Autumn, 1974. In the previous 12 months, President Nixon was forced to resign by the Watergate scandal, congressional investigations were exposing FBI and CIA psyops against the American people, gas prices literally tripled, and double-digit inflation ravaged the economy and very noticeably lowered the standards of living of the working and middle classes.

Gerald Ford was the unelected President, and generally thought of as well-meaning but incapable, which launched the comedy career of Chevy Chase.

The midterm elections that November were a disaster for the Republican Party of Nixon and Ford. Democrats gained 49 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate, giving them the power to stop anything Ford tried, and that was probably a good thing at the time.

When South Vietnam was collapsing in the spring of 1975, Gerald Ford and his bloodsoaked Secretary of State Henry Kissinger really really wanted to send in the Marines to save Saigon, but Congress refused to consent to any such effort.

The vote wasn’t even close. I remember because I was 17 at the time, the draft was gone, and I really really wanted to keep it that way.

Then, we got Carter, more stagflation, more double digit inflation, no new wars but he was letting the CIA play in Afghanistan, then a US Empire defeat in Iran by the Iranian Revolution, and then came the Reagan reaction in 1980.

See how that works? One government party pisses too many people off, then the other one comes in, throws some tub to the whale, then it pisses too many people off, the other party comes back in, you know the drill.

Now, we have a President who ran on a promise of no new wars and total transparency obviously covering up his involvement in a scandal that makes Watergate look like juvenile vandalism, and then starting a war to avoid talking about it! Incredible, but here we are.

Donald Trump began a stupid, unwinnable war that he’s too egotistical to admit he has already lost, is openly enabling a genocide seen by Americans in real time with not even Walter Cronkite as a go-between, and is directly responsible for the collapse of the petrodollar and the inflation and pain that come with it.

And neither Gerald Ford nor Henry Kissinger ever said anything like this:

Reporter: To what extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you to make a deal(with Iran)?

President Donald J. Trump: Not even a little bit.

Republican hopes of anything better than a total blowout in November:

One government party royally screws up; the other government party gets voted in. The ruling oligarchy puts up with a few reforms that don’t destroy them, the reformers themselves never dream of destroying the capitalist system that made the reforms necessary in the first place and will eventually unravel them in the second, and then the Empire looks for more palatable victims to feed its ever insatiable MIC.

I am not saying not to vote this November, but I’m not about to tell you that it’s your duty to ever vote for a government party politician, either.

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I will vote this time, because I don’t want a second generation Indian immigrant billionaire snake-oil salesman as governor, and the choice in the Senate is between a Bible-thumping hypocrite who literally took a 100K donation from one of Epstein’s close buddies(one Les Wexner, former CEO of Victoria’s Secret) before he voted against releasing the Epstein Files, and former Senator Sherrod Brown, who got me an additional $1000 per month in retirement income by pushing the Social Security Fairness Act through.

Talk about a pair of no-brainers. And Ohio Republican ads still brag about them being in lockstep with Trump. They lose votes every time they air one, and don’t even realize it yet. Frank Zappa had a T-shirt for them back when they were baby Republicans cheering for Reagan:

Contrary to what capitalist propaganda tells you, one’s wealth has no correlation to one’s intelligence. Trump and Ramaswamy are perfect examples of this. There are many more.

I am saying not to place too much hope in, much less fall in love with, any of these Democrats this year. Or ever. At best, they might improve a few little things, but they will never solve the fundamental problems plaguing the American people because they are beholden to the same system which creates those problems. The same applies to Republicans, of course.

No, we can’t just vote our way out of this mess. Eventually, we’re going to have to have a real revolution. However, we can set things up to prevent Trump from doing much more damage for the rest of his term, which will probably include a year or so of President JD Vance, and we probably don’t want him able to do very much, either.

Most importantly, whether you are American or no, now you know you can at least make some money off of some poor schmuck who thinks the Democrats will pick up fewer than 40 House seats.

Thank you for reading, good day or night, and good luck.

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