They Did It Again (And Again...)
The duopoly commits crimes again and again… And yet there are Americans who still vote for them thinking they’ll do better by us next time. Stop lying to yourself. They won't.
They Did It Again (And Again...)
by C.A. Matthews
Example 1: Christmas in February
The postmark read December 19, 2024. We received the Christmas card this past week. In previous years we received mail from my husband’s cousin in less than a month’s time. What was so different this time?
Two Christmas letters that I’d mailed out the first week of December came back “return to sender” a little over week ago. Is there some new rule that says that these letters must sit in bag somewhere inside a post office for almost two months before being returned to the sender?
What gives with the US postal service? If you’re blaming Trump for the lousy mail service, you’re only half right. Sure, Trump appointed Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General during his first term, but I mailed these letters (and others in the past four years which have been delayed and lost) during the Biden administration. Who served as Postmaster General under Biden?
You guessed it—it was Louis DeJoy and it still is.
If Louis DeJoy was installed by Trump to wreck the USPS so Congress would be tempted to shut it down and turn it into a private mail delivery corporation instead of a public one, then why did Biden never attempt to appoint another Postmaster General? I’ve received tons of emails these past four years from various organizations saying we should all write our Congress members as well as President Biden pleading to work toward changing the USPS board so it could offer a replacement for DeJoy.
The thing is, DeJoy knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s doing as our real rulers want him to do. And Biden didn’t want to upset the rulers, so DeJoy remained in office.
DeJoy’s bosses are not the president and Congress. His bosses are the oligarchs (or billionaires) who control everything because they essentially own everything—up to and including the presidency. DeJoy is following the oligarchs’ orders to gut the US Postal Service and ruin the Post Office’s formerly sterling reputation so the oligarchs’ private mail delivery firms can take over and make massive profits without the competition of an efficiently run, government mail delivery organization.
Read last week’s article If You Give A Billionaire Some Power… to see the faces of our real rulers. And remember this little poem whenever something doesn’t seem quite right in the American government:
“Red or Blue—they don’t give a shit about you!”
That’s right. The duopoly (or uniparty) doesn’t work for ordinary Americans. Duopolists work for the billionaires who pay them and pay them well via big fat donations to their campaign war chests. Upon retirement, these paid-off politicians land cushy jobs doing nothing, such as serving as “advisors” to the oligarchs’ corporations.
Independents and third party members run for elected office in order to help the people by promoting an agenda that puts the needs of the people before the billionaires’ needs. Duopoly members run for office to line their own pockets by prospering from insider stock trading.
Don’t believe me? Check out how well Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio has done since she entered Congress. Our real rulers don’t care much for do-gooders who take office to stand up for the rights of the people. Do-gooders get in the oligarchs’ way for maximizing profits. And speaking about profit-making enterprises…
Example 2: What’s So Wrong With Slave Labor? (It’s legal under the 14th Amendment.)
Trump has been (rightfully) criticized for his horrendous immigration-related executive orders. As a trained immigration advocate, I’ve been following his actions closely. The word on the street (in the non-profit immigration organizations sphere, that is) is that these attempts to remove (deport) undocumented persons are going to ultimately fail. Why? Because Trump can’t by himself destroy the entire legal system that US immigration law is based upon.
All people—citizens or non-citizens—are entitled to due process under the law. What that means in the simplest terms is that if people claim asylum in the US, under our immigration laws and international agreements on human rights that the US has signed on to, asylum-seekers are entitled to have their claims heard. Shipping people out of the country on planes who have claimed asylum doesn’t mean they can’t—and won’t—come back. Legally they are entitled to due process and can sue from outside the country for their rights to be respected. Numerous cases like this have been decided in the asylum-seekers’ favor in the past.
All Trump has done with his ill-advised executive orders so far is provided a lot of work for immigration lawyers and created headaches for everyone involved. At the end of the day, these barbaric tactics aren’t going to prevent people who are seeking asylum in the US from doing just that.
But why do people seek asylum in the first place? Answer: They’re leaving a terrible situation where they or their loved ones could be hurt or killed. It’s life or death for them—and most will choose life in a safer country.
So why is Trump going through all this nasty business if eventually asylum-seekers get to have their day in court? To say that grabbing people off the streets and shipping them out of the US isn’t going to put at least a small dent in the yearly immigration totals would be disingenuous. Some of those removed from the US without due process—against our own immigration laws—will not live long enough to return most likely.
Remember, people seeking asylum because aren’t rich and bored and just want a change of scenery. These are usually poor people who are discriminated against in their home country due to their gender, sexuality, religion, race, ethnicity, or political beliefs. They are in danger of being killed in their home country by government forces (such as the police or militias) or by others because their government simply won’t raise a finger to protect them. Transsexuals and gay persons are particularly at risk of being murdered upon return to their home country, as are women and children fleeing abusive relationships.
Trump and his kind know these terrible statistics but simply don’t care. Dead people don’t immigrate.
After all the initial chaos and confusion surrounding these executive orders calms down, what will change? Will desperate people stop immigrating to the US? Probably not. Like I said, people seeking asylum are running for their lives. They’re looking to settle in a safe place among friends and family who immigrated earlier to the US.
I predict things will pretty much remain the same. We’ll continue to have undocumented workers picking our produce in the fields and working in the slaughterhouses simply because they’re willing to do the hard work for a lot less money than American citizens would expect holding those positions. Plus, if an undocumented worker gets injured on the job, do you think they’ll sue their boss for unsafe working conditions? Of course they won’t. They’ll stay quiet so their boss doesn’t report them and their family members to ICE.
While countless immigrants will be swept up and deported, it will be just enough to say he [Trump] kept his promise, without stepping on the toes of his capitalist friends.--Mike Prysner, The Empire Files
Now for all those who think Trump is a monster who has deported more immigrants than any president in history, here are the numbers for the top three years with the most ICE deportations:
1. 2014 (Obama) - 316,000
2. 2024 (Biden) - 271,000
3. 2019 (Trump) - 267,000
Trump is third on the all-time list.
Deporting immigrants is a duopoly thing—it’s not a “Republican” or “Democrat” thing. Duopolists work for the oligarchs, the billionaires, remember? Undocumented workers and prisoners are the 21st century equivalent of slave labor. Why would the billionaires cut into their profit margins by paying living wages to free citizens when they have scared immigrants or incarcerated people to take advantage of?
If you can’t fathom why “Democrats” or “Republicans” would deport so many immigrants, consider the Ratchet Effect of how the duopoly works. One faction starts something horrible such as deportations and then the other faction works to keep it in place.
Trump appointed DeJoy—Biden kept him on as Postmaster General. Treating undocumented immigrants as a large slave labor pool is just par for the course for duopolists. They all are for it. The billionaires give huge campaign donations to both the Red and Blue teams, and they want to keep things the way they are. It’s really that simple. It’s really that evil.
Example 3: Genocide Is For Everyone
If you haven’t figured out by now that the US finances and arms just about any violent dictatorship on the face of the earth in order to make our billionaires richer, then I don’t know what to say. It’s all too obvious to most. It’s why the US has earned the nickname “The Great Satan.”
There’s no need to deny it. The US government has armed the genocidal Israeli Army for the past 15 months and done nothing to stop them as they murdered babies in incubators and burned patients alive in Gaza’s hospitals. Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken covered for their war crimes up until his last second in office. The Biden administration also financed and armed the Ukrainians in their proxy war for the US against the Russians. Trump, for better or worse, hasn’t topped Biden’s record of bloodshed. Yet.
The duopoly thrives on war. The military-industrial complex and Big Oil will always keep willing duopolists in office so these corporations can continue to profit from war. It’s why US billionaires in particular hate third parties such as the Green Party. Greens stand for “People, Planet and Peace,” which isn’t quite the billionaires’ thing. Maintaining world peace, putting the people’s basic needs first, and taking care of the planet cuts too much into the billionaires’ profits.
Green candidates are people-powered. That is, they don’t accept contributions from billionaires to run for office. Greens taking the side of ordinary people really infuriates both duopoly factions, but in particular it irritates the DNC. The Dems have always pretended to be “the worker’s party” or “the party of peace,” but Biden’s term in the White House has exposed their lies. Biden preventing the railroaders from striking for better safety measures and his administration selling 2,000 pound bombs to the IDF to drop on civilians in Gaza were pretty much giveaways.
Caitlin Johnstone puts it well how the duopoly factions work together:
It’s not very often you hear a US empire manager come right out and admit they only care about planetary hegemony and that their whole schtick about spreading freedom and democracy is a sham… Biden destroying Gaza and then Trump working to ethnically cleanse it is such a classic case of the jab-cross combo that Democrats and Republicans employ to advance the agendas of the empire. They don’t just do evil things, they set up the other party to inflict new evils. —From Tom Cotton Admits The US Doesn't Actually Care About Spreading Democracy
To sum up, duopolists don’t care about ordinary people’s well-being. Their actions clearly demonstrate this. We the People don’t deserve a decent postal service, a decent national health care service, or a decent environment to live in with clean air and water. Immigrants are to be abused and frightened into working dangerous, under-paid jobs.
The duopolists don’t care about the lives of innocent people in other countries when there’s money to be made for their billionaire backers. Genocide isn’t a dirty word in their dictionary. Who’s to say the billionaires and their lackeys won’t try genocidal tactics on ordinary Americans next to get rid of us so they can take what little land and resources we may still possess?
The duopoly commits these horrendous crimes against ordinary people again and again and again… And yet there are Americans who still vote for Democrat and/or Republican candidates thinking they’ll do better by us next time. Stop lying to yourself. You know they won’t.
Keep your eyes open and stop falling for their propaganda. The time to dump the duopoly (and their billionaire backers) is NOW. We might not get another chance.
You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or at Buy Me a Coffee or at Ko-fi. This is my only source of income. Thank you.
Related Articles and Interesting Links
(Watch and learn how to start a class action lawsuit in your state!)
A Coup Attempt Against American Taxpayers https://otherwords.org/a-coup-attempt-against-american-taxpayers/
Border Deployment to Insurrection Act: Trump's Illegal Military Plans https://empirefiles.substack.com/p/border-deployment-to-insurrection
They're Still Slaughtering Civilians In Gaza https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/theyre-still-slaughtering-civilians
Trump confirms US seeks forcible expulsion of Gaza's entire population https://www.owenjones.news/p/trump-confirms-us-seeks-forcible
The Western Way of Genocide https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-western-way-of-genocide-read
Tom Cotton Admits The US Doesn't Actually Care About Spreading Democracy https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/tom-cotton-admits-the-us-doesnt-actually
“Scorecard, Scorecard, You Can’t Tell al-Queda Without a Scorecard.” https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/scorecard-scorecard-you-cant-tell
Did a Trump executive order just cripple the global US regime change network? https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/did-a-trump-executive-order-just
A Well-Connected NYU Parent Is Trying to Get Students Deported https://theintercept.com/2025/01/31/nyu-gaza-protesters-deport-maca-antisemitism/
Nine countries launch legal action against Israel over Gaza war https://www.newarab.com/news/nine-states-launch-legal-action-against-israel-over-gaza-war
As Part of 'Authoritarian Takeover,' Trump Signs Order to Deport Pro-Palestine Students https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-executive-order-protests
Yes Elon Musk, you can be both a Zionist and a Nazi https://mondoweiss.net/2025/01/yes-elon-musk-you-can-be-both-a-zionist-and-a-nazi/
US Citizens Detained by Officials in Milwaukee for Speaking Spanish https://truthout.org/articles/family-us-citizens-shopping-in-milwaukee-was-detained-for-speaking-spanish/
Billionaire Ultimatum: Nicole Shanahan Warns Senators to Support RFK Jr.
Yanis Varoufakis on Cloud Capital vs AI: DeepSeek, Technofeudalism, Capitalism and the New Cold War https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/28/yanis-varoufakis-on-cloud-capital-vs-ai-deepseek-technofeudalism-capitalism-and-the-new-cold-war/
Israel's 'genocide general' welcomed in London – and the media yawns https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/israels-genocide-general-welcomed
Even at an Anti-Racist Educators’ Summit, Decrying Genocide Proved Controversial https://truthout.org/articles/even-at-an-anti-racist-educators-summit-decrying-genocide-proved-controversial/
Aaron Maté : The Costs of Shunning Diplomacy. youtube.com/live/SCRdBpUTmE0?si=-yJVWR4lHF4tWzrQ
Swiss official who jailed journalist Ali Abunimah is fanatical pro-Israel activist https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/swiss-official-who-jailed-journalist
Ali Abunimah has been freed by Swiss authorities after being falsely accused of inciting violence https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/ali-abunimah-has-been-freed-by-swiss
Denmark PREPARES for POSSIBLE INVASION by USA youtu.be/ngbHkrzda-c?si=MaBVuJKjj3dkURCK
How America Has Supported And Whitewashed Real Fascists In Ukraine Since 2014. https://the307.substack.com/p/how-america-has-supported-and-whitewashed
Israel and the Kennedy Assassinations https://husseini.substack.com/p/israel-and-the-kennedy-assassinations
The Evolution of the Militarized Data Broker https://unlimitedhangout.com/2025/01/investigative-reports/the-evolution-of-the-militarized-data-broker/
The Tiger Show https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-tiger-show (Powerful!)
Why Is The US Always At War? (This short video explains it clearly.)
I don't get how so many otherwise intelligent Americans fall for either of the red/blue MAGA teams. These criminals are destroying the country and the planet just to make themselves richer. And how long can you live on a dying planet with your billions, huh? Case closed!
Cindy, great column as always. The meme juxtaposing tRump and the Native American was absolutely priceless; I wanna have that blown up into a poster!
I also want a bumper sticker that reads Don’t blame me, I voted for Jill Stein. 😁
Was the red and blue bird meant to be an eagle? If so, isn’t it appropriate that our national symbol is a carrion eater?
Red and blue: two cheeks on the same ass.