Adios to a Miserable 2024. Get Ready to Fight.

The future of this country depends on what we can do over the next two years.

January 30, 2024

By Marc Cooper

Note to readers: This Friday my wife and I will be decamping to Chile for 5 weeks or so. We are not going into exile or abandoning the fight. We are going to visit family and mostly going escape the darkest, coldest, wettest part of the PNW winter. Coop Scoop will remain in publication mode. It might be a bit erratic the first couple of weeks as we get set up and dug in. But we are not giving up the fight. Now, more than ever, with the MSM buckling to the authoritarians, outlets like THE COOP SCOOP desperately need your support. This is a crucial time to subscribe and/or upgrade to a paid subscription. Thanks. See you next week.

I listened to the news today, oh boy. I heard it might rain in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I heard what kind of clothes you should wear if you are going to watch the ball drop. I heard the ball weighs 12,000 pounds… a crucial fact.

This report on a major network lasted about 2 ½ minutes—about the same length, or actually longer, than most broadcast reports on the ongoing massacres in Ukraine and Gaza, which are becoming ever less frequent. And much longer than any report I have heard on Elon Musk lying about his own initial H-1B visa, making him a candidate to lose his citizenship and be eligible for deportation.

And we wonder why only 15% of the population follows politics closely. A new survey shows that only 10% of Americans read any newspaper. And those who read newspapers online average about 2.5 minutes before they click back to Amazon or ESPN.

I don’t believe in the hocus pocus that turning a New Year means anything in itself. The world will be the same on January 1 as it was the day before. But people believe in all sorts of mythical crap like this. New Year’s Eve is just another item on a long list of nonsense and a good excuse to get hammered. Salud!

2024 was a miserable year. Apart from the mass murders occurring in the aforementioned wars, we saw the most unfit candidate for president in history win the popular vote in spite of felony convictions and overwhelming evidence he doesn’t know shit from Shinola. We saw the MAGA coalition win a trifecta. We saw a loathsome slate of misfits, kooks, fascists, hustlers, and zealots proposed for the cabinet to back up the towering, lying, and mentally twisted imbecile who will have the nuclear codes.

We saw the American oligarchy, which has always been with us, come out of the closet and put itself on full, garish display. The richest people in the world pretending to speak for the working class. We saw major media outlets bow to the oligarchs and to the addled president, now selling his own line of merch as millions of suckers eagerly snatch them up.

We learned that American elections are now supposedly decided by appearances on a podcast run by someone with an IQ barely above room temperature.

We saw the Republican Party smashed to pieces and gobbled up by the grotesque creature known as MAGA. With that, we saw the previously most stalwart opponents of Russia convert themselves into allies of Vladimir Putin.

We were immersed in intentional lies and disinformation from the MAGA cult. (‘They’re easting our pets! The whole world is emptying their jails and asylums and sending them to our border!)

We saw the Democratic Party kicked back onto its ass, still shocked and dazed, with no direction back home.

We saw the long-standing idea among Democrats and the Left—that if we could only reach “low propensity” or non-voters, they would vote progressive—blow up in their faces. MAGA got to them first, and they voted for a bully racist and fascist.

We saw the collapse of the woke myth of DEI finally pay off, dividing us by race and gender, as young Black males and Latinos started voting for the same fascist demagogue. They are not BIPOCs or POCs, but rather working-class individuals, small business owners, and professionals who face the same economic squeeze as their white counterparts.

We saw average home prices in major cities floating up near, and often over, $1 million putting home buying into an impossible category for the vast majority of renters of all races, colors and gender.

We saw Joe Biden kick off his new term with real boldness that evoked FDR. And then we saw MAGA and a couple of scuzzball Democratic senators sink all forward motion on his program. This was followed in 2024 by Biden’s public mental decline, which was obscenely covered up by his closest insiders, only for him to pathetically meltdown on stage during that first summer debate.

We saw Biden virtually disappear from the public eye after November 5, ceding all coverage to Donald J. Trump and his movement. The outgoing president could have denounced the incoming mob as a mortal threat during the Keystone Kops transition to the incoming "Turd-in-Chief." And he ends his term as a regretful and bitter self-pitying old man, delusional enough to think he could have beaten Trump. His legacy will be he was too egotistical to stick to his promise of being a one-term president and helped paved the way for a return of the worst president in history at age 82. Sad but true.

We saw Nancy Pelosi—a bare-knuckled backroom infighter, usually portrayed as an angelic genius—block 35-year-old AOC, a truly popular politician with a real following, from heading up the all-important House Oversight Committee. Instead, Pelosi installed a 79-year-old with esophageal cancer in her place. Don’t ask me why, unless Nancy has a new strategy to make the nursing home and hospice vote the new base of the battered party. And why not, given that an ossified gerontocracy firmly occupies the commanding heights of the Democratic Party.

For the first time in American history we saw a majority, 51% of voters, say they consider themselves independents. The reasons why are quite vivid.

We saw the inert rock occupying the Attorney General’s office wait 18 months before going after Trump for what was clearly an attempted coup—giving him ample time this year to use the legal system to run out the clock and evade all accountability. Merrick Garland turned to be so big a fizzle, that even Biden —who appointed him— publicly chided him last week.

We saw the U.S. Supreme Court exposed once again as both an open sewer of unchecked corruption and personal greed, as well as a blatant ideological support system for the MAGA fascists and their convicted felon of a leader, writing him a blank check for lawlessness in the new administration.

We saw 21 states outlaw abortion, creating a recent rash of newborn babies showing up in dumpsters in ass-backward Texas. And yet, we learned this week that abortions are now at a record high, rendering these bans nothing but cruel punishment and an obstacle course for women.

2025 looks like it will mesh seamlessly with the passing year. On this Friday January 3, the new Congress will be seated, and it seems doubtful that, with a one-seat majority, the religious fanatic Mike Johnson will be re-elected as Speaker. The resulting chaos could torpedo Trump’s certification on January 6 and even his January 20 inauguration and the CW is that loon Jim Jordan will be his likely replacement. It will make no difference as it appears that the real congressional leader is Elon Musk.

I have been among those who have warned that the Trump administration will be authoritarian and neo-fascist. I stand by the authoritarian label—that is written in stone. But it sure looks like the major characteristics of the incoming regime will be pure chaos and irrational, impulsive moves by a deluded president and his choir of backers. MAGA lacks the discipline and the political smarts to construct a fascist regime…I think.

The open warfare now erupting inside MAGA, with the xenophobes and racists led by Steve Bannon and the contemptuous political morons on the Oligarch Team led by Elon Musk and amplified by the despicable Xitter.

This rift was more or less inevitable, as there was no through-line to the MAGA movement except hatred for the other half of America, rank xenophobia, and the worship of a cult idol. Building a governing coalition on the backs of an uninformed and misinformed working class, along with self-serving oligarchs who know only greed and power, was bound to be rocky—to say the least. And now that Trump has sided with the billionaires (he had already named ten to cabinet-level positions), it’s anybody’s guess how this will shake out. Will the hooples be ready to be bossed around by foreign-born oligarchs? Maybe. I am not going to bet against it.

I know the above reads as a dreary downer. Sorry. But you can’t fix a problem unless you know what it is. And we have a lot of problems.

2025, however, will be a year of opportunity if we make it so. Yes, Trump will likely pardon the jailed and convicted January 6 hooligans. He will likely deport the million or so undocumented immigrants already in U.S. jails or convicted of crimes. I doubt he will get much farther than that. He is not going to invade Panama, or buy Greenland or annex Canada. These are the public musings of a psychopath and at best serve as a new set of unfulfillable grievances he can feed to and distract his base.

His coalition will be in constant chaos and disorder, and he will be lucky if he can complete 20% of his horrendous agenda. Damage will be done, but the world will not come to an end. And nobody knows how the red-hatted plebes will react to a government run essentially by an unelected, amoral, profane, and arrogant greed master like Elon Musk.

What we do know is that the ball is now in our court. We must build not a resistance, but a rock-solid opposition. If the Democrats wish to join us, they are welcome. They should not be invited, however, to lead that opposition, as they are incompetent to do so. That has been proven in spades. We already have some jackass senators like Fetterman and even Blumenthal talking about “working where we can” with the Republicans.

With all of the tumult, chaos, and craziness that will confront us this coming year, this will be the final test of the American people and of a constitutional republic. If you wish to abstain or sulk in a corner, you become part of the problem. All around the world, mobilized civilian populations have thrown off shackles much weightier than those that Trump will clamp down so no feeling sorry for yourself. It makes you look weak and that’s what tyrants thrive upon.

No more wishcasting or self-pity will be allowed. No more lamenting that the Democrats are a centrist party… um… we have known that for decades. If there are younger, more liberal, and progressive currents who will join us in opposition, so much the better. And if there are centrists or conservative Democrats who want to join in, they should be welcomed. Agonizing, however, about the internal politics of a party that isn’t really a party, but rather a collection of fiefdoms and power centers floated by PACs, is a monumental waste of time.

If you want to preserve rule of law, civil liberties, and compassion for the majority of the country feeling squeezed, then it is up to you, your friends, and neighbors to start building that opposition with real alternatives to offer beyond denouncing Donald Trump.

THE LIBERATION OF PARIS BY THE CITIZENRY

With the imbeciles and cretins taking power and fighting among themselves, we will have ample opportunity to present those rational and effective alternatives while taking measures against the repression that will also be palpable very soon.

Don’t kid yourselves into thinking that Trump/MAGA will magically implode and disappear. Not gonna happen. It needs to be shoved, overwhelmed and defeated. No matter how awful his first two years will be, there is no guarantee whatsoever that a majority of voters will not applaud and vote for his minions in the 2026 midterms just the same. There are a whole lot of people in the cult, and no matter how chaotic, ineffective, and contradictory his first two years might be, cult members tend to follow their leader no matter what.

There will be disappointment, maybe even rancor, among his troops. But few people desert a barricade unless there is an opposing one to defect to and to join.

America will remain a republic, only if we decide to keep it.

Wishing you a resolute New Year.++

Follow me on Bluesky thecoopscoop.bsky.social

All the other major web platforms except Bluesky are now throttling links, especially political ones. That makes it very difficult to grow substacks like this. So please spread this around, and subscribe for free or better yet, paid. We are the lowest cost substack out there at about 8 cents per day. The media is buckling to Trump and the continued existence of independent voices like the Coop Scoop must survive.

Monthly subs are $5 a month. Yearly is only $31.00 (most substacks are $80 a year.)

It’s also holiday season so consider giving a paid gift subscription to a family member, friend or enemy. Saves time at the mall.

You are also encouraged to donate via Venmo or Zelle. If you subscribe that way plse include or message me you email. Thanks!

ZELLE ————————>marccooper.usc@gmail.com

VENMO ———————→ @marc-cooper-56022

·