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The Compliance Machine

As Americans, we’re historically a proudly defiant and sneaky lot. The national mythology celebrates rebellion. Yet something has shifted in the past fifty years. Today we’re going to dive into the deep end and examine ourselves through the lens of South America. It is, after all, according to Trump in terms of Venezuela, “ours to control.”

Much to unpack, little time to do it.

The marketing machine that built postwar America sold a specific vision: a house, a car, a picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a dog. That dream is now thoroughly subverted by economic realities. Housing prices, car prices, food, healthcare, and many other expense categories have put those markers far out of reach for the majority.

The marketers adapted. When the big dream became impossible, they sold smaller ones. Eating Doritos. Drinking a Coke. Weight loss drugs like Ozempic lure the overweight into a desirable body image at the expense of their last remaining dollars or credit card debt. Education, once the ladder to prosperity, has become a debt-accumulation, stress-inducing life arc.

In all cases, the default setting being pushed by the government and major corporations is sheepdog compliance. Continue working the low-paying job. Live in a substandard apartment. Some people finance a car, truck, or SUV they cannot afford because the monthly payments are small, even though they pay for it five times over the life of the loan.

Resignation and domination are the primary emotions driving daily life. This is the domestic extraction model functioning exactly as designed.

The Original Extraction Model

In 1545, an indigenous prospector named Diego Gualpa stumbled onto the richest silver deposit in the world at Cerro Rico in what is now Bolivia. Within 55 years, the mining town of Potosí had swelled to 160,000 people, making it larger than London, Paris, or Madrid.

The Spanish Crown took one-fifth of everything extracted. By the time colonial rule ended in the early 1800s, more than 150,000 tons of silver had been shipped from Potosí alone. At its peak, the mines produced 80% of the world’s silver supply. The forced labor system, called the mita, killed millions of indigenous workers.

The model was simple and devastatingly effective: identify resource-rich regions, install extractive infrastructure, suppress populations through forced or underpaid labor, and ship raw materials to imperial centers for further processing and profit accumulation. This pattern operated across South America for three centuries.

The American Variation

The United States took a different path, or so we told ourselves. Constitutional government, democratic institutions, innovation-driven economics.

But a 2025 RAND Corporation study tells a different story. Since 1975, 79 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑑 f𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑜𝑡𝑡𝑜𝑚 93.9%. It’s a staggering amount. For every trillion moved upward, it’s enough money to give every worker in the bottom 90% a $32,000 raise.

In 1975, the bottom 90% took home 67% of all taxable income. By 2019, that share had fallen to 47%. If income growth had remained equitable, median household income today would be double what it actually is.

No foreign army extracted this wealth. The mechanism was different: tax policy favoring capital, deregulation enabling financial engineering, dismantled unions, and the erosion of any political counter-pressure to wealth accumulation at the top.

The result is the same. Wealth flows upward. Working people struggle.

Why Venezuela, Why Now

Venezuela holds 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest on Earth. This represents 17–18% of global supply, exceeding Saudi Arabia’s 267 billion barrels. The United States, by comparison, sits on only 45 billion barrels.

Despite these reserves, Venezuela currently produces only about 1 million barrels per day, less than 1% of global output. In the 1970s, it pumped 3.5 million barrels daily. Decades of mismanagement and U.S. sanctions have crippled the infrastructure.

Trump has stated that U.S. oil companies will spend “billions” to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. Energy analysts estimate it would take $100–180 billion over 10–15 years to restore production. The scale of investment required and the scale of potential return explain the intensity of interest.

This is the logic of extraction reasserting itself. When domestic wealth extraction reaches its political limits, imperial powers look outward. They look for resources that can be controlled and populations that can be cost-effectively “managed.”

The Historical Parallel

The conquistadors who landed in South America in the 1500s came from European nations that had run out of room. After centuries of war over European territory, the major powers had reached a rough equilibrium. With nowhere to expand domestically, exploration became the outlet for imperial ambition.

The United States is now approaching a similar inflection point. The $79 trillion transfer of wealth over the last 50 years to the top 1%, documented by RAND, represents an extraction model that cannot continue indefinitely without political consequence. At some point, the population experiences a collective wakening - and the message of disillusionment and despair from the middle down is becoming less and less subtle. People showed up in the millions for No Kings protests. Now they’re looking for alternatives, not just rehashed Democratic Party policies yammering about “kitchen table” issues.

The whole system is collapsing, even as the stock market reaches new highs. It is a game of catch-if-you-can, riding up a bubble that will burst the minute China asserts control over Taiwan. In that moment, and I hope you get out before it hits, a very simple thing will pop the AI bubble: few people realize we are fully dependent on TSMC, where the T in that semiconductor manufacturer (think AI Chips) stands for “TAIWAN”. Do you think China has every reason and excuse to go back after Taiwan? Do you think Donald Trump is going to put up a fight when he’s declared a much simpler “Hemisphere Control” doctrine? In short, have you googled the “Monroe Doctrine” lately? You might want to.

The house of cards comes crashing down when NVIDIA (and all the MAG 7 that depend on it explicitly) collapses from its inability to manufacture chips at the cost and speed of demand, because China closed its doors to Taiwan for a while. Why wouldn’t they? They’ve been preparing, planning, and simulating every variant of the scenario for decades!

So, at some point, the system's legitimacy comes into question. The very dollar-based, paper currency that denominates billionaire wealth becomes unstable if the population that gives it meaning disengages. Even more happens when we discover they’ve been preparing all along for a conversion to Cryptocurrency for that $79 trillion. This is nothing more than Crypto's pregame warmup. Every smart, wealthy person knows it.

When that moment approaches, there are two options. Redistribution, which would require the ultra-wealthy to give up accumulated wealth and power. Or external expansion, which allows the extraction model to continue with new resources and new populations.

The history of the hemisphere tells us which option imperial powers tend to choose.

The Resource Question

Land and resource control were the markers of wealth for the European aristocracy for centuries before the industrial era. Paper currency and financial instruments are relatively recent inventions for storing and transferring value. They work only as long as the population agrees to honor them.

If coordinated disengagement from the wealth-extraction normalization were to take hold in the United States, if working people refused en masse to participate in a system designed to impoverish them, the currency itself would become unstable. The whole measuring stick of billionaire wealth would lose its meaning.

At that point, wealth reverts to what it was before: control of land and resources. And South America, with its vast oil reserves, mineral deposits, agricultural capacity, and relatively weak military infrastructure, represents the nearest and most accessible extraction zone for Donald Trump, his regime, and his billionaire friends.

This is not speculation. This is the pattern. The Spanish did it for three centuries. The British did it across four continents. Every empire that has run out of domestic room for extraction has looked outward.

The Uncomfortable Conclusion

The Venezuelan operation is not about freedom, democracy, or the welfare of the Venezuelan people. It is about 303 billion barrels of oil, along with the infrastructure required to extract it.

The parallel to Potosí is uncomfortable precisely because it is accurate. Different century, different resource, same logic. Identify the resource. Install extraction infrastructure. Manage the population. Ship the value upward.

The difference is that this time, Americans are not just the imperial beneficiaries. They are also increasingly the extracted population. The $79 trillion that has flowed from working Americans to the top 1% demonstrates that the extraction model has been applied domestically for fifty years.

The turn toward Venezuela suggests that domestic extraction has reached its limits in North America. The population is beginning to notice. The political stability required to continue the upward transfer is eroding. External resources offer a release valve.

How reasonable is it that the wealthiest nation in human history, one that has seen $79 trillion flow from the hands of working people to a fraction of a percent of its population, would decide that the best use of its military power is to seize the oil reserves of a neighboring continent?

The answer is written in five centuries of hemispheric history.

The Cultural Destination

There is one more parallel worth considering. Today, South America is characterized by deep distrust of institutions, rampant subversion, and a cultural avoidance of government. This is not a character flaw. This is what happens to populations after centuries of extraction.

When every institution has functioned primarily to extract wealth from working people, those populations learn to distrust every institution. They develop informal economies. They treat official channels as traps.

This is where the American compliance model leads. Each year of resignation, each acceptance of domination dressed as necessity, each small consumer pleasure substituted for genuine prosperity, moves the population closer to the South American cultural condition.

Americans still possess a defiant, sneaky, norm-rejecting spirit. The question is whether enough of them recognize the extraction in time to refuse it. If they do, the South American fate is avoidable. If they do not, they will join their southern neighbors in the post-extraction condition: surviving rather than thriving, distrusting rather than participating, evading rather than engaging.

That’s a Wrap

Thank you for reading my article today! I’m grateful for your time and consideration.

I do not share this point of view simply to “rage-bait” or otherwise cause you distress. I find that stark contrasts are increasingly necessary to grab attention, and I hope I’ve achieved the goal of prompting you to consider whether you agree, and, if not, to tell our community why.

I also ask you to consider your mental health and wellness. We sometimes get trapped in doom-scrolling loops; I do not want you to experience the stress that comes with them. For that reason, I ask you to consider unplugging from your digital footprint for an hour and doing something restorative. If it’s hospitable outside, I go for walks to clear my mind from the noise. In turn, it focuses me on the next challenge. I hope you’ll do something similar that works for you!

Be Well,

Rick Herbst

January 7, 2026

Sources

RAND Corporation Working Paper WR-A516–2 (2025),

OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2025, U.S. Energy Information Administration,

World History Encyclopedia,

CBS News,

Visual Capitalist

The United States: Government by Consent—Under Strain

The American premise is revolutionary: sovereignty derives from the people, delegated to elected representatives (not unelected functionaries like Musk, Miller, Vought – who couldn’t win an election if they tried) with specialized competence in governance. The Founders designed institutional checks against corruption, a fear that runs through the Federalist Papers in Madison’s studied critiques of monarchical systems and their abuses around the world. If there was any author whose fears ran deep about unchecked power more than the others, it was Madison.

Madison, Washington, Jay, Hamilton, and even Jefferson were very well educated in the ideas of John Locke, the first of many to question the “divinity” of the Divine Right of Kings: basically, the idea that rulers were empowered to rule through bloodline. Locke lit the match that started the fire. It also created new potential for abuse and fear of creating systems of governance that would fall victim to it.

Those fears have materialized. The Trump administration has operated what experts and historians call an unprecedented influence apparatus. The president’s cryptocurrency ventures have generated an estimated $800 million in family income, with holdings valued at billions. Foreign interests seeking favorable treatment invest directly in presidential businesses: a $2 billion deal routed through the family’s stablecoin, SEC investigations halted after defendants purchased Trump crypto.

Inauguration donations reached $248 million, quadruple any predecessor, with donors receiving regulatory relief and dropped investigations. Pilgrim’s Pride gave $5 million and received safety waivers. Boeing donated and avoided prosecution for 737 Max crashes. The crypto industry contributed $16 million and got a friendly “crypto czar” plus inclusion of donor tokens in the government’s digital reserve.

Yesterday, in my podcast to all of you, I called it “pay to play.” Bribe Trump, you’re in. But make sure you compliment him on at least three things before you depart the room, and grovel in his presence, because he likes it.

Now, Venezuela. On January 3, 2026, American forces captured President Maduro without congressional authorization. Trump announced the U.S. would “run” the country and “get the oil flowing.” American major leaders have sought Venezuelan access for decades.

The map below highlights the power structure of 2026. We are inextricably linked now to Venezuela’s fate. Venezuela fuels parts of the South Pacific and Teapot Refineries in China, among other places, on the black market. In turn, China has ambitions it can unleash after decades of restraint on Taiwan, which affects everything from the AI bubble to the global consumer television markets – watch that bubble burst! In turn, China is also linked in a two-way relationship with Russia, which is attached to Ukraine and its simultaneous ambition and necessity of ending the war there to expand its extractive, oligarchic-building machine. All of it ties back to us, right here in the United States.

The First Principle: We have always had the elite and the common classes because we inherited them from Europe through our ancestors there. We’ve tolerated the wealth inequity. But when it comes to governance, we want independence, freedom, and the right to pursue what we want, within the bounds of the law. Those are our table stakes, the bare minimum for entry into the game of our society and country.

It’s the social contract that starts and ends with “consent of the governed” by “we the people.” John Locke wrote the ideas down. We implemented many of them, reflecting our Founder’s recognition of the essential Enlightenment concepts Locke explained.

When that process becomes transactional, as it has with Trump in his pay-to-play schemes, and when laws bend toward those who pay the bribes, the social contract frays.

The governed grow rebellious and irritated, then angry. Institutions designed to channel discontent peacefully lose their credibility as neutral arbiters. What follows is historically predictable: populist upheaval, sometimes from the left, very occasionally from the right, always chaotic.

In simple terms, if they try to press their thumb upon us, we will respond with subversive tactics to undermine their regime. That is the reality unfolding in the US right this minute.

Russia: The Eternal Return

Russian history moves in cycles scholars have mapped with great accuracy: collapse into chaos, reconsolidation under authoritarian strength, territorial expansion, imperial overreach, economic exhaustion, regime collapse. Time after time, this cycle continues.

Proof: The Time of Troubles gave way to Romanov consolidation. Revolutionary chaos produced Soviet reconstruction. The Soviet collapse gave rise to the oligarchic chaos that Putin put in a chokehold. Each cycle features “defensive expansionism“—the logic that vulnerable borders require pushing outward. That’s what’s pushing it to do what it’s doing in Ukraine. Let me explain.

Russia’s heartland is an indefensible plain. Mongol invasions came from the east; Napoleon and Hitler from the west. This geography bred justified paranoia and territorial appetite. Under Putin: consolidation, Crimea, full invasion of Ukraine.

The war has proven costly—over 7% of GDP on defense, hundreds of thousands of casualties. Yet NATO officials warn Russian forces could reconstitute for potential NATO engagement within five to ten years. The Baltic states treat further expansion as an existential certainty.

The First Principle: Russians have historically accepted authoritarian governance because attempts at liberalization, the chaos after communism’s end, and the economic devastation of the 1990s brought suffering worse than the predictable constraints of autocracy. The implicit bargain: order and dignity in exchange for freedom. This compact holds until military casualties, economic privation, or elite fracture make it unsustainable. Then comes upheaval—and eventually, another strongman.

Before we continue, please consider this: Are people of the United States going to adopt a similar mindset towards fascism under Donald Trump’s regime? Or are we still carriers of that revolutionary blood that despises imposed control, in exchange for the sometimes-painful blessings of liberty, happiness, and freedom?

China: The Stability Compact

Modern China’s logic requires understanding the century before 1949: it was sustained infighting leading to catastrophes costing advancement of the country’s economy, social structures, and fundamental order. Assent to the needs of stability and control by the people, for the people’s own safety, security, and foundational needs became the regime’s fundamental justification.

From the Opium Wars through the Japanese occupation, China experienced foreign humiliation, warlord fragmentation, civil war, and famine, killing tens of millions. When Mao declared the People’s Republic, the population was exhausted. The Communists leveraged that exhaustion to establish control; its memory remains operative.

The modern social contract in China looks like this: The modern Communist Party (which functions partially within capitalist spheres) delivers economic growth and internal stability; citizens accept surveillance and restrictions on political participation. This differs fundamentally from Western consent, producing a different arrangement rooted in different historical trauma.

Taiwan represents unfinished civil war business and strategic imperative. Control of it by China will give it a path to the Pacific through the “first island chain,” provide semiconductor infrastructure and capacity for production, and complete the reunification narrative. In late 2025, China conducted its largest Taiwan-focused exercises while a Japan crisis escalated after Tokyo linked Taiwan’s defense to Japanese security. Chinese carriers now operate near Okinawa. For the current year, Japan has approved major increases to its defense budget.

The First Principle: The Chinese compact trades liberty for prosperity and stability. The Party’s legitimacy rests on delivering both. Should economic growth stall or internal conflict emerge, the foundational bargain weakens. But as long as memories of chaos persist—reinforced through education and propaganda—the population accepts constraints that Western observers find incomprehensible.

Europe: The Malaise of Post-Empire

Europe defies easy characterization, but “malaise“ recurs for reason. The continent that dominated the globe for four centuries struggles with economic stagnation, demographic decline, and security crisis it cannot address alone.

The European project assumed major war obsolete. It focused its resources towards welfare rather than defense. EU nations spend over 25% of GDP on social protection but averaged under 2% on defense. That calculus has collapsed as JD Vance and other MAGA leaders have thrown criticisms at Europe for its lack of investment and payment for its own defense. The new world order is regional and territorial, not principled like it has been since 1945. Europe appears to be asleep at the wheel regarding this fact, while it turns inwards to its own economic problems.

NATO members pledged 5% of GDP defense spending by 2035—levels unseen since colonial wars. Yet finances are stretched: UK debt servicing exceeds £100 billion annually; French officials warn of being “crushed by debt.” Military adequacy requires massive borrowing, painful cuts, or unacceptable tax increases.

The EU’s “ReArm Europe” plan acknowledges the scale: €800 billion in new investment. Yet fragmentation persists—three fighter programs where one would achieve the goal. The internal bickering seems to drag on while Europe slowly drops its drawers and exposes itself as weak kneed in the face of gathering Eastern threats from Russia. Remember the extractive nature of Russia’s mindset. They see land as buffer, but also as a means to power and further wealth by mining, drilling, cutting, or (lowest) growing commodities like grain on it.

Meanwhile, the Trump regime aligns with Putin rather than the EU. Marco Rubio (Secretary of State) and Vice President JD Vance explicitly speak and put their names on policty that shows reduced commitment, attention shifting to the Western Hemisphere and Indo-Pacific. The November 2025 National Security Strategy, which was warmly received by Moscow (!), says America is ready to hand conventional European defense to Europeans.

The First Principle: Civilizational momentum requires conviction, a belief that better days lie ahead, that sacrifice yields reward. When populations perceive only managed decline, when political leadership offers crisis management rather than aspiration, collective will atrophies like weak, unused muscle. Europe possesses the economic capacity to defend itself. Whether it possesses the political coherence and psychological stamina remains genuinely uncertain.

The View from the Porch

These four sovereign entities, and the countries they’re inextricably linked to: Venezuela, Ukraine, and Taiwan, represent distinct models of state-society relationship under an enormous level of stress. The American democratic contract confronts corruption when it works. Russian authoritarian consolidation grinds through expansion-retraction cycles predictably. Chinese stability holds firm as growth continues. European welfare-state equilibrium faces military demands it was designed to avoid.

What distinguishes this moment is simultaneity—all four arrangements tested at once, in an interconnected system where each trajectory affects the others. American disregard for the rule of law and the end of its role as a global police force signal to Beijing we’re in decline and moving towards isolationism. Russian resilience informs European calculations. Chinese pressure on Taiwan will likely not give rise to a bloody conflict, but rather signify a quiet surrender and transfer of power that has had a gravitational pull for six decades.

The “big dogs” in post-American Superpower status are starting to take shape. We’re just waiting to see which one bites the other first.

That’s a Wrap

Thanks for reading my article today! I hope it’s been useful, and I encourage you to leave comments and questions, especially constructive and helpful feedback.

At the start of the week, it’s crucial to manage our stress levels. I hope you’ll consider taking an hour today to unplug from your digital footprint and spend that time focused on something real, something physically in front of you that you can absorb without much thought. It’s indirectly a way to focus yourself, to let your brain rebalance itself, and it helps restore calm in an anxious day. It works for me, and I ask you to consider doing it too.

Our present circumstances are going to be here for a while. We must have you, and others like you, aware of what’s happening and engaged in both the history of reasons that got us here, and the unfolding events that occur every day. Above it all, your mental health matters! It’s going to be a long fight, and we need you in it!

Be Well.

Rick Herbst

January 05, 2026

All who joined today, a huge thank you! I’m grateful for your time, and I hope the information and context provided helped set boundaries around what’s going on in the world. If you take anything away from our time together, I hope you’ll gain a better sense of the big, historically shaped systems that drive countries to do what they do. They are in force now, and when the United States drifts from its First Principle of “Rule by Consent of the Governed” towards oligarchic greed and graft, we will rise up.

I mentioned in the video for YouTube viewers to Like and Subscribe. What I also should have said was “PLEASE hit the like button (if you do), RESTACK so this reaches more people - attaching a recommendation from you is helpful too. Finally, please, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to the publication and podcast. If that’s just not doable right now, NO PROBLEM, I totally get it - it’s tight and scary - but do consider becoming a FREE subscriber!

Two things I also asked:

1. Please visit the LiftUpDemocracy.org site and read this article about the job claims of the Trump administration for a thorough debunking. We’re still putting the like/share stuff on that site, but it will grow into our hub for organizing to Win the House, Senate, Gubernatorial races, and a slew of local and regional elections for progressives!

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Lastly, please subscribe if you haven’t, free or paid, we welcome you and I personally thank you:

I’m grateful to everyone who joined this morning on short notice. I hope you found it informative and at least a bit interactive - thanks for the questions during the cast, I hope I was able to answer them accurately.

Depending on what comes of Trump’s press conference at Mar-a-Lago at 11 am EDT, I may come back on afterwards for a shorter piece on analysis. It’ll take me about 20 minutes to go live after his yapper quits making noises.

Also, I totally forgot: Please LIKE, RESTACK, and Subscribe if you would. It helps me immensely in supporting this effort! I am grateful to every single one of you who has supported me with a paid subscription, and if that’s not in the cards - that’s OK - please be welcomed to the community with a FREE subscription - they’re the same (I don’t paywall).

ALSO… I published an unrelated way-early-morning piece today on Lift Up Democracy.org’s (LUD) website, mostly because the Substack format really sucks. It’s here (another browser window will probably open):

Jobs Are Not Booming Like Trump Says

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I have much better control on the LUD site! It’s organized better, reads faster, and is generally easier to understand. It’s all about Trump’s bogus claims of American-Born Job Growth being historically high. Worth at least a glance, which you can do on the LUD site.

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Take care, and I will see you soon!

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Author’s Note: This article, by our new contributor Jack Boyle and me (an independent investigative journalist), presents data in ways that are materially easier than Substack's limited editor allows. After a lot of deliberation, I decided to produce the piece in a much more readable, technically more sophisticated format on the Lift Up Democracy website. (LINK RIGHT HERE). (It displays charts directly on the data as opposed to translating to images and uploading them). It also has a TOC, which makes it much easier to digest and read quickly.

Right now, that website is undergoing an update. I apologize for the dust: We will have the rest of the site updated over the next few days.

Jobs are Not Booming for US-Born Workers as Trump Says

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We are grateful for the people who made time to join us on New Year’s Day! Our episode covered a lot of ground with clips and discussion on the MN fraud investigations and debunking the large amount of BS shoveled by the Trump regime in cutting off funding. They failed to realize the innocent victims get trampled under their ham-handed handling of a situation that already has its own process - for CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS that have been ONGOING SINCE BEFORE 2022. Children are now knee-jerk victims, as are parents who live 1 paycheck away from homelessness who can’t go to work now that childcare is severely underfunded, REGARDLESS of criminal involvement.

We go on to examine JD Vance’s alarming TP USA comments about:

1. Not having to “apologize for being white”. I’ve never apologized or been asked to for THAT, but I think that Vance is reprehensible for making people of color the targets for hatred and giving more permission slips to people with nothing but hate to spew.

2. Christianity is the root religion of the United States, just like Russell Vought wants it to be in his Christo-fascist hot dream. Right on camera, Vance spells it out. See for yourself.

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We ran the gamut of topics, from the follow up to Lev Parnas and MeidasTouch Network, to the recent bombings by American forces on Nigeria, to Hemisphere Control that appears to be the Trump regime’s latest M.O.

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Thanks to everyone who joined us in our latest conversation about politics, the holidays, a bit of history, and Trump’s bizarre 100+ holiday tweets he cranked out like a monkey on meth December 25th. We had a lot of fun, and if you missed it, we hope you’ll catch us on the live recording!

We’ll be back soon, which as of now is Sunday night, and we’re really looking forward to seeing both the new and returning folks who joined us this evening!

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I’ve been through my share of terrible Christmases in my lifetime. I’ve had good ones, too. Over time, and with age, my perspective on the holidays has changed. I’ve gradually shifted from a mindset of high expectations to one of cautious, guarded optimism, as experience has taught me. I’ve also chosen to view my circumstances differently, as I discuss below. It serves to improve my overall results.

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The Terms “Merry” and “Happy” Do a Lot of Heavy Lifting in December!

I use the term “Christmas” loosely, actually intending to cover the many celebrations, both religious and non-religious, held this time of year. There are a surprising number of different festivals and holidays tied together in December:

• Christmas: Celebration by Christians of the birth of Jesus Christ

• Hanukkah: Jewish Festival of Lights. The actual celebration this year is between December 14-22.

• Kwanzaa: African-American celebration honoring African heritage, unity, and culture (December 26-January 1)

• Winter Solstice/Yule: Pagan/Wiccan celebration marking the shortest day of the year. (December 21)

• Diwali: Hindu Festival of Lights (though usually earlier than December, sometimes referenced in holiday greetings)

• Bodhi Day: Buddhist celebration of Buddha’s enlightenment

• St. Lucia Day: Scandinavian/Christian festival of lights, (December 13)

• Las Posadas: Latin American Christian celebration commemorating Mary and Joseph’s journey (December 16-24)

• New Year’s Day: Secular celebration observed globally

The Facts About Suicide and the Holidays: An Uplifting Fact

We have, historically, a persistent myth about December and suicide rates: People pick December as the month when suicide rates are the highest. The data tells another story: They’re typically at their lowest, and the reasons for this are notable. The (pre-RFK Jr.) CDC data consistently show that suicides are the most numerous during the late spring and summer months between May and August. This is true both for the United States and internationally. The encouraging news is that through the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 98% of callers report their crisis was de-escalated during the call.

I highlight this because it shows that if you or someone you care about is experiencing distress during this time of year, there is strong evidence that those crises are manageable, though still challenging. I encourage you (to say the least) to reach out to your mental health provider if you have one and are in an escalating situation, because professionals are acutely aware of the needs of many this time of year for crisis intervention and are making themselves more available for assistance.

What Our Frame of Mind Really Is This Year

Way below the level of stress that involves the severity of suicidal ideation comes the more disturbing fact that many of us are experiencing material and significant differences this year in how we look at the 2025 holiday season.

I want to highlight a few polls and their findings that cover multi-year trends and differences in 2025.

The American Psychiatric Association’s “Healthy Minds” poll found drastic shifts in our holiday stress levels. 41% of Americans anticipate feeling more stress this holiday season than in previous years, a significant increase from 28% in 2024 and 29% in 2023.

Of particular concern is that younger adults, aged 18-34, were the most likely group to anticipate stress at 49%. The top stressors identified were missing a loved one or experiencing grief (48%) and being able to afford holiday gifts (46%). (You can see the source data in the “Links” section at the end of the article, if you want more detailed information.)

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The Point is Optimism

I mentioned earlier that my outlook towards the holidays has shifted as I’ve aged. I’ll give you a little more detail on specifically what has changed, in hopes you’ll consider a decisive shift in perspective that many people, including me, are using.

The shift is optimism, and it has been extensively studied. If you’ve watched my podcast (Lift Up Democracy, with Lisa | We are the Third Estate), you can probably guess I don’t lean into pop psychology, and am probably very cynical towards anything that resembles it. But optimism is heavy-hitting psychology, not the lightweight, armchair kind: According to the National Academy of Sciences, optimism is specifically associated with an 11-15% longer lifespan and greater odds of reaching “exceptional longevity,” which they define as reaching 85 or beyond.

When individuals were compared, the researchers from Harvard Health and Mayo Clinic found that optimistic people enjoy better health and a significantly lower death rate during follow-up periods of 15 to 40 years. They also found a lower risk of major illnesses, including heart disease and respiratory conditions.

The real power that underlies optimism lies in a shift from a situation-based point of view. For me, it meant shifting to making objective and honest (not “cover-it-up”) statements of fact about a current situation: “This is bad. Here are the reasons why.” But after acknowledging that reality, the framing changed from “…and it’s only going to make me more miserable in the future, and I’m inevitably going to suffer in one or more ways.”

That narrative changed. Reality was still truthfully acknowledged (lying to myself never helped). But the narrative became, “…and I choose to do what I can to improve it.” If nothing else, that simple choice to own and improve my outcomes gave me a much-needed, scientifically grounded grip on reality that wasn’t as depressing. Yet, I can’t emphasize enough, this change did not happen suddenly and has enormous benefits for me overnight. It took looking at many situations, revisiting old demons in my closet, and dealing with them this way, one by one, before the benefits became easily identified.

It Isn’t Your Imagination

I wrote a separate piece I’m going to repackage after Christmas that debunks, fact by fact, all the lies being hauled out by the White House and Trump to be put on display, almost as if yelling "how great thing will” will make us believe a different reality.

That analysis isn’t for today. In the near future, I’ll explain why and how the Trump regime is trying to fool us into thinking the economy is better than it really is. Our eyes are most definitely not deceiving us: As always, the devil is in the details. In two upcoming articles, I’ll look at the chain reaction that is playing out right now, which is distorting something called “aggregate indicators” to make them look good: You’ll hear a lot about how great our economic growth has been, yet wonder why your paycheck isn’t covering your energy costs or your healthcare anymore.

For today, if you celebrate Christmas or any of the many other holidays, I ask you to put those concerns aside with a small amount of optimism that circumstances will improve for you and that you will be empowered with choices in the upcoming year that will dramatically improve your long-term outlook.

Contagious Toxicity Warning

I’m putting in a short section on the power of being around toxic people. I don’t mean the kind who might have Covid-19 and aren’t wearing a mask. I mean, the fact that it’s easier to catch an emotion than to catch a cold. That’s not a joke, and it works exceptionally well with people who are emotionally bereft of anything positive to say about others, their jobs, or their lives. The toll on you can be enormous, and research backs up the notion that when you give those people attention and an ear to shove their grievances into your head, it’s you who suffers the consequences.

The other aspect of this is specifically political toxicity, which has been studied extensively in the era of Trump and MAGA. Studies have shown that the leading cause of relationship rupture is political disagreement: It’s very common for individuals in these circumstances to avoid, distance themselves from, or even sever their ties with a partner. Affective polarization (the strong swaying of political views in one direction or another) leaves the realm of mere issue disagreement. It moves right in on emotional contempt, moral condemnation, and perceived threats.

The last thing I’ll mention on toxicity is what @Jeff Tiedrich often refers to as “Elon’s Nazi Bar” – the social platform X, where many leading influencers produce an endless stream of negativity, fear, threats, and unchecked aggression. All of this is avoidable. However, it also requires the reader to choose to disengage actively. After all, the “algorithm” is designed and optimized to repeat and amplify anything that will keep you glued to the next message longer. That’s how all of these companies grew to billion-dollar mammoths. And they’re betting big on AI to do even more to keep us isolated, angry, grievance-filled, and depressed so we buy products to feel better. It’s retail therapy, psych 101.

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That’s a Wrap

I thank you for reading today’s article. I stayed away from heavy negativity because we are all coping with its effects right now, at least to some degree. I witnessed a clerk at my grocery store being rudely yelled at by an unhinged woman, who had a meltdown over a button on her uniform with the label “Liberal” in bright pink lettering. The unhinged woman decided that, instead of ignoring what clearly did not matter, she would give the younger woman an earful. This was while the store was crazy-busy, with customers stacked 10-deep in the register lanes. I can’t say I’d have helped the f who went off on the other if I found her lying out on the ice in the parking lot. I might have dialed 911, but that’s about as far as my compassion would go.

Taking all I said into account, I ask you to consider doing something very positive for your mental health today: take an hour, or more, and unplug from your digital devices. You can spend your time being entirely present in the moment, preferably doing something you like. It helps me to block off time during the day; I hope you’ll consider doing the same for your own benefit.

I’ll wrap up by asking you to take a mental inventory of the people you know, subtract the toxic ones, and assess whether any of them could use a friendly check-in from you today or tomorrow. The simple act of reaching out might be a game-changer for some and a welcome, positive surprise for others! Happy Holidays from our home to yours!

Be Well

Rick Herbst

December 24, 2025

LINKS

https://www.wbiw.com/2025/11/21/apa-pole-finds-economic-anxiety-fuels-sharp-rise-in-anticipated-holiday-stress/

https://www.psychiatry.org/News-room/News-Releases/Americans-More-Anxious-About-the-Holidays

https://news.gallup.com/poll/699311/economic-confidence-slips-holiday-spending-plans-plummet.aspx

https://theworlddata.com/holiday-stress-in-us/

https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/lowest-suicide-rate-is-in-december-but-some-in-media-still-promote-holiday-suicide-myth/

https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/suicide-rate-low-during-holidays-holiday-suicide-myth-persists

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-lowest-suicide-december-media-holiday.html

https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html

https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/suicides-dont-spike-around-holiday-season-americans-think-they-do

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11603963/

https://988lifeline.org/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/202506/research-finds-988-suicide-and-crisis-lifeline-effective

https://www.tfah.org/story/marking-three-years-of-988-suicide-and-crisis-lifeline-support-for-people-in-need/

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1900712116

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190826150700.htm

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/09/01/755185560/optimists-for-the-win-finding-the-bright-side-might-help-you-live-longer

https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/optimism-and-your-health

https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-boost-optimism/

https://wiselyandco.com/the-science-of-optimism-boost-your-health-happiness-success/

https://lifearchitekture.com/blogs/well-being/benefits-of-optimism

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-new-science-of-optimism-and-longevity/

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/optimism-linked-longevity-and-well-being-two-recent-studies

https://www.harvard.edu/in-focus/happiness/

https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-boost-optimism/

https://positivepsychology.com/learned-optimism/

https://www.neh.gov/article/martin-seligman-and-rise-positive-psychology

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8322226/

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/emotions_are_contagious_learn_what_science_and_research_has_to_say_about_it

https://profrjstarr.com/s/The-Psychology-of-Polarization-Affective-Division-and-Civic-Empathy.pdf

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10416258/

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:93e8772c-7f9d-4325-ad4f-576c33fa5cb3/files/ma6c2779cedb8148039582f5be6cd8dc7

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9337870/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10416258/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/seeds-of-wisdom/202511/navigating-the-social-and-political-divide

Thanks to all of you who were able to join us for our live this evening! We are grateful to each one of you who made the time to join our Live podcast.

Not only did we get a chance to plug the benefits of yoga, we talked about Epstein and how the DOJ seems to take law as a suggestion over a command (!). We discussed the framing by the Right of the Democrats as a holier-than-thou actors in the scandal (hypocritical). Instead, we want to see some truth and consequences that involve the Republicans, and in particularly Trump, and STOP distracting our attention with Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

Lots of other topics came up, and it was great interacting with our audience’s live questions, which we try to address in real time.

We also touched on the major update to Lift Up Democracy this weekend (still have lots of features and functionality we’ll be adding in the days ahead). We plan on rolling out some great features and content that we think you’ll love.

The link to the new Lift Up Democracy site is here:

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Please enjoy our podcast if you missed it, and we invite you to the next one!

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I started this newsletter because I am sick & tired of staying silent while a handful of people hoard power & wealth as the rest of us are left scrambling. I’m ready to create a strong community that can rise collectively w/ others to reclaim our power.

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Trump had a fantastic 2025 – for Trump! His estimated net wealth is between $6 and $8 billion, and he has stolen earned around $2 billion since taking office last January! Now that’s some good grafting!

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Other groups, like tens of thousands of undocumented migrants, who were, for the vast majority, guilty of nothing other than a misdemeanor of entering the country “undocumented,” were hunted like dogs, captured, and detained in facilities with conditions so bad that the Department of Homeland Security makes a practice of allowing no public figures in there. If you are the one unlucky enough to be stuck in this situation, Trump is the last person to have your back, and his cronies might deport you to some random country where not only are you literally alien to their practices, language, and culture, but you might be put to work in a labor camp.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Trump, who declared he “knew nothing about Project 2025” before the election, started implementing vast swaths of it by executive orders before the oath-taking ceremony had even cooled off. He issued a raft of them, “flooding the zone” with “bullshit,” as Steve Bannon would say. The effects have been devastating to families across the country, with the term “compassionate Conservative” being thrown out the window and set on fire.

Let’s recap just a few of the things, in somewhat alphabetical order if you start with a verb, Trump accomplished this year, while still wildly missing the target on reasons voters said just over a year ago they said they would cast their ballot in favor of him: Affordability, inflation, housing, immigration, to name a few.

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The Short Version of the Long, Long List

Healthcare (But the concept of a plan will be ready in two weeks! Just two more weeks!)

Tax breaks for the incredibly already wealthy

Tax increases for the poor

Vast personal enrichment

Starting a Global Trade War with… Everybody

Starting a Global Trade War with… China

Gutting the federal workforce,

Firing Office of Inspectors Generals

Firing the Federal Election Commission board

Implementing “law” via Executive Order

Authorizing brutal Undocumented Immigrant treatment

Alligator Alcatraz

Watching a movie and deciding the real Alcatraz needed reopened

Favortism to White South Africans immigrating to the US

Favortism to the Richest and Willing to Pay to come to the US

Hiring Brainworm Bobby

Subsequently gutting actual scientists at the CDC and NHS

Installing Vaccine Quacks

Cutting funding to the Public Broadcasting organization that has educated the young for decades

Gutting the Department of Education

Authorizing DOGE to go in and steal our most private financial and health data, plus more

Installing a Presidential Cabinet of pure cronies like Bondi, Noem, and others with filler issues

Eliminating even the aftertaste of DEI programs

Reduction of strategic alignment with Europe

Making kids take a military service exam in high school

Decimating almost All Care for Trans people

Supercharging Public Funding of Private Christian Schools

Slashing Student Loan Relief programs

Making the Smithsonian and Other Museums White-Friendly Again

Clean Energy a Memory

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Electric Car incentives eliminated

Public Partial Ownership of Private Companies

Abortion Rights curtailed where States haven’t Done Enough

Dismiss Federal Oversight of Cybersecurity

FBI Agents working Counterterrorism Reassigned to be ICE Thugs

ICT Thugs’ Radical Expansion in Force and Capacity

Declaring Autopen Was Presidenting in All of 2021-2024

Destruction of the East Wing of the White House

Building a giant, inexplicably expensive but privately funded Data Center Bunker Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Ballroom

Privatize TSA Screening

Turned the DOJ into a Personal Pet Grievance and Perceived Persecution Equalizing Machine

Demolished the FBI’s most senior ranks

Hired a total Clown Show Idiot to Run the Pentagon and our Military

Withdrew from the World Health Organization

Attempting to Jerrmander Elections in 2026

Starting work to withdraw from NATO

Eliminated American Soft Power while Killing Hundreds of Thousands by Eliminating USAID

Removed Protections of Generations of Public Lands

Increased the National Debt by at least $7 trillion

Damaged America’s Labor and Business Statistics Agencies (Ooops! Biden’s “fault” – and the numbers were working just fine when they were under Biden’s economy!)

Assert Control over the Federal Reserve’s Judgment and America’s Monetary Policy

Invented an entirely new high-up wing in the Department of Implausible Deniability

… and this only touches the tip of the iceberg!

So, Does Trump “Know” Now About Project 2025?

I think the short answer is “probably not.” My reasoning is pretty simple: Long ago, his top aide, Stephen Miller, realized just how transactional and mentally addled Trump actually is. So instead of getting into some sort of big conceptual discussion with him, Miller just fed him one executive order after another. King Donny just liked signing that razor-tooth signature of his with a big black marker over and over. It was soothing to Donny. And it got what Miller wanted, done.

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That’s a Wrap

It may be hard to believe, but I’ve only touched on highlights of Trump’s orders. When Trump said he would be a dictator “on Day 1,” he meant it. Hundreds of lawsuits and toilet-bowl poll numbers later, Trump’s Greatest Hits 2025 are coming home to roost.

If only this president was going to be around the White House for just one year. For the rest of us, it’s Three to Go.

Please mind your mental health. As we slog through this together, I ask you to consider whether the intensity and amount of Trumpian noise is causing you mental fatigue. It sure does for me. I’d ask you to consider doing something beneficial for yourself, specifically unplugging for an hour from your digital footprint. Decide if spending some time relaxing, reading a book, taking a walk, or doing something else fun is a better choice than doom-scrolling for at least a little while.

This is a long fight. We need you in it!

Be Well

Rick Herbst

December 17, 2025

Thank you also to the many people who participated in the chat! We had some new audience members today, as well as familiar names - WELCOME! We sometimes do a “freestyle” show where the conversation drifts (a little, sometimes off topic), but if nothing else, we try to share useful info you can take with you into the week ahead! Our panel tonight is a walking, talking smorgasbord of useful history, facts we can back up, and connected dots we can explain. We are grateful you keep up, and appreciate you telling us when we need to slow it down!

Our next LIVE of the RICK+LISA LIFT UP DEMOCRACY SHOW will be Wednesday, December 17. Look for the invite soon in your alerts!

Please - if you haven’t yet, and find value in our content, like, subscribe, restack, and help us spread the word about the LIFT UP DEMOCRACY PODCAST we do several times a week - share with a friend!

As always, you can reach me directly via email or DM on Substack. I welcome questions and non-abusive criticisms! I’m at rick@liftupdemocracy.org. You can also visit the (right now, coming online, so expect some dust and clutter) LiftUpDemocracy.org website with tons of useful information we’re publishing this week at:

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We were lucky enough to get Nick Paro on a free moment (to take it up!) and get his take on so many things in this episode. If you’re sick of traditional TV, you’ll love this episode! Get hot takes on military force in Venezuela, criminal actions, and war crimes against service members, Hegseth, and others. Also, Nick gets political and really lights us up with the urgency behind the 2026 elections and our need for YOU to support our efforts!

Thanks to Nick for his time. Please sign up for his publications at the link below. Also, please sign up for Adverse Action (Rick’s) substack, as well as Lisa | We are the Third Estate at the links below!

I appreciate your support of our program today! We were glad to get the audience we did, and appreciate each of you for your lively comments, questions, and concerns!

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We had a blast (again) doing the show, covering Epstein from multiple angles as more documents are dropped from Congress and the DOJ and she demonstrates her AMAZING skills at connecting dots, creating great synthesis of so much information, and extracting the pieces of real importance for all of us readers!

We also spoke about her fiction writing, Death of a Mayfly, which for me (rick) is a gripping story that gets in my mind and lives there, one chapter at a time, for quite a while! I’m lucky to be able to talk to the author and hopefully ask questions that are representative of what is on reader’s minds! (Email me if you have specific things you’d like asked in the future.)

Please subscribe to Ellie’s substack as well as my own. For mine, you can just fill out your email and click the button below. For Ellie’s, just go to her Substack at the link below mine and sign up. We’d love to have you as paid subscribers if you find value in our work!

Until the next episode!

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The Panicked, Unpaid Writer

Rejected op-eds, personal musings, and my adventures as a middle-class mole dropped on my head in New York City, maneuvering the wild and incestuous world of film, publishing and journalism.

By Ellie Leonard

Let’s look at this narcissist’s signature for a moment. Reflect on the buzz saw, razor sharp edges up close. They’re teeth, even if he’s turned into an addled old fart factory. He still wants all the toys in the world. He’s needy and empty inside, and hasn’t made the basic human connection that material wealth does not mean emotional well-being.

In the National Security Strategy, on page 1, the Trump regime states:

[Americans] overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare, regulatory, administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex.

I cannot overstate the importance of what is hiding behind this statement. It comes after a setup that essentially says, “what the US did, during and after the Civil War, two World Wars, and a Cold War with the Soviets, was the product of ‘policy elites’ who convinced themselves that ‘permanent domination of the whole world was in the best interests of our country.”

The Adverse Analysis

Now, there are hardly any people left alive who were involved in the making of policy during the post-WW II lead up to the Cold War, let alone people who could tell us precisely who those ‘elites’ Trump’s regime imagines they were.

See, back in those days, not every single word was parsed through an obsessive lens on “narrative control,” as Trump enjoys with his base. It’s what fuels every lie that comes out of Press Secretary Karolyne Leavitt’s Caucasian mouth and blond-haired head. Narrative control has been a hallmark of his seemingly indestructible ability to consolidate power and hold sway over Congress during his second term. To most of us who watched his simultaneous descent (down the escalator) and ascent (up the ranks in polls, activating the bigoted hall-pass for white supremacists, Christian “nationalists,” and hateful people in waiting the country over to get license to say what they’ve really been thinking), he looked like a buffoon, hardly to be believed, not to be taken seriously, let alone respected and trusted with the most critical job in the land.

Such ideas were foolish in 20/20 hindsight. There was a huge assumption, which itself was a lesson taught no less by another actor, Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s, that presidenting required at a minimum a law degree or a thorough rise through the political ranks to achieve the 20^th century role of President, let alone the 21^st century version of one. But no, like a bad remembrance, Trump came and largely mopped the floor with his opponents in 2016 and again in 2024.

Then he gave his friends all the essential jobs, and for the jobs they took over, they shared a pact: Massive cuts, reductions in the federal workforce, and the installation of loyalists. This was organized and codified in the Project 2025 blueprint, and it wasn’t until his approval ratings began to plummet and lawsuits, injunctions, and court orders began piling up at the doors of the Oval Office that the regime slowed this “flood the zone with shit” campaign.

We may have been fixated on surviving paycheck to paycheck, but Trump’s people were fixated on a gold mine of money just lying in wait all over the halls of government in Washington, DC. The map to all this treasure was no less than the United States government’s ledger, held by the United States Treasury.

Remember When…?

They first hit us with DOGE and Elon Musk, who has yet to account for one whit of what his team did to the American public while he was running things from behind the curtain, his minions gaining access to our most sensitive and private data we entrusted to the government to keep safe, and which was broken down in a matter of days with a few executive orders. Despite it being written in black and white by believable people (the Project 2025 grand master, Russell Vought himself), everyone seemed to have their heads stuffed in a dark place when DOGE showed up to collect its bounty. It is, and was, inexcusable on the part of way too many people to call it “unfortunate” and let it pass.

The American National Security Strategy takes the methods and means of thefts committed against the American people through a quickly forgotten invasion of our most private information. It applies them to our closest allies, who have been, perhaps counterintuitively at first, down this road before. Don’t think for a minute that France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, and the rest of the European Union don’t recognize what Trump is doing under the cover of the thinly veiled wording in this thirty-odd page document. They’ve seen it all when it comes to the pure skill involved and obtained by white people screwing each other over seven ways to Sunday. They know it, and they also know how to respond to it. But we’ll have to come back to that, so put a pin in it for a moment.

In the Trump Regime’s National Security Strategy, Trump makes a key distinction: Where the United States once stood at the forefront and nexus of economic, military, and innovative power, it now (through carefully chosen wording, to once again hide real interests) wants to deprioritize its support of protecting NATO nations in Europe. All while it increases its alignment with an elaborate criminal enterprise known as Russia.

Meet Russia, Fully in Mob Form

Russia, make no mistake, is not operating at a nation-state level.It devolves into a mob of sorts, a hierarchy that people play along with cyclically throughout Russian history.They go for a while in an introverted, non-combative mourning for their own version of “the old days,” a nostalgic and mythical past (sound familiar, all you ex-MAGA people?). Then it comes out swinging with aggression for its acquisition of its neighbor’s wealth, first by claiming territory.

The latter is happening once again (see: Ukraine), after a cycle of many centuries that it’s repeatedly proven itself, as surely as the pendulum moves on a clock. This time, it’s happening with the US and the Trump Family, acting as the agents and brokers of deals with the United States. They’re negotiating the spoils of war, two sides who appeared to be fighting each other, but ironically, are now divvying up Ukraine’s vast natural resources in back rooms (see Witkoff and Kushner) in a perverse deal-making spree in which nearly all of western Europe, not to mention Ukraine, will badly lose.

The Open Door for China to Come In

The implications are brain-bending. Consider what Russia has built over many years of being sidelined from the Western Hemisphere, particularly from the United States. Now consider the opportunities presented to and for China. China has done one thing that is very relevant to the operation of the global economy: It has harnessed the power of its top thinkers in industrialization to achieve rapid, accurate, exact, and high-quality production of nearly any physical good used around the world. It’s also made the output of that available as the input to Russia, creating an almost perfect symbiosis: China needs a big market to pay and feed its 1.3 billion people (compared to the United States’ 337 million), and for it to succeed, its products must be rock-solid as called on to be.

So it has happened. Now, Russia has almost no reason to buy anything from the United States. We have no highly developed supply chains leading into Russia because, for the same reason, we only had a handful of supply chains into the South after the Civil War: Deals were done through “good ol’ boy” networks, not on established terms. That, friends, is what Trump is turning America back into: A rat’s nest of smoky, back-room deals that won’t be codified, won’t be enforceable, and will allow for the “accidental leakage” of much money to flow from Russia (and for that matter, the Middle East) into the Trump Family, enough to ensure their wealth for many generations to come.

What They’re Really Saying Is…

At its core, this agreement sets the stage for how the United States’ commerce and military complex will operate with the countries it touches. Case in point, what appears to be the writing of Marco Rubio in the Security Strategy document, we’ve entered the era of transactional relationships with murky terms, and in the process, sold off our allegiance to Europe, replacing it with a love for the style of business Russia (and Donald Trump) likes to do. That style is lots of smiling, handshaking, and back-stabbing. It usually escalates, if history is our teacher, to another state of collapsed warfare between competing national entities.

The Security Strategy, in effect, is a blueprint that says to the world, “This is how you’ll do business with us: Come ready to pay, and pay big, for anything you got from us for free before. Our era of tolerance for handouts is over.” It’s transactional, which is the only logic Trump works with, if even that, on some days.

Control of ALL of North and South America

Let me be clear: This same policy document outlines a “strategy” for South America in which, to put it simply, anything but South American interests is prioritized. Instead, it’s the US that is going to use its massive military force, backed by its trillion-dollar budget, to topple the regimes that do not bend the knee to a fascist leader of our country. Right now, we are seeing just the early stages of this. In a few weeks, I fully expect to see many more boots on the ground.

It goes further. Section 4 of the Security Strategy lays out wording that, if read through Pollyanna eyes, looks naively simplistic. It goes on about sovereignty and the importance of nation-states, blah blah blah. But under all that, if you read it with a more Imperialist tone, it absolutely reflects that we intend to control our destiny by controlling other countries. I’m convinced there is no limit, including the “acquisition” of Canada, Greenland, Panama, and a whole bunch of South American assets (and Mexico in the middle), to what this regime’s ambitions and unrivaled military power will go after.

This paragraph is going to get me some heat, and I probably deserve it. I don’t want to put too fine a point on it. Still, two regions of the world have been screwing around, wallowing in their own small pile of under-visualized self-interests. At the same time, globalization has turned their working classes into cheap human robots, and their super-rich have been free of worries about the futures of their great-great-grandchildren as they’ve taken checks from the United States. The Security Strategy almost spells this out in black and white.

Failure of Imagination, Not Sorry

Where are these regions? South America, Canada, and most of Europe. It is a failure of imagination on their part to assume our republic would stand firm and forever be the teat of trade imbalance from which their elite would suckle the profits. Sooner or later, their minds might have covered the topic of “what if” America turns dark, imperialist, and empire-like? What shall they do then? Run like scared children into the forests?

This failure of imagination wasn’t for a day or a week. It was for decades as the world watched our GDP grow, China evolve, Russia devolve, and a hundred other things. Even the first Trump administration, tame by comparison, should have served as a warning of what could come to Europe’s and South America’s doorstep.

To be fair, I must give a ton of credit to the leaders across Europe and North America affected by this – from the EU to Greenland, Mexico and Canada – because it’s been a radical shift in mindset we haven’t yet seen from any administration in memory. They’ve dealt with it very well. Not so much South America.

China Saw It Coming

I’ll hand it fairly and factually to China: They knew exactly what to do when Trump came out swinging with his asinine Trade War back in April. They didn’t blink or flinch, and for the most part, they are prevailing. Why? They imagined the “what-if” this all came to pass. Many times over. Remember, they have a population that is FOUR TIMES LARGER than ours. Statistically, their likelihood of having geniuses in almost every area they choose to study is extremely high, and they have the systems to identify, grow, and move those people to the center of power in Beijing. They don’t mess around. They organized and planned for what is happening right now. Their response isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. It needs to be good enough.

Where this Leaves Us Today

I could go on through much more, but I’ll tie off the topic today that the National Security Strategy is an insightful document to revealing the minds of those really running the show in Washington. If nothing else, it’s written proof that if you think all of these guys are crooks, you’re probably right. But if you believe none of these people are smart crooks, you’re probably wrong. The policy is a transparent statement of intent. It is the predecessor to violence and war, regardless of what it says about peace.

That’s the trouble with words. Lies are told in this document, but they are easy to spot. It takes a keen eye and a close observation of what the Trump regime does compared to what it says. In the upcoming weeks, we’re going to see the deals emerge from Russia, the ties diminish to our European partners, and democracy take one more hit from fascism.

That’s a Wrap

I thank you for reading today! I hope your weekend is off to a good start. Today’s topic is one I hope you’ll consider, and if you like, take a read of the actual policy document here:

National Security Policy, December 2025.

As I say in almost every article, I hope you are mindful of your mental health. I’d encourage you to take at least half an hour and unplug from your digital footprint. Get away from the phone, the tablet, the computer, anything hooked up to the internet. Get yourself outside and stare at a tree. Enjoy the sound of water from a stream (or a faucet if no stream is nearby). I’ll invite you to my two podcasts later, and ask that even with those, don’t overdo it. If things get too heavy, please back out. We’ll still be here when you return!

Be Well,

Rick Herbst

December 6, 2025

Today’s Podcasts

Podcast 1: With NICK PARO AND LISA: The Rick+Lisa Show, where we have guest Nick Paro, LIVE at 3:00 pm EDT / 12:00 pm PDT. Covering lots of political and military/legal topics for sure!

I'll post links soon.

Podcast 2: With Ellie Leonard, Writer, Investigative Journalist, Funny, Smart, Great Dot Connector! We’ll be live at 8:00 pm EDT / 5:00 pm PDT.

Please join us for a great, relaxed time to talk about current news, politics, and great ideas!

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Can’t wait to have you on the next podcast tomorrow - we have Nick Paro at 3-ish and I’m doing another interview with Ellie Leonard on her recent work and fiction writing! That’s at 8pm tomorrow. (Busy day!)

Thanks, —- rick

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That King Donny is rotting from the brain outward is no mystery and certainly no secret to either side of the Uniparty in Washington, DC. But the closed-eyed, golden-gray-haired King Donald, who was swaying side to side and sleeping while standing during an appearance on Thursday, December 3^rd, was once again ignored by the mainstream media.

Granted, I’m not saying this appearance was the apex of geopolitical importance. It was a signing ceremony attended by the presidents of the Republic of Rwanda and the Republic of the Congo. It was held at the Institute of Peace, which Trump gutted earlier this year and sicced his little pimply DOGE dogs on to do the job. You might remember the “barricade situation” where the then-director and his folks blocked the entrance of DOGE officials, and the Metro Police, the FBI, and the US Marshals had to force themselves in.

It got more ridiculous: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later described it as a “concerted effort amongst rogue bureaucrats“ to “physically barricade themselves inside the building“ and thwart political appointees, including new acting president Kenneth Jackson. Moose was physically escorted out by law enforcement, and DOGE installed new leadership, though the incident sparked immediate lawsuits alleging an “illegal takeover by force” and “plundering” of infrastructure.

Then, which must frost the cupcakes of every single person who used to work there but does not any longer, the State Department decided to rename the entire building after Donald J Trump. Trump was so excited that he drifted into somnolence in an upright posture.

(If nothing else, I gave you a minute, thirty-second clip of some “blah blah blah” while you zoned out from work or whatever else you were doing. My clips are NOT always as sound as @Jeff Tiedrich!)

Look, my point here is this guy needs a bed, pronto. It’s as plain as day. Another thing he really needs is to have his ass 25^th-amendmented out of office, because we have NEVER had a president who can’t stay awake at State functions, days after Monday’s briefing tidbit that Karoline Leavitt passed along, saying Trump’s MRI was of his head and belly, for no reason than because he’s an old man.

That particular line of bullshit did not fly far with the Adverse Action editors, simply because it’s really evident that something is very wrong. Yet, the Mainstream Media refuses to talk about it, or blast the White House and Congress with questions about:

• Whether it’s time to start really worrying about what that guy can do with the “nuclear football,” in terms of setting off actual bombs, and,

• Whether JD “McGee” Vance is anywhere near ready to take on the job of presidenting. He is most definitely not, in my opinion.

I’ll say this in closing, an homage to JRR Tolkien tied to Trump’s passing into the sunset: “Soon the white ship will be made ready at the Grey Havens for the last of the great Ring-bearers of old, and Donald Trump shall step aboard, weary of the circles of the world, and sail into the West where the straight road still runs and the crooked shall be made straight at last.”

Enough said.

Trump’s “Vindictive Madman” Strategy Gets Put Out to the Curb

We all love what Letitia James represents, right? Not only going after His Excellency, and getting this close, but just out of reach thanks to all the people (now dipshits) who voted for Trump this time last year or so. Whatever were they thinking? Anyway, here’s the scoop.

To Refresh Your Memory

In September 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump, his adult children Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, the Trump Organization, and several executives under New York’s Executive Law § 63(12). She accused them of persistent business fraud through repeated false statements of financial condition that inflated Trump’s net worth by billions to obtain better loans, insurance rates, and tax treatment.

After a non-jury trial in late 2023 that included damning testimony from former CFO Allen Weisselberg about asset manipulations, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in February 2024 that the defendants had committed fraud. He ordered Trump to pay $355 million in disgorged profits (growing to over $450 million with interest) plus $100 million in penalties against his sons, barred Trump from serving as an officer of any New York company for three years, and installed independent monitors to oversee Trump Organization finances.

Appeal After Verdict

Trump appealed and won a partial victory in August 2025 when an appellate court vacated the monetary judgment but left the fraud findings and non-financial restrictions intact, a result James still called a major accountability win.

Trump views James, a Democrat who had campaigned in 2018 on investigating him, as the poster child for partisan “lawfare” meant to cripple his 2024 campaign. Throughout the race, he repeatedly labeled her a corrupt, racist witch hunter and promised retribution against her and other prosecutors he blamed for weaponizing the justice system against him.

Weaponizing the Justice Department 101 (Vindictive Prosecution)

Trump’s personal law firm is now the Justice Department. In April 2025, the Trump regime’s Department of Justice launched a probe into New York Attorney General Letitia James after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte referred her for potential criminal charges related to alleged misrepresentations in 2020 mortgage documents for a Virginia home, where she reportedly classified it as a second residence rather than an investment property to secure a lower interest rate, saving about $19,000 over the loan’s life.

Despite initial findings by career prosecutors of insufficient evidence to proceed, the administration installed Lindsey Halligan—a Trump ally and former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience—as interim U.S. Attorney for Virginia’s Eastern District in September 2025, overriding the prior interim appointee; Halligan then secured a federal grand jury indictment against James on October 9 for one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. James pleaded not guilty on October 24, denouncing the charges as politically motivated retaliation for her 2022 civil fraud lawsuit against Trump that resulted in over $450 million in penalties.

On November 24, 2025, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed the indictment without prejudice, ruling that Halligan’s appointment violated federal law under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, as Attorney General Pam Bondi’s authority to install her had expired after 120 days from the prior interim’s start in January; this nullified all actions tied to Halligan, including a parallel case against former FBI Director James Comey. Undeterred, the DOJ quickly empaneled a new grand jury to revive the case. Still, on December 4, 2025, just ten days later, the panel issued a rare “no true bill,” declining to re-indict James after reviewing the evidence, which legal experts described as a major embarrassment for the regime, given grand juries’ typical deference to prosecutors and the thin proof of intent in the allegations. James’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, called it a “decisive rejection,” while the DOJ could theoretically pursue a third attempt but faces heightened scrutiny over claims of vindictive prosecution.

In the end, James came out like she should have: Clean as a whistle. The entire “vindictive prosecution” thing is being stopped, once again, by the courts.

their voices and writing in front of a very much larger set of eyeballs (and my writing too, when I can). We can’t afford to lose the 2026 Midterms and regain the House, but thousands of elections matter just as much happening across the country next November. I created a whole company to be a cooperative place that bridges us on Substack to two destinations: The first is candidates and campaigns. The second is press platforms that lean left. Just around 40 outlets today reach more than 28 million people every day! That’s a lot of opportunity to put people like Nick Paro, Ellie Leonard, and Shane Yirak in front of! Their enthusiasm and energy is to be celebrated and elevated, in my opinion.

For that reason, I’d ask you to read about it here at this link. Also, that site is set up for our donation campaign to cover startup expenses – a pretty modest $35,000 before the end of the month. If you’re intrigued by what we’re doing, please take a moment to read. There will be more articles and more details coming out in the near future, too! (Like, this week!)

https://www.liftupdemocracy.org/meet-liftupdemocracy-org/

I hope you’ll take some time to step back, unplug, and detach from your digital devices today. I’ve missed writing that to you all! It’s essential for your mental health, so please consider taking an hour away from all of it. It may be constructive to sit in a quiet room and read a book. This is a long, protracted fight, and we need you in it!

Please be well.

Rick Herbst

December 5, 2025

LINKS

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/us/politics/trump-boat-attacks-killings.html

GIFT LINK TO SECOND STRIKE OBSCURES LARGER QUESTION ABOUT BOAT ATTACKS:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/us/politics/trump-boat-attacks-killings.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6U8.X9C_.uCABSh4483VP&smid=url-share

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/04/institute-peace-renamed-donald-trump

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/04/grand-jury-declines-to-indict-letitia-james

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2024/attorney-general-james-wins-landmark-victory-case-against-donald-trump

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-imposes-364-million-penalty-in-trumps-new-york-civil-fraud-case

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/19/what-happened-jamal-khashoggi-murder-trump-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0gdkwp2p9o

Yes, , I DID MAKE A “DECK”… 😎😂👍

Here is a link to the slides in a PDF Form in my Google Docs for the “DECK”…

Click To Open PDF

Anyway, thanks very much for those who joined here and on YouTube (link to replay there is: https://youtube.com/live/PgXj0g1QK1s?feature=share).

Deep dive into Venezuelan boat sinking as reported by WaPo → Ordered second strike to kill survivors of the initial missile attack. Positioned Adm Bradley as the scapegoat. We went through the key footage that shows the BS the White House press office is putting out framing Bradley when you strip the veneer off. Same with the video of Sleepy Trumpy and Horny For War Hegseth. Aigh.

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Thanks again for watching! I appreciate everybody’s support!

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-rick

Dec 2, 2025

I went through the comments, and those who commented were insightful and funny. (@Lisa Joy, “Opinions are like assholes…” - Great one!).

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By Rick Herbst