THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

  ALL FALL DOWN 

In a very real sense we are witnessing the fall of American greatness at the hands of Donald T**** and his right-wing MAGA’s. Consider:

A great, civilized country would not limit health care, tolerate food insecurity for its people or leave crops rotting in the fields while it citizens go hungry. 

It would not destroy what was once admired as the world’s best educational system.

It would not attempt to rewrite its history in order to satisfy a fickle minority who would erase rather than teach and learn the lessons of its tragic past. 

It would not target women by eliminating their reproductive rights or allow politicians to decide their health care issues and all the while refusing to help the babies whoa are the result of their crass indifference. 

A great, civilized country would not refuse or abuse desperate immigrants. 

It would not pretend to believe in Christianity while perverting and betraying its tenets.

It would not refuse to protect the Earth from destruction in deference to industries that would destroy it.

It would not tolerate the rise to autocratic power of a corrupt, demented, pathological liar, second-rate con artist and convicted felon.

A great, civilized country would not tolerate masked, armed and unidentifiable agents chasing people down in the streets and hauling them away in unmarked vehicles. 

It would not tolerate the housing of unnamed victims in inhumane detention centers without access to beds, personal hygiene, medical attention, legal assistance or decent food. 

It would not tolerate the detention, arrest and deportation of unnamed victims without the pretense of due process. 

In all these things America is debased. Its shining light on the hill grows dim as its cheap, tawdry leader drags its exalted promise through the mud.

The truth is that the Great Experiment of America’s Founding Fathers has been abandoned by men who deem themselves above it’s most sacred tenets: that we are one nation with liberty and justice for all, and that no man is above the law. 

Our friends back way and our enemies exult. We have become our own nemesis.

The whole world is watching. 

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

Moderate Senate Democrats are catching hell for caving on the government shutdown. But they didn’t just go quietly into the long good night. There is some interesting strategy at work, here.

It’s important to remember that nothing to date is a done deal. The agreement has to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president. And there are some things in it that not everyone’s going like.

Also, the Republicans don’t come away clean. The Democrat’s legislative wins include restoring the jobs of thousands of federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown and bar further reductions through Jan. 30.

They guarantee back pay for hundreds of thousands of others who were furloughed, as required by a law T**** endeavored to break. Among other things, this would put the air traffic controllers back on the job just a few weeks before Thanksgiving. Americans will like that, and will know who to thank.

The agreement protected the government Accountability Office, (GAO), an agency that helps Congress keep track of federal spending, by maintaining funding at its current level. It also removed language that would bar the agency from suing the White House to release illegally withheld funds.

More importantly, it will eliminate the dog-and-pony issue of who is responsible for the shutdown dragging on while keeping the hot-topic issues of healthcare and food insecurity open and directly in front of the American public for at least another month. Millions are already going hungry and millions more are looking at a devastating jump of the cost of medical care.

By re-opening the government, the Senate agreement forces the Republicans to address these issues which are now squarely in their court. Without extending the ACA subsidies, which the Republicans have previously rejected out of hand, premiums will rise. And T**** is still in court trying not to have to feed hungry children. The Democrats are clearly on the people’s side, here. And the Republicans know it.

And finally, it means that Speaker Johnson will have to re-convene the House in order to pass the compromise budget bill. That puts the issue of the Epstein files on the table because he will will have run out of excuses for not swearing in Arizona’s newest member. He could even face a revolt among members of his caucus over the release of the files.

So the Senate Democrats are not just guilty of giving in. As they give, so do they get. And their agreement means they can hold the Republican’s feet over the flames for another month over the issues that matter most to long-suffering Americans. And they could even get their subpoena for the Epstein files, which could be the penultimate disaster for the Republican Party.

So what have the Senate’s moderate Democrats done? They’ve done what politicians are supposed to do. They’ve done what they get paid to do. They have “played politics.”

And it’s not a losing hand.

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

According to new reporting from journalist David Schuster, more than 100 GOP lawmakers are now leaning towards voting with Democrats in forcing the release of the Epstein files. Schuster suggests that they’re not doing this out of principle. They’re doing it to get in front of what’s coming.

Multiple sources report that senior DOJ officials have privately informed Republican lawmakers that the sealed Jeffrey Epstein files are even worse for Donald T**** than anyone imagined.

Nor is this just about T****. It is about the rot of immorality that lets billionaires, politicians, and predators operate above the law while the survivors of their depravity are silenced or dismissed. It’s about a justice system that protects proximity to power instead of the victims of it.

It is also clear that if the DOJ truly believes these files contain evidence of criminal behaviort, then keeping them sealed is not justice. It’s complicity.

Speaker Johnson is caught in an unbelievably tight bind. He has been told by his Lord and Master that he is not to allow the files be made public. Yet he knows that when (or if) he re-convenes the House, one way or another there will be a Congressional subpoena demanding that the files be released. 

Johnson knows he can’t hold out indefinitely. The House is scheduled to re-convene on November 10, the jig will be up. When the subpoena comes it will put Donald T**** into that unbelievably tight squeeze. He knows what is in those files; the thought of their release must terrify him. And rightly so.

Then there is this: will T**** defy a Congressional subpoena? Defying a congressional subpoena is considered an impeachable offense when done, as it will be inn this case, in the context of obstructing a congressional investigation. But there is precedent, this was the basis for one of the articles of impeachment against President Donald T**** in 2019.

The fact of the matter is that the truth is coming, one way or another. And when it does, Americans will have to decide whether or not they are prepared to put up with this terrible waste of human flesh any longer.

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

                               

SNAP benefits have never been cut off in any government shutdown. Until now. Not once, Not under Bush. Not under Obama. Not during other long shutdowns. The only two times Americans have come close to closing food assistance was during the 2018-2019 shutdown and the one happening right now. Both were under Donald T****’s presidencies.

In 2018, the USDA had to scramble to pay February benefits early to stop people from going hungry. Now, in 2025, we were warned that millions may not get November benefits at all.

We’re talking about families who rely on as little as $6 a day for food being told there is “no funding.” Yet the government sits on billions in reserve for just such emergencies, and under T****’s “big ugly bill,” billionaires and corporations get billion dollar tax breaks. 

And all the while, the president fields his private army in the city streets, he gives away $40 billion in American treasure to prop up the failing economy of a South American strongman he likes and ICE burns through millions on tear gas which it uses against innocent and defenseless citizens. 

And to top it off, the president accepts a gift jet that will cost Americas a cool billion to restore and will be his to keep, and builds himself a golden ballroom. 

This isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s just plain, in-your-face cruelty. Which seems to be the hallmark of  Donald T****’s administration. Fortunately, a pair of federal judges have put the kibosh on T**** halting SNAP benefits and has ordered the government to pay them, either in part of in whole. 

T**** has said, of course, that will pay only in part, and that it may take a while before anyone gets relief. And that is only after challenging the lower court’s rulings and threatening in any event to defy them. So here we have it: Federal judges order T**** to feed hungry children, and he fights the order. 

You’d almost think he wants them to go hungry. 

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

The T**** administration has attempted to reassure consumers facing ongoing inflation with a chilling talking point: Poverty is good, actually. This is a tacit admission that they know their policies will make us poorer and make life harder for the working classes in America. But then, they don’t care. Their message comes down to this: suck it up and get back to work

Preaching T****’s gospel, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has made the astonishing assertion that being able to afford things is not important to Americans. To quote the Secretary, “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.”

T**** affirmed Bessent’s vision when he told reporters in April that he’s not worried about empty stores or children going without toys for Christmas. In truth, T**** is priming Americans for accepting a drastically lower standard of living. 

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick further defined this vision in an interview with CNBC in May: multiple generations working in the same factories, stuck in the same grueling jobs for low pay. 

Says Lutnick, “This is the new model, where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work there. It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past but to do the great jobs of the future.” 

Great jobs of the future? For Lutnck, toiling away year after year, generation after generation in a factory is the best America can offer its working class? That’s the best we can look forward to? Who’s kidding whom?

Republicans are clearly not worried about telling us that not only is relief not coming, but you shouldn’t complain about it. However, the idea that there’s no chance for upward mobility and that generations of Americans will be bound to the same oligarch, capitalist bosses sounds suspiciously like feudalism.

Although you cannot assume that Lutnick knows it, his model of course, is not new. It is the child of the Industrial revolution, which spans the years from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. It’s heartless, uncaring and impersonal horrors were minutely dissected in  Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” published in 1905.

This, then, is Donald T****’s vision of the American dream: a regression of over a hundred years to the days when men, women and children worked grueling hours in factories at little more than existence wages.

The die would be cast at birth by caste. The ruling class would live apart in regal splendor. But there would be few paths up or out of T****’s and Lutnick’s imposed feudal existence and planned impoverishment for the working class. 

And you can just forget about toys for your children at Christmas.  

T**** is literally deciding that who deserves disaster relief is based on how they voted.

This week, Donald Trump proudly announced he’d approved millions in relief funding for Alaska, Missouri, and Nebraska, all states that helped elect him. But when Democratic-led states like Vermont, Illinois, and Maryland begged for help after floods and storms tore through their towns, they were met with silence or outright denial.

The Associated Press confirmed that the White House denied those requests, including Maryland’s appeal after devastating May floods, while rushing to approve red-state declarations in the same week.

Meanwhile, T**** was online calling Alaska’s residents “incredible Patriots.” In the same breath, he bragged about winning them “BIG” in past elections, as if disaster victims had earned their salvation by voting the right way.

So let’s be clear: if your community is drowning but didn’t vote for T****, good luck.

Vermont’s Republican governor, Phil Scott, didn’t mince words. “President T**** and his administration have politicized disaster relief,” he said. “And our communities are the ones who will pay the price.”

He’s right. And it’s obscene. Disaster aid isn’t supposed to be a campaign perk. It’s not supposed to depend on party lines, loyalty tests, or how loudly you cheer at a rally. It’s supposed to reflect the most basic moral principle in public life: we take care of each other when we’re in crisis.

What we’re watching is moral corruption in broad daylight, the erosion of fairness, compassion, and decency at the highest level of government. This isn’t just about who gets a FEMA check; it’s about who counts as worthy in Trump’s America.

Every time T**** politicizes disaster aid, he sends a message that cruelty is power and empathy is weakness. But he’s wrong. Americans don’t turn our backs on neighbors because they voted differently. We help because that’s who we are supposed to be and that’s what we are supposed to do.

When disaster strikes, there’s no red state or blue state, just families in need. The idea that your right to recover depends on your political allegiance is beneath contempt and beyond corruption. It’s moral bankruptcy.

And the only way to fight this travesty is to name it, shame it, demand it stop and accept no less. Because if we accept this, if we let a president decide who gets rescued and who’s left behind, we’ve already lost the soul of this country.

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

Patriotism is not obedience to those we elect to office, high or low. It is not silence. It is not quiet acceptance of unconscionable power. True patriotism is a noisy, messy, and deeply uncomfortable thing. It is the courage to hold our leaders to the ideals upon which this nation was founded.

The first lesson of American history is that patriotism does not require nor is reflected in a pledge of loyalty to a president, a party, or even a flag. True patriotism is to respect and hold dear what our elected leaders and our military all vow: to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

The next lesson is that all power belongs to the people. Only we are sovereign. And we must never, ever cede that to an autocrat, an oligarch, a strong man or dictator. There are no kings here.

What the MAGA’s are trying to sell us today is a new kind of patriotism. It is quiet. It is convenient; it suggests that we all just go about our business. It concedes power to the executive, salutes and never asks why. But American patriotism stemming as it did from rebellion against tyranny, is loud. It is demanding. It holds the Constitution in one hand and a protest sign as a symbolic sword in the other.

In the context of what is happening today under the increasingly autocratic rule of Donald T****, I always harken back to the words spoken by Mario Savio during the UC Berkeley Free Speech Protests in 1964 as he stood atop a police car surrounded and impounded by hundreds of righteously angry students. This is how patriots respond:

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who own it, to the people who run it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”

True patriotism cannot abide quiet acquiescence. Donald T**** and his MAGA’s cannot ignore the truth of our nation’s violent birth nor the uprising of protest against his lust for tyrannical power. And they cannot ignore us.

\When you look back on our country’s history, it would seem that perhaps the most important lesson America must remember is encapsulated in these words from Thomas Jefferson: ”The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

No. Freedom isn’t free. And in the struggle for freedom there is always an element of risk. True patriots must always accept that risk. Because in the final analysis, it is better to live with one leg than to spend your life on your knees.

Neither Donald T**** nor his MAGA’s nor his private army nor any soldiers on the streets can silence our voices. We will not be quiet. We will not go away. We will never forget that an American’s first loyalty is to the Constitution and first love is freedom.

Questioning is our right. Rebellion is in our blood.

Resistance is our duty.

At the No Kings protest I went to the other day there was this one guy, all alone, standing on the corner with a sign that read “I support President T****”. And in a crowd of thousands of people all of whom disagreed – many vehemently – with him, no one talked trash to hm, threatened him, assaulted him or tried to hurt him. A few people exchanged greetings and there were some brief conversation with him, but that was about all. He was safe standing there all alone. 

And it struck me that if he had been one of us at a MAGA rally, he would not have been safe. I have seen what MAGA rallies are like, and In fact, he would have been screamed at, vilified, bullied, assaulted verbally and almost certainly battered physically. He would have been in such real physical danger that it probably would have been better and safer for him stay away. 

And that’s the difference between them and us. In spite of the MAGA’s characterization of the No Kings protesters as violent criminals, terrorists and America-haters, we peacefully, almost joyfully channeled the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. We practiced non-violence and were protesting for the rights of everyone. Even the one T**** guy. 

On the other hand, through their private armies of ICE officers and Border Patrol agents, the MAGA’s use violence as a means to their end. It is their goal to suppress the rights of all people of color, of anyone who looks Hispanic, speaks Spanish or looks like they work at a low-paying jobs. And they do it with the Supreme Court’s blessings. 

Through their semi-official militia like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and their violent, hateful followers liie the ones who stormed the Capital, MAGA’s almost gleefully assault and batter anyone who doesn’t look like them, act like them or appear to believe as they do.

They channel the bigotry and hatred of the Nazi Brownshirts. They take umbrage when called Nazis, but I suggest that fascist by any other name…. 

And they follow the philosophy of Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Herman Goebbels who advised, ”Always accuse the enemy of that which you are guilty.” This is who they are and this is what they do. They are  not us. 

We are not the same.

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

The Republican playbook for the government shutdown is based on a sham and a lie. They hold all the card and they damn well know it. The Democrats are caught between a rock and a hard place.

The Democrats can do little more than play the game. All they really say they want is for the Republicans to sit down and negotiate on the issues of healthcare and stuff. Then they tack that agreement onto a continuing resolution either before they re-open the government or after. 

But so what if they do. 

The problem is that the Republicans negotiate in bad faith. That’s because they are little more than puppets of the president, and do only what Donald T**** tells them to do. And he’s nit likely to tell them to give away the farm. And even if negotiations do produce a compromise, it still has to be passed by the Senate, which is no guarantee. 

Then it goes to the president, and  T**** will veto anything he doesn’t like. And he’s not going to like anything that saves healthcare for so many tens of millions of Americans. 

So in the best/worst case scenario goes like this: Republican legislators in the House negotiate a deal with the Democrats but it stalls in the Senate. Or it get it through both houses of Congress, and the president vetoes it. Either way, T**** wins, the Democrats and Americans lose. Which was the plan all along. 

Democrats negotiating with the Republicans is little more than legislative masturbation. It may feel good at the time and seem like they’re getting something worthwhile accomplished. But in the end, it all goes down the toidy.

After all, running with the Devil is touch and go. 

                               IF THE SHOE FITS

From the New York Times:

“The T**** administration is considering a radical overhaul of the U.S. refugee system that would slash the program to its bare bones while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans and Europeans who oppose migration, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

“The proposals, some of which already have gone into effect, would transform a decades-old program aimed at helping the world’s most desperate people into one that conforms to Mr. T*****’s vision of immigration — which is to help mostly white people ‘targeted for peaceful expression of views such as opposition to mass migration or support for ‘populist’ political parties who say they are being persecuted’ while keeping the vast majority of other people out.

“The proposals also advise Mr. T***** to prioritize the European far-right political party Alternative for Germany, whose leaders have trivialized the Holocaust, revived Nazi slogans and denigrated foreigners.”

T**** had suspended refugee admissions on his first day in office and solicited the proposals about how and whether the administration should continue the program. This is what they’ve come up with. 

So. Is Donald T**** a racist and anti-semitic bigot? Damn right he is. And the Republicans and MAGA clones who follow him, are they racists and anti-semitic  bigots, too? Huh. Just watch’em try and deny it. But of course, the shoe fits like a glove.

So they just have to wear it.