Fascism comes at you pretty fast

Friday morning I wrote that the fascist tactics being used to ethnically cleanse the country would eventually be turned against citizens. A few hours later we had the breaking news that the FBI raided the home of prominent Trump critic John Bolton under the pretense of national security. The current head of the FBI is an anti-FBI QAnon conspiracy theorist who was placed in charge of the FBI in order to transform it from a professional law enforcement agency into a tool to persecute his list of political enemies.  That is why the agency is being purged of anyone believed to be insufficiently loyal to our Dear Leader or who worked on the prosecution of the now pardoned violent mob of insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow our government on January 6, 2021. To further the goal of transforming the agency into a Trump political weapon, they are lowering the standards and reducing the amount of training necessary to become an agent from 18 weeks to 8 weeks. That's in addition to replacing actual professional leadership with law enforcement expertise with conservative influencers.

And Supreme Leader for life Trump is also now proclaiming that he has the authority to order his political enemies investigated and arrested because he is "actually the chief law enforcement officer."* Ordering arrests and investigations is not a power that the US presidency has (for obvious reasons) but that's the point: we no longer have a president, we have an authoritarian ruler who will continue to expand and consolidate his power and nothing short of total control over our lives will satiate his ego. And given the nature of the structure of the way he tells his lies, when he says he did not order the Bolton raid it means that he most likely did order the Bolton raid.

*He also has proclaimed himself the embodiment of the federal government and the States have to thus obey him. Again, presidents do not have the powers of divine monarchs where they are considered the living embodiment of the government; and their word is not law. As I was saying, the structure of how he lies tells you what he actually means - when he said he'd only be a dictator for one day it meant he intended to be a dictator forever.

Only a matter of time now

The pace of our race towards totalitarianism seems to be accelerating concurrently with Orange Nero's descent into full blown dementia (did you know he's stopped ten wars, lowered drug prices by 1,500%?). With the military being deployed to occupy American cities to impose the regime's white ethnic nationalist agenda and break up and crush any dissent, it is only a matter of time before we have another Boston Massacre or a Tiannmen Square type event.

At this point my frustration is mostly with all the millions of voters who continue to support this growing fascist cancer. Part of the reason the revolutionary war was fought was to stop the use of military quartering amongst the civilian population. These were grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence, you know: "He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures ... For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us." 

Any real American patriot would be denouncing and opposing this regime, not supporting the dismantling of American democracy.

The language of totalitarianism gets a new idiom

Do the supporters (Republican voters) of the fascist MAGA ethnic cleansing of the United States think the regime will only impose totalitarianism against Them (immigrants, visa holders, Democrats, liberals etc.)? That's not how the tyranny of totalitarianism works. I ask because everyday the threat to everyone who values living in an open society which respects the rule of law and human rights is increasing. This is the latest

The Trump administration is reviewing the records of more than 55 million US visa holders for potential revocation or deportable violations of immigration rules, in a significant expansion of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. 

 In a move first reported by the Associated Press, the state department said that all of the foreigners who currently hold valid US visas are subject to “continuous vetting” for any indication that they could be ineligible for the document, including those already admitted into the country. Should such evidence come to light, the visa would be revoked and, if the visa holder were in the United States, they would be subject to deportation.

"Continuous vetting" means living under constant surveillance, having to live in fear that anything you say or do will upset the regime and have secret police arrest and disappear you and place you in one of the numerous concentration camps for committing a thought crime or because at some point in your life you hit the like button to a post somewhere that Orange Nero says is "woke." The Stasi had to rely on a secret network of informers; now MAGA fascists have access to the infrastructure of mass surveillance that was put in place in response to the 9/11 attacks that has never been dismantled, in addition to the AI algorithms that will scour our digital lives in seconds to find if you have ever held any view or opinion the United States dictator disapproves of. 

It is only a matter of time before this will apply to citizens as well. And when they come for you - I'm speaking to Republican supporters of this - you will have no one to blame but yourself.

Baleful quote of the day

"RFK Jr.’s 'scientific' method is that any research process that reaches a different conclusion than RFK Jr. has reached based on no evidence whatsoever isn’t science." - Scott Lemieux, "I am beginning to think that RFK Jr. is not, in fact, trying to make America healthy again"

Rose "Garden"

Since Orange Nero now considers himself Supreme Leader for life he's renovating the White House as if it's his personal palace and remaking it in the image of his actual personal residence at Mar-a-Lago. Which is kind of a problem because the White House belongs to the American people, not him. But again, what am I thinking, that's old America where we had presidents, not life long divine monarchs.

Anyway, the new Rose "Garden" has been completed. I put garden in quotes because there no longer is any garden - it's gone, replaced with a garish cement hellscape that looks like Isengard did after Saruman decimated the surrounding forest in service to his evil agenda. And the Rose ... er ... Pavement is surrounded by black & grey American flag drains and the presidential seal; also giving mark of the White Hand vibes.

This is Trump in microcosm: literally paving over American tradition and history to implement his personal preferences because he has no respect for anyone or anything other than himself. Although on second thought he does seem to have a great level of admiration for dictators.* 

*Just an aside: but let's revisit something for a moment. The surreal reality that American voters elected someone who in advance of the 2016 election retweeted an actual fascist quote attributed to Benito Mussolini because HE AGREED WITH AN ACTUAL FASCIST QUOTE ATTRIBUTED TO A FASCIST DICTATOR. (Or, you know, the time he retweeted - I'm not making this up - the account "WhiteGenocideTM.") Yet we still have people who call it hyperbole or Trump Derangement Syndrome to accuse him of promoting fascism. Oh and then there is also the matter of the masked secret police currently roaming the streets, just randomly beating the shit out of people for the crime of not being white enough. 

Quote of the day

"Fascism’s perversion of freedom’s meaning demands a richer conception of liberty than mere absence of constraint. As Snyder observes, the American Right has historically defined freedom negatively as freedom from government, which originally served to prevent federal intervention against slavery and later against various forms of discrimination. The humanist tradition offers an alternative conception of freedom: not just freedom from constraint but freedom to flourish, to develop one’s capacities, to engage fully in democratic life." - Jonathan Simmons, "The Humanist Response to Authoritarianism"

The country is being run by a sadistic racist psychopath

No, I'm not talking about the president. I'm talking about his handler.

The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”. 

 ... 

In a pair of posts on the social network on Friday, Loomer had shared video of badly injured Palestinian children and their family members arriving in Houston and San Francisco this month, along with false claims that their shouts of joy were “jihadi chants” and that they were “doing the HAMAS terror whistle”.

Reminder: Loomer previously "joked" about the genocide of the entire US Latino population via a concentration camp in Florida. She is one of the closest, most influential advisers to someone who is transforming the US presidency into a dictatorship.

I'm just saying

The cowardly masked militarized ICE agents currently terrorizing the civilian US population in order to Make America White Again look like the masked paramilitary working for Lex Luthor in the new Superman movie.

Why does this seem familiar to me?

"Now Sauron's lust and pride increased, until he knew no bounds, and he determined to make himself master of all things in middle-Earth, and to destroy the Elves, and to compass, if he might, the downfall of Númenor. He brooked no freedom nor any rivalry, and he named himself Lord of the Earth. A mask he still could wear so that if he wished he might deceive the eyes of Men, seeming to them wise and fair. But he ruled rather by force and fear, if they might avail; and those who perceived his shadow spreading over the world called him the Dark Lord and named him Enemy; and he gathered again under his government all the evil things of the days of Morgoth that remained on earth or beneath it, and the Orcs were at his command and multiplied like flies." J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fall of Númenor: And Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-Earth

Let me try something:

"Now Sauron's Trump's lust and pride increased, until he knew no bounds, and he determined to make himself master of all things in middle-Earth America, and to destroy the Elves Democrats, and to compass, if he might, the downfall of Númenor Los Angeles. He brooked no freedom nor any rivalry, and he named himself Lord of the Earth. A mask he still could wear so that if he wished he might deceive the eyes of Men Republicans, seeming to them wise and fair. But he ruled rather by force and fear, if they might avail; and those who perceived his shadow spreading over the world called him the Dark Lord and named him Enemy; and he gathered again under his government all the evil things of the days of Morgoth MAGA that remained on earth or beneath it, and the Orcs fascists were at his command and multiplied like flies."

But her emails ...

Thanks, Republicans. You voted for this level of incompetence and compromised national security.

Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage. 

Eight pages, that appear to have been produced by U.S. staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employees.

At least Emperor Orange Nero has been able to use the resources of the US government to turn himself into a real billionaire instead of a pretend one, though, so I guess it's worth it.

Quote of the day

 "Donald Trump has turned the presidency into something it shouldn't be: a job with unlimited ability to advance one's own personal interests at the expense of the public's." - Joe Walsh, F*ck Silence: Calling Trump Out for the Cultish, Moronic, Authoritarian Con Man He Is

A new report estimates Trump has profited 3.4 billion dollars so far from merging his business interests with those of the presidency. I'm old enough to remember when Republicans tried to end Bill Clinton's presidency over a failed land deal he and his wife made in Arkansas prior to becoming president that lost them money.

Quote of the day

“With 450 million FEMA dollars being reallocated to open Alligator Alcatraz, and 600 million taxpayer FEMA dollars being used to now open more concentration camps, and ICE burning through $8.4 million a day to illegally detain people—How much does it cost for fascism? How much do the taxpayers have to pay for a fascist country?” - constituent question to Rep. Mike Flood (R-Nebraska) at a town hall Aug. 4, 2025

Via Heather Cox Richardson

In which I remind myself these are the end of days

The future of medical research and public health policy is being decimated because the Republican majority is willing to sacrifice millions of lives to the alter of Emperor Trump's ego. Why else would they have confirmed this lunatic to be head of the HHS?

"COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately," Kennedy said at a recent dinner in New York City. The remarks were videotaped and first published by the New York Post on Saturday. 

 "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese," he continued, adding, "We don't know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact."

Somehow I missed this article from a couple of years ago. Of course, I never thought the HHS would be transformed into a mini-dictatorship run by someone who has no actual scientific or medical knowledge but just makes up wild conspiracy theories that exist only in his own mind, then unilaterally imposes those beliefs on the rest of the country circumventing all agency process and expertise.

We're living through an Orwell novel

Back in May, as part of the plan to Make America White Again, Orange Nero fired the first female and first non-white Librarian of Congress, and named in her place his personal attorney as the acting head, who has zero qualifications for the position and is already in a time consuming position as Deputy Attorney General. He happens to be a white male, however. And then something like this happens

As TechCrunch previously reported, parts of Section 8, as well as the entirety of Section 9 and Section 10, were deleted from Article 1 of the Constitution on the U.S. government’s official website over the past month. The changes to the sections, which pertained to congressional powers, the rights of individual states, and the rights to due process, sparked alarm at a time when the Trump administration has threatened to suspend habeas corpus.

Maybe it really was a coding error. That sounds plausible. But equally plausible is Trump appointees purging federal websites of information Dear Leader does not like. It's plausible because it's already been happening at an alarming rate.

South Park isn't wrong about Kristi Noem

"Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country." - DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, redefining habeas corpus as tyranny

First, let me say again: Presidents don't have constitutional rights, they have constitutional powers. The Constitution guarantees rights to everyone in the United States; a president has no more or less of these. So the notion that Kim-Jong Trump is entitled to deport people with no due process is false; and suspending habeas corpus is not even a power of the presidency, Congress has the power to suspend habeas corpus. 

South Park's most recent episode offers a withering depiction of Kristi Noem and her Mar-a-Lago face. Noem responded that "it's always the liberals" who "make fun of women for how they look." Nevermind that the creators of South Park are libertarians; the issue with Noem isn't her physical appearance in itself so much as the desire to create a surface level appearance of glamour and artificial beauty while carrying out horrific human rights abuses. I'm thinking specifically of Noem getting her hair done up for a photo op in el Salvador where the people she helped put in a torture gulag with no due process are used as props, something that she should have to answer for in a court of law at some point since it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

A high-ranking American official visits a prison on foreign soil which we are using to warehouse enemies of her regime. She appears in a fitted long-sleeve tee and active-wear slacks. There is a ballcap on her head and a pound of makeup smeared across her plasticized face. A gold Rolex Daytona—worth more than some of these men will make in their entire lives—sits proudly on her dainty wrist. Every piece of this visual is carefully engineered.

It's like she has used plastic surgery to achieve the effect of Dorian Gray's portrait.

The fruit that they bear

 I don't think it's a far stretch from the kind of deranged hatred that MTG or the conspiracist lies RFK Jr spread about the CDC to this kind of hate.

After speaking with family members of the suspect, police are operating under the hypothesis he was either sick or believed he was sick and blamed the illness on the Covid-19 vaccine, a law enforcement official told CNN. 

 

The CDC, one of the world’s leading health agencies, is tasked with protecting the health of Americans. But it has come under fire during the second Trump administration as conspiracy theories continue to plague the vaccine credited with halting the spread of the global pandemic. 

The shooting occurred the same week US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a longtime critic of Covid vaccinations, with a history of spreading vaccine misinformation – announced the cancellation of a half-billion dollars in investments in mRNA projects.

Before 2020 the CDC was a well respected institution across the political spectrum, but now as the Republican party becomes more and more Qanon-ified it's become the case that it has been added to their list of things that are a part of the grand conspiracy against them. If we had responsible Republican leaders, rather than insane ones, this needn't be the case. But we are rushing head first into a new dark age of unreason, where we destroy the institutions that protect us and help us.

Fox News is worse than it used to be

 I was in a waiting room the other day and had the misfortune of sitting near a television turned to Fox News. I spent years in the 2000s into the 2010s watching this network, and it was bad then, but I hadn't realized how much its turned into straight North Korean style state media. It was just non stop slobbering about how glorious the first two hundred days of Kim Jong Trump's dictatorship have been. It was completely untethered from reality, with the hosts and guest stating that the economy is performing amazing now (in contrast to the reality that he has broken an economy under Biden that was the envy of the world) and basically Trump with his god-Emperor powers is magically transforming the United States into a utopia, which is obviously at odds with the actual country being created: a fascist police state ruled by white Christian nationalist men where a handful of corporations and the mega-wealthy own everything and we labor to let them live in luxury while the federal government does, basically, nothing for citizens. Witness Trump himself using the presidency to add billions of dollars to his wealth, already (not to mention essentially embezzling 1 billion dollars from taxpayers after accepting a $400 million bribe from Qatar to give himself a luxury jet while healthcare is taken away from children, food from the starving.)

Oh, and they ended by saying a new government report reveals greenhouse gases aren't that dangerous. If Fox News had been broadcasting on Krypton the hosts would have been telling people not to worry about the fake news about Krypton's imminent destruction.

If you don't think this is fascism, well, you're very wrong.

"Yeah! Fuck them! Kill 'em. Yeah!" - current employee of the Department of Justice, urging violent protesters to kill law enforcement officers at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 

The linked above NPR article notes, "a Department of Justice spokesperson said in a statement, 'Jared Wise is a valued member of the Justice Department and we appreciate his contributions to our team.'" 

Future historians will look at this like our version of the Beer Hall Putsch. But at least Hitler went to jail for it, although briefly. The Holocaust Encyclopedia states that "despite its failure, the leaders ultimately redefined the putsch as a heroic effort to save the nation." Kind of like calling the insurrectionists political prisoners then pardoning all of them and purging the DOJ and FBI of anyone who held them accountable for their attempted coup. 

Wise was being prosecuted by the DOJ until Orange Nero, Kim-Jong Trump had the case dismissed. And now, of course, he has a position in the DOJ where he very clearly has a conflict of interest: "According to email records from multiple sources viewed by NPR, Wise holds the title of senior adviser in the office of the deputy attorney general and has been working on internal reviews of alleged 'weaponization' of law enforcement." Yes, who better to investigate weaponization of law enforcement than someone who was unfairly prosecuted for merely storming the US capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history and encouraging rioting members of a mob to kill police officers. The corruption never ends, it is bottom-less. 

A lot of Republican now support this - this fascism - because they think tyranny will only be imposed on people they disagree with. They're very wrong about that, also. No one is safe from any form of government where the Rule of Law is replaced with the Rule of a Leader. Who will protect them when the Leader or anyone he has delegated authority to turns on them? Not the law, it will be gone. 

As Robert Bolt put it in A Man for all Seasons 

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law? 

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? 

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that! 

More: Oh? And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and, if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake. 

Substitute "not Trump's" for "not God's" and the point is the same.

The current United States president is deranged and has dementia

 What would it take to wake his supporters up to this fact? The president is now claiming he will use his magical powers to make this happen:

"This is something that nobody else can do. We’re gonna get the drug prices down. Not 30 or 40% which would be great, not 50 or 60, no. We’re gonna get ‘em down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%"

If a $100 drug decreased by 1,500 percent that would mean the pharmacist would pay you $1400 to take it. 

Down down the memory hole

"Winston's greatest pleasure in life was in his work. Most of it was a tedious routine, but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem -- delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of what the Party wanted you to say. Winston was good at this kind of thing." - George Orwell, 1984

Recalling Neal Postman thinking that had Stanley Milgram's subjects been required to read a classic work on obedience to authority and the claim of simple administrating policies not being a defense for causing harm they would have been less inclined to cause harm, I'd like to hope that if more people had read 1984 before voting for Trump they'd be less likely to support his administration creating memory holes. 

 In July, the National Museum of American History removed a placard from a display of presidential impeachments. The placard included Trump’s two impeachments. The placard that replaced it stated that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal”: Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton. 

 The former placard including Trump’s two impeachments had been on display since September 2021. 

 A person familiar with what occurred told The Washington Post that the former placard had been removed following pressure from the White House

The Smithsonian (which is supposed to be independent of the Executive branch of government, but that was under our old system of government which was based in laws and the Constitution, not the Leader's will) has issued a statement saying the display will be updated in the coming weeks to include Dear Leader's record breaking two impeachments. We'll see how long that stands before it too goes into the memory hole.

You elected a tyrant and a monster

“I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed ... I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant… You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.” - Donald Trump (2005)

"I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ...Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." - Donald Trump (2005)

"As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining...." - Donald Trump (2017)

"I have the absolute right to PARDON myself" - Donald Trump (2018)

"As the President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!" - Donald Trump (2019)

“I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." - Donald Trump (2019) 

"I'm allowed to [pardon child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell] ... I know I have the right to do it. I have the right to give pardons." - Donald Trump (2025)

The "you" I refer to in the title is anyone who voted for this person despite the clear evidence - including his explicitly bragging about doing so - that he will abuse any power and authority within his reach. Be it claiming he's "allowed" to view young women undressing because he is the owner of a beauty pageant or that he can sexually assault women because "you can do anything" if you're a celebrity or claiming that being president gives him absolute rights to trample the rule of law. The common underlying theme is that he feels entitled to do these things.

Presidents do not have rights, they have powers - and they are not absolute; they are limited. Or at least they are on paper. What Trump claims for himself is more akin to the Divine Right of Kings, something this country was founded to end. Yet he claims the Constitution gives him the powers that the nation had rejected. I say had because Republican voters are apparently done with democracy. They favor something more in line with Führerprinzip, as they have no objection to Trump ignoring laws and governing directly by imperial decree or through late night diet soda fueled social media rants and all aspects of the federal government existing only to implement his will. He believes that he is accountable to no one, answerable to no one. And for some reason that I can not and never will understand, Republican voters are ok with that, despite Trump being absent of any regard for any person on the planet other than himself.

Not incidentally, the nation's founding generation were avid readers of "Cato's Letters." I have a particular affinity for #33 (1721)

There is no evil under the sun but what is to be dreaded from men, who may do what they please with impunity: They seldom or never stop at certain degrees of mischief when they have power to go farther; but hurry on from wickedness to wickedness, as far and as fast as human malice can prompt human power....

People are ruined by their ignorance of human nature; which ignorance leads them to credulity, and too great a confidence in particular men. They fondly imagine that he, who, possessing a great deal by their favour, owes them great gratitude, and all good offices, will therefore return their kindness: But, alas! how often are they mistaken in their favourites and trustees; who, the more they have given them, are often the more incited to take all, and to return destruction for generous usage. The common people generally think that great men have great minds, and scorn base actions; which judgment is so false, that the basest and worst of all actions have been done by great men: Perhaps they have not picked private pockets, but they have done worse; they have often disturbed, deceived, and pillaged the world: And he who is capable of the highest mischief, is capable of the meanest: He who plunders a country of a million of money, would in suitable circumstances steal a silver spoon; and a conqueror, who steals and pillages a kingdom, would, in an humbler fortune, rifle a portmanteau, or rob an orchard.

Quote of the day

 "[I]t is legitimate to infer in Marcus a visceral dislike of Hadrian and all his works. Hadrian had himself portrayed on his coins with grandiose titles: Clement, Indulgent, Just, Tranquil, Patient in Illness. Marcus made it clear that he despised such boastful imperial titles; the epithets he aspired to were those denoting a philosopher or a good man. And he loathed Hadrian for using murder and terror as an instrument of policy: Hadrian, it was clear, was a man who had no proper idea of friendship and knew neither its value nor its limits." - Frank McLynn, Marcus Aurelius: A Life

Quote of the day

 "Unforeseen consequences stand in the way of all those who think they see clearly the direction in which a new technology will take us." - Neal Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology