Diogenes Club

Diogenes Club | E16 - Replace, Reclaim, Rebuild

Diogenes In Review This was supposed to be the episode where the panel — Nick Paro, Walter Rhein, Dr. Eric Lullove, and (briefly) Evan Fields — sat down to plan how the resistance replaces, reclaims, and rebuilds. Instead the conversation walked through the doors marked “personal,” “procedural,” and “religious” in that order, and by the end Eric was naming the drift on-air: “we literally got away from the whole point of the title of our show… and somehow we got caught up in this — in our own little religious war over syntax.” It would be easy to read that as the episode losing the thread. The more useful reading is that the drift was the thesis. You cannot rebuild a country whose civic infrastructure is gerrymandered, whose information layer is algorithmic, and whose moral vocabulary was written in 1548, by talking only about candidate slates and finance laws. The show’s quiet argument this week is that the rebuild project has an interior surface — grief, shame, the inherited language we use about God — and that ignoring it is how the last several rebuilds failed. Thank you Lev Parnas [https://substack.com/profile/35788031-lev-parnas], A. Eevie Bateman [https://substack.com/profile/443649430-a-eevie-bateman], Ashleigh Alauren [https://substack.com/profile/337755654-ashleigh-alauren], Carole [https://substack.com/profile/380457057-carole], Ms.Yuse [https://substack.com/profile/322112054-msyuse], and many others for tuning into my live video with Walter Rhein [https://substack.com/profile/15113701-walter-rhein] and Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove]! Join me for my next live video in the app. Actions You Can Take * Check out the new: Sick of this Shop! [https://shop.sickofthisshitpublications.com/] * Check out the new network and affiliate calendar: BroadBanner [https://www.broadbanner.com/] Submit questions, feedback, and artwork for Notes of the Week with Nick and Walter: * Sick of this Shit Community Comment Form [https://forms.gle/4WSu8qGkSA7Wxbh98] Call your public servants on important issues: * 5calls.org [https://5calls.org/] Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States: * deflock.me [https://deflock.me/] Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders: * Orders Project [https://www.ordersproject.com/] * Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76 Learn empathy forward, human centered, experiment based Leadership & Growth Courses for Higher Ed & Non-Profit Professionals: * B. Cognition Labs [https://www.bcognitionlabs.com/] Nick’s Notes I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community! Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective [https://1acollective.com/] Support as a paid subscriber however you can — to help get you started, here are a few discounted options for you * Forever at 50% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/50forever] * Forever at 60% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/60saver] A special thank you to those who are a part of the Sickest of Them All ~ Soso [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-soso] | Millicent [https://substack.com/profile/5428714-millicent] | Courtney 🇨🇦 [https://substack.com/profile/136249074-courtney] | Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove] | Terry mitchell [https://substack.com/profile/32751953-terry-mitchell] | Carollynn [https://substack.com/profile/301213629-carollynn] | Julie Robuck [https://substack.com/profile/208030486-julie-robuck] | Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙 [https://substack.com/profile/356845797-masonsheher] | Kimmy Win [https://substack.com/profile/180488664-kimmy-win] ~ For support, contact us at: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe [https://sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Diogenes Club | E15 - How Did We Get Here?

Diogenes In Review This episode was supposed to be a “half show” — Nick Paro and Dr. Eric Lullove catching up after a quiet week — and instead turned into one of the more clarifying conversations the Diogenes Club has hosted on how American democracy actually unwinds. When Nieta Greene of Disability Community for Democracy joined from the chat, the episode reorganized itself around a question the title only half-asks. The “how” of “how did we get here” turns out to have a long answer rooted in 1960s commissions LBJ slid into a drawer, an 1982 Voting Rights Act update that’s been quietly clawed back, and a Supreme Court that — by the panel’s accounting — looks more like the AKK in robes than a body of jurists. The takeaway is that the path to authoritarianism is paved with procedural sleight-of-hand: settlement agreements, redistricting maps, website-accessibility deadlines pushed two years out. Each one is boring on its own, which is exactly why it works. Eric opens the diagnostic with the IRS settlement story, and it deserves the cold light it gets here. Trump is suing the IRS; the AG who would sign off on any settlement north of $4 million is his own personal attorney; the leaked terms reportedly include a clause that the Trump organization can never be audited again. The largest IRS settlement in history was $138 million, and the asking number is roughly seventy times that. Eric’s point isn’t just that this is theft — it’s that it’s a generational wealth transfer dressed as a lawsuit, and that the same plutocratic class that built the AI infrastructure for surveillance is about to discover the technology cuts both ways. The Epstein document dump and tools like Test.AI, he argues, will outpace what the FBI could have done in decades with people-agent. The implication is uncomfortable for both sides of the political class: the institutions that were supposed to constrain wealth no longer do, and the ones that might — citizen-built, distributed, AI-accelerated — answer to no one yet. Tennessee is where the abstraction collapses into a face you can name. The state legislature stripped every African-American state congressman of committee and subcommittee positions and quietly stopped notifying voters when polling places change after redistricting. Nieta connects this to the Section 2 cases born out of her own hometown of New Rochelle and the village of Port Chester — decisions that, if reinterpreted by a hostile court, would license a return to at-large elections, the workhorse mechanism of mid-century Black voter suppression. The Voting Rights Act, in her phrasing, no longer exists: take out Sections 2 and 5 and the house falls down. What’s left is the architecture of plausible deniability — change the polling place, bury the new address on a county website that hasn’t been made accessible, and call it a personal-responsibility problem when disabled voters or paratransit-dependent voters or dyslexic voters can’t find their precinct. This is where the analytical case lands: voter suppression in 2026 doesn’t need a poll tax, it needs a 404 page. Nieta’s strongest contribution is structural, and it deserves to be heard outside the disability-policy world it usually lives in. The disability community is, as she points out, the largest marginalized group in the United States, and it crosses every line — race, gender, geography, party. It is also, she says with the authority of someone who volunteered for the Kamala Harris campaign caucus, the community both presidential campaigns ignored. Her diagnosis of why is sharp: outreach content was greenlit in principle but routed through legal review until it was too cautious to win, and the Democratic theory-of-the-case never internalized that excluding the largest cross-cutting coalition in the country is a math problem before it’s a moral one. The episode’s quiet thesis is that no anti-authoritarian movement built without disability-community organizing scales — and that the June 4 Disability Community for Democracy livestream on the disability dimension of the Voting Rights Act is the kind of cross-pollination event the broader movement needs to actually attend, not just signal-boost. The closing shifts from diagnosis to architecture, and this is where the panel earns the show’s name. The fixes Eric and Nick float — kill the omnibus bill habit and return to single-issue appropriations, make the Attorney General an electable nonpartisan office, build an independent inspector-general branch elected by the people — are not new ideas, but they’re being staked out here as the floor, not the ceiling. The case Nieta closes on is the only frame that holds the rest together: humanity is not up for debate. The episode is a 48-minute argument that the procedural gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the IRS settlement scheme, and the deliberate abandonment of disability access are the same project, and that the people most likely to recognize it from the inside are the ones who’ve been asked to wait their turn. Diogenes Club is at its best when it lets a guest reorganize the agenda; this one did, and the show is better for it. Sources & References * Nieta Greene — guest; founder of Disability Community for Democracy [https://disabilitycommunityfordemocracy.substack.com/] and editor of the Nothing About Us Without Us newsletter * All Roads Lead to the South — blackpowerwarroom.com [https://blackpowerwarroom.com/] * Roland Martin (YouTube) and Joy-Ann Reid (YouTube/Substack) live-streaming the South action * Win With Black Women emergency virtual town hall (with VP Kamala Harris) * Julie Roginski — referenced for her recent article on Democratic state-level gerrymandering response * Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Sections 2 and 5) and the 1982 reauthorization signed by Ronald Reagan * Telecommunications Act of 1996 — context for the panel’s broader media-consolidation argument * Apportionment Act of 1929 — referenced for the House-cap discussion Thank you LeftieProf [https://substack.com/profile/116079548-leftieprof], Jeff D [https://substack.com/profile/74447207-jeff-d], Nieta Greene [https://substack.com/profile/117743522-nieta-greene], Mary Lummis [https://substack.com/profile/85924874-mary-lummis], Cindy [https://substack.com/profile/357513838-cindy], and many others for tuning into my live video with Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove]! Join me for my next live video in the app. Actions You Can Take * Check out the new: Sick of this Shop! [https://shop.sickofthisshitpublications.com/] * Check out the new network and affiliate calendar: BroadBanner [https://www.broadbanner.com/] Submit questions, feedback, and artwork for Notes of the Week with Nick and Walter: * Sick of this Shit Community Comment Form [https://forms.gle/4WSu8qGkSA7Wxbh98] Call your public servants on important issues: * 5calls.org [https://5calls.org/] Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States: * deflock.me [https://deflock.me/] Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders: * Orders Project [https://www.ordersproject.com/] * Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76 Learn empathy forward, human centered, experiment based Leadership & Growth Courses for Higher Ed & Non-Profit Professionals: * B. Cognition Labs [https://www.bcognitionlabs.com/] Nick’s Notes I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community! Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective [https://1acollective.com/] Support as a paid subscriber however you can — to help get you started, here are a few discounted options for you * Forever at 50% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/50forever] * Forever at 60% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/60saver] A special thank you to those who are a part of the Sickest of Them All ~ Soso [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-soso] | Millicent [https://substack.com/profile/5428714-millicent] | Courtney 🇨🇦 [https://substack.com/profile/136249074-courtney] | Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove] | Terry mitchell [https://substack.com/profile/32751953-terry-mitchell] | Carollynn [https://substack.com/profile/301213629-carollynn] | Julie Robuck [https://substack.com/profile/208030486-julie-robuck] | Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙 [https://substack.com/profile/356845797-masonsheher] | Kimmy Win [https://substack.com/profile/180488664-kimmy-win] ~ For support, contact us at: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe [https://sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Diogenes Club | E14 - Courage For Democracy

Diogenes In Review This episode brings two primary challengers to the same table — Chris Bennett [https://www.bennettforca.com/], running for California’s 3rd congressional district, and Alex Rikleen [https://www.alexrikleen.us/], taking on the longest-serving Democrat in the Senate from Massachusetts — and stages a conversation that refuses the comforting frame of “good policy versus bad policy.” Both candidates are part of Citizens Impeachment [https://substack.com/@citizensimpeachment], a coalition of more than 150 Courage Candidates [https://www.couragefordemocracy.com/] pledging to sign articles of impeachment on day one. What makes the hour worth your time isn’t the pledge itself; it’s the reasoning underneath it. Bennett and Rikleen argue, in different registers, that the structural rot in American government will swallow any reform that doesn’t address it first. The cameo from Eric Lullove, calling in jet-lagged from a wound-care conference in Bremen, sharpens the historical stakes: he’s standing inside a country that already lived through the playbook the United States is now running. The episode’s first analytic move is Bennett’s diagnosis of media. He locates the rot at the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which cleared the way for consolidation, and traces the line from there to a present where CNN, Fox, and CBS are essentially the same product — a reality TV show with policy stakes. The point isn’t nostalgia for a more virtuous press. The point is that propaganda functions best when the audience can’t tell it’s being sorted into ecosystems. Bennett ties this directly to Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” and a decade and a half of grievance media built up around her — not as an apology for Clinton, but as evidence that calling voters names while simultaneously losing the institutional fight over information is a way to lose twice. The Democratic counter-message, he argues, has to be built on grassroots organizing and independent outlets — Substack, PBS, Democracy Now — because the broadcast spine is no longer available to anyone outside the ultra-wealthy. Rikleen’s contribution to the same problem is procedural. He is, by training, a history teacher, and the framing he keeps returning to is that nothing happening right now is unprecedented — and that pretending otherwise is itself a failure of nerve. His core campaign claim is that the differences between him and Senator Markey, between Markey and Joe Manchin, between any of them and Lisa Murkowski, “don’t really matter right now, because none of us can accomplish our goals.” Until the systems blocking progress are addressed, the policy debates are theater. The most useful section of the conversation is when Nick floats uncapping the House under the Apportionment Act of 1929, and Rikleen pushes back not to disagree but to complicate. Uncapping is a good idea, he says, but smaller districts make gerrymandering easier, not harder, unless you pair the reform with multi-member districts and single transferable vote. Term limits are a good idea, but without closing the lobbying revolving door, they just incentivize freshly-elected officials to spend twelve years auditioning for K Street. The line Rikleen lands on — “there are good ideas out there, but we have to do them well” — is the episode’s quiet thesis. Eric’s contribution lands differently, and on purpose. He’s calling in late, exhausted, secondhand-smoked, and surrounded by people whose grandparents lived inside what they all keep calling “1933.” His invocation of Nuremberg isn’t theatrical garnish — it’s an argument that accountability is what made German recovery possible, and that “too big to rig” is not a slogan but a logistical necessity. Rikleen picks up the same thread by pointing at Viktor Orbán, who lost in Hungary recently after rigging election after election, by losing by too much to rig. The implication is one of the more uncomfortable things to sit with: democratic restoration may not be available through the normal margins of victory, because the margins of victory are no longer normal. The hosts and guests don’t pretend this is a comforting frame. They argue it’s the honest one. The episode closes on a more philosophical note, which is also the most Diogenes-Club-shaped move — Nick’s argument that the underlying disease is the denial of personhood, and Rikleen’s response that this is exactly the authoritarian’s offer: a guaranteed underclass below you, no matter how bad your own life gets. The candidates are explicit about what to do with the Senate’s procedural tools — halt unqualified nominees, slow the confirmation conveyor, exercise powers that don’t require 51 votes — and what to do in a community where Democrats won’t say plainly that gerrymandering and SAVE Acts and dismantled mail-in ballots are cheating. What you should take from the hour is not a policy list. It’s the standard the candidates are setting for themselves: that fixing the house has to come before redecorating it, and that anyone running on the second part without the first is, however likable, not yet serious. Thank you Steve Glicken, MD [https://substack.com/profile/19356772-steve-glicken-md], Ann Kramer [https://substack.com/profile/8363417-ann-kramer], Nieta Greene [https://substack.com/profile/117743522-nieta-greene], Karma [https://substack.com/profile/408982447-karma], Gloria Ramirez [https://substack.com/profile/144854626-gloria-ramirez], and many others for tuning into my live video with Walter Rhein [https://substack.com/profile/15113701-walter-rhein], Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove], and Courage for Democracy and Citizens' Impeachment [https://substack.com/profile/402634291-citizens-impeachment] candidates Alex Rikleen [https://substack.com/profile/355767117-alex-rikleen] and Chris Bennett [https://substack.com/profile/475630976-chris-bennett]! Join us for our next live video in the app. Actions You Can Take * Check out the new: Sick of this Shop! [https://shop.sickofthisshitpublications.com/] * Check out the new network and affiliate calendar: BroadBanner [https://www.broadbanner.com/] Submit questions, feedback, and artwork for Notes of the Week with Nick and Walter: * Sick of this Shit Community Comment Form [https://forms.gle/4WSu8qGkSA7Wxbh98] Call your public servants on important issues: * 5calls.org [https://5calls.org/] Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States: * deflock.me [https://deflock.me/] Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders: * Orders Project [https://www.ordersproject.com/] * Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76 Learn empathy forward, human centered, experiment based Leadership & Growth Courses for Higher Ed & Non-Profit Professionals: * B. Cognition Labs [https://www.bcognitionlabs.com/] Nick’s Notes I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community! Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective [https://1acollective.com/] Support as a paid subscriber however you can — to help get you started, here are a few discounted options for you * Forever at 50% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/50forever] * Forever at 60% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/60saver] A special thank you to those who are a part of the Sickest of Them All ~ Soso [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-soso] | Millicent [https://substack.com/profile/5428714-millicent] | Courtney 🇨🇦 [https://substack.com/profile/136249074-courtney] | Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove] | Terry mitchell [https://substack.com/profile/32751953-terry-mitchell] | Carollynn [https://substack.com/profile/301213629-carollynn] | Julie Robuck [https://substack.com/profile/208030486-julie-robuck] | Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙 [https://substack.com/profile/356845797-masonsheher] | Kimmy Win [https://substack.com/profile/180488664-kimmy-win] ~ For support, contact us at: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe [https://sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Diogenes Club | E13 - Rights, What Are They Good For?

Diogenes In Review The thirteenth episode of the Diogenes Club opens on a title that sounds like a joke and lands like a thesis. Nick Paro has been working all night on the line — “What are they good for?” — and Eric Lullove walks straight into it: “I just know that they’re gonna take my vote away next week.” Within two minutes, Walter Rhein has named the moment as a finger-counting exercise — “Can we count from 10 to 0 on the 10 list of rights that they are going to take away?” — and Nick has refused the premise. “I’m done letting them take any rights. I am taking their right to take my rights away back from them.” The naming dispute that follows is the episode’s tonal anchor. Nick wants to retire “Republican” because they aren’t that anymore — “they’re just the regressive right.” Eric pushes harder: “No, they’re fascist Nazis. Call them what they are.” Walter goes further still and corrects them both: “No, they’re fascist Confederates. They’re older than Nazism. They’re fascist Confederates.” The distinction is not pedantry. It is the operating frame for the rest of the hour. Eric reads Niemoller’s “First They Came” into the record, places himself inside it as a Jew, and observes that the regime is running out of constituencies to alienate. “Who’s left to speak for him when this is all said and done?” The core argument arrives with the Supreme Court’s 6-3 evisceration of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and Louisiana’s overnight response. Eric reads the Landry-Murrill joint statement aloud — the state is “currently enjoined from carrying out congressional elections under the current map,” primaries postponed, ballots already mailed — and the room metabolizes it in real time. Dana DuBois, calling in while walking to her day job in Seattle, names the tactic: “chaos agents. They’re just trying to put elections in so much chaos because Americans already have a problem with not voting in big enough numbers.” Eric collapses the legal logic into a sentence: “The remedy that was supposed to cure the remedy basically undid the remedy, which now makes it legal to go back to where we were back in the 1800s.” Nick remembers it was the Court itself that telegraphed the destination: “Well, I mean, they did say they wanted to go back to the 1800s.” Eric draws the through-line — Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019 blocked political-gerrymandering claims, this ruling kills the racial ones, and what remains is a permission slip. The John Lewis Voting Rights Restoration Act sat on the table; Schumer would not “pull the nuclear weapon” on the filibuster, even after the Senate had already shredded it for appointees, judges, and treaties. The receipts are stacked. The complicity is bipartisan. Nieta Greene’s arrival reframes the fight as continental, not regional. She makes it explicit that the Court did not just gut a Southern protection: “It’s also language minorities.” She walks the room through the 1920s New York English-literacy regime, the disenfranchisement of Puerto Ricans by the 1960s, and the Latino-majority municipal fights in places like Port Chester, then closes the loop: “every community needs to wake the fuck up and understand that this shit is going to roll downhill.” Nick hears her and revises in public — “we forgot that the entire fucking country exists, and there is no north-south in the U.S.” From there the conversation moves to the harder question Walter has been holding all season: defending rights without asking the abuser for consent. Nick names it directly: “we cannot ask for consent to defend our rights.” He links it to imposter syndrome as a tool of oppression — “That’s entirely white supremacy thinking, where you’re afraid to even try to make things better because you’re so convinced you’re going to make it worse.” Brittany Jones’s gubernatorial pitch on enforcing treaty law surfaces as a concrete lever Democratic governors and AGs are simply not pulling. Nieta sharpens the broader stakes: the gutting will be used “so they can reverse gay marriage across the country and make it hodgepodge legal depending on which state you live in. And so they can say they don’t have to educate people with disabilities.” The closing movement turns the analysis into a marching order. Walter refuses the trap of “we can’t fix anything because anything we implement will also be sabotaged” and tells the room their job is to act anyway. Nick hands him the frame: “we’re not problem finders. We’re supposed to be problem solvers.” Eric points to a Palm Beach state Senate special election where the progressive Democrat beat the Trump candidate by thirty points and notes that the people who pushed back have “more money than I could ever attain in a lifetime” — the wealth-versus-fascism alignment is not as fixed as the regime needs voters to believe. Nieta closes her segment with a class-and-race correction that none of the men try to soften, traces post-1968 Black flight and the gentrification cycles that followed, and pitches Disability Community for Democracy’s “Nothing About Us Without Us” — five bucks a month, last day of the annual sale — because that newsletter is the only thing paying for the Restream and Zoom subscriptions that get candidates booked. Eric trails Peter Thiel’s capture of HHS, CDC, and FDA into a forthcoming Blue Amp piece on MAHA and eugenics, and notes Alex Karp’s pitch that legalizing war crimes would be more profitable. Nick lays out a matching-fund plan to seed independent younger creators with every annual subscription. The episode does not tie a bow on the VRA — there isn’t one to tie. What it does instead is what the title actually demanded: refuse to count down from ten, name the regressives as fascist Confederates, and stop asking permission to fight back. Sources & References * Voting Rights Act of 1965, Section 2 — Gutted by a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling the day before this episode aired, ending the racial-vote-dilution claim as a viable cause of action * Louisiana primary cancellation — Joint statement from Governor Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill announced postponement of the in-progress 2026 congressional primary after the VRA ruling vacated the stay on Louisiana’s existing map; reporting attributed to Erin Parnas * John Lewis Voting Rights Restoration Act — Federal legislation to restore the VRA’s preclearance and Section 2 protections; remained un-passed because Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would not move to suspend the filibuster * Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) — Supreme Court decision foreclosing federal partisan-gerrymandering claims; cited by Eric as the prior step in the same dismantling project * Martin Niemoller, “First They Came” — German pastor and author of the canonical poem on the cost of silence under fascism; read aloud in full by Eric * Clarence Thomas — Supreme Court Justice; named by Nick as part of the 6-3 majority and described as a racist white supremacist in alignment with the rest of the bloc * Greg Abbott — Texas Governor; cited as proof that disability does not protect a person from being “ableist and racist as hell” * Viktor Orban — Hungarian Prime Minister; Eric’s benchmark for the regime’s compressed timeline (“trying to do here in two years what Orban did in 16 in Hungary”) * Peter Thiel — Tech billionaire; subject of Eric’s forthcoming Blue Amp Media piece on Thiel’s placement of allies inside HHS, CDC, and FDA, with JD Vance named as one of his proteges * Alex Karp — Palantir CEO; cited for publicly arguing that legalizing war crimes would be more profitable * Dana DuBois — Host of The Daily Whatever; called in mid-episode to react to the VRA ruling and recommended attorney Anne P. Marshall’s analysis * Anne P. Marshall — Attorney whose published take on the VRA decision was recommended by Dana as a less-catastrophic legal read * Nieta Greene — CEO of Disability Community for Democracy, publisher of the “Nothing About Us Without Us” Substack newsletter; serves on the Cambridge, Massachusetts Disabilities Commission * Brittany Jones — Oregon gubernatorial candidate; interviewed by Nick and Eric the prior day; pitched enforcement of treaty law with First Nations as an immediate executive lever governors and AGs are not pulling * Courage Candidates network — Progressive primary-challenger ecosystem coordinated through Kira Havens; named again as the pipeline for booking candidate interviews * Erica Kopp — Colorado primary challenger; referenced as an active candidate-interview booking * Jessica Denson — Forthcoming guest; flagged as scheduled in the coming weeks * Civil Rights Act of 1968 / Fair Housing Act — Cited by Nieta in her closing on Black homeownership, suburban migration, and the pre-1968 “shell games” required to buy property * Palm Beach state Senate special election — Florida race in which the progressive Democratic candidate beat the Trump-aligned candidate by thirty points; cited by Eric as proof of bottom-up resistance even in wealthy districts * EPA groundwater testing decision — Referenced in passing by Eric as a same-week ruling on testing for misoprostol metabolites; flagged for a future episode Community to Check Out Actions You Can Take * Check out the new: Sick of this Shop! [https://shop.sickofthisshitpublications.com/] * Check out the new network and affiliate calendar: BroadBanner [https://www.broadbanner.com/] Submit questions, feedback, and artwork for Notes of the Week with Nick and Walter: * Sick of this Shit Community Comment Form [https://forms.gle/4WSu8qGkSA7Wxbh98] Call your public servants on important issues: * 5calls.org [https://5calls.org/] Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States: * deflock.me [https://deflock.me/] Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders: * Orders Project [https://www.ordersproject.com/] * Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76 Learn empathy forward, human centered, experiment based Leadership & Growth Courses for Higher Ed & Non-Profit Professionals: * B. Cognition Labs [https://www.bcognitionlabs.com/] Thank you Dana DuBois [https://substack.com/profile/201342263-dana-dubois], Beth Cruz [https://substack.com/profile/178744313-beth-cruz], PJ Schuster [https://substack.com/profile/106448962-pj-schuster], Lynette [https://substack.com/profile/284294355-lynette], THE TRAJECTORY [https://substack.com/profile/126135419-the-trajectory], and many others for tuning into my live video with Evan Fields [https://substack.com/profile/12442489-evan-fields], Walter Rhein [https://substack.com/profile/15113701-walter-rhein], and Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove]! Join me for my next live video in the app. Nick’s Notes I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community! Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective [https://1acollective.com/] Support as a paid subscriber however you can — to help get you started, here are a few discounted options for you * Forever at 50% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/50forever] * Forever at 60% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/60saver] A special thank you to those who are a part of the Sickest of Them All ~ Soso [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-soso] | Millicent [https://substack.com/profile/5428714-millicent] | Courtney 🇨🇦 [https://substack.com/profile/136249074-courtney] | Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove] | Terry mitchell [https://substack.com/profile/32751953-terry-mitchell] | Carollynn [https://substack.com/profile/301213629-carollynn] | Julie Robuck [https://substack.com/profile/208030486-julie-robuck] | Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙 [https://substack.com/profile/356845797-masonsheher] | Kimmy Win [https://substack.com/profile/180488664-kimmy-win] ~ For support, contact us at: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe [https://sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Diogenes Club | E12 - Finding Our Groove

Diogenes In Review The twelfth episode of the Diogenes Club covers the full terrain of topics the club has been circling all season: grief, complicity, consent, accountability, the collapse of media as a public trust, and the ongoing project of building something new out of the rubble. If there is an idea embedded in the title, it is not that the groove has already been found — it is that finding it is the work, and the work is always in progress. Eric Lullove opens the episode by honoring his grandmother, who passed away last week, and he tells us two stories. In the first, she calls him from Florida during the 2000 election to say she thinks the fix is in because the punch card didn’t align. In the second, she takes a call from a pollster arguing that marriage should be between a man and a woman, considers the pitch, and responds: “That’s okay — I’m a lesbian.” She was in her eighties. She was not joking. She was a staunch Democrat who worked for the Palm Beach Democratic Party her whole life, was put on a Smucker’s jar at 100, and read books on her Kindle until her mobility slowed. “She was a big part of why I turned out on the right side of the grass.” Walter responds by making the case that grief is not a reason to go quiet — it is a reason to speak. His friend lost a son to suicide and told him he wanted to talk about his boy, not around him. “That’s how we keep the memory alive. That’s the opposite of toxic masculinity.” Nick reflects on his own relationship to grandparent loss — one grandfather died when he was four or five, a grandmother developed Alzheimer’s — and expresses genuine gratitude that Eric’s daughter had eighteen years of relationship with her great-grandmother. “Most kids don’t even know their great grandparents.” The episode begins, in other words, not with a topic but with a person — and by doing so, it establishes what this room is before it gets to what this room does. Eric’s pivot from grandmother to politics is not accidental — it is the same move the group has been making all season, and it lands hard. We live disconnected from each other because of technology, he argues, even as we use technology to try to reconnect. Walter’s candidate interview series — which by this episode has grown to include Shelby Campbell (Michigan), Dr. Melissa Bird (Oregon), Emily Berge, and others through the Courage Candidates [https://couragefordemocracy.com/] network — is named as the counter-model: using the platform not to broadcast but to introduce. And from the disconnection thesis, Eric goes directly to the CNN investigation into motherless.com, a coordinated network in which thousands of men shared pharmaceutical techniques for drugging and raping their wives, livestreamed the assaults for a paying audience, and charged viewers $20 a session. He has been holding this for a week. He is not restrained about it. “You fucking piece of shit. That is not how you treat your best friend and life partner.” Walter, characteristically, moves from the individual to the system: “The guys who have the power to stop these rapes, to hold these men accountable, are deliberately not doing it. I’m assuming malice. I’m straight up assuming malice.” Nick answers the “do you love Israel?” question from the YouTube chat, places himself clearly against the Israeli government’s conduct in Palestine, and then refocuses: “Our society has basically accepted rape culture as culture. We cannot sit by idly.” The accountability architecture runs through the entire episode and surfaces most clearly when Nick addresses the Congressional Sexual Assault slush fund directly. He has a public challenge: “We need one male Congress member to put his career on the line and go on the floor and name them. Not a female. A male. With the most privilege in the world. Don’t ask for approval. Don’t wait for approval. Just do it.” Frederic invokes Cory Booker breaking the Strom Thurmond filibuster record: “Why can’t Democratic senators just start reading the Epstein files on the floor? You don’t even have to do it alone — you can pass it off to someone else.” Walter’s answer: we have surrendered the media, and even a senator reading those names on the floor would be trashed by every oligarch-owned outlet before the clip finished loading. “That is why you guys being here matters. We have to continue to grow. We are a fledgling. We are a seed.” The episode ends in something close to joy. Eric shares polling data live: Trump is minus 68 on the economy, Republican approval with their own base has collapsed from 93% to 89% in four months, independents have dropped from 35% approval in August to 25% in December — and this is last year’s data. Frederic takes partial credit for the independent numbers, having recently re-registered. Nick wraps it: “Fred’s being part of the solution.” The Diogenes Club’s twelfth episode doesn’t wrap anything up — the Epstein investigation is ongoing, Evan missed the conversation, Maxwell may get pardoned before the episode posts — but it does something the title promises: it finds the groove. The room knows how to work together now. They know when to hold a hard conversation and when to pass. They know when to call something out and when to call something for. That’s the groove. That’s what twelve episodes builds. Sources & References * Motherless.com — Subject of CNN investigative report in April 2026, exposing a coordinated user network sharing pharmaceutical techniques for drugging and assaulting spouses, with livestreamed assaults sold for $20 per viewer * DOJ Inspector General Investigation — Announced April 2026; targets the handling of Jeffrey Epstein files by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche * Ghislaine Maxwell — Epstein co-conspirator, convicted 2021; pardon discussions referenced as ongoing in April 2026 * Congressional Sexual Assault Defense Fund — Taxpayer-funded mechanism used to settle and defend sexual misconduct claims by members of Congress * Alan Dershowitz — Attorney; referenced for reported statements advocating for lowering the age of consent to 14-15 * Cory Booker — U.S. Senator; referenced for breaking Strom Thurmond’s Senate filibuster record * Courage Candidates — Progressive primary challenger network; operating in approximately a quarter of all U.S. House races in the 2026 cycle * Shelby Campbell — Courage Candidate running in Michigan; interviewed by Walter Rhein and Eric Lullove * Dr. Melissa Bird — Candidate running in Oregon; interviewed by Walter Rhein * Joseph Perez-Caputo — Courage Candidate running for Connecticut 4; scheduled for interview with Nick Paro * Jasmine Thomas — Senate candidate from Oklahoma; mentioned by a viewer in the live chat * Joy Reid — Journalist; cited as the one established media figure who has actually elevated independent creators * Eric Swalwell — U.S. Representative; named as a protected member of the Democratic establishment Actions You Can Take * Check out the new: Sick of this Shop! [https://shop.sickofthisshitpublications.com/] * Check out the new network and affiliate calendar: BroadBanner [https://www.broadbanner.com/] Submit questions, feedback, and artwork for Notes of the Week with Nick and Walter: * Sick of this Shit Community Comment Form [https://forms.gle/4WSu8qGkSA7Wxbh98] Call your public servants on important issues: * 5calls.org [https://5calls.org/] Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States: * deflock.me [https://deflock.me/] Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders: * Orders Project [https://www.ordersproject.com/] * Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76 Learn empathy forward, human centered, experiment based Leadership & Growth Courses for Higher Ed & Non-Profit Professionals: * B. Cognition Labs [https://www.bcognitionlabs.com/] Thank you NeuroDivergent Hodgepodge [https://substack.com/profile/290170277-neurodivergent-hodgepodge], LeftieProf [https://substack.com/profile/116079548-leftieprof], Farmers AGAINST trump. [https://substack.com/profile/277849637-farmers-against-trump], MJ [https://substack.com/profile/294329322-mj], Ms.Yuse [https://substack.com/profile/322112054-msyuse], and many others for tuning into my live video with Evan Fields [https://substack.com/profile/12442489-evan-fields] and Walter Rhein [https://substack.com/profile/15113701-walter-rhein]! Join me for my next live video in the app. Nick’s Notes I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community! Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective [https://1acollective.com/] Support as a paid subscriber however you can — to help get you started, here are a few discounted options for you * Forever at 50% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/50forever] * Forever at 60% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/60saver] A special thank you to those who are a part of the Sickest of Them All ~ Soso [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-soso] | Millicent [https://substack.com/profile/5428714-millicent] | Courtney 🇨🇦 [https://substack.com/profile/136249074-courtney] | Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove] | Terry mitchell [https://substack.com/profile/32751953-terry-mitchell] | Carollynn [https://substack.com/profile/301213629-carollynn] | Julie Robuck [https://substack.com/profile/208030486-julie-robuck] | Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙 [https://substack.com/profile/356845797-masonsheher] | Kimmy Win [https://substack.com/profile/180488664-kimmy-win] ~ For support, contact us at: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe [https://sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]