People are starting to realize that there is no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power. (2/2)

Some people, for reasons I do not claim to understand, can make grotesque mistakes and it slides right off them. Reagan was famous for being “the Teflon president”. Trump (and cronies) take this to a whole new level.

People are not going to “understand” this by mere words alone. No amount of complaining by Democrats is going to change minds. No pictures of hungry children, nor videos of parents being separated from their kids at the borders are going to make this go away. Protests in the public square are not going to convince anyone who is not already convinced.

The only thing that’s going to get their attention is being smacked in the face with a 2x4: losing their jobs, cutting their Social Security checks, watching prices skyrocket after tariffs are imposed, seeing their nascent crypto “investments” go to zero, having a wave of corporate bankruptcies that affect them personally, and so on. I am not even convinced that losing Ukraine to Putin *and* Taiwan to Xi will get their attention until they are hit across the head with a log so big they cannot avoid it.

I am reminded of Nancy Reagan, who watched her husband ignore the AIDS epidemic until her friend Rock Hudson died. Or Dick Cheney who was against same-sex marriage until his daughter came out. There’s so much more, but there’s little point in delineating it all. The simple fact is “they won’t change until it comes and bites them on the ass.”