This is no surprise.  The nation is governed by a fascist criminal gang that is not opposed by feckless Democrats, and a population cowed into slumber either because they are working two jobs, are sucked into an endless spiral of credit card debt, or just have no hope for a future.

To fill these gaps, many Americans are enmeshed in social media, sports fanaticism, get-rich-quick schemes, crypto trading, or fantasy worlds with gremlins, witches, time machines, and Star Trek outer space.

This is understandable because things on Earth are not so great.

“The bad news is that just about every part of the country — even Minnesota — is seeing a decline in self-reported personal well-being and mental health. Likewise, people throughout the country trust institutions and their fellow Americans less. Overall, we are increasingly unhappy,” according to an article by Nicholas Kristof, in the New York Times.

Kristof then goes on to list how individual states rank in the “well-being” index.  He lists the top 10 states for well-being in the study, in order, as: Minnesota, New Hampshire, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Utah.  Almost all states are Democratic.

The states at the bottom of this “well-being” index are mostly Republican: Louisiana is at the bottom, followed by New Mexico, West Virginia, Nevada, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arkansas and South Carolina.

Predictably, Kristof ends the article on a happy note by using a quote from Abraham Lincoln, a Times favorite, “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

Combatting the Media’s Naïve Liberal Optimism

It’s unclear why so many people in the media always put on a happy face when talking about Trump and his gang.  Reporters and cable news readers don’t have an obligation to say that things in the country will get better when they have no evidence of that.

The media’s other unchallenged belief is that all change is peaceful.  Absolutely not.  This is not evident in thousands of years of recorded history, yet the media persists in denigrating protests that turn violent, usually after a police attack, or wringing their hands when there is a violent protest. They would never discuss why the actions of Luigi Mangione, the man

accused of shooting the CEO of a health care company, had some merit, even though Mangione received significant support on social media, an often-cited measure of public opinion.

It’s not surprising that most young reporters today have no historical knowledge about the role of violent protests. There is no major social or political change in the US that has not had a violent component.

Without violent protests against the government and police, there would be no civil rights, women’s rights, abortion rights, environmental rights, Native American rights, gay rights, voting rights, union rights, animal rights, and anti-war protest rights.

This is because every major right achieved by Americans meant that you had to oppose the people who had control over you, usually through violence.  Slave holders did not want to voluntarily abandon their investments in slaves. Men who want control over women do not want to grant voting rights and abortion rights to women. Gay rights emerged to fight all forms of discrimination and violent attacks. The same is true for unions that sought to oppose management to secure better wages and working conditions.

Still, too many reporters and news readers have no awareness of history. Instead, they pick up on the prevailing behavior in corporate newsrooms that all violence that emanates from ordinary people is evil, but corporate and state violence is acceptable.  No wonder ordinary people feel helpless.

Kristof Misses Lincoln’s Main Point

Unfortunately, Mr. Kristof misses Lincoln’s main point.  His comments were made after the Civil War that killed over 620,000 Americans.  The issues that caused that war—slavery, secession, the need to produce a master class in the South—are all issues that are still with us today.  The MAGA Republicans, as reactionary conservatives who hate change, want to roll back the clock and re-interpret history. This explains the “Lost Cause” revision of the Confederacy’s loss in the Civil War, the rollback of Reconstruction, and the Great Replacement Theory from the Nazis.

The MAGA Republicans are the incarnation of the Confederates who want to erase voting access for Blacks, deprive women of their rights, impose wage slavery on ordinary people, avoid any war that does not benefit the corporate (plantation) owners, or just benefit themselves by stealing from the public (the Trump crime family).

Mr. Kristof’s article was published on June 6, 2026, a few weeks before the nation’s 250^th anniversary.

But what a sad Fourth of July 2026 this will be.

Uninformed and Beaten Down Americans

About two-thirds of Americans are so uninformed, selfish, delusional, and unhappy that they voted for a convicted felon, fake business success, liar, sociopath, and criminal to be president twice. Yes, two times.

Americans voted for Trump and his reactionary movement because they see they have a limited future. They make less than their parents, and Trump, their elected leader, gets to steal and grope anyone he wants with impunity from Congress, the judicial system, and the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, ordinary people cannot get away with any of those crimes because they live in a system with police trained to use massive force against anyone who contests the civil order, especially against the federal government.  As we have seen, if ICE or cops kill someone, they have good odds of never facing any penalty.

So, Mr. Kristof’s naïve liberal optimism that the nation must “bind up its wounds,” along with another favorite quote from Lincoln used often in the New York Times about controlling “our better angels,” is grossly out of touch to describe the nation’s current fascist state.

Contemporary America is ruled by money.  The control is from the richest people obsessed with making more money, controlling who gets it, devising strategies to separate ordinary, uninformed people from their money, and then hiding the money where it cannot be taxed.

Everything in America is monetized, a buzzword for extracting the last dollar from Americans who are bombarded by ads to buy more, or finance more, or borrow more.  Americans are wage slaves, people who are targeted by unethical behavioral marketers at corporations to deprive naïve people of their money.

This explains the rise of crypto, offshore banking, gambling, pardons by Trump of financial fraudsters who pay millions for a pardon, and average MAGA supporters who steal and evade taxes, and will also probably never be prosecuted by the MAGA-controlled IRA.

So, as the nation approaches its 250^th anniversary, the elite say the looting of the country has just started. Trump has a few more years to build his multi-billion-dollar criminal empire.  His followers have the same time frame, and maybe longer if the wimpy corporate Democrats decide that stealing money from taxpayers could also benefit the Democratic Party elite.

But for average Americans, ‘fuh ‘gedda ‘bout it.

The USA’s best days are behind us.

Let the looting continue. No one will stop it.

There, they will supposedly help hapless travelers toting luggage, backpacks, and anxious kids through long lines to prove they are not carrying bombs, flammables, or messages on their phones that oppose or insult Trump or the American Way.

These masked American Gestapo ICE agents are being sent to guard Americans against other Americans, whose authenticity Trump’s Gestapo will decide if they are really all-American enough to board an airplane.

Yes, the freedom to move freely around the US is being evaluated by a group of thugs, many of whom have never been to college or graduated from high school. Some even vandalized the Capitol during Trump’s January 6 Insurrection.

Worse, most of the people arrested by ICE have done nothing wrong. “50,259 out of 68,289—or 74% held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction according to data current as of Feb. 7, 2026. Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations,” according to TracImmigration.

So, why are these thugs being sent to US airports to wish travelers a happy journey?

On its face, its done to add more screening agents for boarding passengers to go throug security..

But it’s also part of the chilling and desensitization factor to get Americans used to seeing armed soldiers in close proximity.  They are on US streets and airports. Next, they will be in malls, schools, theaters, and entertainment districts.

ICE is there to intimidate Americans.  Parents accompanying their kids at airports will now have to explain why masked men in full combat gear with guns and pepper spray are now standing next to people in wheelchairs being pushed to their departure gates.

Maybe the ICE agents will arrest people wearing pajamas on airplanes since the head of Trump’s FAA already said that is not part of the Republican dress code.

This is full-blown fascism. Previously, this was restricted to isolated neighborhoods in Minneapolis and Chicago, but now the goons will be intimidating people buying magazines and candy for their flights.

Apparently, few other people have noticed this incongruent scene because they are too busy watching March Madness basketball or scrolling through the latest TikTok videos.

Even the media is asleep.  Today, Dana Bash of CNN did another one of her toothless interviews with Tom Homan, the new ICE head, about sending combat thugs to airports.  Bash asked Homnan whether his geniuses have any expertise in operating a scanner or working the X-ray machines that detect bombs in luggage.

After a visibly long pause, Homan (who makes about $200,000 a year but has never explained the $50,000 he says he received in a paper bag) said they don’t have that expertise.

However, he said they would be stationed at the exits to ensure no one entered the baggage claim area from the outside lobby.  This is worth repeating because Homan said his highly trained force of weekend combat soldiers will be stationed at the exits to ensure no one enters from the exit-only door. Imagine that!

Anyone who has been to an airport knows that the job of sitting on a stool, looking at people exiting the luggage area, was previously held by a rent-a-cop in a blue blazer who sat there with no gun or tear gas.  Essentially, his job was to make sure no one went up or down the escalator.  Now, travelers will feel more secure with a masked goon at the door with enough weaponry to level the whole lounge.

Now, Homan’s weekend warriors will be sitting at that same exit with loaded weapons and pepper spray to make sure some misguided old lady who forgot her purse on the airplane does not enter the wrong door to retrieve her purse.

If that happens, the ICE agent will throw her against the wall, yell at her, push her to the ground, and after that, three or four other weekend combat soldiers in ICE will surround her, handcuff her, and block the view so no bystanders can take cell phone videos. She will then be taken to an ambulance and flown to some unnamed town in the Arizona desert.

God knows what will happen if a traveler gives an ICE agent the finger or takes their photo. It could be a bloodbath.  All this is possible under Trump’s Nazis.

How do we know this?

Because this has been their pattern in Minneapolis and Chicago, and wherever ICE agents have beaten people up for no cause.

Did this occur to Dana Bash of CNN?

Bash, one of the highest-paid newsreaders at CNN at $3 million a year with a net worth of $9 million, cannot ask tough questions that any good journalist who was on the air 30 years ago would ask.

Why she is paid $3 million annually is unknowable to anyone outside the cable industry, but she certainly does not ask questions that any journalism freshman would know.  Maybe she is paid that much NOT to ask tough questions. That would better explain the wimpified cable journalism we see today.

The US Embargo Kills Cubans and No One Protests

So, as the US is working to silently kill Cuban citizens with more embargoes, Americans keep watching March Madness or the next Great Diversion in American society, whatever it is.

Trump’s comment that he is glad the former head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, died would be disgusting if it came from any person, but when Trump says it, that vile comment from the most vile man in the US goes unnoticed on cable TV.

The fact that about one-third of Americans voted for the convicted criminal, sex offender, adulterer, and racist TWICE to be president is proof that the US is declining.

The amount of damage Trump has caused in less than one, a little over one, year will take a generation or two to recover from.

The great days of America are over.  When the Trump crowds chant “USA, USA,” it’s proof that the pre-Trump USA is gone.

People aged 30 or younger will have less wealth and a lower standard of living than their parents, unless they receive an inheritance.

The proliferation of online betting, betting on prediction markets, reverse mortgages, and payday loans, the mischaracterization of crypto as an “investment” by greedy advisors and banks, is more proof that younger people are desperate for get-rich-quick schemes.  They are doing this because it’s difficult to get entry-level jobs commensurate with their education, get raises, have job security, and save on basic expenses.

Monopolistic corporations in the utilities, cable, internet, and food distribution businesses make it impossible to save unless a subscriber signs up for their most basic plan.  If they cannot afford that basic plan, they have nothing to substitute for it, so they do without.

The credit card companies, banks, and credit rating agencies further control the lives of most working people.  If you don’t have a good credit score, you pay more for everything you buy on credit: cars, houses, cosmetics, food, entertainment, and clothes.  Americans who live paycheck to paycheck charge more, so they pay more for everything if they have a low credit score.  It’s the reason why credit card companies have profit margins in excess of 25%, the highest of any industry in America.

Suicides Are the Leading Cause of Death

The reason America’s best days are behind us is that more people die of suicide than gun deaths in America. If these people had something to look forward to, why would they commit suicide?

The new report, Gun Violence in the United States 2023: Examining the Gun Suicide Epidemic, finds that guns were involved in 46,728 deaths in the U.S. in 2023—or one death every 11 minutes. For the third straight year, gun suicides reached a new high: 27,300, or 58% of all gun deaths, were suicides, according to this report.

American soldiers (men and women) who went to the useless and fraudulent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are also committing suicide at the rate of 17 per day in 2023. The rate of suicide among veterans was 35 per 100,000, compared with 17 per 100,000 for nonveterans (Office of Suicide Prevention, 2024b). In 2022, the suicide rate among 18–34-year-olds remained the highest among all age groups.

The people who started those wars using fake pretenses and the lie of “weapons of mass destruction” are living very comfortable lives in Texas and California.  Condoleezza Rice, the pliable liar under the George Bush administration, now heads Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.  Being a war criminal pays well: Rice is paid $305,000 annually from Stanford and received roughly $350,000 in total compensation as a C3.ai board member in 2024. Stanford University should have an entire department composed of war criminals.

Who needs more proof that America’s best days are in the past? 

Trump is unchallenged and has about three more years to dismantle the nation and make it into a kleptocracy, complete with prison camps in warehouses, all paid for by the Federal government.  The Democrats are a disgraceful group of spinless wimps who are focused on Robert’s Rule of Orders, discharge petitions, and esoteric discharge petitions, and the esoterica of parliamentary procedure and the rules of debate.

All of these are relics from another age.  Newt Gingrich introduced the dismantling of Congress in 1995 as the Speaker of the House.  That happened 31 years ago, but that was not enough time for the Democrats to adjust their strategic playbook.

Now they have no playbook, only speeches delivered by the tootlless trio of Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Corey Booker, all of whom hate the democratic socialists Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani more than their Republican “colleagues.”

The Congressional Democrats are so useless that they still believe they can work with their Republican “colleagues.”  But they are not the first to be deceived by the obvious.  Barack Obama, a true corporate Democrat and a failed political force, never seemed to recognize that the Republicans opposed every bill he ever introduced because he was Black.

At a famous meeting of top Republicans the night he was inaugurated, these Republicans agreed to that goal.  Obama knew about it, but tried to appease the lions. Obama was criticized before he became president for being unable to make decisions, wishy-washy until he heard the latest poll numbers, or got the OK to act from his advisor, Valerie Jarrett.

The Democrats became even more spineless under Joe Biden, who was addled by old age, mental disabilities, or the inability to realize the new political reality he had never encountered: in-your-face disgust, rejection of his ideas, and full-blown hatred of the principles of the Democratic Party.

Biden was too spineless to fire the worst Attorney General in modern History, Merrick Garland, who waited over a year to appoint the Special Counsel Jack Smith for reasons that have never been publicly released.  There may not even be a reason for Garland’s behavior aside from the fact that he was a coward or too entangled in legal esoterica to make a decision.

The bottom line is what we see today.

Americans can see the fascist takeover is being televised.

But most Americans think this is a reality show like “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” or “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”

It’s not.

The best advice is to skip the airport. Don’t fly. Take the train or drive. And if you are a tourist in Europe, South America, or Asia and are thinking of visiting the USA, think again.  Don’t make the trip.

If you show up at a US airport and think favorably of Castro, Mao, the European Union, the United Nations, liberal movie stars, the US women’s Olympic soccer team, or the socialist governments of Scandinavia, or socialist candidates in office in France or Germany, you could immediately be thrown in an unnamed, unfindable US jail with no recourse.

Welcome to Trump’s America.