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Ten Lessons Donald and Co. Are Teaching Us All: My Take On A Class in "History Repeating Itself" [1]
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Date: 2025-07-04
Go get a cup of coffee. For all you skimmers, this is a TL;DR. Also, don’t simply rely on my list. Pick your own ten lessons. Write ‘em down, put your list in my comments section. We’ve seen the results of people not actually paying attention in class for the last decade. What we didn’t know was just how dark, deadly and determined these folks had become.
The first lesson is:
When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Especially if they tell you they are mean, cruel, hurtful and hate-filled. It isn’t a joke. They are not going to change. Old people are, no matter how nice or mean, still old people. Things change, life happens, sickness and injury come, they have weird, irreconcilable thoughts and feelings, and mortality is the final adjudicator. There’s no fool quite like an old fool. Criminality knows no age limit, and old crooks are very well practiced in the Art Of The Scam. It started when he opened his mouth at the bottom of the escalator when he announced his first run for the Presidency. It will only end one way.
The second lesson is:
A confidence scheme has four parts. The oversimplification, the narrowing of options, the baiting of a trap with “incentives” that have zero value, and then, the creation of a nonexistent crisis that moves you emotionally from neutral. How do you know someone is running a con? Because you are looking at it and saying to yourself, “Why am I here listening to this nonsense?” Also, you are feeling emotions rise, whether they are bad or good, and you suddenly realize that you are not in control of them...
The third lesson is:
Liars come in all sizes, shapes, wear all sorts of different suits, have all kinds of outrageous stories. What they do NOT have is evidence that substantiates their lie, or makes it into truth. When liars get together, and begin swapping yarns, it is either a small collection of old buddies reliving their youth, or it is a collection of con-men trying to figure out how to play one another and also, play anyone else they come across.
And when a group of liars get away with their lie, either because nobody cared enough to challenge them, consequences never attached to them, or they discovered how many liars wanted to also get away with some sort of big, dirty secret — — they all seem to have the same, smug, smarmy grin. That’s their tell.
The fourth lesson is:
Cruelty is never, ever acceptable. Never.
But we’ve been watching these folks performing acts of cruelty on a daily basis, bragging about it, being vocal about their intolerance of anyone “not them.”
No. Not ever. Not under ANY circumstance. Mothers do not tell their children to,”Go out, find someone to bully, pick on, belittle, hurt, hit, make them cry, steal their toys, and it is okay if you gang up on someone who cannot defend themselves — — -especially, if they are sick or crippled.”
Mothers don’t tell their children that. In fact, usually, the exact opposite is what mothers say. Children who cannot or will not play together nicely usually discover the worst part of a mother’s scorn, displeasure and wrath.
People are not innately cruel, but very often, they are not particularly nice. Once they shift to being cruel, it is hard to get them to change back.
People who ARE cruel, acting with cruelty, incapable of exhibiting kindness, “performative” about their opportunities for charity and generosity, leaning in to their more bloodthirsty instincts, are informing all of us that we should follow suit, because otherwise, they will find us and inflict cruelty on us. Kindness is their enemy, and they mean to stamp it out. Don’t ask them why, they haven’t a clue, just like the kid who gets caught with his mitts in the cookie jar, the best they can offer is, “I dunno...”
These folks are telling you that they’ve found safe harbor for sounding cruel, acting cruelly, taking away benefit from hapless victims, and because they can hide behind a pseudonym or put it in an Instagram, Tweet or TikTok, they can “harsh the mellow” with a mean girl dig and get infinite “Likes”. Without consequences, these people will keep up the abuse.
The fifth lesson is:
Racism is alive and well. It was always there. It probably always will be there. It sleeps. It takes naps. It awakens every so often with an appetite for making trouble. It is innate. We see and hear and know that we are not all exactly the same. We sort our lives into families, tribes, communities, and nations. We are given different languages. We choose faiths. We choose clubs and sports teams and hobbies and restaurants and watering holes. We create our own version of “special” and “exclusive.” We do these things. It is simply there within each of us. We don’t intend to be exclusive. It is just baked into the lasagna.
When the admixture of cruelty plus racism is blended together, it is like gasoline in a plastic bag — it causes great damage, much harm, and many times, comes back on the person inflicting it on others.
All it takes to set it off is a little primer and an ignition source.
The sixth lesson is:
Thieves come in all shapes, sizes, appearances, fancy clothing. When someone plays with your basic notions about the world and how you live, when they get your energies focused on a magician’s trick, you cannot turn away, because you’ve been properly distracted by the illusion. Using a baseball analogy, you took your eye off the ball, and you hit “nothin’ but air.” There’s something else going on, and it might be that you’re getting pickpocketed or mugged…
So if you read this far, and you consider the “Big Beautiful Bill” for what it really is, please check your pockets for your credit cards, your wallet and your cash. I think you’ll discover, you’ve been rolled...
The seventh lesson is:
Hatred is so much easier than love. Want ridiculously easy? Then focus on the hate. Love requires dispensing with the notion to hate, the rising anger waves, the disgust, the impatience, the natural tendency to get distressed and be unable to bottle it up or get a reasonable outlet for the “juice” that gets going. Love is hard work. Hate comes quicker, gathers momentum like a boulder rolling down a hillside.
Hate damages. Love, healing as it is, takes time, effort and patience. Hate has overgrown everything like an invasive weed. Pulling it out at its roots is the only solution to getting rid of it.
The eighth lesson is:
We want to be thought well of by others, so we keep putting nice names, pretty window dressing, fancier clothes, and we keep making up stories to tell ourselves that “it’s not that bad,” even when the putrid odor of rot is ever-present. We try to be “nice.” Nice doesn’t work against a threatening predator, one that is hungry and has identified you as lawful prey.
Stop calling it mental illness or a “cult,” stop identifying this as some coup d’etat, stop trying to assign any form of governmental ideology to it. This is about a corrupt person, a corrupt cadre of desperate people, a corrupt approach to everything that makes a society work, and a desire to break everything down “just because...” There’s no reason for it. It is just brutality, by several someones who came before everyone pretending to be occasionally nice guys, but mostly, proclaiming that they’re mercenary people intent on committing crimes against humanity, as often as possible, with horrific intensity and with malice aforethought. And if the reports have any truth to them, the brute cannot hold his bladder, uncontrollably evacuates from time to time, gets lost, stumbles and cannot manage his thoughts — very much like many an old man. Also, the plumbing of virility is probably not working. If it is, others are present to make that operate, as well.
If ever there was an old man begging for someone, anyone, to cart him off to a nursing home, assisted living campus, lockdown wing, or any other kind of containment for older folks who genuinely feel threatened every day and cannot recover from the reality of what comes for us all, it is this guy. But we’re all too busy trying to not see what is obvious, and just move on with our lives ...
The ninth lesson is:
People do not remember the past. People do not remember the present. People do not project into a future that is more than one meal away, and more than one television show or football game. People just don’t get deeply involved. They live their lives, oblivious, often putting up walls and defensive barriers, often not really caring if they have a savings plan, a home, a car, nice things, just moving along, grabbing what they can, trying to be happy, and if not happy, getting angry before allowing sadness to rule their day. Notice how people drive. Note their impatience with everything. Note how unless it happens to them, whatever calamity it is doesn’t matter and they do or say nothing about it. Someone once suggested to me that people have the attention span of a goldfish. I think it is very unfair to goldfish to make that comparison.
The tenth lesson is:
Violence never solves anything. Violence adds more fuel to the fires that burn because of Lessons four through eight. Chaos and violence often walk through life hand in hand. Can this violent uprising and “smash — n -- grab” be suppressed? Not without more violence. The human condition is presently a dry forest with a tinderbox and dried leaf floor; many of the trees are either remnants of once-proud families, legacies, stories of success, or, already fallen timber, adding more firewood to the blaze.
So, what do we do with these hard lessons? What will you do with your own list of lessons learned? How do we live in a dystopian reality where it is hunter and hunted, ignorance of and disregard for rules that you simply don’t like, open hatred, vigilanteism and human trafficking, and events right out of a script written for Germany in 1935-1938?
We can stay.
We can go voluntarily, if there’s a place to leave for.
We can fight back, make a stand, maybe get deported, maybe get killed.
We can go on “pretending” — and in pretending, what we are doing is creating a pipe dream that this will all go away one day, and we’ll be allowed to resume normalcy. It is not normal. It is not even healthy. It is morbid and destructive.
We can hope for a few “lucky accidents” that resolve certain leadership issues. Honestly, that’s not going to work either.
But what each and every one of us must take away from these ten lessons, is that looking for the person we can blame is a waste of energy. We have been shown an image of ourselves, been forced to own what is real, and accept that nobody is going to come and help us out of this disaster.
If we stay, we’ll have a huge mess to clean up one day. I hope I am around to be part of the clean-up crew. If we go, where to? Who would have several million Americans who realistically are not popular anywhere else, generally lack the skills to adapt to life anywhere else, get angry, get belligerent, start clamoring about “our rights” when we’re guests at best, refugees at worst?
If we fight, what will that look like? Will it be like an action movie, on some stretch of open country, recording everything from drones and playing it all back to create content? Will the bullets be rubber, lead, magnum rounds, explosive or will we be using blanks or paintballs? I really do not think the latter will be the case.
What we must do is stop pretending.
Stop pretending we have a voice any more. That’s been shuttered. Corporate America has finally taken over, decided how they want things to look. We must get busy trying to retain what assets we currently hold, and accept that they will buy the best government shills they can afford. We’ll get the elected officials that business wants in office, to create opportunities for their well-being, not ours.
Stop pretending that our military forces will protect us. That’s gone, too. They are now a “for hire” utility that will be sent out on a quid-pro-quo basis to go out into foreign theaters, based on who pays a Certain Old Man a tribute. He learned from mobsters of old, their lawyers, their pocket politicians, and what he learned was how to manipulate everything and everyone so that he could shake all the coin out, get every last nickel, dime and penny. Then, like a scene from any of a number of gangster movies, take the victim in the back and rough them up or just kill them.
Dear readers, we’re officially on our own.
We’ve crossed into a new frontier, and it is full of great dangers. The most important opportunity for all of us is simply surviving. I pray that we can achieve that.
[END]
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