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The Politics of Fear
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The following piece appeared in the New Yorker magazine’ ‘Talk of the Town,’ recently. The author is that magazine’s editor, David Remnick. It describes how the President has always used ‘fear’ as one of his tools. Remnick points out that “As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump made his world view plain: there was ‘us’ and there was ‘them’ and that once he was in the White House, the fear factor would prevail.” To read it, and I strongly recommend that you do, CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/11/the-politics-of-fear on your device’s browser line.
For those who are among ‘them,’ it should sound familiar and for those who believe they are among Trump’s ‘us,’ it offers an awakening.
JL
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Bet You Never Heard of Mike Nellis
A course of action for Democrats is offered by Mike Nellis in his postings. Copy and paste https://endlessurgency.com/ on your browser line or CLICK HERE.
Mike is a long time Democratic strategist who pulls no punches and urges voters not to let Trump define the issues. Here is the final paragraph of a recent posting from that site:
‘Trump wants the election about crime, safety, and immigration—his turf. We win when it’s about the economy, inflation, and how his policies make life harder. Don’t let Trump dictate the terms. That’s how we lost in 2016 and 2024. He couldn’t pull it off in 2020 because COVID swallowed everything—and he botched it spectacularly. We can’t wait for a crisis to save us again. Eyes on the ball. Stay focused. Stay grounded. Win on the things that actually touch people’s lives and mirror their lived experience.’
A coach’s advice: No matter how good your defense is, you need an effective offense to score touchdowns. Don’t count on an interception or a fumble.
JL
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Why I Switched My Local Paper
(You should get one delivered at your doorstep every day)
Some of you, perhaps, have noticed a difference in the tone of Jackspotpourri over the past year of so. The columnists quoted are not quite the same, for example. I have at last taken steps to remedy this situation. Sort of. Let me explain.
Twenty-three years ago when we retired to Florida, I subscribed to the Palm Beach Post when a ‘bargain’ subscription was offered. With rare exception, I have maintained that subscription for almost a quarter of a century, being quite satisfied with the Post, that is until lately.
All newspapers are suffering these days, many failing or being acquired by national chains. Their local staffs are reduced and their resources are limited. The Post went this route ultimately becoming part of the Gannett organization, whose main publication is USA Today. But believe me, USA Today is not the New York Times.
The cracks first appeared in their sports coverage. They covered the Miami Dolphins with several lengthy articles in every issue, even off-season. Baseball news, including the local Miami Marlins, was usually absent from the Post’s sports pages. Their sports editor advised me that there were not enough Marlins fans in its area and it was not worth assigning a reporter on them.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the Post’s reporting on the Marlins recent three game sweep of the New York Yankees, following a five game winning streak, by publishing a piece from a USA Today/Gannett affiliate in northern New Jersey merely reporting on the the Yankees poor performance in Florida. The Post’s sports editor told me he did not have the personnel to cover the Marlins and the USA Today/Gannett ‘Yankee’ story was the only article available to him ‘on the wire.’
Most local newspapers do not have the staff to report on everything that happens but share the resources of agencies like the Associated Press to broaden their coverage. That’s where ‘the wire’ comes in. Well over a thousand newspapers participate in providing articles to the AP and the ability to share what the AP makes available ‘on its wire.’
Here’s the bad news. Gannett and their USA Today family, including the Palm Beach Post, withdrew from the Associated Press in March of 2024.
That is when the deterioration of the Post began, with broader news coverage affected and some regular columnists disappearing. This limited the basic outside ‘wire’ to which the Post had access to the other Gannett publications, and a relationship with a relatively small Reuters link, good for international news, and some small independent ‘opinion’ agencies, like ‘Outside Sources.’
Basically, a subscription to the Palm Beach Post became a subscription to USA Today plus local high school sports, the Miami Dolphins, local editorials and news stories, and a link to the Palm Beach News, a paper aimed at the socialites on Palm Beach island.
That’s why the Post has lost me as a subscriber.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel (owned by the Chicago Tribune) still remains part of the Associated Press family and because of that alone, is a far better newspaper than the Post, at least for me.
Although based in Fort Lauderdale, the Sun-Sentinel does a good job reporting on news from Palm Beach County, especially its southern part which was sometimes given a back seat by the Post. The Sun-Sentinel is now delivered to my doorstep daily.
JL
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Look Up in the Sky Tonight for Meteors
Late at night this week, when there is a minimum of artificial light, away from the moon, and an absence of clouds, is the best time to watch for the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. Around August 13, they should be at their best with about one a minute visible.
JL
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Why Dictators Sleep Poorly
When a country’s elected Chief Executive assumes dictatorial powers, dominating the judicial and legislative entities that exist in that country, the usual ways of removing him or her from office do not work, because the dictator influences or controls them. That is why dictators have to be taken down by other methods.
Usually, it is the military which accomplishes this, but all too often they replace one dictator with another. Another way is through the efforts of criminals, an untrustworthy group with which few dictators align themselves. Latin America offers many examples of both.
Though it has been strongly denied, there will always be the lingering suspicion that the assassinations of both Jack and Robert Kennedy resulted from broken deals with underworld elements.
This may be why a dictatorial Chief Executive might center their attacks on immigrants, educational institutions, uncooperative corporations and businesses, media outlets, and even stubborn islands of resistance within the government itself as well as some local governments, all groups without sufficient resources to resist and fight back, resulting in the Executive getting their way. And the citizenry itself, without leadership and organization, is unable to offer resistance.
Although such Executives might replace members of the military leadership with supposedly loyal generals and admirals, they never quite fully trust them, aware of the influence on their behavior the patriotic lessons learned in their service academies may have had on them. In fact, some Executives might prefer to recruit their own militia-like organizations. Hitler had his ‘brown shirts’ for this purpose.
Similarly, you will not see such Executives seriously attacking the criminals who distribute drugs and may manage other illegal activities. That’s a ‘sleeping dog’ often better left unawakened.
Either of these two groups, given good reasons to act, would have the ability in some manner to attempt to bring about the Executive’s removal from office. This is why astute observers of governments carefully watch a dictator’s actions in these two areas, and may be why some dictators do not sleep well.
(Any similarity of these ideas to what some see as today’s reality is purely coincidental.)
Nevertheless this might be a good time to visit ‘Here Be Dragons’ by CLICKING HERE or copying and pasting barbarafwalter@substack.com on your browser line to read Professor Walter’s’ thoughts. Dr. Walter is on the faculty at the University of California – San Diego.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com.
Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com
More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email.
Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps:
1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Most are from vendors which I may have used years ago. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them.
2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these ‘Promotion’ emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open.
3. Then I read my email.
Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine (or other search engines) where I can look up any subject I want.
Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri.
After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than the AI summary.
I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect.
Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence.
JL
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