If you want to understand how we have come to this point; how the stink of Epstein is embedded in the hallways, offices and backrooms of political and corporate power there are four books I recommend.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (2/2/26)
The most recent release of some 2.7 million of 3 million pages and related videos and photos that were supposed to be released from the Trump/Epstein files got me thinking of a recent note sent to me by a reader:
When I was younger, I had a frequent nightmare where something was chasing me, possibly supernatural/alien/monstery things, and I was in the boonies trying to run from it.
In the nightmare, I always came across a bunch of houses, residences, with porch lights on, and I ran to all the doors, ringing all the doorbells, screaming for help. My expectation was that someone would open the door, and people would instantly catch my horror, sweep me inside, and the father of the family would get his rifle, and the police would be called. Everybody would be horrified by the thing chasing me and unified in trying to defeat it.
But the nightmare always progressed in the same way; most of the doors wouldn’t open to my ringing. One does, and it’s a middle-aged woman who looks ambivalent about my horror.
I try to scream what’s coming, but she either doesn’t believe me or doesn’t care; she sort of shrugs and is about to close the door on my face.
And that’s my end, I’ve got nobody, I managed to get to the houses, thought the people would save me, but the same LACK OF APPROPRIATE RESPONSE that was my end in the dream, feels a lot like the lack of response to Whitney Webb’s and others’ work, where they plainly lay it out there, look what’s happening, we’re being lead like lambs to slaughter.
And... nothing follows.
I think most Americans today are looking at the rabidly autocratic transformation of the country and wondering, “WTF, who is gonna’ save us?”
As dark and disgusting as previous releases of even heavily (illegally) redacted Jeffrey Epstein documents were, what dropped Friday spins to deeper, darker depths of depravity, cruelty and perversion. George Galloway’s MOATS monologue yesterday was a powerful summary dose of reality of the evil class ruling the West.
Masks ripped away
All the masks are coming off the corporate state. From the lies that led us into disastrous, bankrupting Middle East wars for Israel, to deindustrialization and impoverishment of the American working class while billionaires cash in on tax breaks and subsidies, to a Congress and White House entirely bought and owned by genocidal Zionist and corporate lobbies, the illusions of who we are are popping, one after the other.
But as the ICE Gestapo murders, beatings, kidnappings, disappearances, child abuse and terror ripping through neighborhoods in Minneapolis and other communities across the nation has revealed to us the true face of this government that poor countries from Vietnam to Chile and Iraq to Syria have suffered under for decades, we now see — and are experiencing — the US for what it is: a rogue, corporate terror state.
It’s all overwhelming and confusing. Maddening and terrifying. One needs to understand that what we are seeing is not an exception to the nature of the United States: it is the rule. Truly, what we are experiencing is who and what we are and have been, especially post-World War II.
And what we are seeing with ICE is not about illegal immigrants. It is about building a domestic terror force to control us all.
What the hell happened?
If you want to understand how we have come to this point; how the stink of Epstein is embedded in the hallways, offices and backrooms of American political and corporate power there are four books I recommend.
I know, four books is a lot in the age of iPhone doom scrolling and YouTube mind-numb, but to make sense of what is happening and how it will directly impact each of us and the future our children will face if we do not rise up and resist, they are essential reading.
The first two are by Catholic Worker peace activist and scholar James W. Douglass, whose two books explore the coup d’état assassinations that toppled our government. On the day JFK was murdered (soon followed by MLK Jr., RFK and Malcom X) whatever faint gestures of a democratic republic we once had were swept aside by the CIA and manipulators of the deep state — what Douglass call the “Unspeakable”.
Douglass’s first book came out in 2008 and the second in late 2025, as he turned 89 years old. Both books are heavily researched, clearly footnoted and powerfully written, as readable as powerful novels.
Douglass provides the detail and context of the corporate state we live in and he names and profiles the traitors who have methodically led us into our current disaster.
Where Douglass lays out the political and intel agencies coup d’état, author Whitney Webb’s two-volume book lays out how we have come to be ruled by a truly, grotesque cabal of privileged, entitled and — as Galloway correctly labels — “demonic” and “satanic” class of pedophile perverts.
One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, Vol. Two
The recent delayed and incomplete release of Epstein files on the same day as Melania Trump’s absurd, self-aggrandizing ‘documentary’ film grift wilted in the theaters contains often detailed allegations of rape of girls and boys, impregnation and abortions, torture and ritual abuse, murder, blood sacrifice, even references to cannibalism. The fact that many of the allegations go back over 25 years and most were not even investigated by the FBI is yet another example of our corrupt, darkly twisted “just-us” system.
As bizarre as many of the recently dropped reports and documents sound, within the context of Webb’s deeply researched work on the Epstein network and the earlier Epstein-like Franklin Scandal of the late 80s, it all feels consistent.
Understand ‘chaos-land’ and prepare
The biggest takeaway from the books above is to forget about the Republican vs Democrat or even Right vs Left carnival show. The only thing we need to focus on is TOP vs BOTTOM and the figurative — and in many cases literal — rape of the majority of this country by a tiny economic ‘elite’. It’s all about class, nothing else.
And, no, neither party is going to rescue us.
As retired US Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson recently observed: “We’re in chaos-land, that’s where we are.”
Further down the post you will find other references that touch upon or bring additional insight on the issues of the four books. Adding facts and historical context is essential to the intuitive understanding that things have never been as they seem and all is falling apart. And — most importantly — what needs to be done in response.
The brutality and discord we see escalating daily is the corrupt empire coming home and the goal is AI-dominated total control of us all.
As novelist Margaret Atwood — whose 1998 novel “The Hand Maid’s Tale” warned us of where we were headed — notes in the interview below:
"We came to realize that a civilization which rode roughshod over the way of life of other peoples was incorporating evil in its own way of life."
Beware the coming false flag attacks
If after Minneapolis and the spiraling Epstein scandal you still have any doubt that the government will kill us, watch the video below on Operation Northwoods, a methodically planned, detailed mass government terror attack on US cities designed to justify war on Cuba in 1962. And, of course, never forget the 1967 US/Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.
As an example of US/Israeli false flags, watch Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi detailing the recent US/Israeli terror attacks within his country designed to gin up western support for another manipulated “color revolution”, like those that have decimated countries across the Middle East in service to US/Israeli hegemonic control. It’s a story even mainline liberal news organizations like Democracy Now! ignore, or cover up.
If it isn’t triggering WW III in Iran, it is highly likely we will experience some form of coordinated terror attack here on the homeland to justify “temporary” suspension of Constitutional Rights and imposition of an unlimited Gestapo ICE domestic military force informed by AI. Again, the work of Douglass and Webb provides context and the twisted logic behind such a warning.
If at all possible, purchase the books from a local independent bookseller. Purchase physical rather than digital books, which — I predict — will be subtly censored or scrubbed to oblivion in the next few years.
I know this can all sound a tad paranoid, but if you read Douglass and Webb you will understand nothing is too much or too far to go for the truly depraved SOBs running this country.
Portrait Of Today’s America
An Ice agent at the Delaney Hall detention facility during a protest in New Jersey, on 12 June 2025. / Photograph: Olga Fedorova/AP
Washington Post Raid Is a Frightening Reminder: Turn Off Your Phone’s Biometrics Now! — The recent federal raid on the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson isn’t merely an attack by the Trump administration on the free press. It’s also a warning to anyone with a smartphone. Included in the search and seizure warrant for the raid on Natanson’s home is a section titled “Biometric Unlock,” which explicitly authorized law enforcement personnel to obtain Natanson’s phone and both hold the device in front of her face and to forcibly use her fingers to unlock it. In other words, a judge gave the FBI permission to attempt to bypass biometrics: the convenient shortcuts that let you unlock your phone by scanning your fingerprint or face. … Link to story
ALERT! Preserve Evidence Of ICE Crimes At Demonstrations To Help Future Prosecutions — Information & evidence protection is the first step on the road to justice. … Link to story
"You will never find justice in a world where criminals make the rules."
— Bob Marley
“There’s all kinds of stuff that’s been wiped out of the history we have.”
Jim Douglass - JFK And The Unspeakable
“At a certain point in his presidency John Kennedy turned a corner and he didn’t look back i believe that decisive turn toward his final purpose in life resulting in his death happened in the darkness of the Cuban Missile Crisis although Kennedy was already in conflict with his national security managers the missile crisis was the breaking point at that most critical moment for us all he turned from any remaining control that his security managers had over him toward a deeper ethic a deeper vision in which the fate of the earth became his priority without losing sight of our own best hopes in this country he began to home in with his new partner Nikita Khrushchev on the hope of peace for everyone on this earth.”
— James W. Douglass
The Searchers (11/8/14)
1-hour, 32-minute video
The Secret Govt. Plan To KILL Its Own Citizens: Operation Northwoods
Forgotten History (5/9/25)
In 1962, America's top military leadership proposed a secret plan to stage false flag operations on American soil — just to justify a war with Cuba.This chilling blueprint, known as Operation Northwoods, called for fake hijackings, bombings, staged funerals, and even the destruction of a drone airliner painted to mimic a real passenger flight. The goal: manufacture public outrage, blame Cuba, and rally the nation into supporting a full-scale invasion.
The Pentagon’s top brass, including General Lyman Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed off on this plan. But President John F. Kennedy rejected it — shutting down the proposal before it could unfold.
Declassified decades later by the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, Operation Northwoods is now a disturbing case study in how power can drift dangerously behind closed doors.
Join us as we explore the hidden history of Cold War deception, military manipulation, and the dark realities of false flag history most Americans were never meant to see.
How far were our leaders willing to go?
And what would have happened if Kennedy had said yes?
12-minute video
“All dictatorships do this.”
Margaret Atwood On Trump & History
[Editor’s Note: This a GREAT interview! Well worth the time. — M. Taylor]
On With Kara Swisher (12/8/25)
Margaret Atwood is one of the most famous and prolific authors of the modern era. Though best known for her 1985 hit novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” her dozens of works span literary genres — poetry, novels, children's books, essays, short stories — and often defy neat categorization. Now, at 86, Atwood has written her first memoir. At roughly 600 pages, it’s an intimate look at the ways her personal life inspired and shaped her writing.
Kara and Atwood talk about her lifelong passion for the outdoors, how she decided to become a poet when she was just a teenager, and her reputation for having an eerie prescience about major world events. They also talk about Atwood’s fears about the Trump administration’s use of power, and why she still considers herself to be a hopeful person despite her predilection for dark stories.
1-hour, 4-minute video
The CIA Has Been FUNDING The Academic Left
Bad Faith Podcast (1/12/26)
Founding director of the Critical Theory Workshop and professor at Villanova University Gabriel Rockhill is out with a new book that calls out many of the intellectual fathers of the academic left as insufficiently imperialist and often funded by the CIA.
How have we been mislead by the “compatible left” -- a cohort of leftists that support Marxism only in theory while inveighing against actually existing socialism? Where do Slavoj Zizek & Noam Chomsky [Possible explanation for Noam hanging out with Epstein, perhaps? — MT] fall in this analysis? How do we identify the contemporary “compatible left” in our media and political environment, and if the deep state is so effective at coopting left movements, what can we possibly do to evade them and achieve revolutionary change? This is a big, three hour episode you won’t want to miss. [This is 30 minutes]
30-minute video
Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? offers a crash course in the history of imperialist propaganda, as well as in the Marxist method for analyzing culture and ideology. Author Gabriel Rockhill demonstrates the explanatory and transformative superiority of a dialectical and historical materialist approach, while elucidating how the world of ideas is a crucial site of class struggle. He then engages in a meticulous counter-history of the Frankfurt School―which made a foundational contribution to Western Marxism―by situating it within the global relations of class struggle and the imperialist war on actually existing socialism.
With the explicit and direct backing of powerful elements in the capitalist ruling class and the world’s leading imperialist state, the Frankfurt School developed a widely promoted form of compatible critical theory as an ersatz for dialectical and historical materialism. The volume concludes by bringing to the fore the positive project that serves as the guiding methodological framework for the work as a whole: a thoroughly anticolonial and anti-imperialist Marxism dedicated to building socialism in the real world. Drawing on extensive archival research to pull back the curtain on ruling class machinations, Rockhill’s book elucidates how the intellectual world war on the socialist alternative has sought to shore up and promote a “compatible left” intelligentsia while misrepresenting, maligning, and trying to destroy the revolutionary left.
Flood of brazen criminal money to Trump family
We Investigated The Criminals Who Bought Trump: What We Found Will Shock You
“This system could make Donald Trump the richest man in the world in a few short years.”
More Perfect Union (12/16/25)
A billionaire put $75 million into the Trump family crypto company. His SEC probe was dropped. Binance helped them make a crypto coin and facilitated a $2 billion deal. The founder was pardoned. The Trumps are using crypto to enable brazen corruption at the highest level.
12-minute video
“The world really should not want this kind of thuggery.”
Jeffery Sachs: Trump’s Venezuella War Is Just The Latest Of Illegal US Policy
“This is a concerted long-term attempt to bring down the government of Venezuela. I think people would do well to understand how the US foreign policy operates. It operates on a long-term basis and tells whatever lies or stories or narratives it wants to tell at any given moment to keep the long-term narrative. In the case of Ukraine, it was a 30-year project to bring Ukraine into the American military orbit. This goes back to the early 1990s. In the case of Venezuela, it’s been a more than 20-year effort. In the case of Syria where Bashara al-Assad was brought down last year, that was an effort of 13 years by the CIA and the US deep state. These are projects and trying to overthrow Venezuela, which just happens to have the world’s largest reserves of oil in the whole world — larger than Saudi Arabia — though more expensive to produce because it’s heavy oil, but still the world’s largest reserves. Well, this is a project of the United States. Trump is unusually thuggish.
“The collapse of the American constitutional order is very far advanced. I would say if you think about Roman history going from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire which is usually dated to 27 BC with Augustus becoming the prince. I would say we’re somewhere into the reign of Tiberius now.
“In other words, the US stopping a constitutional order 10, 20, 30 years ago. But we have the trappings of the Senate the same way that the Romans kept the trappings of the Senate. We don’t have a constitutional order. We have a president enriching himself and his friends. Nobody says a word. We have a president that rules by executive decree. No one says a word. We have a president going to war against Iran or complicity in Gaza or attacking Venezuela or bombing Nigeria. Nobody says a word.
“We’re into a post-constitutional order in the United States. So this is really our situation. It’s quite dramatic.”
— Jeffrey Sachs, U.S. Attacks Venezuela & Kidnaps President Maduro (1/3/26)
Elbows Up, World!
“Whether you’re in the US, whether you’re in the UK, whether you’re in Canada, whether you’re in Ireland, across Europe, around the world, elbows up. We are in … unprecedented territory. I can give you comparisons that are kind of like this. But the combination of this authoritarian, the power of the American system, and the escalation of the damage through social media means, yeah, this is a defining point for our histories.”
— Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, Having A Political Opinion Can ‘Now Get You Killed’ In The US
“Peace is the greatest threat to a war economy.”
— INWIT370, online comment
“It's one big club and, I don't want to be in it!!”
— aaronmcconkey1062, online comment
"Together they were going to shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos."
— Juan Orlando Hernandez, former Honduran president who convicted of smuggling 400 tons of cocaine into the US then recently pardoned by Pres. Trump, speaking during a meeting with drug traffickers.
A Lesson For Europe…
“Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”
―John F. Kennedy
The Ultimate Book For AmeriKKKa Now…
— Steven Colbert (1/22/26)
Stop being angry, America
Start getting even
— thepsychicyak, online comment
I've read and have a copy of JFK and the Unspeakable, but darn that I can't find James Douglass' latest book in the local library. (They have all of his books up until his latest.) The library does have the e-book versions of Whitney Webb's 2 volumes, so I might try tackling them next... But some days I just want to read something light-hearted and funny 'cause the real world sucks!
Thank you for all you do. It's like as if Americans went to sleep the night before, and walk up next morning in North Korea. Sleep walking and a trance state