7 RULES on Approaching Authoritarian Supporters

 From The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide:

7 RULES on Approaching Authoritarian Supporters
What if your neighbour, friend or family member supports the authoritarian regime?

Rule 1

Don’t look down on them, don’t patronize them, even if you know what they’re saying has no factual basis or you find it offensive. Don’t preach, ask questions. Try to understand them, where they are coming from, what their problems are and why they see solutions to them in the regime. Treat them as people, as equals. They believe what they’re saying is true and they might have valid reasons for their support.

Rule 2

Don’t get emotional, don’t get provoked into heated arguments. Fight the other side’s emotions with your calm, logical approach. The angrier they get, the calmer you should be. They’ll calm down eventually.

Rule 3

Focus on what you have in common. Do you live in the same neighborhood? Do you work in the same company or sector? The smaller the community, the easier it is. Give examples, like “we all need to get this done for all of us, if we don’t cooperate neither of us will have it”.

Rule 4

Use their language, don’t treat it as inferior or below you – don’t seem patronizing (see rule 1). If they curse, curse with them. If they approach you with humor, don’t get angry or uptight about it, reply with humor. Show them you’re actually not that different (see rule 3). As long as you communicate on two different planes, you will never meet.

Rule 5

Don’t block their news sources, don’t turn away from their leaders and authority figures. Treat them as an insight to their worldview and tactics. Use them to your advantage, to better prepare for their arguments. Whenever you don’t agree with something or detect a lie, voice it calmly, expose it with factual arguments.

Rule 6

Pinpoint the practical, negative effects of their side’s actions, ones that affect them directly. Find examples of how they, their families, children or friends will be personally impacted by their policies, or how it will affect your shared community.

Rule 7

If all else fails, don’t turn away, don’t abandon your friends and family, don’t shun your neighbors. Remember, an authoritarian wants to divide you to control you. So invite them over to your BBQ, crack open a beer, and who knows, maybe they’ll realize you’re not so different after all.

LINK TO WHOLE GUIDE - written in Poland in 2017 
https://verfassungsblog.de/the-authoritarian-regime-survival-guide/

Trump supporters report higher levels of psychopathy, manipulativeness, callousness, and narcissism

Not surprising

https://www.psypost.org/trump-supporters-report-higher-levels-of-psychopathy-manipulativeness-callousness-and-narcissism/

 by Eric W. Dolan  July 23, 2025 

  A new psychological study has found that people who report favorable views of Donald Trump also tend to score higher on measures of callousness, manipulation, and other malevolent traits—and lower on empathy and compassion.

 

How Mike Johnson became Speaker

 Nov. 11, 2025

 A reminder that the reason we got Mike Johnson (R) as Speaker of the House was that all Democrats plus 8 Republicans voted to oust his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy (R). Johnson is much worse than McCarthy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_Kevin_McCarthy_as_Speaker_of_the_House
 

Feed and Freeze

 

I wrote this song after reading a few years ago that there are children in our country who routinely lose weight in the winter because their families cannot afford both enough food and heat. And of course people need more food when they are cold.

Feed and Freeze
copyright 2001 Patricia M. Shannon

(chorus)
If I feed my my children, they will freeze
'cause the power bill is so high.
When they say "Mama, mama, can I have some food",
sometimes I just break down and cry,
sometimes I just break down and cry.

(verse)
They don't understand that I don't have enough food
for them to have their fill.
I have to pay the heating bill
'cause it's cold enough to kill;
it's cold enough to kill;

We turn the thermostat way down
and wear a lot of clothes.
We hang out at the Waffle House,
but the heating bill just grows and grows,
the heating bill just grows.

(chorus)

They say you'll be a big success
if you work really hard.
But I slave all day at the fast food place
and the minimum wage is my reward,
the minimum's my reward

They say they can't pay anymore,
the economy's too slow;
Profits are down, but they gave a raise
and a bonus to the CEO;
a big bonus to the CEO.

(chorus)

No! Obama Did Not Control Congress His First Two Years!

http://cjonline.com/blog-post/lucinda/2012-06-01/no-obama-did-not-control-congress-his-first-two-years

 Looks like the original link no longer exists. Here's another one with the information:

 https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2012/09/09/when-obama-had-total-control/985146007/

Posted June 1, 2012 12:05 am - Updated June 1, 2012 01:39 am
No! Obama Did Not Control Congress His First Two Years!

•••••

Let’s take a trip back to 2008.

And let’s brush up on some basics. First, did you forget that the President needed 60 votes to pass legislation? The healthcare bill is a good example of that. There were NOT 60 Democrats in the Senate. Remember that? So there had to be reconciliation.

What about the Stimulus? Again, there was NOT 60 Democratic votes to pass it. Reconciliation did not work. It was blocked by the Republicans, and Obama traded job-creating for tax cuts. Remember those tax cuts he let go on? Yep, traded for job creation - which it did accomplish as much as the baby stimulus that he was able to get would allow.

Is it all coming back to you now? How about this: It was Obama’s inaugural dinner. Senator Kennedy suffered a seizure. It’s kind of hard to work when you’ve had a seizure. He went back to Massachusetts.

Old news is so much fun to go back and read about. Here’s one I had forgotten, too. Al Franken had not yet been seated because the previous senator had challenged the election. Mein Gott, that went on forever with no way for him to vote in the Senate.

With Kennedy in Massachusetts and Franken in purgatory, awaiting his chance in the hell that is Congress, that left just 58 votes in the Senate. Memory Refresher: It took 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. The Republicans were already playing dirty politics and would not work across the aisle with the Democrats.

By the way, that was 56 Democrats and 2 Democratically-minded Independents. Not 58 Democrats.

Then, in April 2009 – good news. Republican Arlen Spector switched to Democrat. That gave the Democrats 60 seats with which to discourage a Republican filibuster (their most prized procedure at the time). But… oh no… we forgot, Al Franken was still in Purgatory out there in election recount turmoil. So… back to 59 votes.

We can pause here to lovingly remember the filibuster I just mentioned. Republicans made history during that time by using it more than any time ever before. Reminder (because this can get confusing): It takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The Democrats only had 59 at this point… technically. One of those votes was the very ill, Senator Kennedy. He did cast one vote during that time.

Then, Senator Byrd was admitted to the hospital.

Then Al Franken was sworn in but Byrd was still in the hospital and Kennedy was too sick to ever vote again.

Senator Byrd finally returned, but Kennedy did not.

It wasn’t until August- 2009 that Senator Kirk was appointed to Kennedy’s seat, and finally they had the 60 votes.

That filibuster-proof 60 votes lasted exactly 4 months – Not 2 years. Not 1 year. Not 6 months.

Just 4 months – from August 2009 to February 2010 - when Scott Brown was sworn in.

But here’s a fact that nobody can deny:

Republicans had the presidency, the House, and the Senate from 2001 – 2007.

For six years, Republicans had total and complete and undeniably absolute control over everything.

And how did that work out in the final analysis?

It doesn’t bear repeating. You know the answer to that as well as I do. Six years to screw up the whole country – nay, the entire damned world!

And you whine because Obama could not fix it all in four months?

Alright, I expect you to whine. But from this point on there is no excuse for lying. Not now that you know the truth.

tags: obstructionism, control of congress

What Kind of Job Is Important

The relevance is really obvious in the wake of the several recent very destructive natural disasters. Obviously, not a comprehensive list of important jobs.

Lyrics

What Kind of Job Is Important
© copyright 2017 Patricia M. Shannon

What kind of jobs are important? What do we really need?
What is it we cannot live without, not just an expression of greed?
We need food and water, shelter from the cold.
The farmer, the plumber, the carpenter are far more important than gold.

(chorus)
Those who have been thru the tunnel/valley, seen the light then returned to our shores,
tell us helping each other, and always be learning, that is what we are here for.

(bridge)
And no one returns from the other side to say that our value is shown
by the size of our stock portfolio, or the number of cars that we own.

Some people think they're important, because they sit at their desks all day
making money by moving money around in a circular way.
But what use is money if there's no one who can buy,
and no one to fix the power lines, or the pipes when the water runs dry.

(chorus)

The Mathematics of Inequality

 

 

Mathematical analysis shows that without redistribution, wealth becomes increasingly more concentrated, and inequality grows until almost all assets are held by an extremely small percent of people.  History shows this analysis is accurate.   I first saw such an analysis years ago, I believe in Scientific American in the winter in 1990, 1991, or 1992. I haven't been able to find the article in the Scientific archives, because they don't have good enough descriptions for the column where it would have appeared. I bought several articles I hoped would be the right one, but didn't find it. Luckily, there were finally some more recent analyses I was able to reference in my blog.

 

https://now.tufts.edu/articles/mathematics-inequality

By Taylor McNeil
October 12, 2017

Seven years ago, the combined wealth of 388 billionaires equaled that of the poorest half of humanity, according to Oxfam International. This past January the equation was even more unbalanced: it took only eight billionaires, marking an unmistakable march toward increased concentration of wealth. Today that number has been reduced to five billionaires.

Trying to understand such growing inequality is usually the purview of economists, but Bruce Boghosian, a professor of mathematics, thinks he has found another explanation—and a warning.

Using a mathematical model devised to mimic a simplified version of the free market, he and colleagues are finding that, without redistribution, wealth becomes increasingly more concentrated, and inequality grows until almost all assets are held by an extremely small percent of people.

•••••

It’s easy to imagine how wealth-attained advantage works in real life. “The people with that advantage receive better returns on their investments, lower interest rates on loans, and better financial advice,” said Boghosian. “Conversely, as Barbara Ehrenreich famously observed, it is expensive to be poor. If you are working two jobs, you don’t have time to shop for the best bargains. If you can’t afford the security deposit demanded by most landlords, you may end up staying in a motel at inflated prices.”

The model tracks the data with remarkable accuracy, he said.

•••••

Putting aside ethical issues of growing inequality, it can also create an unhealthy economy, Boghosian said. “That’s because when wealth concentrates and the middle class is depleted too much, you may get very wealthy industrialists, very wealthy manufacturers, but to whom do they sell their products? It locks up the economy,” he said.

•••••

https://www.austms.org.au/Jobs/Library4.html

THE MATHEMATICS OF INEQUALITY

By Mark Buchanan
reprinted from The Australian Financial Review
September 2002
(originally in New Statesman)

•••••

Even if everyone starts out equally, and they remain equally adept at choosing investments, differences in investment luck will cause some people to accumulate more wealth than others. Those who are lucky will tend to invest more, and so have a chance to make greater gains still. Hence, a string of positive returns builds a person's wealth not merely by addition but by multiplication, as each subsequent gain grows ever bigger. This is enough, even in a world of equals where returns on investment are entirely random, to stir up huge disparities of wealth in the population.

•••••