I Warned You, since the ’90s: The GOP Has Been Adopting Soviet Tactics—And Now It's Reached a Crisis Point with Trump

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I’ll say it yet again, as I evidently have to...as I've spoken on this and written about it, ad nauseam... because this is serious, and it’s no longer just a warning. It’s a reality. But it's been a while since I addressed this in such detail as I'm about to. There is no bragging here, merely the facts to make clear my orientation and veracity. And as a professional communicator for decades, I feel it is necessary.

Something I shared with a friend just this week. As a professional communicator, I try to offer ways to those at a loss in how to respond to what many feel powerless against: disinformation, propaganda, and authoritarianism. Many, like Donald Trump, think he's a swell guy, incapable of putting his behind-the-scenes (at times right out in front) actions with his demeanor they are attracted to. And right now, it’s no longer creeping. With Trump and the disinformation coming straight from the Oval Office, it’s here—now.

On narcissists.

"You and I both know that the American leaders were once public servants; we're now in the age of public self-servants." — Anthony Scaramucci on Kara Swisher's August 5, 2025 Pivot podcast

To explain my veracity on these topics...Russia, disinformation, autocracy, the GOP, Trump...I can only share my lived experience and orientation. I don’t speak from ego, but from decades of firsthand exposure, careful observation, and a lifelong commitment to sharpening the mind.

Before diving into my background, I want to make clear...as I always do in my non-fiction writing...that I include this only to establish my bona fides. If you're already willing to accept that, feel free to skip most or all of what follows and jump straight to the core of the topic.

This is aside from my membership in the 1990s and early 2000s in an international cybersecurity group that had the support of the then presidents and law enforcement, with briefings from various government, police, and corporate cyber/IT groups.

I spent my university years earning a psychology degree, concentrating in phenomenology—the study of lived experience and consciousness. That was no accident. Since childhood, I’ve held a belief in bettering one’s mind, refining it much like a bodybuilder trains muscles: through focused effort, discipline, and an unrelenting pursuit of growth. I’ve never seen intellectualism as elitist. For me, it was a way of making the most of what I thought was a flawed mind.

I didn’t know until much later in life that I had ADHD—something I’d always suspected was both a curse and, in many ways, a gift. My stepfather once told me I was "stupid." And for a while, I believed it. I was a consistent C student—until I got to college. Let me address that issue about academia and thinking processes. I obviously don't have standard normal processing. But among other things, I'm incredibly good at patter recognition. 

After the military, I enrolled in university on the GI Bill and decided early on not to obsess over grades. I realized few people in the professional world would care about my GPA—but the knowledge I gained would define the rest of my life. So I made it my mission to absorb as much as I could in four years—on the people's dime—as a form of respect for that opportunity. I saw it as a civic duty: to get the most value possible out of my education.

And it paid off. My primary psychology advisor—an intense, no-nonsense professor who didn’t suffer fools—once told me I was nationwide, “in the top 10% of the top 10% of all 'university' psychology students in the country.” That's roughly the top 1% overall. That is a small number, and it stuck with me. Not as a point of pride, but as a confirmation that the mind I was told was defective... wasn’t. I had simply been underserved, misjudged, and misunderstood.

So when I speak now—about propaganda, disinformation, authoritarian creep, and political manipulation—I do so not as a pundit or partisan, but as someone who’s spent a lifetime trying to understand how people think, how they’re manipulated, and how truth gets buried in favor of control.

That is the lens I bring. That is why I write what I do.

In October 1978, I completed initial screening and was formally recognized as a screened applicant for U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) agent status. That experience—though I ultimately chose not to pursue the assignment—set the course for a lifelong vigilance regarding disinformation, authoritarianism, and foreign intelligence tactics.

Back in the 1970s, during my time in the U.S. Air Force, I received regular classified briefings at the Secret level—standard for my role. But those briefings ignited something deeper in me: a lasting interest in Soviet tactics, propaganda, and disinformation, particularly the strategies developed by the KGB. I was seriously considering a career in intelligence.

I passed the initial screening and testing for OSI. According to the Commanding Officer at our base's OSI office, he said I had scored “the highest I’ve ever seen.” I still remember the look on his face—some mix of admiration, maybe even appreciation that someone like me had walked into his office and volunteered. Maybe he was comparing me to other candidates, or maybe to the agents already serving under him. I don’t know. But it meant something.

My interest in OSI stemmed from more than curiosity. I had entered the Air Force with thoughts of eventually working for the CIA or a similar agency. Growing up near McChord AFB in Tacoma, Washington, I had served as a Flight Commander in the Civil Air Patrol, the USAF’s civilian auxiliary since WWII. Intelligence work felt like a calling.

I’d met a few OSI agents on base through the course of their investigations. One case involved a B-52 drag chute that tested positive during a random K-9 sweep. The dogs had alerted to it while it was queued for packing in our parachute shop. Turned out, the chute had scooped up a few spent shotgun shells—probably from a hunter who somehow wandered near the runway. Odd, considering how meticulously those areas are maintained.

But honestly, I wasn’t overly impressed by the agents I met. No offense to them, but they didn’t strike me as particularly sharp. They seemed tired, maybe nearing retirement. This wasn’t the elite crew I’d imagined. That contrast only sharpened my interest in what the higher-level work must be like—where the real stakes were.

Professionalism had always been a personal compass, instilled in me by my grandmother—a self-taught woman who surrounded herself with educated, thoughtful people and passed that mindset on to me. She believed in living a life of purpose, and I took that to heart.

For me, studying Soviet methods wasn’t just intellectual curiosity—it was preparation. I truly believed I might one day be up against these people. When I applied to OSI, I told the CO I wanted to learn everything. He initially recommended the Philippines, where he said agents learned all the procedural paperwork inside and out due to the rampant crime at the time.

I told him I didn’t want paperwork—I wanted fieldwork.

He smiled and said, “Then there’s only one station I can recommend... but it’s dangerous.”

"Berlin."

At the time, there was an open agent slot at the Berlin Station that had remained vacant for nearly a year. He told me the position was empty because the previous agent had allegedly been killed in a KGB operation...a bomb was planted in his car.

That's not true, actually. This is how it went...

I asked why the slot was open...and why it had remained vacant for an entire year. He seemed to appreciate that I was asking the right questions. He said an agent had gotten into his car one day...and it exploded, killing him. I wondered for a moment: morning or evening, on base or off, on assignment or what?

So, I asked, “Who was responsible?”

He didn’t say a word. He just tilted his head forward slightly and looked at me over his desk.

I assumed he meant the KGB, but I wanted to be sure.

“You mean...?” I prompted.

He gave a small nod.

Still not satisfied, I said it aloud but not loud: “KGB?”

He nodded again—this time, a little more firmly.

---

When I asked why no one had filled the post for so long, he gave me a look and said, “No one wants that station.” I understood. "For obvious reasons," he added. I considered the potential up and down both sides. I hesitated a moment, ruminating, then looked at him across his desk.

I gave him my response. “Sign me up.” 

His face went blank for a moment, then he grinned. "OK, if you want. We can do that." He saw no hesitation, so he wrote something down. I wasn't jubilant but determined. Someone had died after all, someone else could die. I could die. But this wasn't a vacation, it was a serious career consideration.

As it happens, when I would have been stationed there, a certain KGB agent named Vladimir Putin was also operating in Berlin. And yes, I still have all that paperwork. 

Brief aside. Decades later I made friends with a Ukrainian at our local Aikido dojo where I was on the Board of Directors. We were having drinks one night and talking and this topic came up. When spoke of the OSI and Berlin, he got excited and said he too had considered such service, with the KGB. I said, then we could have one night run into one another in a dark alley, on opposite sides. 

He was a big guy, and we had thrown one another around on the practice mats many times. I told him that I wouldn't have wanted to have had to take him on in a life-or-death scenario. We would have been younger obviously and in even better condition. He knew I had started martial arts in grade school, everyone at the dojo knew that and I was the unofficial dojo martial arts historian. He then said he wouldn't have wanted to go up against me in that situation, either. I took that as a compliment. Then we both just laughed. 

But had we happened into that situation on some dark street in Berlin one night, well, it could have been epic, to be sure. Had that instead been Vladimir? I've often considered that and how he was back then? We might have even gotten along. That wasn't unusual in those cold war days. For a variety of reasons.

In today’s world, the rise of open-source intelligence (OSINT) has changed how we verify, explore, and re-examine stories that were once confined to shadows. What used to be whispers in briefing rooms can now—sometimes—be triangulated through declassified archives, historical analysis, and public-access data. And yet, there are still events that resist confirmation. One such moment for me has lingered for decades.

In 1978, while pursuing a position with the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), I was told by the OSI Commanding Officer at my base that an OSI agent stationed in Berlin had been killed the year before in a car bombing—allegedly by the KGB. He didn’t speak lightly of it, and I had no reason to doubt that the information had been passed through the appropriate channels, possibly even directly from Berlin Station itself.

Over the decades, I’ve made multiple efforts to verify that claim, but I’ve never found an official or open-source record of such an incident. That in itself is telling. The Cold War was not only a time of open conflict and covert operations, but also of strategic silence. If the agent’s death was operationally sensitive or politically volatile, it’s entirely possible the record was suppressed—or deliberately misattributed. That’s not conspiracy thinking—it’s how intelligence agencies operate when the stakes are high enough.

Assuming the bombing did happen, several possibilities remain plausible. The KGB, of course, had both motive and means. Berlin was a front-line city in the Cold War, and Western intelligence assets were always under threat. It could also have been the Stasi—East Germany’s notorious secret police—acting independently or in coordination with Moscow. 

Other Soviet-bloc services had capabilities too. Alternatively, the attack could have come from a group like the Red Army Faction (RAF), who were very active in Germany in the mid-to-late '70s and did not shy away from targeting U.S. personnel. Finally, it’s not inconceivable that the killing stemmed from a criminal or gray-zone intelligence matter—something off-book, personal, or unofficial that would never see the light of day.

For more about this, see the end of this blog.

To this day, the absence of an answer continues to echo. And in a way, it serves as a reminder: in the world of espionage, it’s often what isn’t in the record that deserves your closest attention. Stories like this helped shape my lifelong interest in intelligence and disinformation—not just as tactics, but as cultural languages spoken in half-truths and silences.

I ultimately didn’t take the OSI assignment, for reasons that were personal, and—at the time—necessary. Did I regret it? For years, yes. Though with what I know now? Not so much. What I haven't yet mentioned was in merely going to the OSI office on base, I was actually already risking my life. But that's a story for another time.

But the decision didn’t dull my passion or focus. From the late 1970s on, my study of Soviet strategies, especially those of the KGB, became deeply personal and lifelong.

I share this now because I believe it's more important than ever to pay attention. What we’re seeing today—disinformation, psychological operations, and the normalization of authoritarian tactics—isn’t new. It’s an evolution of Cold War techniques, updated for the digital age and internalized by some of our own political actors.

Back then, I was preparing for a future I feared might come. That future is here. Now. 

But it affected me for the rest of my life. I remember, when the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990s, wondering...WHY did I waste my life so focused on the Soviets and the KGB? UNTIL...I started to see those very same tactics being used by our conservative political party here, within OUR United States.

For most of my life, until one day when I finally accepted, I wasn't going into that life, I read no spy fiction fearful it might pollute my understanding and stored facts. I read books and watched documentaries about and by KGB agents, retired heads of the KGB. I triangulated that with non-fiction books by other retired agents from various other secret agencies especially from the UK, but also from Japan, and others. I learned that by reading several accounts of a specific incident, one could indeed divine the reality of a situation, even if the information wasn't pristine. 

By the 1990s, I began noticing disturbing parallels emerging within the U.S.—specifically, within the Republican Party. The language was shifting. The messaging was changing. The subtle manipulation of facts, the reframing of truth, the eroding of trust in institutions and media—it was all eerily familiar.

I started warning people.

I told friends, colleagues, anyone who would listen, that I saw the GOP adopting methods that felt straight out of the Soviet disinformation playbook. Few believed me. Not because they dismissed me as a conspiracy theorist—I don’t fit that mold—but because the implications were too disturbing to accept.

"That couldn’t happen here," they said.
"Not in America."
It sounded too far-fetched.

I didn’t blame them. Even I had trouble believing it at times. But the signs were there—plain as day.

---

Then Came Trump

And then, Donald Trump emerged on the political scene. With him came a tidal wave of misinformation, attacks on truth, and open disdain for democratic norms. As POTUS45, Trump told over 30,000 documented lies. He was impeached—twice—and much of what he did, he admitted to publicly. It wasn’t hidden. It wasn’t subtle. It was blatant.

And now, as POTUS47, he's done something even more brazen, and even more dangerous.

He has fired the head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics—a nonpartisan civil servant whose job was to provide accurate, apolitical economic data to the American people. Why? Because the numbers didn’t align with Trump’s narrative. Because the truth challenged his desires. Not his beliefs—his illiberal, authoritarian desires.

Let that sink in.

This isn’t a difference of opinion. This is the manipulation of national data—the very numbers that inform policy, investment, public discourse, and our understanding of economic reality.

And that, my fellow Americans, is textbook Soviet disinformation strategy.

---

This Is Domestic Information Warfare

What we’re seeing is not normal political maneuvering. It’s not “hardball” or just “spin.” It’s domestic information warfare—against the American people.

It’s about power.
It’s about permanence.
And it’s about the entrenchment of disreputable MAGA-style political oppression—designed to outlive Trump himself.

By discrediting institutions, distorting truth, and controlling the flow of information, Trump and his enablers are reshaping the very nature of American democracy. And unlike a single election cycle, these effects won’t simply vanish when he eventually exits the political stage.

This will take decades to repair—if it can be repaired at all.

This is no longer about Trump the man. This is about a movement and a machinery built on disinformation and authoritarian tactics.

---

A Changed America

And make no mistake: this has already changed the character of America.

For all the talk about “American exceptionalism,” we are now facing a future where truth itself is a battleground, and facts are bent to serve political power. The very thing many of us believed could never happen here—has.

This isn’t just about Trump. It’s about what he’s normalized. It’s about the GOP’s long flirtation with authoritarianism turning into a full-blown affair. It’s about a country where too many still deny the danger, still excuse the behavior, and still act as if this is politics as usual.

It’s not.

---

Straight From the KGB Playbook

I saw this coming because I’d studied the tactics.

Long before Trump appeared on the scene, I had watched the GOP lean into the methods used by Soviet propagandists—methods honed by the KGB and later mimicked by regimes like Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, and Kim’s North Korea:

• Undermine trust in media

• Attack the legitimacy of democratic institutions

• Blur the line between truth and falsehood

• Replace facts with "alternative facts"

• Stoke chaos, fear, and grievance

• Erase objective reality in favor of cult loyalty

What we are seeing now is not new—it is imported. And it is being deliberately applied against the American public.

---

The Bottom Line

This is not alarmism.
This is not exaggeration.
This is not theory.

This is the playbook.

And unless we confront it head-on, reject it outright, and reassert our commitment to truth and democratic values, it will remain the new normal.

If you're still pretending it's not happening, ask yourself: why did a sitting president just fire a data official because reality didn’t suit him?

Because that is not democracy.

That is control.

That is disinformation.

That is the legacy of the KGB, now wearing a red hat that says MAGA.

And unless we dismantle this movement at every level—politically, culturally, and legally—it may become permanent.

END OF BLOG DETAIL—

More on who might have been responsible:

If the bombing occurred, there are several plausible culprits worth considering—each with their own motives, methods, and histories in Cold War-era Berlin:

---

1. The KGB (Soviet Committee for State Security)

As the USSR’s primary foreign intelligence and security agency, the KGB had both the motive and operational reach to eliminate Western intelligence threats, especially in Berlin—one of the most active espionage hotspots of the Cold War.

KGB assassinations abroad were rare but not unheard of. They typically involved:

• Surveillance and psychological pressure

• Recruitment or compromise of local assets

• Direct sabotage or assassination, especially when a Western agent posed a serious threat to ongoing Soviet operations

If the OSI agent was involved in counterintelligence work, double-agent handling, or surveillance of Soviet diplomatic/GRU personnel, the KGB would have considered him a legitimate target—especially if he was close to uncovering something sensitive.

---

2. The Stasi (East German Ministry for State Security)

The Stasi was among the most ruthless and efficient intelligence services in history, with deep roots inside East and West Berlin. While technically subordinate to the KGB, the Stasi conducted its own operations against U.S. military and intelligence personnel, especially those stationed near the border or involved in surveillance.

If the OSI agent had infiltrated or disrupted a Stasi-run operation—such as courier lines, smuggling routes, or informant networks—the Stasi could have retaliated, possibly using a car bomb or similar method.

They were known for:

• Psychological warfare (“Zersetzung”)

• Targeted surveillance and blackmail

• Occasional direct attacks or assassination under deep cover

---

3. GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence)

While less publicized than the KGB, the GRU was often more aggressive in its methods, and Berlin was a key city for their operations targeting NATO infrastructure. The GRU sometimes operated without KGB coordination, and its officers were embedded in Soviet military attaché offices, embassies, and disguised as trade envoys.

If the OSI agent had been collecting information on Soviet military movements, electronic surveillance, or East German troop readiness, and the GRU caught wind of it, he could have been neutralized as part of countermeasures.

The GRU also had experience with sabotage techniques, including:

• Explosives

• Booby traps

• Disguised attacks using local criminal proxies

---

4. Red Army Faction (RAF, or Baader-Meinhof Group)

The RAF was highly active in West Germany in the 1970s, particularly during their so-called “German Autumn” of 1977. They targeted U.S. military bases, West German officials, and corporate elites. While they leaned domestic in focus, the RAF was known to receive material support from the Stasi and possibly the KGB, including safehouses in East Berlin.

They were well-trained in:

• Bomb-making

• Vehicle-based attacks

• Urban guerrilla tactics

If a U.S. intelligence agent was seen as a “tool of imperialism,” especially one operating in the field and not just administrative staff, the RAF might have seen him as a legitimate target.

---

5. Criminal Underworld or “Gray” Actors

Cold War Berlin was also home to a thriving black market and criminal underworld, particularly in the American and British sectors. Western agents occasionally ran afoul of smugglers, black marketeers, or informants who straddled the line between crime and espionage.

It's possible—if less likely—that:

• The OSI agent got too close to something illicit and was silenced

• An informant double-crossed him

• He was operating in unofficial or covert capacities, and his death was covered up or not attributed to state actors

These “gray zone” deaths are hardest to trace because they often go unclaimed and unresolved.

---

This breakdown doesn’t deliver a definitive answer, but it helps frame the context in which a covert assassination could have occurred—and gone unacknowledged. In Cold War Berlin, plausible deniability wasn’t just a tactic—it was standard operating procedure.

Cheers! Sláinte!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Russia Invades Ukraine, Film Festivals & "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero"

My antiwar film, "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" has an interesting evolution which I'm detailing in my book of the same or similar name:

“Pvt. Ravel's Bolero - Film Companion Book History, Form & Structure in the Antiwar Filmic Poem & Historical Documentary" I'm hoping to finish it soon. I am this day finishing up the DVD version of the film and it will soon be released exclusively on a streaming service I recently started with two other indie filmmakers called, "ThrilzTV.com". Pop over and sign up for a free month. If you like it, stick around. It's only $4.99/month! And we ARE going to evolve beyond a streaming indie video channel in support of our indie filmmaking community. 

But this is really a story about my submitting my film to film festivals and in particular, a Russian festival. It was in the week's leading up to and including Russia's ludicrous invasion of Ukraine, all due to their sad, ill, despotic leader, Vladimir Putin, a once middling KGB agent, how apparently had a bruised ego.

My history with Russia goes back to my interest in espionage. It began in high school and the Irish "Troubles" (I'm Irish on my dad's side) which I later transferred into curiosity about US/Soviet relations. In studying that, it led me quite obviously and reasonably into UK/Russia relations history for the past 100 years of their involvement with and against one another. 

Britain found it had to teach America about Soviet espionage leading up to WWII, as we were quite ignorant and disbelieving about things London would tell us. SO they painstakingly updated and educated us on what they'd learned about Soviet tactics, and their long term active measures against other countries, and their disinformation techniques.

This led our "Wild" Bill Donovan, head of our OSS fame being questionably (illegally?) involved in the ABC group of America, Britain and Canada. Eventually, after the war the OSS became the CIA. But in studying this history for decades, considering going into the business myself, entering the USAF with a security clearance for nuclear weapons and signing up with the OSI (Office of Special Investigations, their FBI), I learned a lot.

"When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Donovan, then a major, organized and led the famed 1st Battalion of the 69th New York Volunteers (the original “Fighting Irish,” and which, after the unit was federalized, was redesignated the 165th Regiment of the 42nd Division). He was soon promoted to lieutenant colonel, and his unit arrived in France in October 1917, ready for action." - America's Spymaster, from Warfare History

When in the 1990s I noticed Newt Gingrich started using old Soviet KGB disinfo tactics, the GOP had begun its long decline into autocracy. It was frightfully obvious to me in that decade that something untoward was going on with our Republican Party. Full disclosure, I was raised in my mother's liberal, Teamsters Union family. But I had always had a good head for what was right and fair between human beings, since before I was able to speak.

At some point I left the USAF, got a couple of degrees, started a family and realized I not going into that business after all. But I had learned a lot. I decided I had apparently wasted my time for decades assimilating a vast amount of useless knowledge. Then the "Iron Curtain" fell. I abandoned all those thoughts, thinking I had wasted much effort on useless knowledge. 

Until the 1990s played themselves out and I saw oddly similar things happening, not in Russia, but right here at home in America. I had experienced some of the right wing's white Christian nationalism while in the USAF in Spokane, in Eastern Washington, which I felt was more akin to Idaho (or eastern Oregon) where many from the beaten south after the Civil War had fled to. 

More like Idaho (or was Idaho more like eastern Washington?), than the western side of the Cascade Mountains where I had grown up in Tacoma and around Mt. Rainier. One of my degrees is from Western Washington University in Bellingham, near Canada's Vancouver (love it up there!). So when I heard the leader of the "Church of Our White Christian Heritage" up from Georgia spewing hatred in a chapel in he back hills of Idaho one day, about how Vancouver, BC was a "cesspool of humanity", I was shocked. My wife was terrified. A guy on base had invited us, he drove, surprised us in leaving Washington state for church and needless to say, we didn't go back.

When I left the USAF, I read up on these neo-Nazi loving "Christians" and was shocked at what was going on, right here at home in America (Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City bombing, and so on). And how Oregon had been home to some very questionable types I won't go into here. 

Needless to say, I retained my fascination with Russia (and let's not forget Ireland, which I visited for my 60 birthday back in 2015). So when Putin took over, I easily realized it couldn't be good for Russia (for earth?), for a KGB agent to take be handed the reins by a predecessor criminal and alcoholic, as leader of a broken State such as the old USSR. Especially considering the agreement was Putin would protect Boris Yeltsin and his family for all his crimes as Russia's leader in having plundered their coffers. Just as Putin has done and now worries about leaving his position. As trapped in power and Russia it trapped under him.

So thoughts of submitting a work of mine (especially an antiwar film) to Russia, to Moscow, carried a lot of baggage for me. Needless to say, it was a somewhat entertaining notion to me. But I had no idea how it would end up, as so much Russian culture does, as involved and bittersweet as it would turn out.

It all started with that email, from Moscow... 

Wednesday, February 17, 2022:
"Hi, I’m representer of Fox International Film Festival. We heard a lot about your great work "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero". We would like to invite you to take part in our festival."

I checked them on FilmFreeway where I usually submit my films through. Their profile page there said their were a Moscow/Rome film festival. First time I ever saw that. Twin cities...with Russia. OK. Cool. Whatever. I have a long history with Russia since it was the Soviet Union (USSR). I had studied their disinformation techniques and history of espionage along with that of the UK and America (and somewhat therefore, Canada, as in the "ABC" secret America, Britain, Canada during and leading up to WWII).

February 18, 2022
I entered my antiwar historical documentary/filmic poem film "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero", to their festival being held in Moscow (with an associated event indicated in Rome).

Tuesday, February 24, 2022
Russia invaded Ukraine.

My film ends, end credits run, then a list of all "Wars on Earth" scrolls on, seemingly forever. The day Russia invaded Ukraine, I added one last war. So when it played in Moscow, that would be seen on the screen. They would have to know that in reviewing the film so to put it on screen would be a conscious decision. I doubted they would play it, or select it. I felt I had quashed my chances at winning an award, or even being selected. 

I really wouldn't blame them. But maybe they would appreciate just seeing it in watching it, judging it, privately as we do as film festival judges. As I've done myself in our Gorst Underground Film Festival, Kelly Hughes and I founded some years ago. It would take some kind of bravery under the dictator Putin to chance that kind of thing. But there are more Russian patriots that one might think. As happens in any country over twenty years under oppression. Would I have done something like that when the sexual predator and criminal Donald Trump was POTUS45 (or POTUS47 for that matter)? Absolutely. But to be fair, it's no where (yet) near the same thing.

Kelly and I, along with Tony Green in Montreal, Canada have started ThrilzTV streaming indie video channel. It's pretty cool. An indie streaming channel by and for indie film types. Utterly no bearing on anything I'm talking about here. I just thought I'd mention it. It's been a lot of work, but it's coming along well, and you will hopefully hear about it more in the future. And not just from me.

I guess I mention that because I mentioned Kelly. So I should mention Tony. And I'm talking about these two films of mine, both of which are now going to be on ThrilzTV, exclusively with "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" to become available on there soon after a lot of promotion and hoopla (hopefully, the hoopla, not the availability as it's GOING to be available there).

Tuesday, February 24, 2022:
"Hi, dear JZ Murdock! Congratulations from FIFF team, as your work was selected to the second part of our December-January 2022 programme. Your work was something special and our jury was really excited watching it! We would like to inform you that in addition to being successful in your chosen categories, our jury has recommended you the following categories in which they think your work can be successful as well:
"Best War Film"
Good luck in the final part of our October-November 2021 programme!
With love, the FIFF team!"

Wow. No kidding? I found that brave of them. A statement perhaps against Putin's Kremlin in general. Especially since the last words of the film seen on screen are: "Putin's Folly" 2022

So I was up for "Best War Film" that Friday, on February 27, 2022. They thought that my film, THAT film... would play in Moscow? Even after Russia had invaded Ukraine? That, was pretty bold. I was having fond feelings for them.

Alas, in the end, I received only Official Selection. But thinking it was played in Moscow after Russia invaded a neighbor for no good reason was reward enough.

Plus, it allowed me to email Symbiotic Film Festival in Kyiv to tell them about this as it played out. I've talked about this before, like when it was happening. I wrote a blog about it.

Thursday, January 13, 2022:

Symbiotic emailed me requesting I submit my film noir, "Gumdrop", a short horror (trailer). 

Monday, February 23, 2022:

FilmFreeway:

Dear JZ,

Congratulations!

Symbiotic Film Festival has updated the Judging Status of your submission "Gumdrop", a short horror to Selected.

"Gumdrop", a short horror

Selected

Project has been selected to be included in festival!"

Wednesday 26, 2022:

Email to Symbiotic Film Festival:

"I'm hoping as we all are that you are all safe.

I just wanted to mention, my film, "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero", an anti war film, filmic poem/documentary was just given official selection by Fox International Film Festival in Russia, and they also nominated it as  "Best War Film", which I take as a form of support for Ukraine, if not also a form of dissent against what is going on. 

The world watching and is with you and pushing for ever more to be done to help you.

Slainte! May this all end soon and in your favor!"

I never heard from them again. But it is rewarding to see that they are still listed on FilmFreeway and their website is still up.

I only wish the same could be said for the Fox International Film Festival who had shifted their home reference only to Rome. Their listed website URL from before is not online and their listing on FilmFreeway is now gone:

.

I wish them well and can only hope my own response against their criminal leader Putin's illegal war in Ukraine did not adversely affect or cost them any difficulties. I'm not vain enough to think it had, but under a regime like that, anything is possible. Though I see a reference to them on someone's Twitter posting from last Friday, May 12th, 2023. I can only assume this is the Rome festival location.

What does make me happy is that the Symbiotic Film Festival seems to be alive and well. They are still today listed on FilmFreeway as being in Kyiv and their website and Twitter are up! Though their website is only updated through last year, their FilmFreeway listing indicates July 31, 2023 as their event date for this year's festival.

I wish them all well! Both festivals.

And now "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" will be exclusively on "ThrilzTV.com". It's only 28 minutes long. But it packs a punch. Which explain why it's winning all these awards, I suppose. 

I wish you all well. We'll need it!

Cheers! Sláinte!

June 1, 2023 update:

Since multi award winning "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" is ONE, an antiwar documentary about WWI, I'm not surprised Moscow rejected it here in this festival, since...TWO, the last phrase in the entire film, after a long scrolling list of all wars on earth, is:
"Putin's Folly 2022" for the Ukraine war he instigated.
I so wanted to be impressed by them. But I also understand.
And I should be even more impressed that the Fox International Film Festival in Moscow in Feb. 27, 2022 did play it.
I have one final festival Moscow Film Party coming up, then I'm done there... Notification Date: June 20, 2023

Walkabout Thoughts #30

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…(2/2/23 Thursday)


Weather for the day… 45 and lightly overcast, and I can see blue here and there.

Podcast for the day pod, “Havana syndrome“ episode two

Instagram post for the day

I swear this podcast is a lot about Cuba, but also about the inside scoop on that country related to Obama opening up relations. Also, our government employees. And the CIA and Cuban intelligence. Also, that has to include Russian and Chinese intelligence. Also the Russians who trained Cuban intelligent services, who then got better, reportedly, than the KGB.

It was a career I was leaning towards (espionage) beforeI went into the USAF as law-enforcement. And still considered towards the end of that service when I interviewed with and got accepted into the OSI. Which the USAF's FBI. I was literally reading "FBI" magazine sitting in the waiting room (should have kept a copy), waiting to see the CO in our base OSI office. Didn’t even know the FBI had a magazine before that. But apparently they are only in offices like the FBI, the OSI, CID, and so on. But that’s another story. And so this is a very interesting podcast, for me.

Once I was accepted, after couple months of interviews and testing with the OSI, I requested to be stationed in Berlin as there had been a year long opening there (CO said no one wanted that position). I would have preferred Berlin over Cuba. But then we weren’t doing that in Cuba, at the time. Berlin was the place to be, to become a seasoned agent of any kind. I still wanted CIA, but I was going to go with USAF at the time. I would replace the OSI Officer the KGB blew up when getting into his car one day. Which was why no one else seemed to want that replacement position. It wasn’t unreasonable to think back then that I might’ve run into Vladimir Putin. I said this before, back then I might’ve even liked the guy. But I never thought a KGB agent being the "Czar" of Russia was a good idea. And then some years ago he changed, and eventually, inevitably, became fucking evil. But then I voted for George HW Bush as president, because I thought it might actually be good to have a president who had been had head of CIA. Who actually knew the inner workings of intelligence. So paint me crazy and call me a hypocrite. But then again in that, you can’t equate the USA with Russia, or the Soviet Union.

I’ve been setting up a streaming movie network for a niche audience that involves us independent film and filmmaker types. Allow me to qualify that… a set up for them, but not involving them directly. Although we three primaries the two founders, those who brought me on, all of us are indie filmmakers. We’ve all directed and/or produced somethings. I’ve learned a lot about this segment of the movie industry the OTT (over the top) providers (Services like Netflix, Hulu or Disney+ are video OTT services). I’ve actually been in the movie audience industry since childhood.

When I was in grade school, my stepdad got a job as assistant manager and box office cashier at a drive-in theater in Tacoma Washington. No longer in existence. It's now a plot of hundreds of apartments. Not having a lot of money in the 1960s, and him having a day job at a warehouse, every Friday night my family my two siblings and mom and I, would be at the drive-in, in our station wagon to watch whatever film was shown, eating employee discounted snack bar food. It was a good time and I learned a lot about things. I probably shouldn’t have learned some of those things. There is no rating system for films back then. My older brother had a job there, working in the field during the day. My olders sister had a job at the snack bar, in high school. After she left high school, I immediately entered it. Then I had a snack bar job there as cashier, as she did. Eventually, I became a snack bar manager, then also worked in the box office. That all  after my stepdad and his boss, our manager, moved to a brand new shiney Drive-in Theater in south Tacoma.

So that’s the viewer experience end of the movie business. Catering to moviegoers. Now I’m on the back end of that, for movie viewers, viewing from their home or a variety of electronic devices. We’re doing a lot of research in building and learning about film aggregators, and CMS (content management system) platforms. Dealing with investors and bringing on people to support us, as we’re almost immediately having too much work to do for just the three of us. I'm the IT department. I just brought someone on to train up. We had one failure in dropping the first CMS company we tried. A turnkey operation in India. From the start, I liked the platform but there were too many problems, and for us, they were too slow to fix things and be flexible as partners.

Half a mile walked now, taking it very easy on my knee. I’m doing well. Maybe. The VA nurse had told me when this happened on my last walk, how I should always stretch afterwards. I said, "Well, I’ve been on the board of an Aikido nonprofit school for years over a couple decades. I know stretching." I had to quit years ago because of my knees. Five minutes in class, my knees would swell up and I could hardly bend them. So I had to quit. They kindly offered I could just stand all through class and I did that for a class. It’s just not functional. You’re just an apple in a class of oranges. You really need to be able to go down and up and down a whole bunch of times. I do miss it. I started martial arts in 1965, then fighting tournaments beginning that next year. Isshinryu Karate. Aikido and Karate are very different. Aikido is Japanese for one. Karate is Okinawan, invented by unarmed farmers to deal with armed and amored Samurai who had taken over their island. I’ve taken various forms of martial arts over my lifetime until I discovered Aikido in college, in 1980. I’ve never been in a dojo where there is so much smiling and positive energy as an Aikido dojo. Kids just love the classes. More so than I’ve ever seen in Karate classes. My own kids took a form of Karate, we lacked in an Aikido dojo in the vicinity, I put my own kids in a karate dojo just so they would have some of that experience. Even though by then, I was not fully invested in their being in a Karate dojo. It’s better than nothing, but I would prefer Aikido for kids.

Getting back to Aikido, and espionage… Our dojo years ago had a big bear of a guy, who is I believe is Ukrainian. We got talking one day, might’ve been over drinks, out of the dojo, obviously. We both revealed something about our pasts that I’ve just revealed to you here. Him, not knowing any better, he wanted to go into the KGB. And I would argue now, maybe my not knowing any better, I wanted to go into the CIA, or something like it. I never had a desire to wear a uniform, even though I did (USAF). At 19 I took the Tacoma police department exams. I didn’t get it. I was mid-level on the test, not knowing you’re supposed to study for it. But I was way above everybody else on the obstacle course, in my running time. Fastest one that day to be sure by, 10 seconds. I was in the 40's next closest to me was in the 50s. Women were in the 60s (seconds). We were running the Fire Dept.'s obstacle course. I literally flew over it. Ran over the zigzag beams, the raised table, under the table in the sand, up and down the building stairs of several flights. And that was after being slowed down by one of the monitors there, accidentally. She said, "Run up the three flights carrying this 70lb rolled up rug to similate a person, across the top of the building outside, back in, down the stairs, come to me and wait for me to indicate what's next. I did all that, was standing before her again with her clipboard and she just stared at me. I said, "Well? Now what?" She got a shocked look on her face (maybe 5 seconds wasted looking down at her rather attractive face) and she said, "Oh!" Go out that window, back in that one, back out and hit the beginning of the field obstacles." I gave her a disconcerting look so she'd read I was not happy and she'd wasted me time and I took off.

Anyway, my friend at the dojo and I worked out in Akido together, the Ukrainian guy and I, we enjoyed working out together. Both respected each other in that. I said once that we could’ve one night met up accidentally, or on purpose, in a back alley in Berlin, us in the KGB and CIA (or for me maybe as OSI), And probably we would’ve ended up being more friendly. But in considering if we had to oppose one another, we both grimaced. I said, with him being bigger than me, I’d really not want to tangle with you in a dark alley like that. And he, perhaps, kindly said, "Hey, I feel the same way about you." Which I thought was a high compliment. And I said so. But he said, "No I’m serious. I wouldn't want to take you on." Perhaps he knew about my other martial arts history. I don't remember. There were one or two others in our dojo who thought they were pretty hot shit. Especially as I was learning and coming up to speed. They perhaps assuming incorrectly I was new to martial arts, after decades being in it since childhood. And I knew they were better than me, at Aikido, until I got equal to them. What they didn’t realize and I knew back in 2000 when I started at that dojo, I had already had 35 years of experience in other martial arts, which I kept too myself for a while. Aikido is a very different animal. So I was very much a white belt when I took my first college quarter class in 1980. Then returned to it in 1999 or 2000, maybe 2001? When I first heard of a local dojo, my wife read about it actually. She said, "Hey, you said if there’s ever a dojo nearby, you would go to it." She was taunting me some. I said, "You’re right." So I went down to check them out. They received me with friendly, open arms, and the rest is history. Our Sensei always said, "If someone cames into the dojo, welcome them right a way and asnswer any questions. Make them feel at home. Postive energy." And so, anyway, if you go to Hombu dojo in Tokyo, you can look my name registered in their records.

Now about my comments on my orientation, wanting to get into espionage. That came up sometime after high school. I never read spy novels. I read my first spy novel around the time my first born's birth in 1988. Somewhere I had aquired the entire collection of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Old black cover hardback additions. 

My pregnant wife read of them first, after I'd had them for years. I can't remember now where I got them from. I want to say from someone in my family. Perhaps one of my grandparents after they had passed. My wife said they were pretty good. I assumed. She said I should try reading them because I loved the movies. Yes, I loved spy movies. I have to admit to that. I saw "Dr. No" when it first came out, with my mother at the walk-in Community Theater on the corner of 56th & M St. a few houses down and across the street from where she had for a while, grown up, in a house across the street. Later my sister would have her first apartment in that very location, where an apartment building had been constructed replacing a few of the old houses there.

I love the tension and the espionage elements in those movies. Then I saw "Thunderball" with mom, at that theater again, when it came out. Then we saw my favorite, "Goldfinger". And so I read the books. For decades I hadn't wanted to fill up my mind with specifics, that were all fiction. Instead, I had read a lot of books by ex-agents and heads of the CIA and the KGB. Those who had retired and wrote a book, especially after the Soviet Union fell. So finally, I read those James Bond books and was stunned to find how different they were from the movies. And I liked them. By some time in the early 90s, I started to realize, "Hey, you’re not going into espionage, pal." So I started reading that fiction genre and really enjoyed some of them. Like, John le Carré. Who had friends who were spies, so he was good to read. And my favorite author, Len Deighton, who wrote novels that my favorite movie spy, next James Bond, "Harry Palmer" was in, played by Michael Caine in the films. Loved his characterization of that character.

So my point in saying all that, I spent decades, familiarizing myself with espionage and its culture and tactics, and especially the Soviet Union's, and their KGB and I would key into any news about either of them. "Know your enemy well. Better than they do." Which was why, as I’ve said many times, that back in the 1990s, when the still Republican Party started getting so weird and polluted, I started to notice they were using old tried and true Soviet disinformation tactics which only got worse until today. When even traditional Republicans don’t recognize the GOP anymore as an American political party.

So, in this episode of the podcast, they’re interviewing an ex CIA officer who was in Cuba after Pres. Obama nomalized relations, long overdue, greatly because of old Florida Cubans hating their old government, after abandoning Cuba. This CIA officer was talking about his day. He was a new CIA officer back then and he said, "I come home, maybe watch a show on TV and then go to the gym. So people ask anymore, 'What show did you watch?' He laughed, and said, "It’s always Sunny in Philadelphia". Everybody laughs on the podcast. I like this podcast, a lot.

That's it for the day. Got my lame 1 mile in. Headed home. Knee is doing well. This getting old thing, ain't for the young (or the old), to be sure. I remember all the wild things I did when I was younger and thought or someone said, "You'll regret this when you get old." "I'll deal with it then," I'd say, or think. Yeah, thanks younger self, much appreciated. But then, I did have some good times, I do have some great memories.

Cheers! Sláinte!

America's Dezinformatsiya and компрометирующий

I've been avoiding political blog postings for a bit but now it's time to revisit that. I'm busy working on my re-draft of The Teenage Bodyguard with a Hollywood producer and I'm approaching the end of principal photography on my project from one of my previously published short stories ("Gumdrop City"), titled, "Gumdrop, a short horror". You can see shots on my Instagram account of some production stills from the set.

Note from 5/4/2026: An update is available on this at: Two Moments That Changed How I See Authority

Okay, first for a little background.

Beginning in the early 80s when I was at Western Washington University, I began to notice some odd things. I was doing a lot of research in the University Library toward my psychology degree. One day I was talking to someone and they pointed a certain book out to me. They said I could find it in the library where I was spending massive amounts of time.

WWU Library

There were days when I got out of class, went to the library and was there until closing and went home and continued studying with my girlfriend who lived with me. We were a team. We amazed even our departmental advisor. We studied together, were in some of the same classes and could finish one another's thoughts to a dazzling degree.

WWU campus in Bellingham, WA

This was noticed one day by said professor who was himself one of our top professors in psychology nationwide. We were focusing in our studies on the theoretical of phenomenology and of processes and systems. This professor one day tested us in front of the class and we proved ourselves valid and highly functional. My point being, we were advancing faster together than most students and were told we were at the very top of our class, even across the nation.

One day I got into that book. I looked up a corporation on my and who actually owned it and fell down a kind of corporate rabbit hole that led to some very interesting and disturbing connections. I traced who owned that corporation, and who owned that one and in the end, I was stunned by who owned that primary umbrella corporation. Then I checked others. The more I checked the fewer I found. And the more disturbing connections popped up.

Meaning that many corporations were owned by a few, or one entity and some foreign corporations, leading to other questions. Now, many do know about that. Many would say, "Yeah, sure, so what?"

But it was about more than that. It was beyond disturbing to at times, frightening. But I dropped it, as it would have taken all my time and I had little time as it was to get my studies done, my papers written and turned in. But I kept an eye on things over the years, over the decades. And what I was seeing became ever more and more concerning...bringing us up to, today.

Over that next year or so I continued to look into it on the side as I had time. When doing my research I would stumble upon something, spend fifteen minutes going down that rabbit hole then go back to my primary effort for classes toward my whatever article I was preparing toward my psych degree.

My best effort in psychology may have been a paper I delivered in my final year on schizophrenia and synesthesia, about how one might help the study of the other. When I delivered it in my senior seminar on abnormal psychology it stunned both my class of eight and our prof. There was not a lot on synesthesia back then.

It is now available today to everyone, all these many years later, as an ebook and an audiobook. Of course, it doesn't have the same punch or import today as it once did in 1984 but the concept of using one toward another is and it has been my most downloaded ebook for years.

Years before that after graduating high school in 1973 I was planning a career in espionage (I eventually entered the USAF and at the end of my first term was accepted into the OSI), I had started studying the Soviets, KGB tactics, and the history and nomenclature and tactics of espionage.

Back in the early 1970s I read a book by a general who pretty much ran the Vietnam war. I believe it was Gen. William Joseph Westmoreland. A very respected general who went down his own rabbit hole and because of rather a laughing stock.

In reading his book and looking into his contentions I discovered not his veracity but my first conspiracy theory. I believe it was published by a small publisher who published such books and I can now, not find a copy or reference to that book anywhere. Which is telling.

However, rather than many would do in looking deeper and deeper into HIS conspiracy, perhaps allowing cognitive bias to enter the picture, I instead began studying what conspiracies and the theories themselves actually were.

I found most of them are nonsense. But I discovered the dynamics of conspiracy theory and those it affects and did my best from then on to avoid that nonsense but to do actual research and adhere to research methodology and reality itself. That has put me against a lot of people over my lifetime who believe in utter nonsense. And it has gotten only worse in recent times and since the advent of the internet to the general public and the world.

There is a way to research these conspiracies. Something most conspiracy theorists fail to follow and thus, fall down their own sad rabbit holes. The advent of the internet has merely exacerbated that syndrome.

I've used due diligence to avoid that myself and also in being a university-trained researcher and not some armchair nutcase political quarterback and have done well having debunked many conspiracy theories rather quickly. Which always amazed me how others do not see the obvious but continued instead on along their dark paths utterly wasting their time. QAnon is a recent addition to the white noise of conspiracy theories.

QAnon terminology

I began telling people what I knew about what I had found regarding corporations. My older brother still remembers me after college telling him to stop looking at what he had been and at countreisa and start watching what multinational corporations were doing.

I then began to notice a convergence of Soviet/KGB tactics and corporate actions. In the 1990s I began to notice the Republican party stepping over the line of spin and politics and enter the shady realms of social engineering in KGB style tactics which they have continued and multiplied against the American people, to this day and in that direction. Because these tacts are effective.

With great reticence I watched Putin become the leader of Russia in 1999 and worried openly to others about it ever since. He has maintained power against all reality and odds, greatly to the detriment of not just the Russian people, but all of America and western democracy.

After 9/11 the GOP fell down its own rabbit hole as if a gift handed to them and aided by their leaders and others, as in the NRA and as in Russia. This is not a conspiracy. It's facts, it's public knowledge and it's actions compiled together as we get a picture of the forest for the trees and not really missing anything in the process.

Many refuse to believe any of this because it is so open and obvious and so they believe, it simply cannot be. But the best covert actions are held in public view. From one of my great authorial heroes:

"The best place to hide is in plain sight. – Edgar Allan Poe, in The Purloined Letter"

Another favorite of mine and I have his books too, is the British magician who helped in the WWII effort as his father and grandfather before him had done in their wars, Jasper Maskelyne. The Fischer book, "The War Magician" is a good read, but factually errs fairly often apparently.

I mention all this because "magic", camouflage and covert ops are best done in the open leading to an innate disbelief in what they are actually doing. So what? Well, we now have a president doing all this in plain sight and his supporters cannot believe the contentions against him. Some quite well proven by now. We have multinational corporations doing this. and we have the Russian cyber machine doing this to destroy confidence in America regarding our culture and elections.

Russian intelligence and their organized crime connections, always a branch of the Soviet and then the Russian government and now along with the internet, have allowed for fairly cheap, enhanced covert operations... from afar.

The GOP and the Russians began to converge now many years ago. When I say "Russians" I mean, their government in Putin, his Oligarchs, the Russian mafia interests, Russian intelligence services, and yes...multinational corporations.

Because they are all in this together, apart. And that is what makes all this very difficult to "see" or believe. Or to counteract. While our intelligence services know of it all, or much of it, laws and leadership deny too much of it all and little and at times nothing, gets done to counter it. Though we are catching up...finally.

Still, it is criminal activities like this in America that led to our need to create the RICO laws. And so now too we need new laws and processes to cover this kind of multinational anti-American activity.

It is very likely that in many cases, the Russians, the GOP, and corporations were working apart, separately, just on similar agendas but for perhaps, very different reasons. Though it matters little when the damages done are so very much the same.

One does not avoid someone like the Russians when using their tactics. As eventually, you will find yourself in bed with them. Even if you never talk together. It wouldn't be unusual for those types to rationalize their behaviors as "absolutely not", Russian, or in the Russian interset. Or the old Soviet interests. But that is indeed the mindset of criminals, and bad people everywhere in thinking they are good while doing bad all along.

Then Trump arrives on the scene as POTUS and... now we've come full circle.

This is by no means a conspiracy theory. Some just want you to believe that. It's not a Hollywood spy movie. It is not just grand gestures by a James Bond/Ian Fleming style "worldwide evil" organization.

In many cases it is individuals, it is faint actions nudging things in a certain direction for varied reasons. Not coordinated, rather just an agenda and an ideology. It is essentially, greed. And in some cases in as Putin, hatred, of western democracy and a loss of Russian stature. It is desire. For money, for power, for position. For Nationalistic pursuites. For racist pursuits. For the worst of us, not the best, but in believing in ones' own tribe that it is the best. That is the White Supremacist's belief after all.

"Terrorism: Ideology w/out grievances doesn't resonate & grievances w/out ideology are not acted upon. Indeed, there be 2 sides to this coin." - Mubin Shaikh

Ideology without grievances is very little, just as grievances without ideology are nothing. But together, as we've seen through Donald Trump, they are a powerful force toward putting a minority against the majority and then against all odds, to see themselves in positions of power.

It is how fascism and such have always things worked. It is how they are working today.

This is our New Reality. Forged by the GOP. With help from American multinational corporations, or at least those in control of such entities. And it is something our friendly-nation friends like the UK, France, Germany, and others have actually warned us of! Repeatedly. While many of our own, mostly conservatives leaders have denied again and again and again.

Our own people in intelligence, who do not deal in FAKE NEWS, but rather raw intelligence and solidified information, know much of all this.

There is indeed FAKE NEWS, but it is merely real news that some like Trump simply do not like as it uncovers their actions so often hidden right there before us in plain site. There is disinformation (dezinformatsiya) and compromising information (компрометирующий), and there is more going on than most of us aware of all this, are even aware of. But it will all, ore mostly, come out, eventually. It always does. 

Our own intelligence agencies have tried to inform us, but they are constrained by the nature of their jobs and by those in power who do not wish to be exposed, in restraining them. Those such as Donald Trump, to be sure. And such as we've now been seeing, in Mitch McConnel, Senate Majority Leader. Sadly.

To be fair, McConnell and many Republicans today were off on the wrong foot from day one in their platform, their confused and misled conservative agenda, their mistaken ideology. Yet, it's odd how closely aligned it is or has become, with the Russians.

Not (most of) the Russian people, but Putin and those of his, in power. Those who refuse to give the Russian people a free and fair society. And like us, they want one. Those people in power claim they are what we aren't and aren't the crazed Americans with their racism.

Because Putin, just like Trump now, fears to leave power to then be available for prosecution. Putin has been winning, but Trump is in America and we do yet still have a chance at bringing him down for any criminal activities he has been involved in, or is still involved in.

Again, this is not a conspiracy. The information is mostly out here for us all to see. We just have to, if not want to see it, allow ourselves to see it. Before it's too late. And it may already be. Just as with climate change that has been sped up through human mechanized actions since the 19th century.

We are all seeing it plain as day while it is to far for too many as it somehow means it's all not real. To them it's just diatribe, partisan smear campaigns. And yet, these things are still happening, the intelligence agencies continue to accrue this information as we strive to bring it to light through Congressional action, if not now through legal judicial means and impeachment.

All while Mitch McConnell does what he can to avoid that. Why? Because he is in this for himself, for Trump, for Russia, Putin? Or for America?

And now we have new issues to be concerned with as one leaked executive order indicates that it would let US Government control our social media. As the article indicates:

"Trump wants to do something most Twitter users could only dream about: enlisting the federal government to make sure his posts get more engagement."

What?

So, now what do we do? We end this regime and replace it with an American one. A fully American one.

And that includes what is going on with the NRA. As well as the GOP. We should obviously keep an eye on the DNC. But to be fair, they are already headed in a very American direction of inclusivity and diversity. They always have been more so than the GOP in recent decades for that matter.

America is here, still.

We just have to continue to fight for her. And for US all. 

America's First & Necessary Post POTUS Execution

Is there an argument for the State execution of Pres. Donald Trump, once he is removed from office? I believe the consideration it is now rapidly being approached and very likely will soon be surpassed.

Why do I keep thinking of the French Revolution of 1789 – 99? And, "Why [does] President Trump resembles a pre-revolution French monarch."

Either way, treating our abusive leader appropriately, is really my point in all this.

The Donald, or The Don?

The argument against it is far less strong with each passing day. Not to mention Mr. Trump's own orientation on the death penalty being required for certain crimes. It's not a long stretch to consider if he were on the other side and himself were his enemy, he too would be calling for the execution of a traitorous POTUS. Especially if he could have pushed for that against an obviously far better president in Barack Obama.

Where there is this much smoke...there's fire.

First off, IF we allow this kind of abuse to go unpunished, we are essentially following the Donald Trump foreign policy for his beloved dictators and the abuse of national leaders' own citizens as in Syria or even as with Saudi Arabia against a journalist: "Oh well...."

We have GOT to send a strong message to not just Donald Trump AND his people who appear to be dropping like flies in a firestorm. And the vapid and zombie Republican party for this manufactured nightmare. But also to ANY other party (or foreign actor) in the future who may consider similar actions against the American electorate in their desire for power and position, or simply...chaos.

Putin loves western chaos, not Trump

That includes Vladimir Putin as a foreign actor against America and as well against his own country. Putin needs to be removed. I can't say that enough and I'm sick of saying it as I have since about the year 2000, a year after he took power.

Perhaps, had we better helped and made better decisions along with Mikhail Gorbachev in the bringing down of the Iron Curtain, we would never have seen a coup that replaced him with the alcoholic criminal Boris Yeltsin. Who then put Putin into power to protect him and his family from prosecution once he left office. It is a chain of authority from a decent path to a criminal path until today we have a State Criminal in Putin and a government he crafted in his own ex-KGB image.

Obviously, we need the appropriate and legal proof against Donald Trump to act upon it. The last thing America needs now is more illiberal or criminal actions in our government. We need to not follow in the footsteps of Russia.

Or China for that matter in their recently giving Pres. Xi a position for life. A stupid move. A very stupid move for any country to do. And a sign that something is very wrong. One that other nations need pay attention to and in their dire fortune if they ignore it. As they are doing. As we are all doing.

We must also take a stand against presidential plausible deniability. A tough thing to accomplish.

Which one should suspect Mr. Trump has already screwed up anyway and may prove not to even be a concern for us. Mostly because of his innate ineptness and that of his crew along this path he has taken these past decades.

The president is indeed held to a different consideration than the rest of us. And rightly so. Up to a point. Therefore he (or hopefully soon, she) needs and, especially this president Trump, needs to be held to a different judicial consideration.

We obviously have to be sure what we're doing. That is, to be transparent. As there will always be those who believe this is being done TO the POTUS  and somehow had not been done BY him and to himself and therefore, to America at large.

These are difficult times to be sure but we're up to the occassion!

That being said, IF Mr. Trump did these things, IF we cannot prove it in the normal ways, then it needs to be proven in an appropriate enough way to succeed in finding a ruling that should be found in considering just what he has done. Leaving things like plausible deniability by the wayside. We need to protect the citizens by rule of law. But we also must protect the nation by rule of reality.

Presidents DO need that capability at times in plausible deniability, in order to not be held accountable. There IS  a legit reason for its existence.

But FOR the American nation, the American people, and not against them as Mr. Trump has apparently done. All for wont of money and power, to satiate his defective ego and personality. That is no longer in question. Mr. Trump obviously has some serious defects. Defects that should have disallowed him ever to become POTUS. We have damaged the office of president, ourselves in allowing such a man to enter into it.

In actuality, our least hardworking POTUS in history

Otherwise, we will have allowed ourselves to continue to be dupes to what and who is basically a conman in a Donald Trump as president.

However, if all this happened as we're seeing it, but Trump is technically "clean" though obviously not, as a nation we have got to demand appropriate repercussions. We cannot let a conman slip through our fingers because he is the president.

Just as being POTUS should have certain protections, so too it should not have certain protections because of a situation just as we're seeing before us now. The loopholes have been found by the Republican party and Donald Trump. When that happens sometimes you have to step sideways and correct an abusive action, in the most powerful and democratic ways available to us.

IF for no other reason than not being seen worldwide as the fools we are now being seen as!

Otherwise, we will inevitably see this action again and again, over and over again, against us. These conservative Republican abuses will continue against America (potentially and quite plausibly with the aide of one foreign entity or another), UNTIL we do something aggressively against it in order to once and for all, stop it.

We have got to end all this nonsense now! End all the extremist conservative right wing abuse from the GOP, from the NRA (which reportedly now may no longer be with us anyway), from Russia, from criminal types like Putin, from THIS president...once and for all!

Saying that this is treason, is actual and real patriotism. Unlike the fake forms of nationalism we've been seeing from the far right and not so weirdly enough, also from Russia who has been backing them.

When Nixon was pardoned by Press. Ford, I was like many, angry at the time. But eventually, I came to see Ford's reasoning. in order to protect the office of the president.

That certainly is not the case any longer. Quite to the contrary, this is exactly and specifically not that case.

Through this process, we have also got to work toward putting an end to this bacterial infection of authoritarianism worldwide. We need to end the greater potential we see for war today and the abuses from our wealthy who are involved, our military-industrial and our corporate sectors who have all had a stranglehold on what IS after all, OUR government.

It's time to clean things up. To truly empty the swamp Trump was foolishly elected to empty and instead, filled to the brim and overflowing with his political appointees. In the cabinet, in his offices, in our judiciary. And not for partisan, organizational interests, but for his own personal financial gain and empowerment. Never satiate an egotist's personality, that never goes well for anyone involved.

And yet we've force-fed Mr. Trump at his request again and again.

Trump is not the last, but merely the first domino. We need to flick his blank piece, executing the beginning of the end for as many of our ongoing nightmares as we can effectuate. Now!

We are and should be in control. We just need to start acting like it! An America for all. Not just a few.