the attitude with arnie arnesen the monday edition Dec 29
Arnie Arnesen
10 events and lessons from 2025.
- First. Letting us know that this is the year subtext would become text, it began on January 1 with a bomb in a Tesla Cybertruck set off in front of a Trump Hotel in Las Vegas
- 2. Then we had Billionaires all in a row on the stage at Trump’s inauguration, relegating members of Congress to a separate room to watch on TV
- Then literally the world’s richest man was given tacit permission to dismantle the agencies that regulate his companies and to dismantle others and kill millions
- 3. The bulldozing of the East Wing of the White House, a crude metaphor for almost anything you want it to be
- 4. The Supreme Court abandoned the pretense that it is neutral; showed us that it is a partisan actor like any other
- 5. Trump’s cognitive unfitness is now on clear, regular display; we are literally governed by an ignorant, mad king
- So obvious that even middle-aged generally apolitical suburbanites marched in huge numbers under the No Kings banner
- 6. Media, big Law Firms, Universities making obvious that they do not serve or defend the public interest; they too are beholden to monied interests
- 7. We learned that Law is all parchment barriers, and someone willing to ignore it cannot be effectively constrained; Laws only have meaning if you think they do
- 8. We learned that the Confederacy survived the Civil War, and is still determined to build a whites-only country; it now has a new paramilitary force in ICE and CPB and the DOJ
- 9. We learned that the Constitution cannot do the main job it was designed to do — to prevent the election of and concentration of power in a despot. It became clear this year that it’s a failure
- 10. Finally: The Key lesson for going forward is that we cannot have durable policy reform without political reform. Systems need to change. That’s should be the goal, after we depose the regime and send them all to prison or the gallows
How Effective Are Protests? Historians Say: Very. Protests change the protesters, their communities and the nation. From emancipation to women’s suffrage, civil rights and BLM, mass movements have shaped the arc of US history.
https://portside.org/2025-12-26/how-effective-are-protests-historians-say-very?utm_medium=email&utm_source=portside-snapshot
Zuckerberg settles $8 billion lawsuit over Cambridge Analytica scandal, avoids testifying Mark Zuckerberg and current and former Meta executives agreed on Thursday to settle a $8 billion shareholder lawsuit alleging the company’s directors failed to prevent billions of dollars in fines and legal costs stemming from repeated Facebook user privacy violations. The Federal Trade Commission in 2019 fined Facebook $5 billion in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal. https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20250717-zuckerberg-settles-8-billion-lawsuit-over-cambridge-analytica-scandal-avoids-testifying
nugget: The trial would have been a rare opportunity for Meta investors to see Zuckerberg answer probing questions under oath. In 2017, Zuckerberg was expected to testify at a trial involving a lawsuit by company investors opposed to his plan to issue a special class of Facebook stock that would have extended his control over that company. That case also settled before he took the stand. "Facebook has successfully remade the 'Cambridge Analytica' scandal about a few bad actors rather than an unravelling of its entire business model of surveillance capitalism and the reciprocal, unbridled sharing of personal data," Kint said. "That reckoning is now left unresolved."
MAGA Is Breaking Up Over an “Are Nazis Cool?” Debate. It’s a Sign of Things to Come. Trump’s GOP is held together by a cult of personality. But what happens when that personality flickers? https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/12/maga-heritage-foundation-mike-pence-donald-trump.html
One Big Beautiful Bill Act complicates state health care affordability efforts https://stateline.org/2025/12/26/one-big-beautiful-bill-act-complicates-state-health-care-affordability-efforts/
D. ARNIE ARNESEN
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Host of "The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen"