Clean Up on Aisle America
After we win
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“It's time for clean up on aisle America. The question is, will Harris do that? I certainly hope so.”—High Fidelity for Bette Dangerous
As I prepare for upcoming interviews about the election, I called my podcast partner, High Fidelity, to talk through various scenarios.
We talked about how critical it is for Democrats to regain control of the House, and how nail-bitingly close some Senate races are and why.
Our conversation centered on the importance of winning the House and Senate for meaningful change. All of us need to be paying attention to the down ballot races, and I know most of you — like me — have already voted and understand the importance of Democrats winning a majority in both House and Senate.
We can’t have a Democratic leader hamstrung. The urgency of addressing global warming and the need for Americans to make significant lifestyle changes can only occur with a Democratic sweep.
The most consequential races beyond the presidency are in the House and the Senate, so please if you have not yet voted, keep that in mind.
A Harris loss would undoubtedly lead to inaction on global warming, as Trump aligns with authoritarian regimes propped up by oil-based economies.
A renewables future must be the future.
In the days we have left, we stressed the importance of voter turnout, one-on-one engagement, and how we need to already be thinking through the potential for resistance and what that will look like if indeed the worst happens.
I remind people often that Trump got an “F” on every environmental metric, so if you care about the future of the planet, this is the time to think through why voting for Harris, who worked with President Biden to allocate resources to save the North Atlantic Right Whale from extinction, matters.
Saving endangered whales matters. The decisions we make and the actions we take may just save us from extinction.
I believe this is the time we channel JFK and ask not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country?
We can vote for the continuation of democratic governance by supporting the party that’s trying to save the whale.
I am grateful to Republican leaders who are publicly supporting Kamala Harris.
This is the year we shatter that glass ceiling in America.
This is the year we put a woman in charge.
I have been revisiting the 2016 election, as I often do. I turn to history both recent and distant, for clues on what to do in this moment.
I want to remind people that in 2011, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for investigations into Russia’s election fraud.
“Russian voters deserve a full investigation of electoral fraud and manipulation,” she said.
In 2016, Russia waged mind-terrorism war on America and a Putin puppet was installed.
Also in 2011, Hillary Clinton raised the alarm about “growing restrictions” on democracy and human rights in Europe and the former Soviet Union.
In 2016, some Americans didn’t like the sound of her voice or hearing the word ‘Benghazi’ on Fox a trillion times confused their judgment so much that they thought the huckster who moved money for the Russian mob was a patriot.
In 2024, I kid you not, a smart progressive woman told me she didn’t like the sound of Harris’ voice. I lit into her like an exploding packet of firecrackers and she heard me.
It’s the stakes, not vocal tones.
When Harris wins, we continue the fight, and it will be a fight.
“It's not like everything's going to be rainbows and unicorns,” I told HiFi. “Remember what happened the last time we voted out a dictator? Remember what happened when Biden took office? The challenges began. Insurrections, wars, SCOTUS, Mike Johnson.”
“It's time for cleanup on aisle America,” said HiFi. “The question is, will Harris do that? I certainly hope so.”
You only need to read my recent Hot Type column in Byline to be reminded of Robert Mueller’s warning:
I quote from Mueller’s Iron Triangles speech of 2011, which predicted the precise situation we find ourselves in.
As I wrote: “I’m tired of this show. I want a return to decency, integrity, and reality. Trump is not running a political campaign. He is starring in his own unreality show, where men like Musk help him assault all that is decent. In their world — which is devoid of facts — cruelty and lies are for sale, along with gold shoes, bibles made in China, and weird roided up trucks that mine your data.”
I looked at some old notes from when I was prepping for my panel at the Byline Festival in July, HiFi working through the night with me to sharpen my game.
“If Trump wins, it’s a thousand years of darkness,” he said.
“It’s the Putin run world versus the continuation of the post-World War II liberal world order,” I said.
I want all of us to honor those who fought in World War II on the side of the Allied Forces by rebuking the new axis of evil, of which Trump is so slavishly a part.
I told HiFi that in my recent studies of history, I learned there were so many people in positions of power in Nazi Germany, who just couldn't quite envision the worst. They were thinking Hitler might not be so bad or at the very least, containable.
And I think, maybe that's human nature. They don't want to believe people to be so capable of such evil. And they would rather believe that those who are doing the warning are overly imaginative.
But what I find very curious is we have history to guide us in this moment, and why do we ignore it? Why are we allowing the GOP to say, ‘Don't call us fascist’ when they are behaving like fascists.
Why do we believe, it can’t happen here, when it can happen anywhere. As Bella Fromm wrote:
“There are men everywhere who would sell out humanity for their own personal profit. There are stupid and emotional masses everywhere who can be found to follow them, given a few slogans and some nice uniforms.”—Bella Fromm, Blood & Banquets, A Berlin Social Diary
‘Authoritarian Violence Disorder’
Dr. Gary Slutkin, a Bette member who is an epidemiologist formerly with WHO, wrote in a recent Salon report by Chauncey de Vega about ‘brain flaws’ and understanding MAGA as a “dangerous and lethal syndrome” of what he calls “Authoritarian Violence Disorder.”
He told Salon:
I have 15 years of experience living or working in dictatorships. In these countries, you can’t speak or act freely and don’t want to live there. There are always threats. Life is fear. People fear the government, their neighbors and even their family and friends. Businesses and the press can be taken away. People become suddenly imprisoned or disappear.
I feel the U.S. 2024 election is the most important thing in the world now. And I can see that we’re not doing enough to prevent a disaster. Trump becoming president would be like a severely lethal hurricane raging across the whole country continuously. With JD Vance around as a possible successor to Trump, this feels more ominous…
I understand MAGA as an epidemic disease, infecting many through what I call “brain flaws.” It is not their fault. There are brain pathways for copying and following others — in the cortex, dopamine system, and pain centers, to motivate conformity and violence. This is a movement of violence. Violence is a disease, and specifically, a contagious disease. The disease spreads through these brain processes. The MAGA movement is a dangerous and lethal syndrome of what I describe as “Authoritarian Violence Disorder.” Donald Trump is a massive superspreader. The contagion and the moral disengagement it causes provokes cruelty and obedience. This is accelerated by the effects of “constant-lies.” Streams of lies are not just lies to be fact-checked, but an accelerant that impacts people’s brains, causing moral disengagement, allowing people to abandon their own decision-making and obey…
If Vice President Harris wins there is hope for sure.
So let us end on that note of hope.
We know what the world will look like under Trump’s feudalism — nasty, brutish, and short.
Here is an excerpt from a poem — from the The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney, cited by Joe Biden that I learned about from Martin Sheil:
Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured
History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
I can see that further shore from here.
It is reachable.
Believe in miracles, and cures and healing wells.
And in the endurance of the human spirit.
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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We do not need to “hope for a sea change” or “believe in miracles” … the crumbling (to dust) of the institutions propping up patriarchy, misogyny, racism, xenophobia and homophobia, is as inevitable as the sinking of the Titanic, guided by the self imposed blindness of its hubris-maddened creators. And somehow … when a Washington or a Lincoln or a FDR or now … a Kamala Harris is required, she is here.