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.

 

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 Choice

The Choice
copyright 1993 Patricia M. Shannon
(can be sung to the tune of "Holy, Holy, Holy"

As I go out a-walking in the forest peaceful,
climbing up the mountain trail until I reach the top,
looking o'er the valley I feel a sense of wonder
rising within me, filling all my soul.

How wonderful is nature, tiny lifeless atoms
bring forth the multitude forms of all life.
We are one of many, sharing genes with one-celled beings,
dependent upon the interwoven web of life.

We have developed powers of terrible destruction,
wiping out whole species that used to roam the earth,
Threatening the whole world with utter devastation,
blithely ignoring what we don't want to know.

It is our own choice which path we choose to follow;
do we love our children enough to change our ways?
Will we change our pattern of long-term self-destruction?
History says "No", but we can prove it wrong.

..

Welfare Religion

I wrote this song after my experiences working with people who bragged about being "born again". It didn't keep them from being mean dishonest liars. I started asking them how being "born again" had changed how they treated other people. Not a single one said it had any effect. They ALL looked puzzled at the idea. They admitted it hadn't, but said it made them feel so good.

The on-line book "The Authoritarians" https://theauthoritarians.org/, by  Bob Altemeyer, refers to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's coining of the phrase "cheap grace", in chapter 4:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/
"Cheap Grace. Unfortunately, fundamentalist Protestantism may directly promote hypocrisy among its members through one of its major theological principles: that if one accepts Jesus as a personal savior and asks for the forgiveness of one’s sins, one will be saved. But a lot depends on what “accepts” means. Is one’s life transformed? Do good works increase? Is the born-again person more like Jesus, holier? That would be all to the good. But because of some evangelist preachers, the interpretation has grown that all “accepts” means is a one-time verbal commitment. You say the magic words and you go to heaven, no matter what kind of life you lead afterwards. Many have thought that a pretty sweet deal. You’ve conned a free pass through the Pearly Gates from the Almighty and you can sin and debauch all you want for the rest of your life. "

A nifty phrase. It describes what my poem/song "Welfare Religion" is about. And I have incorporated it into the song.
If you read the Bible, you know that is not what Jesus said. Eg., Matthew 25.

When sung, the last verse is the chorus.


Welfare Religion
copyright Patricia M. Shannon 1996

What would Jesus think if He came to earth today?
Do you think He would be happy with all the folks who say:
"I am saved, alleluia, and I'll live forever more".
But they would never think of giving comfort to the poor.

They say they believe in Jesus and the Bible is all true,
but they ignore what He did say in Chapter 25 of Matthew:
What you do for the less fortunate, you've done it unto Me,
and where you go after you're dead depends upon your deeds.

They say "I feel so good because I have been born again.
And what's that got to do with how I treat my fellow men?
Jesus loves me, this I know, He loves only myself;
it's true, because He doesn't care how I treat anybody else.

I believe in Jesus, no need to change my ways,
just massage His ego once or twice a day.
I believe in Jesus, all it takes is that cheap grace,
to get me into heaven, the perfect welfare state.

Trump's promises to oil companies

 Washington Post -As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.

Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch reveals how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his reelection bid. At the same time, he has turned to the industry to help shape his environmental agenda for a second term, including the rollbacks of some of Biden’s signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles.

Trump traitor

 

Judge Cannon put witnesses against Trump in danger

 Judge Cannon is the district court judge in the Trump classified documents case. She was appointed by Trump. This is info on her recent actions that put witnesses in danger.

From Twitter, Ben Meiselas @meiselasb

Feb. 9, 2024

Moments ago, Judge Cannon just made a very dangerous ruling and we cannot let it slip under the radar. 

I am sure Jack Smith’s team is working feverishly on a response right now. 

Judge Cannon just ordered that by tomorrow February 10, Jack Smith provide Trump with information about the death threats against a confidential witness in the Mar-A-Lago document case which Cannon previously allowed Jack Smith to file ex parte (meaning Trump can’t see it) and under seal (meaning the public can’t see it) as part of his motion for reconsideration where Cannon applied a wrong legal standard and where she ordered dozens of confidential witnesses and their statements in the case be made public. 

Here is the sequence of events:

February 6 - Cannon makes a ruling to make the names of confidential witnesses and confidential info public (doc 283)

-February 7 Wednesday Jack Smith makes a filing (doc 289) saying we are going to file a motion for reconsideration of your ruling about making confidential witnesses public and to file that motion for reconsideration we want to show you an exhibit that shows the types of death threats against witnesses but since there is an ON GOING CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION in the threats we CAN ONLY show it you as the judge and not Defendant (they may be the culprit) so we need to file it EX PARTE (only to the you the judge and not Trump) and under seal (NOT PUBLIC)

-Feb 8 Thursday (doc 293) Cannon says Jack Smith can file the document ex parte and under seal as part of your motion for reconsideration of my prior order (doc 283). 

-Feb 8 Thursday (doc 294) Jack Smith files his motion for reconsideration as he said he would and filed that exhibit that shows the threats to witnesses as doc 296. 

-Feb 9, moments ago, Cannon orders Jack Smith to turn over that ex parte and under seal document to Trump by February 10, effectively imperiling the safety of witness and intentionally compromising the DOJ investigation!

Rationalizing

 

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Billionaires Are Bankrolling Judges’ Luxury Travel

And how many more didn't report their gifts, like some supreme court justices.

https://www.levernews.com/billionaires-are-bankrolling-judges-luxury-travel/

 

Dec 15, 2023

 In 2021 and 2022, two conservative, billionaire-funded legal interests sent more than 100 federal judges on 251 trips to conferences and seminars in cushy locations around the country and overseas, according to a Lever review of hundreds of federal financial disclosure forms. 

Alarms raised over missing classified Russian intel file last seen with Trump: report

 

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-russian-documents/

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-russia-intelligence-trump-dg/

 

Tom Boggioni
December 15, 2023 8:41AM ET

 

  According to a report from CNN, U.S. intelligence officials are searching for a missing file containing highly sensitive information about Russia as well as information about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

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According to CNN, "The intelligence was so sensitive that lawmakers and congressional aides with top-secret security clearances were able to review the material only at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where their work scrutinizing it was itself kept in a locked safe."

"The binder was last seen at the White House during Trump’s final days in office.

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10 Reasons Why Societies Fail to Respond to Their Greatest Threats

I suggest reading the whole article


https://www.okdoomer.io/you-arent-the-one-panicking-they-are/


Jessica Wildfire
Dec.7, 2023




Let's face it, we're a mess.


Most of us know we're not doing enough to deal with our greatest threats. Every day, we witness the dumbest behavior, things that seem to fly in the face of our most basic survival instincts.


We ask, "Why???"


The human brain evolved over millions of years. Most psychologists agree, it's good at responding to immediate threats.


It's terrible at responding to slow, gradual threats, even when they're far more important. As Brian Merchant writes in Vice, "Humans have, historically, proven absolutely awful, even incapable, of comprehending the large, looming... slow burn threats facing their societies." In Collapse, Jared Diamond chronicles how leaders of past civilizations failed to address clear dangers because it was easier to shrug them off and downplay them.


As it turns out, there's a lot wrong with the human brain. It's full of contradictory impulses that fight against our better reasoning.


Here's a list:


1) People don't take invisible threats seriously.


Our biggest threats now are invisible.


2) Everyone thinks, "It won't happen to me."


3) People get high off ignoring threats.



It feels good to blow off warnings.

For a lot of people, it delivers a dopamine boost. It gives them a sense of power and control, however fleeting it might be.




4) People shoot the messenger.




People tend to get punished for delivering bad news. Instead of being listened to, they're gaslit and pathologized. They're demonized.




5) People trust their gut too much.




6) People want to forget collective trauma.




7) People can adjust to almost anything.




8) People defend what they consider normal.




Once someone adjusts to a horrible normal, they prefer it.

Change scares them.




9) Most people just want to fit in.

Our desire for social acceptance often overrides our survival instincts, short-circuiting our normal threat response.




10) The elites always panic.

The super rich seem to grasp all of these glitches, at least on an intuitive level. They exploit them for their personal gain.

The corporate media has fallen into a predictable pattern over the last several years, downplaying and dismissing threats instead of giving the public reliable and accurate information. The super rich don't care about saving people. Instead, they obsess over protecting their property from looters and securing the most resources for themselves. They don't want ordinary people to take action, because that threatens their own interests.

Mathematicians may have found an answer to the longstanding puzzle as to why we have evolved to cooperate

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/uob-rda071916.php

Public Release: 19-Jul-2016
Researchers discover altruism is favored by chance
Mathematicians may have found an answer to the longstanding puzzle as to why we have evolved to cooperate
University of Bath

•••••

An international team of researchers, publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that altruism is favoured by random fluctuations in nature, offering an explanation to the mystery as to why this seemingly disadvantageous trait has evolved.

The researchers, from the Universities of Bath, Manchester and Princeton (USA), developed a mathematical model to predict the path of evolution when altruistic "cooperators" live alongside "cheats" who use up resources but do not themselves contribute.

•••••

"What we are lacking is an explanation of how these behaviours could have evolved in organisms as basic as yeast. Our research proposes a simple answer - it turns out that cooperation is favoured by chance."

The key insight is that the total size of population that can be supported depends on the proportion of cooperators: more cooperation means more food for all and a larger population. If, due to chance, there is a random increase in the number of cheats then there is not enough food to go around and total population size will decrease. Conversely, a random decrease in the number of cheats will allow the population to grow to a larger size, disproportionally benefitting the cooperators. In this way, the cooperators are favoured by chance, and are more likely to win in the long term.

Dr George Constable, soon to join the University of Bath from Princeton, uses the analogy of flipping a coin, where heads wins £20 but tails loses £10:

"Although the odds winning or losing are the same, winning is more good than losing is bad. Random fluctuations in cheat numbers are exploited by the cooperators, who benefit more then they lose out."

Jerry Falwell Jr. lobs attacks that will 'will rock' Liberty U 'to its core'

 

https://www.rawstory.com/jerry-falwell-jr-2666333522/

Nov. 22, 2023

Axios reports that journalist Tim Alberta is coming out with a new book in which Falwell Jr. candidly admits that his late father, Jerry Falwell, Sr., founded the university solely to be an institutional arm of the Republican Party and not to be a Christian university aimed at spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

DEFENSE DEPARTMENT SPENT NEARLY $1 MILLION AT TRUMP PROPERTIES FROM JULY 2017 TO NOVEMBER 2019

 

https://www.americanoversight.org/defense-department-spent-nearly-1-million-at-trump-properties-from-july-2017-to-november-2019-records-obtained-by-american-oversight-reveal

June 8, 2023

Records recently obtained by American Oversight and reported on by Forbes reveal that the Department of Defense spent nearly $1 million at properties owned by former President Donald Trump between July 2017 and November 2019. 

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As Everson noted in Forbes, “There’s no full public accounting of how much taxpayers shelled out to the Trump Organization during the Trump administration.”As Everson noted in Forbes, “There’s no full public accounting of how much taxpayers shelled out to the Trump Organization during the Trump administration.”

Does New Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Have a Bank Account?

I'm not happy that Mikme Johnson is speaker of the House, but I care about truth & fairness. There are a lot of posts on Twitted about the fact he didn't show any bank accounts on his financial disclosure forms. At first I found it suspicious. But looking into it further, it is not necessarily a problem.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/does-new-speaker-of-the-house-mike-johnson-have-a-bank-account

Of course, it’s unlikely Johnson doesn’t actually have a bank account. What’s more likely is Johnson lives paycheck to paycheck—so much so that he doesn’t have enough money in his bank account to trigger the checking account disclosure rules for members of Congress.

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House Ethics Committee filing guidelines state that members must disclose bank accounts they have at every financial institution, as long as the account holds at least $1,000 and the combined value of all accounts—including those belonging to their spouse and dependent children—exceeds $5,000.

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Why Democrats voted not to expel Santos right now

 

https://raskin.house.gov/2023/11/raskin-statement-on-vote-against-h-res-773

November 1, 2023

Washington, DC – Today Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08) released the following statement after voting “No” on House Resolution 773, a resolution to expel Congressman George Santos (NY-03) from the House of Representatives.

“I’m a Constitution guy. The House has expelled five people in our history, three for joining the Confederacy as traitors to the Union and two after they were convicted of serious criminal offenses. Santos has not been criminally convicted yet of any of the offenses he has been indicted for that were cited in the Resolution nor has he been found guilty of ethics offenses in the House internal process.

“This would be a terrible precedent to set, expelling people who have not been convicted of a crime and without internal due process. If and when Santos is convicted of these serious criminal offenses or ethics charges, I will certainly vote to expel him. Until then, it’s a very risky road to go down and we have to stick by due process and the rule of law, as obvious as the eventual result seems. In these times of war, chaos, insurrection, division and lawlessness, the rule of law is a lifeline for us.

“I can think of four or five Democratic Members the Republicans would like to expel without any criminal conviction or adverse ethics findings tomorrow simply because they hate their politics. Indeed, the same New York Republicans who want to expel Santos now because he is a complete political albatross for them acted to vigorously defend him in the spring because they wanted his vote for their party on the floor. If Members are not going to be expelled for purely political reasons, we need to stick to due process and the rule of law.

“Back in the spring, the Republicans promised action within 60 days on the sprawling Santos ethics investigation, but nothing has happened since then. Now, they are promising action by November 17. Good, it’s about time.”

Conservative groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision

https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-conservatives-trump-heritage-857eb794e505f1c6710eb03fd5b58981

BY LISA MASCARO

Updated 5:18 PM EDT, August 29, 2023

With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own.

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With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.

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The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Trump’s first years in office, when the Republican president’s team was ill-prepared, his Cabinet nominees had trouble winning Senate confirmation and policies were met with resistance — by lawmakers, government workers and even Trump’s own appointees who refused to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals.

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Much of the new president’s agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what’s called Schedule F — a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired.

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There’s a “top to bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. It calls for stepped-up prosecution of anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail.

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To push past senators who try to block presidential Cabinet nominees, Project 2025 proposes installing top allies in acting administrative roles, as was done during the Trump administration to bypass the Senate confirmation process.

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Moral quandary

 Oct. 17, 2023

I'm sad that I have to think it is a good thing that some people are being killed in order to protect others.

Trump allegedly discussed US nuclear subs with foreign national after leaving White House

 

https://abcnews.go.com/US/after-white-house-trump-allegedly-discussed-potentially-sensitive/story?id=103760456

October 5, 2023, 7:31 PM

Months after leaving the White House, former President Donald Trump allegedly discussed potentially sensitive information about U.S. nuclear submarines with a member of his Mar-a-Lago Club -- an Australian billionaire who then allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists, according to sources familiar with the matter.

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