REGISTRATION: BUILDING RESILIENCE — Thom Hartmann and Monique Camarra Help Bette Members Prepare for the Meme War/Dark Money Onslaught

Please register in advance for our upcoming ‘Speakeasy’ with special guest Thom Hartmann and our Happy Hour with Monique Camarra as we prepare for election war

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Whenever I work on political campaigns, I describe it as going to war. These are not normal times — foreign enemies interfering with our elections are aided by Fifth Column traitors, and the psychological attacks are ongoing and increasing in their cruelty, frequency and coordination.

So to the experts we go, to help us get through the next few months mentally healthy and achieving our goals. I am bringing back Thom Hartmann and Monique Camarra specifically for that reason — to help get us mentally armored up, so we can remain on offense, undeterred. As we are seeing, the Democrats and pro-democracy activists are doing a great job of fighting ‘weird’.

The Weirdos — My Latest Report in Byline Supplement

I always feel better when I’m in action. It felt great to participate in phone-banking training with 600 other citizens concerned about Democracy over the weekend. We were all present and accounted for to help defeat fascism, save the earth, and leave a habitable planet for our children and animals. Under the Fourth Reich, the world will burn. Under Democracy, we can make deep structural reforms and ensure international cooperation on a renewables future.

I explained to Monique this morning that we are seeing 2016-style memes — racist, misogynistic, cruel — the same type that came out of the St. Petersburg operation. If you need a refresher, read these reports:

HOW RUSSIA FAKED BLACK ACCOUNTS: 2016 Election Attack — ‘The Translator Project’ — Butchers of Reality

A MISOGYNY SELF-INOCULATION KIT: PREPARING FOR DIGITAL GUERRILLA WARFARE — The Curious Case of Douglass Mackey, Russian Propaganda Superspreader

As I do this work, I rarely show the cruel memes, because then you can’t unsee them.

But the level of depraved memes we are seeing come from that weirdo creep Trump and that racist fascist Elon Musk is very both disturbing and distressing. The memes appear to have been hatched in Prigozhin’s 2016 factory, and it feels like the 2016 US election again — with the media reposting the cruel memes, and citizens having no inoculation other than to be disgusted or if you’re in the MAGA cult, to cheer along at the cruelty, because ‘owning the libs’ is their full politics.

So that is why we did a media literacy training yesterday, and that is why Thom and Monique are joining us at upcoming events. We’re going to armor up and build resiliency.

As Monique told me this morning:

Don’t look at the problem. You know what it is. Now focus on finding the weaknesses of the Trump campaign, and Dem/Harris strengths. This is a war.

Work on Trump weaknesses and jump on every opportunity.

Threats: how can the Trump campaign upend Harris? Brainstorm them and work on counter pressures.

Opportunities: analyse what the Trump electorate is and see which groups can be swayed away? (Reduce the strength of the Trump alliance).

Resilience of the coalition: you keep the Harris alliance together, and explain why it is strong. People get excited by what will be. Trump will try to divide you, don’t let it happen.

You win this kind of war through hearts and minds. You keep the alliance together through values and shared goals. People fight with their hearts. That’s how the US won the Cold War, (hearts and truth) and that is what Trump is doing to you all. He is the totalitarian leader waging war on American democratic citizens.

He said that he would rather live in Venezuela: I would take a dancing Trump and put him in the middle of a video with the colectivos kidnapping people.

Him and his fucking golf cart racing around Moscow and then him racing around Mariupol.

Since I started studying the strategy side and the tools of political warfare and frameworks, I don’t have anxiety anymore. I focus on how to act.

Flippin’ brilliant, right?

And here is what Thom wrote in his ‘tsunami’ dark money report, which I include below:

We won’t even know the dimensions of the coming onslaught until it’s upon us in September and October.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren noted, echoing a position held by fully 72% of American voters, “Our democracy shouldn’t be bought and paid for by the wealthy and powerful.”

If Democrats survive the onslaught that’s coming and emerge victorious at the federal level, the first order of business next year must be to strip the cancer of dark money out of our body politic.

Looking so forward to seeing both of them!

EVENT DETAILS BELOW AND THE REGISTRATION LINKS ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST, BELOW THE PAYWALL.

If you are not yet a member, please join us:

HAPPY HOUR, 8/20:

Bette’s Happy Hour with Monique Camarra on Finding Trump’s Weaknesses and Building the Coalition of Resilience:

• Tuesday, August 20, noon Pacific

  • Based in Italy, geopolitical analyst Monique Camarra is a frequent Happy Hour guest and most of you already know her from her excellent Eurofile reports, where she pulls together the most critical news and updates about Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as news breaking from Europe. She is also the co-host of the Kremlin File podcast, along with Olga Lautman.

SPEAKEASY, 8/25:

Bette’s Speakeasy with Thom Hartmann on Preparing for the Tsunami of Rightwing Dark Money Operations:

• Sunday, August 25, 2 pm Pacific

  • Thom Hartmann is returning to join the Bette Dangerous community to help us prepare for the floodgates of well-funded right-wing operations to attempt to sway the election. This visit was inspired by his recent report:

    Will Democracy Survive the Tsunami of Rightwing Dark Money Coming this Fall?

  • Thom is a New York Times best-selling author of 36 books in print and the #1 progressive talk show host in America for more than a decade. Thom has co-written and been featured in 6 documentaries with Leonardo DiCaprio about climate change. A former psychotherapist, entrepreneur and refugee worker helping the worldwide Salem group start homes for abandoned and abused children all over the world, Thom’s daily Substack writing is at www.HartmannReport.com. Thom and his wife Louise live in Portland, Oregon with a small menagerie of cats, dogs, ducks & geese. Thom has been kind enough to feature me on his show multiple times, and I’m looking forward to his return to our Speakeasy.

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Register for both events here please…