It's good to be back

Hello friends, it's been a while. Just after my last post on July 16, I lost my @politicsrus4 Twitter account. When I first arrived on Twitter in July of 2020, it was an experiment for me to try and better understand the impact of the platform on the body politic. I found the damage that Trump had done to US politics using Twitter deeply disturbing and I wanted to understand it better.

I'll not bore you with the history, as this is easy to obtain from my earlier posts. However, I was deeply moved by the way people chose to adopt me as a friend and fellow resister. It made me feel part of a community that really wanted to make a difference. After having reached 10k followers and established a well respected voice for truth and objectivity, I was shocked by the impact that the loss of my account had on me. It was like I had lost a member of my family and been cast out to sea on my own. When I spoke, there was silence, which really was something I wasn't used to. My videos had helped carve me out a place in the community and 100k views for the ads I was creating had become the norm. Not only that, my blog posts were also beginning to have some appeal to people who were interested in an outside objective assessment of the politics of the day. All that was gone in a second, and it was like a sense of bereavement. I really hadn't realized how totally invested I had become. I had even spent months writing some ground breaking visual messaging software that I remain convinced could move the needle on the 2022 campaign, but to me, everything had been washed down the toilet in the blink of an eye.

It's taken a great deal of soul searching, hard work and the support of some special people, too many to mention by name, but they know who they are. They picked me up, dusted me down and convinced me it was worth 'building back better'. My safe space once again became producing my ads and everything else I had started building fell by the wayside. I simply found it difficult to comprehend what I had lost in terms of what I was trying to achieve at the time. A quick scan of this website gives you a feel of where I was. It's a little like leaving the bedroom of a beloved family member untouched after their passing. As I read it last week for the first time in months, I was really quite emotional about the time and momentum lost in the intervening months that have passed.

Those that know me well, know I am beyond passionate about politics and what the safeguarding of democracy means to me. This is not about talking about the problems and the injustice that has befell the American people under Trump, it's about doing something to make a difference. This as we all know, is a monumental challenge, given the current political landscape.

So what does the future hold? For one thing I am older and wiser now. I understand the vulnerabilities of creating content that the MAGA crowd can mass report to get an account suspended. I have invested time and money in making sure that every element of content is cleared. Where before I applied a broad brush, I now pay meticulous attention to all aspects of content and run everything by a media lawyer who has become a good friend over the past few months. If it's one thing I have learned, it's that the term 'fair use' is one of the most ambiguous legal unknowns in sharing content. My YouTube channel has to date not been anything other than an archive for my work. It represents a journey from a guy experimenting with video production into someone who has evolved into a competent political message producer.

As I move forward, YouTube will become more of an integral part of Truth Matters. I also want to take a closer look at other platforms, to ensure maximum reach to the various demographics. Twitter will always be my home, but I really want to branch out into making short political political films too and YouTube is a great vehicle for that. To this end, those who like what I do, might want to subscribe to my channel which you can find by clicking here

I love writing and this daily blog will become part of the Truth Matters brand. It will be published each day to be available at 9am ET. The plan is to keep it to a 5 minute read, unless there is a hot topic that can't be covered in that time. I want it to be a more comprehensive expression of what I post daily, in the hope of providing a little more insight into my thoughts and feelings for the day.

As some will be aware, I am a huge fan of the Biden Administration's agenda and I am a big believer in the transformational change he can bring to America, with policies designed for the many and not the few. What I am not, is a blind follower and I am a firm believer that truth really does matter and to that end, I am not fearful of voicing criticism when I feel it is necessary. I have and will always stand behind my posts and my ads. Each is a carefully considered statement of my feelings and position on important political issues. The existential threat posed by the GOP to democracy is very real and it is critically important Democrats are awake to the reality that 2022 MUST be a smart campaign. They must NOT get sucked into the chaos of personality politics. There is far too much at stake to waste time on lunatics whose sole purpose is to distract from the deeply destructive 'new world' agenda Republicans are now committed to.

My ads will continue to form part of a wider strategy of critical policy awareness that must become part of the daily campaign to raise a sense of hope, rather than the fear and despair being peddled by Republicans. The chaos and division being sown by the GOP is becoming more and more malignant, as they slowly set about the task of dismantling democracy. The reality is, millions of voters regardless of what we do, are prepared to sleepwalk into a dystopian nightmare. They have literally been brainwashed into jumping off a cliff for their cult leader. This demographic is lost to us, so there is little point wasting any effort on even attempting to rehabilitate them at this point in the election cycle. The very reason they have embarked on an unprecedented campaign of voter suppression, is born out of the knowledge that they can no longer win a fair election. Without suppressing the Dem vote, they know Republicans will remain in opposition for perpetuity.

I firmly believe that their ability to win on the argument is literally non existent. They have no policy agenda and absolutely no vision. In my view, that arrogance is their Achilles heel. However, unless Federal voting rights legislation can be passed, the road ahead is beyond challenging. Mitch McConnell has spent decades appointing often grossly unqualified conservative judges to the courts and more importantly, to the appellant courts, not to mention the now heavily conservative weighted Supreme Court. These judges are not appointed for their commitment to justice, they are appointed as servants of the right wing agenda. The GOP have trifecta states that are literally able to legislate against fair elections and that is VERY dangerous.

Tomorrow we'll start to look at where we are and what strategies we need to employ in an attempt to move from 'Yes we can' to 'Now we will'. It's important for Dem Lawmakers to stop tripping over each other, provide a definitive proposition for Build Back Better, so we can help sell a message of hope versus a message of hate, division and chaos.

Thanks for stopping by. Stay safe out there. Let's catch up tomorrow.