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Jan 7
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I don't "like" it but I agree with your assessment. And I think democrats will help. I feel totally abandoned and played.

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I disagree - Fox spews lies and propaganda especially to cover vulnerabilities. To me, this means hegseth nomination remains in trouble - keep calling, emailing, faxing your objections to your electeds... we are the opposition now - loud and proud!!

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ZUCKERBERG genuflects to “Alternative Facts”

Breaking: Zuckerberg ends fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram, calling election “a cultural tipping point” on free speech. Meta will instead adopt X-style “community notes”.

(Yup, fact-checking costs money and resources – and it offends Trump and other purveyors of false information. Can’t have that!

PS. Realizing on Day One what a brilliant data-mining operation Mark Zuckerberg had launched, I never signed up for Facebook. In hindsight, that decision just gets better and better.)

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I wish I had been that prescient. I left in 2019 for many reasons. One that most seem to understand is that I had come to feel so “exposed”. I’m frustrated by the fact that all the local DTC groups and state reps, etc. continue to maintain active pages. I’m all for any ideas to shift the discourse to friendlier and more effective platforms.

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It is truly sad that almost all people who claim to be in the information industry refuse to stand up and say something like, "Sorry, objective reality still matters. There are such things as lies and falsehoods, and we need to protect the truth. People are entitled to their own opinions, which is the basis of free speech, but facts are immutable. If you say things on our platform that don't comport with reality or the best known verifiable information at the time, we will be call you out on it. Our platform doesn't claim to own reality or truth-- it exists regardless of what we think or how we feel. But we promise to use it and are obligated to use it as our north star for purposeful, meaningful communication. Without an objective set of facts around which we operate, all endeavors, most importantly communication, are at best useless and at worst destructive."

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Then he should be forced to remove the word "News" from any aspect of Facebook. It should instead be titled "Things that may or may not be verifiable/factual"

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Forced by whom? Meta’s shareholders or Board of Directors? The loud and demanding users of Facebook and Instagram? Meta’s corporate advertisers? The FCC? Alas, we do not live in such a world.

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It was more of a tongue-in-cheek comment about the worthlessness of information on a site that doesn't fact check. It wasn't a legit call-to-action.

FCC has rules to prohibit broadcasting of distorted news, but FB et al. have skirted those by saying they are Social Media companies, not broadcasters.

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Oh, I took it as such. My response was more one of exasperation. :)

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Germany in fact could do that. Germany is why Zuckerberg got fact-checkers in the first place. It was either that or be monitored as a news organization, and in Germany those are held to very strict anti-hate-speech standards. I don't think "Community Notes" will be enough to satisfy the German courts:

https://mashable.com/article/facebook-germany-hate-speech-zuckerberg

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ArcticStones , I am with you! I never signed up for Facebook either. I found it non-sensical to put photos and information about my family on display for who knows what! Great minds think alike :)

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It does, sir. Congrats to you.

Luckily, I was too young for Facebook anyways, so no credit to me. But a great blessing to be free from the tentacles of that scumbag, at any rate.

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I wouldn’t mind leaving FB so much, except that some relatives and high school friends are on there and it’s the only way I have of keeping in touch. Also a few groups I’m in have FB pages that follow. I used to post or share more often, but not so much anymore. My kids don’t want their kids’ photos on there, so that mostly eliminates family photos too.

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How to Stop Authoritarians Before They Start

🔸️FITNESS FOR DUTY EVALUATIONS that are mandatory, like the military for high responsibility positions, would have stopped Trump before he got within a mile of the White House.

Bandy X Lee, Steven Hassan, and 100 other psychiatrists agree Trump has five dangerous mental pathologies as listed in the books "The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" and "The Psychology Of Trump Contagion - An Existential Threat to American Democracy and All Humankind".

"Containing Trump Contagion and Healing from Mental Pathology in Politics"

https://youtu.be/HTkCqU5LM-k?si=f6g0PolglC21w1nR

🔸️Fitness for Duty Evaluations start with everyone who interacts with the individual in question, and when red flags start to appear, 'say something.'

The US Military has procedures to follow that require individuals in question to have a Fitness for Duty Evaluation. Voters must demand the House and Senate do the same.

"Stephen Xenakis- Fitness for Duty Exams: Preventing Autocratic Abuse"

https://youtu.be/vdtChF07ryU?si=VJ5dauWFoUQg10uH

🔸️Outside the military are professionals like Dr. Bandy X. Lee who has several dozen colleagues all of whom are highly qualified to do Fitness for Duty Evaluations.

The U.S. House and Senate have several mechanisms to enforce their rules, including:

* Leadership

* Committees

* Floor Procedures

* Party Discipline

It's important to note that these mechanisms are not always used consistently or effectively. The more voters demand mentally fit leaders the more the House and Senate will comply.

🔸️I like what forensic psychologist Dr. Bandy X. Lee says that fascism and authoritarianism are just dangerous mental pathologies that worm their way into politics.

Everyone on Earth deserves and demands leadership that is mentally fit.

Fitness for Duty Evaluations performed by well respected psychiatrists ensures every country has leaders who do not serve their own power, but serve their own people.

With a pool of mentally fit candidates, we then have all the elections we wish.

🔸️"Trump.. meets diagnostic criteria from the DSM-5 for five personality disorders! These are: 1) narcissistic; 2) antisocial; 3) psychopathic, which has more lack of remorse; 4) paranoid; and 5) grandiose and paranoid delusional disorders."

So, yes, both Biden and Harris would likely pass with flying colors any Fitness for Duty Evaluations

THE NEWSLETTER OF DR. BANDY X. LEE The More Dangerous State of the World, the Need for Fit Leadership, and the Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Part 6

https://open.substack.com/pub/bandyxlee/p/the-more-dangerous-state-of-the-world-f77?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=280c3q

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What. The. Hell. WHY is Trump going after our allies -- Canada, Greenland, Panama and Mexico? This is ridiculous. What can we do, Simon? Where are the Democratic leaders on this crap? We are feeling abandoned by our top Dem brass, who don't appear to have ANY media platform AT ALL to contradict and combat this BS. Oy vey!

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I really appreciate your comment - I too want our leaders to speak out against this. And i very much want a shadow cabinent and until that happens for all of our leaders to speak out loud and clear.

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He wants to be a mini-Putin. Monkey see, monkey do.

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The chaos has started and the convicted felon (with a side finding of sexual assault) is not even in the WH.

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So grateful for these suggestions! I’ve been working hard to putting together the idea of conference of grassroots leaders to share best practices. We are all so siloed and we need a regular forum to share what we know and what’s worked and what hasn’t. I spoke to several Congressionals and Senators last week and they have offered help from their staffs. So important and I would love to see the DNC take this on at a grander scale!

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What are your thoughts on Chorus which is being promoted as a new way to amplify voices on the left?

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TRUMP’s REAL OBJECTIVE – Greenland, Panama, Canada

I have a different take on Trump’s aggressive, deranged proposals about Greenland, Panama and Canada. First, I really do not believe he expects to be able to reclaim the Panama Canal, purchase Greenland from Denmark, or make Canada our 51st state.

We are gullible – and in fact complicit – if we anxiously take Trump’s insane utterances at face value. The point is that the "noise" serves him well. Let me explain.

The news media show an astonishing inability to follow-up and follow-through on important stories. It has been reduced to an infotainment industry that is all about "views and clicks", and it is disappointingly predictable. Trump’s controversial statements get lots of attention, front-page headlines and evening-news top story. These eclipse everything else – and precisely that is Trump’s objective. He plays the press like a master violinist.

What Trump DOES achieve is that his promises to e.g. lower the price of food and gas is suddenly forgotten. Are you seeing fresh articles on this? How about prominent articles about Trump’s various nominees and their glaring disqualifications? Of course not!

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SUCCESSFULLY OVERSHADOWED

Here is a case in point about what was eclipsed yesterday. President BIDEN had an excellent and very important op-ed in The Washington Post. Given its author and the topic, that should have been featured as one of the top three articles. And yet, mention of it was hardly visible on WaPo’s front page! The big headlines were largely about Trump. (Gift link below.)

"What Americans should remember about January 6th"

https://wapo.st/3W6jx4W

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Biden thinking an op-ed would be effective is frankly part of the problem.

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Amen brother. Amen. Reverting to the clutch the pearls response is exactly what Tweetolini wants. It diverts our attention from his incompetence and criminality. It’s very well established that he has no bottom.

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How can we get the media to stop covering trump’s every utterance? They rarely covered Biden. The media seems to be Trump’s mouthpiece and has been since 2016. It’s disgusting and an affront to democracy.

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Well, we can't change the media as we have and are learning. We & the party have to respond with all the ways Simon outlined in today's newsletter. Its going to be a big job for all of us!

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They love this stuff..the outrage and scandal is big shiny stuff that gets lots of attention.

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Corporate media is gone - we have to face that. There are a handful of corporations who dominate the mainstream media and they have made it clear that the only thing they care about is sensationalism to drive revenue. That's why using alternate media effectively as Simon is suggesting is critical.

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Cancel all subscriptions to legacy sell-out media like WaPo, NY Times, et. al. Consider subscribing instead to The Guardian and The Atlantic and becoming supporters of the ACLU.

Cancel\delete your FaceBook and X (Twitter) accounts. I will be deleting mine on January 20 at 12:OO EST.

Boycott Amazon and Tesla.

The only language these assholes understand is the power of the $. So hit them in the g-damned pocketbooks.

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It IS disgusting. Everything is ”President “ Trump this and “President “ Trump that. He’s not president! But they’ve been doing this since 2016 right through Biden’s whole presidency. Where’d he get this Canada/Greenland/Panama stuff from? That wasn’t anywhere in his campaign.

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I just began subscribing to MeidasTouch and really like it. Yesterday, with the certification of the election, I found social media so gloomy that I decided maybe it’s better to limit my time there in favor of more substack/YouTube channels like Hopium, HCR, and MeidasTouch. The idea of DNC hosting mass Zooms would correlate with this. I still find occasional great posts on Threads and Bluesky but find them just too dispiriting at times. I decided this even before learning how Meta is becoming more compromised.

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Are Dems Serious About Getting Louder?

If so they need to make two fundamental alterations:

1) ADD Bluesky links to every OFFICIAL communication (they already have links to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter)

2) STOP posting on social media sites not committed to truth and fact-checking.

There are plenty of serious challenges ahead. These two are easy and within their control.

Getting louder using MAGA megaphones makes no sense.

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Then how do you hope to reach people who are being lied to? I don’t know the answer, btw.

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The only way to defeat Musk and Zuckerberg are to starve their platforms. Every communication on Twitter provides energy, triggers responses and creates greater negative engagement. It amplifies lies. I wish it were not so but that’s how it is. Healthy engagement can only happen where people have control of what they read/hear/see. Musk and Zuckerberg algorithms don’t allow that. They purposely amplify disinformation for engagement and suppress inconvenient truths like newspapers use to bury stories on back pages in lower columns and small headers.

What people are you hoping to reach who are being lied to? If MAGA, you might ask how fruitful the efforts are to convert MAGA folks away from Trump/Musk and open their minds to see alternative points of view. All social media needs engagement to attract users. Twitter has been losing millions to Bluesky because that’s where better engagement happens. That’s how you reach people who are being lied to (that are open to being reached).

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dont think we will ever convert maga. they will self convert when the pain/chaos becomes too much to them, their friends, co workers, family. but we can get the dems that didnt vote (5-7 M) and we can go after new voters thru registration and we can get the infrequent voters who pop in and out. but lets not waste our time on the maga crowd. its a cult.

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This is an excellent analysis that Simon called out, we need to stay engaged with 19mil. ppl!

This article is critical for our audience to know. Some 19 mil. voters for Biden in 2020 (anti-MAGA voters) did not show up for Harris.

Why? They didn't think Trump was dangerous in 2024.

https://www.weekendreading.net/p/how-trump-won

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I agree we need to stay engaged with 19 million people who didn’t show up for Harris. I don’t agree that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the right vehicles for doing that. Bluesky is.

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I dont' know, being honest. Can we get the Anti-Maga ppl if we're not on Facebook. Not sure. I'm leaving, though. I guess I can't be on IG, either. I like Courier's operation.

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If we could get Democratic congresspeople to start posting on Bluesky exclusively, and informing their constituents that moving forward they will have to leave Facebook due to concern about content moderation, I’m pretty sure most constituents would follow them to the new platform. I used to visit my Congressman Andy Kim’s Facebook page often, but I didn’t really care about the platform, it was to see what he was doing and encourage him. I’m not sure what the answer is right now, but I think the situation is becoming more dire by the day, and we may need some true out-of-the-box thinking.

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Trump, idolizing Putin, wants his own Ukraine.

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i believe this is a kremlin hatched plot to both-siderism the invastion of ukraine. the mistake that is being made is that the media doesnt ask the question: under what authority? and is this war? and doesnt congress have to declare war? ask the hard questions.

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I wonder how long Putin would be happy with us taking over Greenland. Greenland has strategic importance for them too.

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Oh my gosh! The next 4 years is just beginning and already I get so stressed by the anti-democracy happenings. Yikes!

I read The Border Chronicle substack and thought some here at Hopium might be interested in what is going on at the border right now. It is written by two Tucson journalists. It is interesting to read Mexico is preparing to receive deported natives.

https://www.theborderchronicle.com/p/the-border-chronicle-forecast-for-05b?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=gn419&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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I wish the DNC would focus on states like Texas which has a minority majority Hispanic population, a strong history of Black Democrats and a whole bunch of white folks who are democrats. By ignoring this state we are losing the Hispanic population along the border. I know that it is a money issue, but Texas is not a lost cause and if there were more robust support and interest I think things could be different. After all just focusing on a few swing states didn't help much. I my humble opinion we need to get our own fire hoses of information out there and we we need to make our case everywhere.

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Jan 7
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we do need to add another state that is not battleground state for the electoral votes. this should be a dnc goal. maybe NC? seems it might be ready to tip. this would really help in the presidential elections.

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I do understand what you are saying, but in my career in education I worked with a lot of young, educated people who are busy with their jobs and their families. It is hard for them to see what the Democrats are doing . It seems to me that the party ignores this populous state at their peril.

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Texas is not a lost cause! There are lots of local and downballot races to be won – and in Texas the Democratic Party needs to be given more resources to achieve that. And the work needs to be unceasing.

Texas is a lost cause only if we focus myopically on the presidential race and the top statewide races. No Red state can be turned Blue or Purple by focusing on just the big campaigns every two or four years!

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Indeed, Mr. Stones. There are some wonderful blue areas there. Austin! Dallas! El Paso! San Antonio! Houston! Laredo! Brownsville! etc.

https://www.kxan.com/news/your-local-election-hq/these-are-the-reddest-and-bluest-counties-in-texas-based-on-recent-election-results/

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TX and NC often disappoint, although strides were made in NC this cycle. I think it would be a huge mistake to write off the entire state of Texas. As an alternative, the Democrats might want to try investing in strategic districts rather than the entire enormous state - it’s not Rhode Island. The losses along the Rio Grande have been going on for awhile. Also TX is likely to gain more seats after the next census at the expense of blue states, like CA and NY. We walk away at our own peril.

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Same with FL

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“Finally, our elected officials, every single one of them, at all levels of government, need to get louder in every way possible every day. There has to be a revolution in how we see the role of an elected official, both on the official side and on the campaign side. Electeds need to not only govern and legislate, but also should see themselves as influencers and info warriors with enormous platforms to help shape the information environment every day, 24/7/365. Simply, they have to work it as hard as they can, every day, using all the tools at their disposal.

Party leaders should work to create a new baseline of understanding of how people get their information these days to help every person in this process become more effective. Classes and training should be required for all electeds and their staffs, and best practices shared.”

Yes, yes, yes.

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i am beginning to think that the grassroots, which fought hard in this election, are way out ahead of the dem party mucks and electeds as a whole. for instance, if you are losing the hispanic and youth vote, wouldnt it be strategic to put AOC as chair of oversight? fyi: 48 dems voted today with repubs to deport immigrants who engage in minor crimes. i dont see "the fight" in any of them really. they are either too old, too corporate, too afraid of their shadows, too status quo. simon is on the right track! hopium is on the right track!

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Can you post a list of the delegates who will be voting? If we, the rank and file, hear something we like or do not like and want to pass that information on to the delegates from our states, many of us have found it hard to secure that information. Thank you for your help with this. A number of requests have been made, but to date, a list of who votes has not been provided. Thank you.

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I was just getting ready to post a question about how the DNc chair is chosen. I have listened to Simon’s interviews but didn’t know what the next step would be. (The holidays also intruded.) I second your request for a list of voting delegates. Thank you.

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