for their own safety. This type of threat was also likely to be present in Alvin Braggs state case against Trump because of the hundreds of death threats he and his family already received. This “bullying” was indeed a novel emergence and a dangerous one.

Changes in Cable News Personalities

Fox News unexpectedly fired Tucker Carlson, their highest rated prime time commentator, and CNN terminated long time host Don Lemon about the same time. The outcome of these firings and on-going cases against Fox News for lying to the American people was unclear, but one thing we suspected… network pundits might not appear to be completely biased as we headed into the 2024 Presidential election cycle. One could only hope.

In other media news it was revealed that just 34% of Americans' trusted mainstream media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly. This was essentially unchanged from 2022 and just two points higher than the lowest rating that Gallup recorded in 2016 during the presidential campaign.

Of that 34% just 7% of Americans had "a great deal" of trust and confidence and 27% had "a fair amount." Meanwhile, 28% of U.S. adults say they did NOT have very much confidence and 38% had NONE at all in newspapers, TV and radio. The question remained. How would Americans educate themselves on candidates and issues if they didn’t know who to look to?

Side note: It's a core part of the dictators "rise to power" playbook to encourage citizens to distrust sources of news that they had depended on for their information in the past. If no one was telling the truth, the culture was wide open to wantabe dictators making up their own facts/reality like Trump.

Other VSD News Flashes

The Texas Senate gave itself the authority to overturn election results certification by their Secretary of State by simply claiming election fraud while offering no proof. There were rumblings of similar laws being considered in other red states. If this had happened in the 2020 election, the outcome could have been very different.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that challenged the authority of Federal government agencies. This was a continuing trend. MAGA justices seem to be on a mission to reduce the over site authority of the federal government and “give” it to the red states that better matched their vision of an America with a weak federal government. They were also better protected from oversight if Congress ceased to have any power.

Trump was found liable by a jury in New York of sexually abusing E. Jean Carrol and she was awarded 5 million dollars in damages. It is the first time that Trump had been convicted in a civil or criminal case.

Eight fake electors in Georgia were granted immunity in the investigation into Trump attempting to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The fake electors were part of a systematic plan across multiple states to replace legitimate state electors with fake ones that favored Trump.

A new version of a religious narrative promoting “White Christian Nationalism” seemed to be gathering support on the right. This fringe movement wanted the United States to abandon its core tenet of the separation of church and state and declare their brand of Christianity the state religion of America.

Although there had been significant pushback from other Christian leaders, the “normalization” of this racist, homophobic outlier belief system posed a growing threat to the legitimacy of the Christian church and the health of our democracy.

The political independent action group “No Labels” took in more than $100,000 from Clarence Thomas benefactor Harlan Crow. In addition to Trumps grifting of his followers, I felt some progressive organizations like “No Labels” were also guilty of promoting fear to raise money from their members. No Labels claimed they could put together an independent presidential ticket that would have the support of a majority of the American people, but their research was completely skewed. The raised millions to support their operations before announcing they could NOT put an independent ticket that was competitive. It smelled like fraud to me.

The Effectiveness of Our System of Justice news category was again in question partly because of public comments made by Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch. He announced in a private speech that the emergency powers evoked by national and state governments to combat the Covid pandemic were a massive intrusion on American’s civil liberties.

Whatever constitutional reasoning Judge Gorsuch used to support his personal position on Covid emergency powers seems to suggest that 1 million plus Americans dying of Covid was not enough. He would have blocked mask mandates, stay at home orders and safe distance guidance. This type of constitutional “reasoning” from the highest court in the land continued to threaten the authority of the Federal government and the majority of American people.

Billionaire Harlen Crow refused to testify before the Senate Judicial committee concerning the millions of dollars he has bestowed on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife as “gifts.”

His lawyers made an argument that the Senate committee did not have jurisdiction over his activities. Most constitutional experts disagreed, but the Democrats did nothing about it.

Getting Ready to Move… when a dream/story no longer works.

I can’t say that planning or strategizing about the future was one of Jennifer and my most positive qualities as a couple. My orientation was a result of being trained as a media producer for all those years. I would go to the worst possible case and work back from there with multiple plan B’s if it didn’t go as expected, which it rarely did.

Jennifer always found that too negative for her. She loved to do visioning and manifesting exercises with the hope that the universe would provide when we really needed it. In a sense, except for our first crash on Whidbey, it did over 26 years, but certainly not at the levels of my commercial career in Hollywood. That would eventually catch up to us.

When my orientation became more about helping the world by creating positive stories about the future began at the turn of the millennium it was a conscious choice I made to forgo the fame and particularly the fortune of Hollywood for something more worldly. And as I have said earlier in this tome this was not a sacrifice I made. I had gotten bored with Hollywood and felt that I should spend more of my time in ways that could benefit more than just me or the studios I worked for. Anyway, when I got bored like that in the past I wasn’t particularly creative about that work. There was something else that was calling me like it had before so it was not that unusual that I paid attention.

As most experts will say there are lots of styles of managing ones life. I have found there is no one way that is best. However, the mix of Jennifer's more “abundance” approach and my more “practical” one did not serve us as a couple when we faced our new financial crisis in 2022. The way we solved this lack of alignment was pretty much handling things independently. She’d choose certain things as did I to manage. That worked until we were faced with the crisis on Whidbey or what was confronting us now. The tension between the two approaches in my view did not allow for the best of both of us to come forward. Instead we found ourselves in two different realities in conflict. It seemed that both of us as ultra-creative people should have been able to make something work, but it was not to be.

Some of it was Jennifer was still distracted by Matt’s problems. We certainly had been through it with him.

The World Didn’t Stop Because of Our Challenges.

Donald Trump was indicted in the Mar-a-Lago documents case in Florida.

This seemed like a good sign that our justice system was attempting to hold bad actors accountable, but the timing of when this case would come to trial could be impacted by 2024 election. Judge Eileen Cannon has been assigned to the case. She was the same Trump appointed judge that attempted to slow walk the documents investigation in 2022. Her rulings were overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals because of their meaningless legal arguments, but these types of appeals took time. And that was Trumps strategy. Delay, delay…

The tension between China and the US ramped up in the June of 2023. A Pentagon report warned that China’s naval forces now outnumbered the US.

IF China decided to invade Taiwan, the resulting military action would now result in a high number of casualties on both sides and potentially trigger a much larger conflict.

YouTube, owned by Google, announced they would stop removing 2020 Election fraud claim videos.

This action seemed at best short sighted considering the election “fraud” theme was still a vital part of Trump’s messaging as we headed towards the 2024 election. Or perhaps YouTube just wanted to make money from the chaos these videos were causing.

New York City recorded the worst-ever air quality on national Clean Air Day in Canada. The US eastern seaboard suffered from dense smoke generated by massive fires in Canada.

There was some speculation that this apocalyptic air quality event happening nearer to Washington DC would get Congress to move on stronger climate change mitigation.

The first Supreme Court ruling on the so called Independent Legislature Theory seemed at first glance to be good news for democracy. The court rejected this fringe theory that claimed that State Legislatures had absolute power over election results with no oversight from state courts or election officials. This theory had been the faulty basis for the failed coup after the 2020 election.

The Supreme Court also overturned fifty years of precedent on affirmative action concerning college admissions. This was not good news for students of color. This program was originally designed to broaden the diversity of student populations at major universities by giving some weight to the race of the student, assuming they were as academically qualified as a white student for admittance.

There was something else strange about this ruling. Normally when a case was brought before a court, including the Supreme Court, there were two parties that have legal standing in the case. One that was representing the existing statue, regulation or organization and the other party that was claiming they have been injured by that statue, regulation or organization. The injured party must show evidence that they have been harmed by the existing laws or policies. In all three of these cases there was NO party that was injured by existing statues. Yet the court called for an end to this long standing program as a part of their roll back of help for minorities.

MAGA G.O.P. member also targeted researchers who were studying disinformation ahead of 2024 election. They attempted to harass researchers who were identifying the sources of this disinformation. It was their belief that IF they could discredit this research, they could continue to dispense disinformation however they saw fit.

Our Dysfunction

When it became clear Matt was not going anywhere, I started looking at California as an option. My sister and brother at the time were going through their own cancer issues that I thought they might need help with. It also felt like it was time to head back to the tribal grounds. Our network (mostly IL) in Boulder never came back from the Pandemic. My siblings also promised to help me financially to make the move and buy some time in Northern California to reset if I needed it. This is what it had come to for me. The real story for me was that I felt I needed to "change my story." Something I taught in my Secret Story classes.

In the middle of all this JW had a minor stroke. Fortunately, it was a like a lot of JW chronic issues, mostly temporary. She was lucky it wasn’t worse, but she was still slow to recover.

My move was a bigger deal than it had been in the past. I wasn’t sure I had the energy to pick up and move to Sacramento River Blu Apartments – yet the trip out with Zeffie was yet another trip across the west for me. I loved road trips and me and my cat were at it again after 17 years in Boulder. This time I wondered if it would be my last time on these well-trod roads. You begin to think differently at age 76.

That is not to say that this ending of a 18 year chapter in Boulder wasn’t filled with deep sadness for me. What kept me going was the realization I believed I had done everything I could to make a relationship with Jennifer work and she had chosen Matt for the time being which was hard for me to fault her for. It was just time for me to attempt to turn the page to a new story that could the two of us if it came to pass. This was a very unexpected turn of events.

Meanwhile

Trump claimed to have received a “target” letter from the January 6th investigation. This almost certainly meant he (and others) might be indicted for leading the insurrection at the Capitol.

Gun Violence Continued. Amid celebrations and fireworks over the long Fourth of July holiday weekend, cities across America were left reeling from the scourge of gun violence as mass shootings occurred at block parties and other festive gatherings. Twenty people were killed and 126 were injured in 22 mass shootings that erupted across the country between 5 p.m. ET Friday and 5 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a website that tracks shootings nationwide.

Middle East News: The protest movement against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul exploded after the hard line Netanyahu government passed a controversial law limiting judicial review of governmental and ministerial decisions.

The first in a series of proposed laws that would radically constrain the judiciary. If these new laws went into effect it would make it impossible to hold Netanyahu accountable for his crimes. Many in Israel never thought it would come to this, but their current situation also held a warning for America as well. If our Supreme Court continued to rule in support of minority views, including protecting Trump from prosecution, democracy here could also be threatened.

Social Media: Google, Amazon, Apple and Samsung shared billion dollar agreements that made Google’s search engine the default on their web properties and cell phones. This was a result of Google controlling 90% of the search engine market. Not a good thing for competition or consumer protection considering Google’s negative record on stealing consumer data.

AI: Congress also convened private sessions with Big Tech CEO’s like Elon Musk and Bill Gates concerning the regulation of artificial intelligence in the marketplace. AI driven algorithms were already impacting jobs, national security and consumer protection. To sufficiently regulate the emergence of AI, you must first understand the implications of its use. Congress was woefully behind in their understanding of the impact represented by AI.

Also of concern was the docket of cases the Supreme Court would hear in this next session. They would rule on aspects of gun rights, abortion, voting procedures and the authority of the Federal government. The current Supreme Court had already shown that they were willing to re-write long standing legal precedent like they did overturning Roe v. Wade. What was next was anybody’s guess,

On the global front, the Ukraine war and our relations with China remained at concerning levels. It didn’t help that MAGA Republicans were threatening to cut off aid to Ukraine in the latest budget talks. Apparently, they wanted Putin to win. And relations with China both economically and militarily remained at alarming levels. China had made it clear they wanted to extend its sphere of influence to include all of the South China Seas and absorb Taiwan as a part of China.

Our hidden story in this period was not so hidden, but we felt it was important enough to point out. Former President Trump said a lot of things, mostly just repeats of his biggest lies, but during this scan he descended to a new low. He claimed that General Milley, retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed because he questioned Trumps mental abilities in dealing with China. This was a pattern that was repeating itself. Normally, politicians would inflate their number of accomplishments, but Trump was outright creating stories out of some fantasy world he inhabited. His MAGA allies tried to make it seem it was just politics as usual and the Democrats were doing it too, but Trump’s stories called for violence against certain populations and individuals and threatened the very bedrock of our democratic institutions. That was new… and dangerous.

Fall 2023

The possibilities in 2024 for who the presidential candidates would be from both parties seemed more cloudy and confused than they had been in 2020. At the moment, it looked like the MAGA Republicans were going to nominate an ex-president that had mentally declined to the point that he reminded us of that crazy uncle that sits on the couch at family gatherings and blurts out nonsense. And was he charged with 86 felony counts.

And Biden Democrats were hoping against hope that President Biden could make it through the campaign with no serious health challenges and get re-elected. However, every time we saw him he looked more tired.

The results of new climate change studies were also not good. They showed a sudden spike in global warmth that was so extreme, scientists said it was mysterious. In other words, it meant that our already dire predictions on the impact of climate change might be too conservative.

As America continued to wallow in its polarized culture war, the real challenges that needed our attention like mitigating the impact of climate change were getting ignored. An old meme came to mind, “Nero fiddled as Rome Burned.”

October 7, 2023

On this day Hamas carried out violent commando raids on communities, military outposts and a peace festival in southern Israel.

The indiscriminate raping, killing and hostage taking of ordinary citizens by Hamas soldiers was seen by Israelis as the worst attack on them since the Holocaust. In response, Israel’s declaration of a war of revenge on Hamas would mean inflicting untold violence on the millions of Palestinians who also lived in the overcrowded Gaza Strip.

The increased violence on both sides threatened to expand into a wider regional conflict as the US and its allies backed Israel and Iran backed Hamas and other anti-Israeli organizations. This was a new, very dangerous global hot spot and the lack of a MAGA Republican speaker in the House had stalled Congressional action on needed military aid to Ukraine as well as Israel.

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In the past, America had unified to meet these kind of challenges, but the continuing culture war between red and blue politicians continued to threaten any effective response to these increasing global dangers.

In related news, the EU gave Elon Musk a 24-hour ultimatum to confront alleged misinformation on X about Israel-Hamas war. A wider war in Middle East could tip the world economy into recession.

November 2023 Arrival in Sacramento

With the world and America continuing to feel deeply impacted, I arrived after a 3 day trip across the west at River Blu apartments in Sacramento. I picked Sacramento as being an ½ hour away from Jane and 1 ½ hours from Bruce. I did not want to live in the Bay Area again unless I had sufficient work there. Too many people, traffic etc.

The first quality I noticed of being in Sacramento was QUIET. The last two years in Boulder had been so crazy with my monkey mind on overdrive, my new place by the river was a place to collect myself and see what was coming up as I looked to change my story.

I got to Sacto too late to get a Xmas retail job so that process wouldn’t start until January. I got some intros to some production folks through Bruce, but they were mostly old like me and didn’t have much energy left. I continued to offer VSD to democratic orgs, particularly in Sacramento, with some interest but no one wanting to pay for the service. They loved the narratives I was unearthing but not enough to write a check.

I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with Jane and Bill and Christmas with Bruce, V and their kids. This was the first time I had done that in a very long time and it felt very good to be “home.”

We also began doing things together. Going to a Cal Game, Visiting an old E Train from our youth... Tracing our Father's history on Angel Island...

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Democracy in America

In the early part of 2023 our VSD narrative analysis identified a lengthy white paper that had emerged called “Project 2025.” It had been developed by former Trump officials and allies at the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. It detailed an agenda for a second Trump administration IF he was elected again in 2024.

As the story goes, Trump was as surprised as anyone that he won the 2016 election by 85,000 votes in three states. I still had not forgiven Hillary for allowing that to happen. As a result of that “surprise,” the transition from Obama to Trump was a dumpster fire. In all his insecurities about actually becoming president Trump fortunately choose some cooler heads for his cabinet on matters of defense and state at first.

His being president at this point also included that old notion that the US Government system would curtail the worst of Trumps instincts. He would find out like Presidents before him that he did not have the power to make the sweeping changes that he thought he did.

However, Trump had fought governments, competitors, and regulatory agencies all his life as his attempted to “stretch” the law to benefit his financial interests. He had also been mentored by an old, hard nosed mafia lawyer named Roy Cohn who taught him how to sue everyone even if there was no basis These cases were designed to delay legal judgements against him by appealing every ruling and only pay his bills when he was forced to. In spite of spending all the money his father had given him, and going totally bankrupt numerous times he had somehow beaten the legal system and stayed out of jail while claiming he was one of the most successful business tycoons… ever.

What we could not see at this point in time was… this “training” would kick in when Trump realized that in some ways the US government and legal system was easier to manipulate than the private world of entrepreneurs and banks. The 2016 Trump administration for the first two years was considered later by his MAGA allies to have been a waste of time. The Project 2025 effort was designed to correct that. IF Trump was elected again, they would hit the ground running to ensure that they brought Federal authority to heel and established Trump as an ”imperial” president representing the views of a minority of Americans.

Project 2025

The depth of Project 2025 was unprecedented.

It was a 900-page policy "wish list" for the next Republican president. A proposal that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision. Donald Trump, repeatedly disavowed the document even though dozens of former Trump administration officials have however contributed to the think tank's proposals and Trump had acknowledged his support at some of his rallies before the backlash hit.

This backlash against some of the more radical proposals in Project 2025 was intense. As a result, the project's director stepped down after criticism of the plan from Democrats and anger from the Trump campaign, who accused Heritage officials of exaggerating their influence over the former president.

Who Created Project 2025?

The Heritage Foundation… one of Washington's most prominent right-wing think tanks. The Project 2025 report was unveiled in April 2023, but Democratic opposition to the document ramped up as 2024 election intensified.

The team that created the project was chock-full of former Trump advisers, including director Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management while Trump was president. Dans left the project in late July, clearing the way for Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts to take over. He said he was leaving during the presidential election season in order to "direct all my efforts to winning.” Russell Vought, another former Trump administration official, wrote a key chapter in the document and also served as the Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform policy director. More than 100 conservative organizations contributed to the document, including many that would also be hugely influential in Washington if Republicans took back the White House.

The document itself set out four main policy aims: restore the family as the centerpiece of American life; dismantle the administrative state; defend the nation's sovereignty and borders; and secure God-given individual rights to live freely.

It laid out radical proposals for increasing Presidential power over the Federal Government among other things. The plan called for a "purging" of thousands of Federal government civil servants and eliminating major agencies like the Department of Education. It was also very critical of the FBI as being "politically motivated" and suggested the Justice Department had be used to investigate Trumps enemies. It also highlighted further limiting of abortion options including criminal penalties for anyone breaking red state rules and proposed dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and combining it with other immigration enforcement units in other agencies, creating a much larger and more powerful border policing operation. And those were just some of the bullet points.

Radical MAGA thought had always been around on the fringes of our political debates, but this white paper placed draconian policies at the very center of power if Trump was elected again. The only good news was that MAGA Republicans actually spelled out what they would do if re-elected in this plan. That at least gave pro-democracy forces a chance to counter it as talking points in the 2024 election.