Why are the people who scream the loudest about “hate speech” the ones most riddled with hatred and venom?

They say they hate hatred. They’re against hatred on principle. But what about their own hatred — of those they claim to hate? It’s self-refuting. But nobody ever calls them on it. Leftists live in a cultural, legal and political vacuum. They reinforce and agree with each other on absolutely everything. They shun those who even hint at crossing the Party line.

Often, anger and rage are a mask for fear and terror. Psychologically, many people would rather feel angry than petrified. Anger (rather than fear) makes them feel stronger, and like they haven’t been defeated. It’s perfectly understandable. However, the terror that many leftists feel at the prospect of living in a world where anyone — absolutely anyone at all, especially one as unapologetic as Donald Trump — disagrees with them now converts into rage and a desire to imprison people who dissent from the Party line … At this dangerous point, we enter the gates of some modern equivalent of Nazi Germany.

And if you try to object to any of this? You’re guilty of “hate speech.” Off with your head — or the twenty-first century equivalent that’s heading our way unless we stand up to it with all the passion, integrity and conviction we possess.

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on X at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, @DrHurd on TruthSocial. Dr. Hurd is also now a Newsmax Insider!

“A woman President? COOL!! It’s about time!”

How cool will it be when you’re in line at the grocery store because Kamala’s price controls distorted supply and demand mechanisms, creating shortages?

How cool will it be when inflation due to exponentially increased government spending leads to $500 buying what $5 bought back in 2018?

How cool will it be when you can’t shoot an armed home invader? “I don’t care,” you say. “I don’t like guns.” So how cool will it be when nobody can shoot a home invader, since Kamala has outlawed guns by executive order? Criminals will be in hog heaven. “I don’t care,” you say. “I can call the police.” What police? Walz defunded them in Minnesota. Kamala promises to do so nationally. And even if we still have police, they’re already weaponized against people who aren’t members of politically protected racial groups. And NOBODY will be protected against any violent illegal noncitizen. Illegals are the ultimate protected class.

How cool will it be when the government has outlawed speech it deems hateful, as Communist Party member Tim Walz has promised? “I don’t care,” you say. “I don’t like conservatives. We’re only censoring conservatives.” Oh, really? Communist Castro jailed most of the journalists who supported him, once in office. Castro belonged to the same Party that Kamala and Walz belong to. If speech is permitted only by the government’s approval, how long until your favorite musician, artist or movie producer is silenced for some stupid reason?

How cool is Communism, really? What are you asking for, you snowflake fools who plan to vote for openly Communist Kamala and Walz?

When you scream that you’ve lost all your freedom, and that your Starbucks lattes cost $150 apiece, and your video games go for $10,000 each under currency devalued by government-induced inflation, it will be too late.

How cool is that?

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on X at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, @DrHurd on TruthSocial. Dr. Hurd is also now a Newsmax Insider!

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic — and politicians’ ham-fisted response to it — dealt a cruel shock to employees and businesses in early 2020, working-age Americans, in greater numbers than ever before, have been fleeing states where their Right to Work isn’t protected.

Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau this summer confirm that the stampede of breadwinners and their families out of Big Labor’s stronghold states continued in 2022 and 2023, when COVID-19-related restrictions on business activities and school lockdowns were already mostly in the past. More than ever before, American employees’ “foot voting” is demonstrating they strongly prefer Right to Work over forced unionism.

Unfortunately, politicians like 2024 Democrat presidential standard-bearer Kamala Harris couldn’t care less about that. There is a huge disconnect between union boss-owned politicians like Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and the majority of Americans who get most of their income from paychecks furnished to them and/or their loved ones by private-sector businesses.

Just as the Biden-Harris administration has done for years, the Harris-Walz ticket is trying to justify its support for legislation corralling millions of additional workers into monopolistic unions by loudly claiming that doing so would somehow make those workers more prosperous.

Ms. Harris, Mr. Walz and their campaign propagandists are trying to bamboozle citizens into believing their claim is correct by grossly understating, or altogether ignoring, the regional cost-of-living difference between Right to Work states and forced-unionism states.

Downplaying or “forgetting” about this key issue enables them to conceal, or so they believe, the proven, economically disastrous effects of compulsory unionism. But the fact is, fewer and fewer Americans are being fooled.

The data show that, when they have a choice, working-age people prefer not to live in forced-unionism states, undoubtedly in part because they understand the fact that real incomes are higher in Right to Work states.

Considered together, Census age-grouped state population data for 2023 and comparable revised data for 2013 tell an important story. They show that, over the past decade, the total population of people in their peak-earning years (aged 35-54) for the 23 states that have never adopted and implemented Right to Work laws (which bar the termination of employees for refusal to pay union dues), fell from 43.66 to 41.62 million. That represents a 2.4% decline.

But in the 24 states that had Right to Work laws on the books the whole decade from 2013-23, there was an overall peak-earning-year population increase of 1.92 million!

And the correlation between forced-unionism status and peak-earning-year population decline is quite robust.

Among the 47 states that didn’t change their Right to Work status between 2013 and 2023, four of the five states suffering the most severe peak-earning-year population losses in percentage terms are forced-unionism. Meanwhile, top-ranking Utah (No. 1), Idaho (No. 2), and Texas (No. 3) are all Right to Work.

Had the peak-earning-year population in the 23 never-Right to Work states risen as much as the national average, they would have had roughly 1.4 million more such residents as of 2023.

And from July 2020 to July 2023, the last three years for which age-grouped population data are available, the trend of “foot voting” against forced unionism by people who have families to support has gotten much stronger.

Census data indicate forced-dues states lost roughly 658,000 “peak earners” to domestic out-migration over this three-year period. If this trend continues, these states are poised to lose another net 2.2 million breadwinners to Right to Work states from 2020 to 2030.

Harris’ radically anti-worker response to this manifest rejection of monopolistic unionism by its putative beneficiaries is to vow that, once she occupies the Oval Office, she will do everything within her power to see that Big Labor’s so-called “PRO Act” (H.R.20/S.567) is rammed through Congress so she can sign it into law.

The core provision in this enormous package of new special privileges for union bosses would effectively render meaningless all 26 Right to Work states currently on the books, and block all states from ever stopping forced financial support for a union as a job condition.

A future without Right to Work protections for private-sector employees anywhere in the U.S. might seem like a dream come true to union bosses. For ordinary Americans, however, it would be a nightmare.

Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the National Right to Work Committee. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.

COMMENT: You, sir, are the only one to tell the truth about this war with Russia. There are many Ukrainians with mixed families, and this war has not benefited Ukraine as one-third of the country has fled. Discontent against our politicians is rising here, as you have forecast. It would not be a surprise if there was a coup to change our leadership.

REPLY: You are correct. Our model has been projecting discontent with governments on a global scale. The EU elections turned to the right in a shock. Then, we saw upheaval in France—Britain overthrew the Conservatives. We see the same trend emerging in Canada and the USA.

This does not appear to be a left vs right surge. It appears to be more along the lines of just throwing the bums out – regardless of what their political affiliation might be. This trend is also rising in Ukraine. I have been getting this same sentiment from other Ukrainians.

The most curious thing is that there was an internal coup to assassinate Zelensky on May 7th, the turn on the ECM. He then fired his chief of bodyguards. While he tried to claim it was a Ukrainian plot orchestrated by Putin, the talk is that most of his bodyguards are now American because he does not trust Ukrainians. There is a risk of political upheaval in Ukraine starting next week and going into October.

Presidential elections were scheduled in Ukraine in March or April 2024. However, since Zelenskyy seized power and moved for martial law, which the Ukrainian parliament approved on February 24th, 2022, no elections have been held because Ukrainian law does not allow presidential elections to be held when martial law is in effect. It does not appear that Zelensky can retain power beyond June 13th, 2026, under any claim.

Yes, there is a rumor that a coup may take place in Ukraine, especially if they do not allow elections soon. Even an opposition Ukrainian member of parliament, Verkhovna Rada, has been said to express such discontent.

Zelensky’s presidential powers officially expired after May 20. The irony here is those who believe the propaganda claiming Putin is a dictator refusing to accept the Russian elections do not even want to discuss that Zelensky is a dictator suspending all elections as long as he maintains Martial Law.

Many in Ukraine think this is a senseless war, and the Donbas have been where Russians have lived for centuries. Is this merely a territorial grab worth destroying all of Ukraine? This is why some question the legitimacy of power in the absence of parliamentary and presidential elections. The concern is that Zelensky has ignored the Ukrainian Constitutional Court’s May 2014 ruling that the presidential term cannot be extended. Many are not satisfied because they feel that not only has Zelensky’s presidential term expired together with its legitimacy, but they also have no democratic process to vote on continuing the war. This is what has made many regard Zelensky as a dictator.

Plotting the ECM frequency from the start of this war, it interestingly projected April 2024, which was the ideal target when Zelensky would have had to stand for election. Now look at the next turning point – May 15th, 2025.

Let’s turn to Socrates’ cyclical forecast, and here, too, we see a major culmination of this trend. We have a major Panic Cycle in November; some believe that implies a Trump election, with a Directional Change in December. But I question if Zelensky will survive beyond the next turning point of May 15th, 2025.

Martin Armstrong

Today our military services face growing threats around the world while their ability to maintain a quality, well-trained, and capable force is at risk.  Our focus should be on readiness, warfighting, and especially selecting the best qualified leaders possible, not on recruiting Drag Queens to perform for service members and their families or promoting sex-reassignment surgeries.  Historically, our personnel systems have been built on merit, individual performance, and equal opportunity, aimed at selecting the best qualified. 

Over the past several years that focus on merit has been replaced by a system built on a Marxist ideology we know as Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) and Critical Race Theory (CRT). The embrace of this divisive ideology by both our civilian and military leadership has had a significant negative impact on the Armed Forces. It has served to destroy unit cohesion, lower standards, and use race and gender to define outcomes. Even the West Points motto: Duty, Honor, Country, has been jettisoned from the school’s mission statement, all in the name of DEI. The personnel and readiness problems we face today, especially in recruiting and retention can be traced to the introduction of this ideology. A recent WSJ article highlighted a 30-year study done with over 800 companies that embraced DEI. They found it had no positive impact on the workplace. Not a surprise.

The public’s trust and confidence in the military is at an all-time low, while retention and recruiting rates have plummeted, with a shortage at one point of over 40k recruits — an unheard-of number. Parents and family members no longer encourage their children to serve. For the first time this includes military family members serving on active duty. The impact is to discourage young men and women from joining, especially middle-class males who traditionally have been the largest source of recruitment. I continually hear this expressed to me by the public.  This places our ability to successfully fight and win a major conflict at serious risk.

Young Americans join the Armed Forces to serve the country and accept the challenges that military service presents. They join to be part of a team and embrace our enduring value of selfless service over self. The DEI ideology is against everything our military values taught us. A report from the Center for Renewing America tells us that over 40 percent of Flag Officers serving today advocate for DEI as military policy. This is a troubling statistic.

Many former senior officers like myself, along with veterans and concerned civilians, can no longer sit on the sidelines and watch our individual services be subjected to this debilitating ideology and have organized in an effort to educate the public. Our organization, STARRS.US (Stand Together Against Racism & Radicalism in the Services) serves as a resource platform to inform the public and congress and to eliminate DEI/CRT from the Armed Forces. Our goal is a return to performance based on merit and equal opportunity.

In the end, the mission of the Armed Forces is to fight and win our nation’s wars. To do that requires that we instill a warrior ethos, not a woke ideology, into the young men and women who volunteer to join, who want to make a difference and are looking for a challenge. After all, it’s only the security and survival of our nation that’s at stake.

John Deyermond, Major General (ret.)

It would be helpful to voters to know that a “whistleblower” says ABC rigged last week’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But outside of conservative media, it’s being largely ignored, because the legacy press covers its own and as zealously as it does the Democratic Party. Whether the claims are true or not – the existence of the whistleblower remains unconfirmed – the mainstream media’s loyalty to Democrats is uncomfortably similar to the relationship Pravda had with the Central Committee of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party.

To quickly recap, the unnamed whistleblower said ABC agreed to fact-check Trump while ensuring “Harris would not face comparable scrutiny.” The plan was so detailed that “various people were assigned to fact check observations it was perceived candidate Trump would make during the debate.”

“In fact,” says the whistleblower, the “Harris campaign required assurances that Donald Trump would be fact-checked.”

These agreements were reached on calls that the Trump campaign was not a part of although all discussions regarding the rules and negotiations were supposed to include both sides.

The affidavit also says Harris was provided with sample questions that, while not the exact questions that would be asked, nevertheless “covered similar topics that would appear during the debate.”

There were also issues that could not be raised – Joe Biden’s health; Harris’ performance as San Francisco’s district attorney; her brother-in-law and “key campaign adviser” Tony West, who allegedly “fleeced taxpayers for billions to give to left-wing groups and lawyers” – since they would reflect poorly on Harris.

“I have observed a pronounced bias against Donald Trump within ABC News,” the affiant continues, while also noting “many” ABC employees “questioned the clear bias that is well known throughout the company.”

The network denies the charges, which is expected. It’s not going to issue a statement that says, “Yeah, you caught us, we cheated for the Democrats.”

What gives the allegations more than a muted ring of truth is that the affidavit was filed, according to its contents, the day before the debate and the charges match the moderators’ actions. It was as if the whistleblower got a copy of the script. So much of what is asserted checks out with what everyone saw.

It also looks bad for the network because Dana Walden, a Disney co-chair who oversees ABC News, has been a close friend of Harris since the 1980s, and their husbands closer for even longer.

Furthermore, Linsey Davis, one of the ABC moderators – and co-conspirator, depending on whose point of view is being taken into account – and Harris are sorority sisters.

Trump would have fared better if the debate had been on another network, but he says the Harris team insisted that she would debate only on ABC. While it’s obvious why, it’s chilling to think that the cabalists aren’t terribly concerned about the striking conflict of interest. To them, it’s just another act of impropriety they will get away with.

But what else should we expect when 28% – that’s a staggering number – of Democrats say the country would have been better off if Trump had been assassinated?

One would think that despite the connections, there would be some fidelity to journalistic standards. But clearly that’s asking too much. At least for the left. Remember that Trump found out in 2015 that “his friendship with the late Fox News chairman Roger Ailes did not spare him a mauling from Megyn Kelly, one of the moderators of the Republican candidates’ debate,” the Telegraph reminds us.

There are no ideologues in the West like those who pose as objective reporters and editors. At times some have internal struggles with the real journalist within. But the propagandist always wins.

We’ve seen this behavior in history’s bloody revolutions. The revolutionaries and their followers believe so deeply in their cause they’ve been willing to kill and destroy. (Of course, those at the top, the Lenins, the Castros, the Guevaras, the Sandinos, and the Ortegas are interested only in power. The revolution is a cover for their tyrannical ambitions.)

Anyone involved in politics in this country who believes in their party, their ideology, their agenda so completely that they feel that their ends justify whatever means they choose needs to back off and reassess. Get away from politics. Find meaning somewhere else, because a blind commitment to the Democrats’ efforts to establish single-party rule, its one and only truth, and its demand for conformity, is toxic to discourse and a threat to our republic.

Issues and Insights Editorial Board

President Biden’s Incredible Vanishing Act Reveals Who’s Really in Charge of the Government

The president of the United States, often referred to as the “leader of the free world” and the “commander in chief,” seems not to be his own man. President Joe Biden, who ostensibly wields the awesome power of the Oval Office, yielded to a loud pressure campaign demanding that he step aside in the 11th hour of a presidential race that Donald Trump seemed destined to win.

Jubilant fellow Democrats hailed Biden’s decision to step aside, but his move raises a far more ominous question: Who, exactly, is in control of the U.S. government?

The answer may surprise you.

It seems the answer may be former President Barack Obama. After all, Obama notoriously joked to late-night TV host Stephen Colbert that he wouldn’t mind having a “stand-in, a front man or front woman” in the White House, whom Obama could direct from afar using an “earpiece.” After all, pressure from Obama appears to have convinced Biden to drop out of the race.

Yet if Obama is pulling the strings from afar, he seems to be doing so rather loosely. Biden’s White House has echoed Obama’s policies, employing bureaucrats who once staffed the Obama-Biden administration, but they seem to be following the current trends on the Left more than Obama’s own slick messaging.

The real answer isn’t any one man but a vast network of left-wing nonprofits that work with administrative agencies to draft policy.

Remember that fancy Constitution you learned about in school, with its nifty checks and balances to prevent the tyranny of the majority? Well, forget about all that. Today, the administrative state writes the rules we all must live by, in conjunction with woke pressure groups.

It works like this. Congress passes a law such as the Clean Air Act, saying: “We need clean air. You, Environmental Protection Agency, you give us clean air.” The EPA then makes regulations, and if they’re too harsh, Congress theoretically can defund the EPA, but it usually doesn’t.

When making those regulations, the EPA will consult with a climate alarmist pressure group such as the Natural Resources Defense Council. Gina McCarthy, who headed the EPA under Obama, became president of NRDC after Obama left office and before she became the Biden White House’s national climate adviser.

Bureaucrats such as McCarthy come in and out of government, often finding a home in the woke pressure groups that influence federal policy. Sometimes, these pressure groups actually write official memos for federal agencies.

In 2009, a federal investigation into the Bureau of Land Management found that the agency was consulting with staff at the National Wildlife Federation, a climate group. The federation’s staff were writing and editing official bureau materials to promote the organization’s own policies.

The federal government often relies on such pressure groups for policy ideas, and these pressure groups in turn rely on a vast, left-wing funding network that often employs what many on the Left demonize as “dark money.”

Many conservatives are familiar with George Soros, the Hungarian-American billionaire philanthropist whose Open Society Foundations directs money to all sorts of left-wing causes, most notably the “reform prosecutor” movement that imposes lenient sentences on criminals.

Yet Open Society is just one among many. Eric Kessler’s for-profit firm Arabella Advisors set up multiple nonprofits—most notably Sixteen Thirty Fund and New Venture Fund—that direct millions to left-wing pressure groups, cloaking which donors are giving to which causes.

Big labor unions such as the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, and SEIU direct hundreds of thousands of dollars through these Arabella network nonprofits, as do teachers unions such as the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. These unions take workers’ hard-earned money and funnel it into activist groups that influence federal policy.

The end result is a behemoth, a monster I refer to as the Woketopus. It’s the subject of my forthcoming book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”

This Woketopus shoves its policy agenda into the administrative state on wide-ranging issues from immigration to labor policy, to LGBTQ+ activism, to “green” initiatives, and even to weaponizing federal law enforcement against its ideological and political opponents.

This Woketopus relies on Biden—and Vice President Kamala Harris—to enable its agenda, but it often works around these figureheads. In some cases, as on the issue of U.S. policy toward Israel after the Hamas terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, it actively seeks to undermine the current president, becoming a “deep state” even against its preferred candidate.

So, who’s really in control of the U.S. government? A far-left network of donors, activist groups, and bureaucrats who use the government as a revolving door, going back and forth between woke nonprofits and the administrative state. It may sound far-fetched, but my new book has the receipts.

This Woketopus will be fine if Harris replaces Biden, but all bets are off if something else happens.

That’s why the switcheroo took place, and why Biden is less in control than he appears.

The Daily Signal

Polling, why is it so bad?

Its election cycle, and as you know in this day and age with every poll that comes out and plethora of headlines and stories will be written about it, because polling apparently is now a replacement for news.. and has been for a long long time now during election season. Every new poll will be reported both professionally and among the punditry as either the end of days, or the greatest news ever to come about, depending on where in the political spectrum the pundit lies and whether their candidate is up or down.

Polling has its place, it certainly CAN capture trends, but polling in the modern era, particularly poling for public consumption, is a wholly different animal. I learned this lesson decades ago. At the time I was running a small news site, and I commissioned personally poll on one of the lesser known republican candidates running in their primary just to see what sort of numbers I got. It was mainly an experiment by me, I had no intention of ever releasing the results, and was simply curious where this person actually stood. Given they were never going to be an actual serious threat to win the nomination, I was curious what polling about this individual would come back as. I found a pollster, told them what I wanted, paid them their money and waited… a week or so later, I got the results and I probably poured over them for the next few days in my spare time. I began to realize early on that the polling was not indeed biased toward the candidate I had hired them to inquire about. The wording of the questions, the ordering of the questions, the sampling breakdown, all showed to me at least, they they “knew where their bread was being buttered” and wanted to give me results I would like. Now understand this poll was not a high dollar poll, I was not a national news organization, I don’t honestly even remember exactly how much I spent but I can assure it was at most in the 4 figure range at the time.

HamiltonJay….

American Presidential Elections are Too Long

Nothing good happens to the public psyche when the two political parties spend two years fighting it out for the presidency.

John Halpin

Sep 18, 2024

The Major League Baseball season is long—162 regular season games running from April until October followed by a month of postseason action. By the end of those regular season games, the best teams in both leagues are generally well known. They consistently grind out victories, wear down opponents, make solid roster moves, and avoid bad injuries. Good teams from the first half of the season sometimes fade, while others ride high following the July break. The playoff results don’t always reward the best regular season teams as relatively lackluster clubs or wild cards can go on late streaks. Baseball is tough that way. But at the conclusion of the entire season, the World Series winner usually reflects true strength, skill, and resilience—and fans know it.

U.S. presidential elections aren’t anything like Major League Baseball.

For starters, the presidential election “season” is longer—much, much longer. Although exact comparisons with other nations are difficult given various governmental structures, the United States essentially has the longest national election period of all advanced democracies. For example, just this year the United Kingdom announced elections on May 22 and voting was held on July 4 with the new Labour government taking charge the following day. In France, parliamentary elections were called in early June and two rounds of voting were completed by July 7 (although a new prime minister was not selected until just recently and the exact composition of the government remains unknown given coalition haggling following inconclusive results).

In contrast, by the time the U.S. presidential campaign is over in November (maybe), the U.S. will have been waging presidential warfare for 700 plus days. Donald Trump announced he was again running for president back in November 2022. Obviously, the 2024 election season “story” changed markedly with President Biden dropping out of contention and Vice President Harris taking over in July. Despite this unusual historical wrinkle, Americans have been fighting about whether Trump, Biden, or Harris should be president for nearly two years now.

On top of the length of the contest, U.S. elections increasingly end in confusion about the results and what they indicate for the country. With less than 50 days to go in the cycle, no one can say with any certainty who is going to win the presidency or whether the winning party will have any real potential to govern effectively. There’s a decent chance given our insanely dysfunctional vote counting systems—and probable legal challenges that will arise in the aftermath—that we won’t even know who won the presidential “World Series” for days or perhaps weeks after Election Day.

Furthermore, it’s quite possible that the eventual “winner” of the presidential election season will achieve an Electoral College mandate without amassing a majority of the national popular vote—for the third time since 2000. It’s also likely that one party may win the presidency this fall but fail to hold control of Congress making the following two years of governance difficult and highly contentious for the next president. And even after the eventual victor in the presidential race is determined, it’s a safe bet it will be a close election in many states and roughly half the country will absolutely hate the results—with some on the losing side contesting them or refusing to accept the outcome.

Two years of presidential battles. No satisfying conclusion. Nothing truly resolved or settled. Lingering questions about the legitimacy of the outcome among voters. Possible gridlocked government again lurching from crisis to crisis. The American election way.

The worst part of our country’s interminable presidential election season is the effect the drawn out and overly complex process has on the American people themselves. Nothing good happens to citizens when they fight about politics for two years without perceived resolution at the end—or, when there is no mutual acceptance of the results and belief that the rules were fair to both sides, no common understanding that political victories are never permanent in a democracy, and no shared agreement that we should look out for everyone in the country whether they voted for the “right party” or not.

Every presidential contest is now “the most important election of our lifetime” with two polarized political parties and their attendant media systems elevating the stakes to absurd levels: “If the other side wins, it’s the end of democracy as we know it,” with looming “communism” or “fascism” in our future and “people in camps,” “no more rights for Americans,” and “civil war in the streets.”

Election season means political hyperbole on every channel and social media feed. Heightened emotions and anxiety across the partisan spectrum. Total exhaustion among the electorate.

U.S. politics is enough to drive decent people crazy—and crazy people even nuttier. Ideally, our better angels would take over in government and politics, and we would do something collectively to fix the election system and tone it all down several notches. But given vested interests in party politics and the media—and all the money to be made selling chaos, mutual loathing, and emotional anger to citizens—nothing much is likely to change.  

The only solution for civic-minded Americans then is to do their duty and vote, resist the temptation to turn politics into incessant emotional release, and tune out all the campaign noise.

Maybe watch some baseball—it’s America’s better pastime anyway with a season that will actually conclude before the presidential election!