Mike McCready

Tag: history

  • We Don’t Know Who Shot Charlie Kirk, So Let’s Be Wary of What We Say

    We Don’t Know Who Shot Charlie Kirk, So Let’s Be Wary of What We Say

    We don’t know who shot Charlie Kirk. We don’t know why. That hasn’t stopped social media from turning into a rumor carnival, with some voices — maybe bots, maybe just trolls — openly calling for civil war. And guess who loves that? Russia and China. They don’t have to fire a shot if they can convince Americans to do the dirty work themselves.

    The playbook is simple: flood the zone with fake suspects, doctored headlines, and AI-generated nonsense. Stoke fear, anger, and mistrust until we’re too busy hating each other to notice who’s lighting the match. Chaos is cheaper than tanks, and it travels faster on Wi-Fi.

    And sure, it’s not impossible that a foreign adversary had a hand in this. Iran has already been caught plotting assassinations on U.S. soil — from John Bolton to Donald Trump himself. Could Kirk have been a softer target? Maybe. But notice that word: maybe. Even saying it out loud is speculation, and speculation without evidence is just free labor for the disinformation machine.

    So here’s the ask: don’t do their work for them. Don’t share every outrage bait headline that confirms your darkest suspicions. Don’t treat speculation as gospel. If you really want to serve your country in this moment, the most patriotic thing you can do is… wait.

    Because foreign adversaries don’t need us to lose a war. They just need us to lose our heads.

  • What Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Means for America

    What Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Means for America

    (And why it should terrify us—not along party lines, but as citizens.)

    Charlie Kirk, was assassinated today at Utah Valley University. This comes just weeks after a shocking double assassination in Minnesota—two state legislators gunned down in what’s now being investigated as a politically motivated attack. You’d be forgiven for losing track. That’s how fast the temperature is rising.

    Before anything else, I want to express my deepest condolences to Charlie Kirk’s family, friends, and supporters. No matter where you stand politically, no one deserves this. And no country should normalize it.

    But what this isn’t—what this cannot ever be—is just another political tragedy we scroll past. This is unfiltered desperation and failure seeping into our public life.

    We’ve had assassination attempts before—on Trump, on members of Congress—but killing a political influencer in broad daylight on a campus? That’s crossing yet another line.

    We need to stop pretending that violence is a random accident or “outlier.” Hatred isn’t burbling under the surface—it’s flooding the streets. Killings like this don’t just raise eyebrows; they expose how far tribalism has eroded civility.

    Meanwhile, the very infrastructure meant to prevent this—our domestic terror intelligence—is being dismantled. The FBI has slashed staffing in its Domestic Terrorism Operations Section and shuttered its tracking database on hate crimes and school shootings. Prevention is now reactive.

    You feel the threat more clearly each day. You wonder: if someone like Charlie Kirk can be killed in public view, are you next? Are we?

    This wouldn’t be happening if people believed the system still worked. But they don’t. Polls show falling trust in elections, in the press, even in whether your vote matters. Add in constant messaging from the top that institutions are rigged—or worse, that they’re enemies.

    When people believe their voice can’t be heard they begin to feel violence is the message.

    I’ve seen people openly whisper and tweet about civil war. That used to sound unhinged. Now it sounds like something that could happen. And that’s the most dangerous whisper echoing across this country.

    So Where Do We Go from Here?

    If you want to say this is just “rhetoric,” know this: it is already worse than rhetoric. It’s violence.

    If you want to say the FBI or justice system can handle this alone, know this: they’re being de-funded and starved of resources.

    If you want to say elections still matter, ask yourself: what message are you sending when you don’t defend them?

    We need to demand more than prayers. We have to demand two simple things:

    1. Rebuild counterterrorism infrastructure. Money. Personnel. Tools. No more willful ignorance. Don’t allow this to be the beginning of events that give a certain someone the excuse he’s seeking to declare martial law.

    2. Restore faith in institutions. Hold elected officials accountable for their rhetoric. Defend objective fact. Support independent media.

    Because right now, we’re living in what feels like a slow-motion breakdown—not of ideas, but of the very architecture that held democracy together. And when that collapses, violence becomes communication.

    So, yeah: Civil war talk? It’s not crazy anymore. It’s proof that our political ecosystem is cracked open.

    And if that isn’t a moment when decent people across all divides come together—voting, organizing, standing in unified outrage—then what exactly were we saving democracy for?

  • Gen X: We Were Supposed to Be Too Sharp for This Sh*t

    Gen X: We Were Supposed to Be Too Sharp for This Sh*t

    There’s a very specific kind of shame in watching a country fall apart and realizing your generation was supposed to stop it.

    We were the skeptical kids. The “don’t fall for it” crowd. We grew up with irony, sarcasm, and a healthy distrust of institutions. We made fun of cults. We rolled our eyes at televangelists. We knew better.

    At least, we thought we did.

    We were the last analog generation—and the first digital one. We knew how to rewind a cassette and reboot a modem. We brought the internet into being, and with it, the promise of better information, smarter systems, and a more connected world.

    We gave the world Google, Amazon, YouTube.

    We gave it Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, the Wu-Tang Clan.

    We built the platforms. Designed the interfaces.

    We were supposed to be the bridge between what was and what could be.

    But now?

    We’re watching the whole thing buckle—and pretending we’re just observers.

    We post memes about how great it was to grow up drinking from hoses, while an entire generation can’t afford rent, let alone a mortgage.

    We forward videos about “the good old days” while Gen Z drowns in debt, climate fear, and medical bills for anxiety disorders they inherited from watching us lose the plot.

    And who’s in charge now?

    Trump. Again.

    President 2.0.

    This time with fewer guardrails, more power, and even less shame.

    And standing right behind him, RFK Jr.—now Secretary of Health—gutting the CDC, firing career scientists, and rebuilding America’s public health policy around gut feelings and internet comment sections.

    We used to point at the USSR and say, “Those poor people don’t get real news—just government propaganda.”

    Now we’ve got half the country cheering for our own state-run media, rage-bait headlines, and “alternative facts,” while willingly ignoring everything they know is true.

    We’re not living in 1984. We’re living in something dumber.

    A self-inflicted propaganda state where people know it’s bullshit—and eat it up anyway.

    And Gen X?

    We were supposed to be immune to this.

    Too jaded. Too sharp. Too allergic to fascism.

    We were supposed to be the firewall.

    But we ghosted.

    No Gen X president because the boomers.

    No major Gen X political movement.

    No defining generational stand.

    We just kept scrolling.

    Kept reposting.

    Kept telling ourselves we were “above it.”

    But the truth is—we’re blowing it.

    We were there when the rot was setting in.

    And we didn’t stop it.

    We let the dumbest grifter of our lifetime sell America a cheap hat and a fake war on reality.

    We watched as housing became a luxury, healthcare became a subscription plan, and truth became a punchline.

    We let RFK Jr. cosplay as a truth-teller while he dismantled actual science.

    And now, with AI about to automate our jobs, scrape our souls, and deepfake us into oblivion, we’re busy sharing memes about the 80s while billionaires plug themselves into immortality servers.

    We were supposed to be the generation that didn’t fall for bs.

    Instead, we’re managing the collapse like theme park actors refusing to break character while the rollercoaster catches fire.

    And yeah, I’m a bit crispy about all of this.

    Not just at Trump. Not just at RFK Jr.

    But at us.

    We were supposed to be too sharp for this sh*t.

    We were supposed to know better.

    We were supposed to do better.

    And if we don’t wake up—right now—history won’t even remember our failure.

    It’ll be too busy documenting the fallout.

    So come on Gen X. It’s time!

  • From Beacon to Bully: America’s New Foreign Policy

    From Beacon to Bully: America’s New Foreign Policy

    There was a time when American leadership meant something more than military might or economic muscle. It meant moral weight. A compass. At our best, we didn’t just throw our power around—we tried to stand for something.

    That version of America—the one that championed democracy, human rights, and the rule of law—is fading fast. What’s replacing it is colder. Meaner. And much more transactional.

    We used to build alliances. Now we issue ultimatums.
    We used to welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. Now we fast-track visas for white South Africans and detain brown migrants in outsourced Central American prisons.
    We once told autocrats they couldn’t jail dissidents without consequences. Now we tell them we admire their strength—and ask for cheaper oil.

    And when the world asks what happened, the answer is simple: America stopped leading with its values. We started leading with threats. With muscle. With grievance.

    We became the kind of country that guts its diplomatic corps in the middle of a global crisis. That fires 1,300 career foreign service professionals in a single week, like they’re office temps, not the architects of American influence abroad.

    And the man carrying out that purge? Marco Rubio.

    Yes, that Marco Rubio. The same one who once gave eloquent speeches about human dignity and moral clarity. The son of Cuban immigrants who defended foreign aid, democracy promotion, and immigration reform. The rising star who called Donald Trump a “con artist” for demonizing the very people Rubio claimed to represent.

    Today, that man is dismantling the very institutions he once praised. He’s torched USAID, shuttered human rights programs, defunded diplomatic broadcasting, pulled the U.S. out of UNESCO, and labeled peaceful protesters “lunatics.” He’s implemented social media surveillance for visa applicants, fast-tracked refugee status for the far-right’s pet narratives, and signed deals with authoritarian regimes to incarcerate migrants off-site.

    In short, he’s become a blunt instrument for Trump’s foreign policy—one that replaces values with vengeance, and diplomacy with dominance.

    It’s not that America’s interests have changed. It’s that we’ve stopped pretending they’re tied to our ideals. Human rights only matter when they serve us. Democracy is optional. And if you’re a dictator with oil or leverage, congratulations—you’re invited to the table.

    Rubio didn’t start this trend. But he’s riding it hard. Because somewhere along the line, ambition replaced principle. The man who once wept talking about immigrant families now uses the word “invasion.” The man who warned against tyrants now enables them. The boyish idealist who once seemed like the future of a better GOP now exists to prove it never really existed.

    And look—he’s not alone. Plenty of politicians lose themselves chasing power. But Rubio’s transformation is more than personal. It’s symbolic.

    Because if even he couldn’t hold the line—if even someone who spoke so fluently about America’s promise could be seduced into bulldozing it—then we’re not just dealing with a few bad actors.

    We’re dealing with a culture shift.

    We’ve stopped asking, “What’s right?” and started asking, “What can we get away with?”

    We’ve stopped inspiring the world—and started threatening it.

    And unless we course-correct soon, the country that once lit the way for others may find itself not just feared—but forgotten.

  • The Tulsi Diversion: A Case Study in Gullibility

    The Tulsi Diversion: A Case Study in Gullibility

    Let’s talk about how weak-minded you have to be to fall for Tulsi Gabbard’s latest stunt—a breathless declaration that the entire Russia investigation was a “hoax,” complete with a memo she declassified like it’s the Rosetta Stone of victimhood.

    Except it’s not. It’s theater.

    And for anyone paying attention over the last eight years, it’s also nonsense.

    Let’s do what Tulsi and her followers refuse to do: look at the actual facts.

    The Mueller Report—the result of a two-year investigation led by a lifelong Republican, by the way—found that:

    • Russia interfered “in sweeping and systematic fashion” in the 2016 election.
    • The Russian government’s goal was to help Trump and hurt Clinton.
    • The Trump campaign welcomed the interference and, in multiple cases, had contact with Russian operatives.
    • Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, handed over internal polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a man the FBI identified as having ties to Russian intelligence.
    • Trump himself tried to obstruct the investigation on multiple occasions—ten, to be exact. Mueller didn’t charge him only because a sitting president couldn’t be indicted under DOJ guidelines.

    Then came the Senate Intelligence Committee report—and let’s be clear here: this wasn’t the Democrats’ spin.

    It was a bipartisan investigation led by Republican Senator Richard Burr. It ran for over three years, produced more than 1,000 pages of findings, and concluded—unanimously—that Russia did, in fact, interfere in the 2016 election and that Trump associates posed counterintelligence threats.

    You don’t have to love Hillary Clinton. You don’t have to love the FBI. But you do have to completely ignore all evidence—and I mean every shred of documented reality—to believe Tulsi Gabbard’s narrative.

    She’s not uncovering some hidden truth. She’s throwing a smoke bomb into the room so no one notices the fire.

    It’s no coincidence this memo dropped just as Trump faces backlash for allegedly burying the Epstein files. When in doubt, blame Obama. Distract. Project. Repeat.

    Tulsi isn’t exposing a crime. She’s providing cover for one.

    So if you find yourself nodding along with this latest fever dream, maybe ask yourself: how many lies have you been fed—and how many more are you willing to swallow just to keep your illusions intact?

    Because this isn’t about justice. It’s about erasure. It’s about rewriting history to protect a man who’s never faced accountability in his life.

    And Tulsi Gabbard is just the latest volunteer in the cleanup crew.

  • The Amazing Donald Trump

    The Amazing Donald Trump

    For Independence Day, I’m going to talk about the amazing things about Donald Trump. Now, “amazing” is one of those words. It’s usually used as a positive. But in reality it just means something amazes you, and that’s where I’m coming from today.

    Trumps is… kind of amazing. And so are my friends who remain loyal to him.

    No, seriously. You’ve got to hand it to him—what he’s pulled off is something no politician in my lifetime has managed. The guy took over an entire political party and convinced its memebers to completely change their values. That’s not easy.

    He got the party of Reagan to dump free markets and start rooting for tariffs like they’d just discovered Lenin.

    He got the law-and-order crowd to throw their arms around a convicted felon—and not just any felon, but one who encouraged his fans to beat up cops while waving Blue Lives Matter flags. You can’t make that up. And I know many of his followers think the justice system was weaponized against him, and getting them to believe THAT is another weak-mind bender.

    He got “family values” voters to shrug off hush money payments to a porn star—while his wife was home with their newborn—because hey, at least he’s not Biden?

    He got millions of women to vote for him after he publicly bragged about grabbing them like a broken claw machine.

    He got the “Epstein was a deep-state op” crowd to look at the one guy who was literally in the photos, on the plane, at the parties, and say, “Nah, he’s clean.”

    He got evangelicals—people who once lost their minds over Obama wearing a tan suit—to go all-in for a man who couldn’t name a single Bible verse and probably thinks Leviticus is a cologne.

    And now, after years of branding every Democrat a warmonger, he’s got MAGA influencers practically begging for war in the Middle East, because this time it’s their guy saying so.

    But he’s not a salesman. A salesman gives you something—cheap steaks, an ugly hat, a framed certificate for your timeshare in hell. Trump? Trump takes. He takes your money, your dignity, your critical thinking—and leaves you with a bumper sticker and a court date.

    What did he actually deliver?

    A wall? Nope.

    Mexico paying for it? Nope.

    Obamacare repealed? Nope.

    Muslim ban? Not really.

    Budget balanced? Not even close.

    National debt reduced? Ha.

    Cheaper groceries? Come on.

    Foreign wars ended? Insert laugh track.

    Did he “Make America Great Again”?

    Or just turn it into an international punch line?

    And here’s the part that really messes with me—the part that genuinely breaks my heart: I know people. Smart people. Kind people. People I care about. Some of them are still on board. They think Biden was destroying America while Trump actually does it before their eyes.

    It didn’t happen all at once. It never does. It was a slow, creeping thing. Like the boiling frog—you don’t realize how far you’ve slipped until the water’s already at a rolling boil and someone’s telling you to blame the deep state for the heat.

    And maybe you don’t want to admit it. Maybe it’s too hard to say, “Yeah… I got conned.” I get that. But that’s what happened. You didn’t vote for a movement. You bought into a scam.

    And Trump? He’s not done. Conmen don’t stop until there’s nothing left to take.

    If this offends you, by all means—let me have it. But before you do, ask yourself:

    What exactly are you still defending?

  • I Tried to Stay Quiet. But Apparently We’re Doing Tanks Now.

    I Tried to Stay Quiet. But Apparently We’re Doing Tanks Now.

    (originally posted on my Facebook page)

    I’ve been taking a break from posting on here. You’re welcome.

    It’s been nice, honestly. Less doomscrolling, fewer arguments with people I went to high school with, and a brief, beautiful window where I could pretend that maybe things were just… normal. But then I saw the day getting closer: Trump is throwing himself a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue this weekend.

    Yes. Tanks. Planes. Flags. The whole third-world-dictator aesthetic. And I figured, alright—time to crawl out of the bunker and say a thing.

    The excuse is that it’s the Army’s 250th birthday, which is technically true. But it also happens to be Trump’s 79th birthday. So… yeah. It’s less “honoring the troops” and more “celebrating Dear Leader with flyovers and a cake shaped like Trump Tower.”

    But hey, if you’ve ever looked at D.C. and thought, “What this place really needs is a little more North Korea,” your moment has arrived.

    And just to make the timing extra bleak, this is happening one week after Trump sent the National Guard into Los Angeles—over the objections of California’s governor. First time that’s happened in sixty years. Back then, it was LBJ sending troops to protect civil rights marchers. This time, it’s Trump sending troops to protect… his reputation. From protesters.

    You know, real freedom-loving stuff.

    And the executive order he used to do it? Doesn’t even name LA. Doesn’t have to. It’s written vaguely enough to let him send troops anywhere that doesn’t clap on the one and three.

    So no, this isn’t just about Los Angeles. This is a test balloon. See how far he can go, how many people shrug, and how many cameras he can get pointed at himself while the Constitution quietly wheezes in the background.

    And I know how this sounds. I really do. If you had told me ten years ago I’d be writing about a U.S. president using the military to intimidate his own population, I’d have assumed I’d finally lost the plot and was living in an asylum somewhere yelling at soup cans. But here we are.

    ICE is already ramping up raids. The deportation push is real. The mass roundups? They’re not a scare tactic. They’re part of the plan. Trump’s asking for $185 billion for immigration enforcement—which is more than the UK and France spend on their entire militaries. That’s not border security. That’s infrastructure for authoritarianism.

    Stephen Miller—who still looks like he was carved out of cold deli meat—is already talking about deporting 3,000 people a day.

    The thing that makes this moment so dangerous is how normal it all feels now. A few years ago, something like this would’ve sparked national outrage. Now it’s just another Tuesday. Another broken norm. Another test to see what we’ll tolerate. And spoiler: it’s a lot.

    Democrats are out here debating whether it’s too “alarmist” to use the word fascism, while Republicans are busy making sure they’re not the next ones to get publicly humiliated by Trump’s Truth Social posts. At this point, he could replace the Lincoln Memorial with a sculpture of his meme coin and they’d all show up to applaud.

    Anyway. I didn’t want to break my non-posting streak for this. I was trying to keep the blood pressure in a manageable range and pretend the world was just weird, not dark. But the tanks are coming. The flags are flying. The script is writing itself. And if we’re not careful, we’ll look up four days from now and realize we just watched the next chapter of American decline roll down the street while we argued about gas prices.

    Happy almost-birthday, Mr. President. Hope your little party goes great. I’ll be over here, quietly panic-Googling “how to spot the early signs of soft authoritarianism” like a normal person.

  • Defending Democracy: Our Moment to Act

    Defending Democracy: Our Moment to Act

    It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in the face of what is nothing less than a coup against the Constitution—but we must not falter. Every generation faces a defining moment, a call to defend the great American experiment. We don’t get to choose when, but we do choose how we rise. Now is our time.

    These are dark days. Neighbors, friends, and loved ones have been swept up in a movement that thrives on resentment, division, and cruelty. We see bigotry not just tolerated but celebrated. This has always been part of America’s struggle, but we once shamed it into the shadows and called upon the better angels of our nature. Now, with permission from Trump and his politics of grievance, it flies proudly in the open. The Republican Party has been hijacked—not by conservatives of principle, but by those who seek to dismantle democracy itself. Their goal is clear: autocratic breakthrough. The moment they overcome our democratic guardrails, the point of no return will be crossed.

    We are witnessing firsthand just how important it was to vote. This crisis exists because not enough of us turned out. Not enough of us took this threat seriously. We allowed it to be sane-washed—a tactic where extremism is repackaged as reasonable, where authoritarianism is softened with careful language, making it easier for people to dismiss the danger. They even twist logic to justify abhorrent behavior. But the consequences of that mistake are now undeniable.

    Our job is simple: we cannot let this continue. We must stand firm, push back, and force hatred back into the margins of history where it belongs.

    But resistance alone is not enough. We must engage. It starts with showing up—joining protests in person and online, flooding Congress with calls and emails, demanding that they rein in this administration. Call: (202) 224-3121 and follow the instructions. We must be prepared to stand up for what’s right and, crucially, to welcome traditional Republicans into our fold as we unite for the common cause of saving our Constitution.

    America has never fully lived up to its ideals, but we have always moved forward. A more perfect union is built not by ignoring our failures, but by striving to correct them. Progress has never been easy, but history proves it is always possible.

    This fight will not be won overnight, but it will be won. If we stand together, if we refuse to yield to despair, if we meet this moment with courage and conviction—we will prevail.

  • Why MAGA Doesn’t Resemble Yesteryear’s GOP

    Why MAGA Doesn’t Resemble Yesteryear’s GOP

    The Republican Party of 20 years ago? Pro-democracy, pro-international alliances, and definitely NOT an outlier among Western conservatives. Fast forward to today, and the MAGA movement is rewriting the script—big time.

    1️⃣ A New Tribe: MAGA Republicans aren’t just breaking with the left—they’re breaking with the entire Western conservative tradition. Their mindset aligns closer to Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdoğan than to Britain’s Tories or Germany’s CDU.

    2️⃣ Goodbye Global Cooperation: The old GOP was about strong alliances (think Bush and Blair “shoulder to shoulder”). MAGA? Not so much. From pulling military support from allies to shrugging at international norms, Trump’s America plays by different rules.

    3️⃣ Autocracy Over Democracy? The Republican Party once championed democracy. Now, MAGA’s values—authoritarian tendencies, distrust of institutions, and nationalism—are pulling them into a different ideological orbit.

    4️⃣ Economics as a Weapon: Trade wars, economic self-harm, and an “America First” approach that even conservative economists are scratching their heads over—this isn’t Reaganomics.

    5️⃣ Shock & Awe Politics: Trump, JD Vance, and their crew operate on a different frequency. What seems disastrous or erratic to traditional Western leaders is just another Tuesday in MAGA-world.

    Bottom line? MAGA isn’t just a more extreme version of the old GOP—it’s something entirely different. If Western democracies don’t recognize this shift, they’ll keep getting blindsided.

    Inspired by: Financial Times article by John Burn-Murdoch

  • When We Accidentally Decided That Authoritarianism Is Okay

    When We Accidentally Decided That Authoritarianism Is Okay

    As a Gen X American, I grew up believing that authoritarian regimes—communism, dictatorships—were the enemies of everything we stood for. The Soviet Union, East Germany, Cuba—those were the cautionary tales. We learned that democracy meant something special: a government of the people, by the people, for the people. That was America’s promise, our core value.

    But today, it feels like that lesson has been forgotten by a worrying number of Americans. Some have become convinced that Democrats have gone so far off track that the only solution is to embrace a different flavor of authoritarianism—a right-wing strongman who promises to restore order by force rather than consensus.

    How did we get here?

    I think it all traces back to when our news media stopped being accountable to truth. The pivotal moment came in 1987, when the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine, a rule that required broadcasters to present controversial issues of public importance in an honest, balanced way. Suddenly, news outlets could openly pick sides, prioritize profits, and turn journalism into entertainment or partisan propaganda.

    Fast forward a few decades, and we have a polarized America, divided not by reality but by the media each side consumes. Many of us no longer agree on basic facts. Once truth is lost, authoritarianism starts looking tempting—especially if it promises to silence the “other side.”

    But history has warned us again and again that authoritarianism never ends well. Not in East Germany. Not in Cuba. Not in the Soviet Union. And certainly not here.

    We need to wake up and remember what we once knew instinctively: democracy isn’t perfect, but it’s infinitely better than the alternative. We have to reclaim the idea that government of the people, by the people, and for the people is still worth fighting for—even if we have to fight for it within our own borders.