The Roundup
The Roundup
The special "Donald Trump won the 2024 election" edition
What Could Possibly Happen in a Second Trump Administration?
With Donald Trump saying that he will rule as a dictator only on Day 1, it's unknown what could really happen as of this writing. I found this article on Vox about what the average person in an authoritarian state goes through: Life in an Authoritarian State is Mostly Boring and Tolerable.
The Real Ukraine YouTube channel had a series of street interviews with Ukrainians who reacted to the recent election and they speculated on how Ukraine will be affected by the election of Donald Trump.
As a reminder, here is a statistical link of Trump's previous four years in the White House.
One thing is for sure, the Russians definitely love the outcome of the recent election. Even before that election Russian state television had hailed Donald Trump as a “Destroyer of America.”
Two Different Perspectives on People Voting Against Their Own Interests
This TikTok video went viral when an African American woman known as bitchhappens called out various groups for voting against their own interests when they chose Donald Trump.
Yet V. Spehear of Under the Desk News wrote on their Threads post this message that we all need to keep in mind during these trying times:
**GUYS** before we all start pointing fingers at marginalize groups like Indigenous people bc an exit poll says they went 63% for Trump..
Remember the exit poll only polled 22k of 143 MILLION voters - ok? So let’s relax a minute. It’s not 53% of White Women went for Trump! It’s 53%, of the just 22k people that were asked at just a handful of polling sites.
The exit polls are pseudo science rot. We can not afford additional (undue) division.
When the Nostradamus of US Political Elections Got His Prediction Wrong
Allan Lichtman had long correctly predicted who would win the next US election based on statistics and history, which earned him the nickname of Nostradamus of US Political Elections. He predicted that Kamala Harris would win only to get this year's prediction wrong for the very first time of doing this for over 40 years. Lichtman explains how he had gotten his prediction wrong for the first time ever.
Bob Woodward is a Reporter Who Sits on Important Stories
When I was studying journalism at the University of Maryland my professors used to tell me that delaying or sitting on a story is one of the worst major sins that a journalist can commit. I had it drilled into me that a story must be released to the general public as soon as possible in order for them to be informed (and to sell papers or encourage people to watch TV news). Well veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward did it not once, but twice and he did it mainly to increase sales of his books. Look, I know that he's done great work in the past and that's largely due to his investigative work with Carl Bernstein on the burglary at the Watergate that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
But now he's switched to sitting on stories to help sell his last two books. One resulted in more deaths from COVID-19 in 2020 than it would have had he sounded the alarm just a few months sooner. The other could have affected the outcome of the recent election had he simply revealed his one story months ago that could have reminded people of both how badly Donald Trump had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and his deference to Vladimir Putin. I had originally intended to write my own rant about this until I came upon this Substack by Tara Dublin that I highly recommend reading: Bob Woodward is a Jerk or When a Book Release Matters More Than America.
Addendum to the 2024 US Election
Here's an informative video on the issue of whether the Electoral College is killing the democratic process in the United States.
How the Kremlin Controls Information Both Inside and Outside of Russia
Fined for yellow and blue shoes: How Russian laws smother dissent.
A great short video on how Russian disinformation works.
Other Links That are Worth Checking Out
Hybrid Warfare and Propaganda.
I started Occupy Wall Street. Russia tried to co-opt me.
Progressives in the US continue to shoot themselves in the foot.
The alt-left continues to shoot themselves in the foot.
And Finally…The Future of This Substack
When I originally started Deconstructing Kremlin Propaganda, I envisioned something that I would work on either once or twice a week. But with the recent election and all kinds of news flying fast, I've been working on it more often than I originally intended. I created this Roundup feature in order to write far fewer Substack articles.
The election is over and I'm at the point of burnout. I'm taking a hard look at this Substack and I've decided to cutback to working on this only once or twice a week. (If there's an unusually important major news story that I feel is important for my subscribers to know about, I may occasionally go up to three times.) As a result, I'm going to retire the Roundup feature because I just don't have the energy to continuously provide news updates on a weekly basis. Every time I came upon something on Twitter/X that I thought would be perfect for The Roundup I would copy that story over to that page. I came across so many stories on a daily basis that I would update that page everyday until either Friday or Saturday rolled around and I would hit Send. With the US election it got really insane, not only for the weekly Roundup page but I would get stories that I felt warranted separate entries, such as the actress whose best known role is Cindy Brady on The Brady Bunch who complained about how being a Trump supporter had harmed her acting career or the Trump supporters crying over the death of Peanut the pet squirrel. I was getting to the point where I would come up with new Substack entries six or seven days a week (including the weekly Roundup). Since I'm the only person who's working on this Substack, it was getting to be too much for me.
So you are now reading the last Roundup post that I will ever write for this Substack. I came to this decision because there are other news-focused Substacks like The Bulwark, The Hartmann Report, Mary Trump, Under the Desk News, The Opinionated Ogre, Dean Obedallah, Steady, Two Grumpy Old Men on Ukraine, Heather Cox Richardson, and Meidas Touch that all do a phenomenal job of keeping up with the news and I'm sure that they will be out there covering the latest outrage coming from the Trump Administration in the coming years. From now on the only news I intend to write about is anything that happens at the local level that could serve as an inspiration for you to try in your own communities in order to mitigate any harm or abuses coming from the Trump Administration.
I'm going to focus more on deconstructing whatever propaganda is coming from either the Kremlin or the GOP (since they seem to be one and the same these days). I will highlight whatever tankies and vatniks I find so you won't be fooled into falling for their bullshit. I will also continue with my monthly Self-Care Sunday posts since we all need to be reminded to take a step back and take care of ourselves. But I think it's time for me to start taking my own advice I've been dishing out in my Self-Care Sunday posts and engage in my own self-care by cutting back on the amount of work I've been putting into this Substack.
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