Resistor Vic Podcast

Health insurance didn’t suddenly become unaffordable.

The Affordable Care Act slowed premium growth when its guardrails were enforced. But those guardrails were weakened, consolidation ran unchecked, and subsidies only delayed the inevitable.

This is why the current spike was always coming — and why Medicare for All is the only healthcare system that can survive partisan politics.

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Every year, there’s a story people like to tell about soldiers laying down their weapons on Christmas Eve. The most famous version didn’t happen in World War II, but during World War I in 1914, when exhausted soldiers along the Western Front stopped fighting for a night. There was also a smaller, lesser-known moment during World War II in 1944, in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge. This is a reflective look at two real Christmas Eve stories, and why they’ve stayed with us.

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This week on the Resistor Vic Podcast, I’m joined by Blythe Potter — an Army veteran, small business owner, and grassroots candidate running for Indiana Secretary of State.

We talk about what that office actually does, why so many voters skip down-ballot races, and how election systems can quietly suppress participation without ever touching a voting machine. Blythe explains Indiana’s delegate system, straight-ticket voting, voter purges, and why voter education may be the most powerful reform tool we have.

This isn’t a polished campaign ad. It’s a real conversation about what happens when regular people decide they’re done being ignored — and choose to step into the arena.

If you’ve ever felt like politics happens around you instead of with you, this episode is worth your time.

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Trump framed the $1,776 payment to service members as patriotic. Most analysis stopped at the funding source. This piece steps back and asks a different question: why 1776, and why now? Using inductive logic and historical context, this essay examines how symbols function, how meaning shifts, and why some choices deserve a closer look.

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In December of 1944, the 101st Airborne Division was surrounded at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

Facing overwhelming odds, the German command delivered a formal demand for surrender. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe’s response was a single word: Nuts.

This piece isn’t about military heroics for their own sake. It’s about the quiet, human decision to refuse surrender when surrender is presented as inevitable — and why that kind of courage still matters.

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Fear is one of the oldest tools in politics — and one of the most effective.

This video provides an example to support what I said in yesterday’s video.

In this piece, I walk through a new Colorado ballot initiative targeting fentanyl and show how fear is being used to sell a policy with enormous incarceration costs, predictable racial disparities, and little evidence it will actually solve the problem.

This isn’t about denying the harm fentanyl causes. It’s about refusing to let fear override facts, accountability, and democratic judgment.

When fear drives policy, the goal often isn’t safety. It’s power.

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Fear has always been one of the most powerful political tools.

It freezes people. It convinces them to stop acting. And eventually, it convinces them to stop participating.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned Americans about fear in 1933, not because danger wasn’t real, but because fear itself could finish the job. Nearly a century later, that warning still matters.

In this video, I talk about how fear is used to make people give up their power, why authoritarians depend on it, and why democracy doesn’t end when someone powerful decides it should, but when people decide it’s already gone.

Leadership isn’t pretending everything is fine.

It’s refusing to let fear make the decisions.

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Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters is serving a prison sentence after being convicted of four felony counts and three misdemeanors related to breaching election security in Colorado.Yet Donald Trump and his allies are now claiming she’s innocent, abused by the system, or even “pardoned” — something a president has no authority to do for state crimes.In this video, I explain who Tina Peters is, what she actually did, why a jury from a heavily Republican county convicted her, and why more than 30 Republican election officials in Colorado said she violated her oath and deserved prosecution.This isn’t really about Tina Peters. It’s about how authoritarian movements attack elections, courts, and prisons to make Americans lose faith in democracy itself.As historian Timothy Snyder warns in On Tyranny, we must defend institutions. This is what that warning looks like in real time.

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Legacy candidates do not break democracy. But they do weaken it.

When familiar last names dominate our political system, voters start with an uneven playing field. Some candidates inherit name recognition, donor networks, and media attention before a single vote is cast. Others have to build everything from scratch.

This video looks at legacy candidates, political dynasties, and inherited advantage, and asks a simple question. Does democracy work best when power is earned, or when it is inherited?

This Thursday, December 18, I will be interviewing Blythe Potter on the Resistor Vic Podcast. Blythe is running for Secretary of State in Indiana. The conversation is about giving voters a fairer chance to decide for themselves.

Join us live on YouTube and TikTok at 7pm Mountain Time

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I’ve seen a lot of outrage posts today about Trump’s social media post on Rob Reiner.

I decided to take a different approach.

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