Hello there, happy Wednesday and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Toddcast.

Today's is somewhat a thematic day. Most Wednesdays, I'm trying to be in the habit of doing

a little bit of updating of what I'm seeing on the campaign trail. And frankly, my campaign

notebook has been overflowing with things.

Look, I'm going to be honest.

This has been, I always hate when people use that phrase.

I use it as a crutch.

I'm going to be honest, as if I'm not being honest before.

I'm trying to cure myself of using that crutch.

But what I'm trying to say is that I'm letting you in on sort of some personal feelings that I normally don't like to share.

And that is, I just feel rotten about the state of the country. I'm not sleeping very well about it.

And because I don't see a path out of this right now.

I'm long-term optimistic, and I'm still going to be a long-term optimistic.

We've gone through a lot of bad things in this country and gotten out better each time.

Each time we have formed a more perfect union, whether it was the scourge of slavery, whether it has been then giving civil rights and Jim Crow, whether it has been the internment of the Japanese, whether it was prohibition.

The point is that we've gone down, we've had a lot of the red scare, which I'm bringing that up for a reason,

because I think we might be seeing a fervor, particularly on the right, that wants to try to

essentially stain an entire political party with an ideological belief that I don't think

the country shares, but one side of the aisle shares.

I mean, the initial, what folks around the president have been promising when it comes

to retribution, going after the left, sort of being blind to the violent outbursts that have taken place that people have, you know, violence and murders that have been done in the name of a far right ideology. The fact of the matter is we have got a poisonous information ecosystem

that can radicalize somebody on the left or somebody on their right to do bad things.

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