Dave, I find myself disappointed at this latest effort of yours. I have followed you for years, first on your You Tube channel and then into your essays and have appreciated most of what I saw--which was typically thoughtful and sometimes even downright inspired. But man, of late you are spiraling into a mouthpiece of Democrat talking points, and it's a shame. One gripe for me is that you are failing to acknowledge what you describe as your own parents' example, in which they supported "the overall good for the greatest number of people", which is what the Trump administration is in the process of delivering. Instead what I read here is a healthy ration of TDS rather than an analysis of actual issues. All I see here is complaints about the personality of the president (complaints that many of us on the right share--including myself.) But that is such a shallow viewpoint. Why not probe deeper into why the Red Wave hit this country? Why are you uncurious about that? Why do you instead propagate the insinuation the majority of voters in this country are somehow simple, and only captivated by a cult of personality? That's the level of analysis to be found from the likes of Schumer and AOC, and it's wrong. The reality is that The People stood up for this candidate because the policies he advocated were the opposite of what the Dems were selling: endless wars, a wide-open border, unlimited abortion, gender nonsense, and a bloated, socialist central government. Trump wasn't elected because of his personality, but in spite of it, because even with his poor communication style, and tiresome tweets, his POLICIES are what this nation needed. You said in your column you will continue to "talk about the issues...", well, then talk about the issues instead of talking about the personalities. The latter is what the Dem talking heads on TV did for the last year--there were few (no) winning arguments they could muster about why the policies of Biden or Harris were good for the country at large, so instead all they offered were attacks and name-calling about the person. And then I believe I detected the same from you in your essay: perhaps I'm wrong, but I took it as your analysis of DOGE when you called it "chaos" rather than acknowledging the savings of billions from the federal budget. And then regarding the leader of DOGE, an objectively remarkable citizen and industrialist, you reduce him merely to the standard Dem talking-point epithet: "oligarch." Yawn. I had grown accustomed to so much better, so much more thoughtful writing from you in the past that I was surprised to read this one. It makes me wonder, why am I even here? Well, rant over. All that said, while I didn't care for this essay, I do appreciate your overall body of work and your overall attitude toward life. I hope you carry on here, as well as resurrect your You Tube channel. You obviously have a lot to say, and it is valuable to society.
Chris - well said... I too was taken back at the hail of Orange Man bad diatribe rather than thoughtful analysis. Chalk it up to a bad couple of months, it has been rough.
I agree with you, Chris. Resorting to ad hominem attacks on others does not illuminate logic at play.
As a semi-libertarian I am fascinated by the goings on in your country right now and to be honest, I think they are good things. Governments (all of them) have become too large, too powerful and completely unfocused on the reason for their existence in the first place.
Something I have never in all of my life understood about the internet is the need to insult someone we don’t agree with. If you don’t agree with this essay, first of all, why not just find one you do agree with and instead of insulting someone, celebrate something you appreciate. But if not, constructively debate what you disagree with- can you provide any factual evidence to prove any of what Dave is saying wrong? I have desperately searched for any evidence of all the “billions” claimed to have been saved and all I can find is memes, people sitting at tables saying it, or line items on contracts that mean absolutely nothing because they have no substance. Have you seen any reports? Please send the reports you have seen, I say that with all seriousness. I would love to see the well analyzed and expertly executed reports that back up the claims of the billions, because I have yet to see one. Just blind faith in complete strangers who have done nothing to earn your trust.
Meanwhile, as one of the persons Dave mentioned in local government who can easily prove to you that your actual local government infrastructures have been cut by the millions for things like roads, energy, veterans, affordable housing, and so much more- we will be continuing to get up everyday trying to keep your lives from falling apart and hoping we all still have jobs tomorrow to keep fighting to do so. This is facts, that CAN be proven.
Dave, this was an excellent essay and many of us appreciate your thoughtful analysis in these hard, and chaotic times.
Come now, the only people being insulted here are the politicians and tycoons. Debate is essential. If you don’t know how to debate then you ought to be living in an echo chamber where all you hear is your own voice.
Dave, I appreciate you sharing your opinion in a public forum. I am happy to hear you are gearing up for another YouTube foray. As I have pointed out before, the magnitude of your reach is just so much greater there.
At to my thoughts on this piece, I would encourage you to consider an additional trait every single cabinet nominee of this administration shares. Each has been stomped politically, if not judicially. Tulsi put on a no-fly list? Accused of being a Russian asset?
For years I’ve heard various opinions on our national debt. What most investment analysts now seem to agree on is that the cost of that debt is threatening to bankrupt the government. Hopefully your YouTube earnings and shoreline busking will make up for the social security cuts coming our way. Maybe you should be a little more forgiving of the man you detest and consider he is doing his level best to right the fiscal ship before we all go down. The billionaires have way more options than us 99%ers. Yet even a few of them have joined what you call a circus and some of us see as a mission.
I will be curious to see how your evolving opinion is received on YouTube. I agree with most of what first commenter Chris wrote. But hey, maybe you will avoid the fate of CNN and MSNBC and gather the TDS sufferers to your orange man bad lamenting.
Please share your opinion on the actions taken against Alex Jones. How do you feel about Trump being universally deplatformed after Jan 6? How about what befell General Michael Flynn? Do you know these stories? Because Dave, I gotta tell ya, our government, the unelected bureaucracy and the judicial system have some authoritarian tendencies of their own.
If you’ve seen the movie “The Matrix”, you are reminding me of the character Cypher who betrayed Morpheus and made a deal to get back into the matrix. Reality was just too much for him.
It seems our government has morphed into a us against them beast. A shock to the business as usual system might be just what we need.
As a solid “R” I approached the preceding president in the following term: “Israel made it through good kings and bad kings, we will be okay, only question is how much damage will be done along the way”
For those that think this is all bad, let’s take a breath, and we will see what history has to write about the next 4 years that we get to live through.
BYW, already following both YouTube channels, see you there!
What comes through this, and all of Dave’s pieces…is thoughtful, eloquent honesty. You may not agree with everything (or anything) he writes…but we read his column because we have come to respect his unique perspective and ability to put our own nebulous thoughts into incisive coherent sense.
I am a left of center Democrat; as appalled as much by the extreme left as I am by the MAGA culture that has poisoned our nation. I don’t know what any of us can do but look with unvarnished eyes at what is going on and say it out loud. Hopefully this will embolden the silent majority when the next elections roll around. Keep it up Dave…we need you.
As someone who has been engaged in the political process for many years, working with people on the both sides of the partisan divide, I would say that the term circus is apt. Clinton cut the federal workforce and the federal budget significantly -- over 400,000 workers I believe. However, he did it carefully -- with care, talking to all the experts, listening to the frontline workers, with an eye to not disrupting essential services. At the same time, Clinton's dismissal of workers did in some cases result in contract workers when an essential service was disrupted regardless, which can be more expensive in the long run. Still, overall it was a good process with a good result -- not a circus carried out with no civic courtesy or any respect for our institutions. Let me give an example. Foreign aid has been less than 1% of the federal budget for many Presidencies; because of the way that it was demolished, we had grain rotting in warehouses while children went hungry -- not good for our traditional building of security through development. This is one example of a pattern that I have seen in all the areas that I work in. We can have a good conversation as people with different perspectives about the role of federal government -- but not when Elon Musk is calling Lutheran Social Services a money-laundering machine and suffering no pushback from the administration that hired him. It is important to name as clearly as possible the aspects of what is going on now that are culturally toxic for us and will have long-reaching consequences. I don't agree with Dave politically in many areas but I appreciate his capacity to name hard truths colorfully.
Thank you for bringing this up. While Lutheran Social Services gets, no doubt, much (or most) of its funding from private sources, as someone who manages property tax exemption for them, I cant even begin to imagine what will happen to all of the people serviced by them in Hennepin County (Minnesota) alone with out funding. I don't think people understand how much organizations like this do to alleviate the burden of government. While yes, the government plays a part in their funding and therefore their functioning, which makes it possible for them to operate, the rest of what they do is funded in other ways, and allows them to keep people OFF of government and taxpayer funding. If you take the axe to everything that is funded in PART by government funding they will crumble and then everything that is supported by them will become completely a government problem. Not to mention a human problem. And it will, eventually, become a YOU problem. For those of us who care to see the impact that this is making to the world around us, it is painful, but for everyone that it isn't impacting yet, it will eventually work its way to you. As the parts of the infrastructure that makes your cities run smoothly continue to crumble it will reach all of us eventually. These non-profits, religious organizations and churches and how they help the people in our communities being unable to do so will have long reaching impacts indeed.
I remember hearing of some foreign visitor who travelled our country in the early years. He wrote glowing reviews of the U.S. religious institutions and the assistance they rendered to those in need. Seems a true Christian mission.
When I heard that story it was being relayed as a tale of woe for a number of reasons. The main being that the government has taken over much of that role. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare all are substitutes for religious charity. Poor ones that that. Which delivers less and grows the government.
A good portion of our society sees our government unable to do anything effectively or affordably and still wants to cede to it all of healthcare.
Listen to Adam Taggert’s interview with David Stockman on YouTube. What Stockman describes is a level of indebtedness that may require cuts to all these programs in order to restore our national fiscal health.
Trump has long advocated against our trade policies. He was frequently asked if he would run for president to resolve the issues. His reply was always, “No. I’m having too much fun doing what I love. And it is an ugly business. But maybe, if it got bad enough, I would run.”
It is so bad, that he is willing to endure the media attacks, the intel community investigations, the political opposition, the justice system prosecution and the efforts to end his life so he can try to fix it.
Everyone has their opinions. What I see is a Ross Perot who didn’t walk away when he and his family were threatened. A courageous and capable man. The U.S. may still fiscally nosedive and be pulverized like flight 93, but at least a group is in the cockpit, trying to save the ship.
Hi, Dave. I’ve watched your Blue Collar Logic videos and love them. Above, you mentioned your “piece on Valentines Day.” Are you talking about the video with the picture of a beaten up valentine, with bandages and stitches all over it? I’ve looked for that video on YouTube, several times and can’t find it. I really loved your insights in that video and would like to see it again. I’d like to send it to my son. Is there a place I can find that video, again?
Thank you for your articles on Substack. I’m new to Substack, and found your page, last night. Thanks for your continued work!
Very long yet insightful. Where you state Trump is wrecking "norms," I'll counter that he is wrecking some of the idiotic "new norms" that were being smashed upon us over the last 4, perhaps 12, years. These new norms were never norms, so removing them, well, brings back normal norms, right? I know - perhaps.
Dave, I find myself disappointed at this latest effort of yours. I have followed you for years, first on your You Tube channel and then into your essays and have appreciated most of what I saw--which was typically thoughtful and sometimes even downright inspired. But man, of late you are spiraling into a mouthpiece of Democrat talking points, and it's a shame. One gripe for me is that you are failing to acknowledge what you describe as your own parents' example, in which they supported "the overall good for the greatest number of people", which is what the Trump administration is in the process of delivering. Instead what I read here is a healthy ration of TDS rather than an analysis of actual issues. All I see here is complaints about the personality of the president (complaints that many of us on the right share--including myself.) But that is such a shallow viewpoint. Why not probe deeper into why the Red Wave hit this country? Why are you uncurious about that? Why do you instead propagate the insinuation the majority of voters in this country are somehow simple, and only captivated by a cult of personality? That's the level of analysis to be found from the likes of Schumer and AOC, and it's wrong. The reality is that The People stood up for this candidate because the policies he advocated were the opposite of what the Dems were selling: endless wars, a wide-open border, unlimited abortion, gender nonsense, and a bloated, socialist central government. Trump wasn't elected because of his personality, but in spite of it, because even with his poor communication style, and tiresome tweets, his POLICIES are what this nation needed. You said in your column you will continue to "talk about the issues...", well, then talk about the issues instead of talking about the personalities. The latter is what the Dem talking heads on TV did for the last year--there were few (no) winning arguments they could muster about why the policies of Biden or Harris were good for the country at large, so instead all they offered were attacks and name-calling about the person. And then I believe I detected the same from you in your essay: perhaps I'm wrong, but I took it as your analysis of DOGE when you called it "chaos" rather than acknowledging the savings of billions from the federal budget. And then regarding the leader of DOGE, an objectively remarkable citizen and industrialist, you reduce him merely to the standard Dem talking-point epithet: "oligarch." Yawn. I had grown accustomed to so much better, so much more thoughtful writing from you in the past that I was surprised to read this one. It makes me wonder, why am I even here? Well, rant over. All that said, while I didn't care for this essay, I do appreciate your overall body of work and your overall attitude toward life. I hope you carry on here, as well as resurrect your You Tube channel. You obviously have a lot to say, and it is valuable to society.
Chris - well said... I too was taken back at the hail of Orange Man bad diatribe rather than thoughtful analysis. Chalk it up to a bad couple of months, it has been rough.
I agree with you, Chris. Resorting to ad hominem attacks on others does not illuminate logic at play.
As a semi-libertarian I am fascinated by the goings on in your country right now and to be honest, I think they are good things. Governments (all of them) have become too large, too powerful and completely unfocused on the reason for their existence in the first place.
Let the chainsaw massacre continue, I say.
Something I have never in all of my life understood about the internet is the need to insult someone we don’t agree with. If you don’t agree with this essay, first of all, why not just find one you do agree with and instead of insulting someone, celebrate something you appreciate. But if not, constructively debate what you disagree with- can you provide any factual evidence to prove any of what Dave is saying wrong? I have desperately searched for any evidence of all the “billions” claimed to have been saved and all I can find is memes, people sitting at tables saying it, or line items on contracts that mean absolutely nothing because they have no substance. Have you seen any reports? Please send the reports you have seen, I say that with all seriousness. I would love to see the well analyzed and expertly executed reports that back up the claims of the billions, because I have yet to see one. Just blind faith in complete strangers who have done nothing to earn your trust.
Meanwhile, as one of the persons Dave mentioned in local government who can easily prove to you that your actual local government infrastructures have been cut by the millions for things like roads, energy, veterans, affordable housing, and so much more- we will be continuing to get up everyday trying to keep your lives from falling apart and hoping we all still have jobs tomorrow to keep fighting to do so. This is facts, that CAN be proven.
Dave, this was an excellent essay and many of us appreciate your thoughtful analysis in these hard, and chaotic times.
I never insulted Dave. He specifically requested comments on his essay, and I provided same in a respectful way. The rest is up to him.
Come now, the only people being insulted here are the politicians and tycoons. Debate is essential. If you don’t know how to debate then you ought to be living in an echo chamber where all you hear is your own voice.
Dave, I appreciate you sharing your opinion in a public forum. I am happy to hear you are gearing up for another YouTube foray. As I have pointed out before, the magnitude of your reach is just so much greater there.
At to my thoughts on this piece, I would encourage you to consider an additional trait every single cabinet nominee of this administration shares. Each has been stomped politically, if not judicially. Tulsi put on a no-fly list? Accused of being a Russian asset?
For years I’ve heard various opinions on our national debt. What most investment analysts now seem to agree on is that the cost of that debt is threatening to bankrupt the government. Hopefully your YouTube earnings and shoreline busking will make up for the social security cuts coming our way. Maybe you should be a little more forgiving of the man you detest and consider he is doing his level best to right the fiscal ship before we all go down. The billionaires have way more options than us 99%ers. Yet even a few of them have joined what you call a circus and some of us see as a mission.
I will be curious to see how your evolving opinion is received on YouTube. I agree with most of what first commenter Chris wrote. But hey, maybe you will avoid the fate of CNN and MSNBC and gather the TDS sufferers to your orange man bad lamenting.
Please share your opinion on the actions taken against Alex Jones. How do you feel about Trump being universally deplatformed after Jan 6? How about what befell General Michael Flynn? Do you know these stories? Because Dave, I gotta tell ya, our government, the unelected bureaucracy and the judicial system have some authoritarian tendencies of their own.
If you’ve seen the movie “The Matrix”, you are reminding me of the character Cypher who betrayed Morpheus and made a deal to get back into the matrix. Reality was just too much for him.
It seems our government has morphed into a us against them beast. A shock to the business as usual system might be just what we need.
As a solid “R” I approached the preceding president in the following term: “Israel made it through good kings and bad kings, we will be okay, only question is how much damage will be done along the way”
For those that think this is all bad, let’s take a breath, and we will see what history has to write about the next 4 years that we get to live through.
BYW, already following both YouTube channels, see you there!
What comes through this, and all of Dave’s pieces…is thoughtful, eloquent honesty. You may not agree with everything (or anything) he writes…but we read his column because we have come to respect his unique perspective and ability to put our own nebulous thoughts into incisive coherent sense.
I am a left of center Democrat; as appalled as much by the extreme left as I am by the MAGA culture that has poisoned our nation. I don’t know what any of us can do but look with unvarnished eyes at what is going on and say it out loud. Hopefully this will embolden the silent majority when the next elections roll around. Keep it up Dave…we need you.
As someone who has been engaged in the political process for many years, working with people on the both sides of the partisan divide, I would say that the term circus is apt. Clinton cut the federal workforce and the federal budget significantly -- over 400,000 workers I believe. However, he did it carefully -- with care, talking to all the experts, listening to the frontline workers, with an eye to not disrupting essential services. At the same time, Clinton's dismissal of workers did in some cases result in contract workers when an essential service was disrupted regardless, which can be more expensive in the long run. Still, overall it was a good process with a good result -- not a circus carried out with no civic courtesy or any respect for our institutions. Let me give an example. Foreign aid has been less than 1% of the federal budget for many Presidencies; because of the way that it was demolished, we had grain rotting in warehouses while children went hungry -- not good for our traditional building of security through development. This is one example of a pattern that I have seen in all the areas that I work in. We can have a good conversation as people with different perspectives about the role of federal government -- but not when Elon Musk is calling Lutheran Social Services a money-laundering machine and suffering no pushback from the administration that hired him. It is important to name as clearly as possible the aspects of what is going on now that are culturally toxic for us and will have long-reaching consequences. I don't agree with Dave politically in many areas but I appreciate his capacity to name hard truths colorfully.
Thank you for bringing this up. While Lutheran Social Services gets, no doubt, much (or most) of its funding from private sources, as someone who manages property tax exemption for them, I cant even begin to imagine what will happen to all of the people serviced by them in Hennepin County (Minnesota) alone with out funding. I don't think people understand how much organizations like this do to alleviate the burden of government. While yes, the government plays a part in their funding and therefore their functioning, which makes it possible for them to operate, the rest of what they do is funded in other ways, and allows them to keep people OFF of government and taxpayer funding. If you take the axe to everything that is funded in PART by government funding they will crumble and then everything that is supported by them will become completely a government problem. Not to mention a human problem. And it will, eventually, become a YOU problem. For those of us who care to see the impact that this is making to the world around us, it is painful, but for everyone that it isn't impacting yet, it will eventually work its way to you. As the parts of the infrastructure that makes your cities run smoothly continue to crumble it will reach all of us eventually. These non-profits, religious organizations and churches and how they help the people in our communities being unable to do so will have long reaching impacts indeed.
I remember hearing of some foreign visitor who travelled our country in the early years. He wrote glowing reviews of the U.S. religious institutions and the assistance they rendered to those in need. Seems a true Christian mission.
When I heard that story it was being relayed as a tale of woe for a number of reasons. The main being that the government has taken over much of that role. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare all are substitutes for religious charity. Poor ones that that. Which delivers less and grows the government.
A good portion of our society sees our government unable to do anything effectively or affordably and still wants to cede to it all of healthcare.
Listen to Adam Taggert’s interview with David Stockman on YouTube. What Stockman describes is a level of indebtedness that may require cuts to all these programs in order to restore our national fiscal health.
Trump has long advocated against our trade policies. He was frequently asked if he would run for president to resolve the issues. His reply was always, “No. I’m having too much fun doing what I love. And it is an ugly business. But maybe, if it got bad enough, I would run.”
It is so bad, that he is willing to endure the media attacks, the intel community investigations, the political opposition, the justice system prosecution and the efforts to end his life so he can try to fix it.
Everyone has their opinions. What I see is a Ross Perot who didn’t walk away when he and his family were threatened. A courageous and capable man. The U.S. may still fiscally nosedive and be pulverized like flight 93, but at least a group is in the cockpit, trying to save the ship.
I agree about DJT and the showmanship.
But really, it's been that way at the federal level for the past couple decades. Just hold on, and ride the ride.
Hola again from Guatemala Dave.
That was your comment? Maybe you should shop for something to read that's more in your wheelhouse.
Looking forward to you back on YouTube
Thanks. My teleprompter arrived today. Still have some technical stuff to work out in my new setting.
Hi, Dave. I’ve watched your Blue Collar Logic videos and love them. Above, you mentioned your “piece on Valentines Day.” Are you talking about the video with the picture of a beaten up valentine, with bandages and stitches all over it? I’ve looked for that video on YouTube, several times and can’t find it. I really loved your insights in that video and would like to see it again. I’d like to send it to my son. Is there a place I can find that video, again?
Thank you for your articles on Substack. I’m new to Substack, and found your page, last night. Thanks for your continued work!
Very long yet insightful. Where you state Trump is wrecking "norms," I'll counter that he is wrecking some of the idiotic "new norms" that were being smashed upon us over the last 4, perhaps 12, years. These new norms were never norms, so removing them, well, brings back normal norms, right? I know - perhaps.
Well said