Up until recently for the vast majority of people in this country, day-to-day life seems to proceed as “normal.” What is “normal”? For most people it is waking up in the morning, preparing for and then heading off to a job you may or may not want to do, and return home—in between of which you do the things necessary to survive to do the same thing the next day: breath, eat, expel, sleep and present a "normal" appearance to the world.
Of course you may go to sleep "dreaming" that something will change the next morning when you awake; but it never does, unless you wake up to a "surprise" phone call from your employer telling you not to bother to come to work this day or any other, and then life is another “adventure” in basic survival skills.
But then one day you awake and something else seems very different. You turn on the television to watch the morning news and you are listening to lies, misinformation and undisguised calls for violence against "criminals," "illegals" and the "radical left." Wait a minute, you say, I never watch Fox News. But then you find it's the same channel you've been getting your news from for decades, but you are now realizing that slowly but suddenly in a rush, fascist propaganda has gone "mainstream" on corporate-controlled media.
The majority of what was "mainstream" is now simply reporting the latest lawless actions of a lawless regime as "conventional" news. Whatever Trump and his cruel, racist, unfit, unqualified and ignorant political stooges want to do to reshape the country into their own fascist vision is now “normal” business. The Washington Post (owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos) isn’t even bothering counting Trump’s endless lies anymore because what’s the “point” of it now? By not doing so, of course, means that lying is being normalized, so why question it? If you do, you will be threatened with billion (or trillion) dollar "defamation" lawsuits or your broadcast license revoked.
There was a time when you could just brush all this off as the usual “harmless” rantings of demented nutcases who deserved nothing more than eye rolls and allowed to sit in their corners talking to themselves. People with a “reputation” to protect couldn’t believe such people would have mass appeal, and at least publicly distanced themselves from the constant stream of lies and hate that seemed to harken back to a historical era that all but neo-Nazis and white nationalists claimed to have abandoned, because it was the “worst of the worst” in any country's history.
But instead of waking up to a world where the “old” was past history, it was resurrected anew, like we time-traveled back to a world described by Orwell's 1984. We see it on television news and social media, where images of violence on the streets under the color of federal law is now common place. Yet as "common" as it is it seems more and more that it is only those on social media still "independent" of corporate and fascist political control who dare to inform the public about it. We find here 1 and here Katie Phang letting it all hang out in a video on the latest domestic war criminal act that appears to have been banned from YouTube, but I don't think she should be kept from expressing a valid observation:
Thus a Chicago area apartment was invaded in the middle of the night by 300 armed and masked thugs, replete with military snipers rappelling from helicopters. Despite complete trashing of every room, no evidence was found to back up DHS claims to that these people were “terrorist gang members” or drug dealers. Only "immigration violations" were eventually mumbled out to justify this raid. Of course we shouldn't be surprised by this, given that a federal judge has found that the DOJ likely invented the human trafficking charge against Kilmar Abrego Garcia not because there was any factual basis for it, but that it was motivated by "vindictiveness" and "retaliation."
So instead, half-naked, crying children who were sleeping were dragged out of their beds, out onto the streets cuffed with zip ties, and thrown into rental trucks. Ice, Border Patrol and FBI thugs simply came in and grabbed everyone, even those who were "obviously" U.S. citizens. One was “saved” initially by double-locking his door as the outlaw thugs tried to bust down his door, but later when he returned from work found his belongings strewn all over his rooms and into the hallway. and his laptop computer and other items stolen as "evidence":
The Guardian further reported on more of the uncontrolled, violent activity of lawless federal stormtroopers in Chicago:
In recent weeks the Broadview facility has become the site of escalations by federal agents against protesters and journalists. Videos of agents deploying tear gas, pepper balls and roughly throwing protesters to the ground have gone viral, amidst the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Another protester, Reverand David Black of the First Presbyterian church of Chicago, said that he was pelted with about seven or eight “pepper exploding pellets” that hit his head, face, torso, arms and legs, while in a position of prayer.
“There has been an extreme escalation in the use of force by federal agents at that facility against people who are exercising their first amendment rights, and targeted attacks against members of the press and legal observers with The National Lawyers Guild,” said Molly Armour, a volunteer attorney with the National Lawyers Guild Chicago for over 15 years.
What was most troubling about the behavior of federal agents at Broadview for her, Armour said, was the use of “violent military-style offensive weaponry used against people, such as tear gas canisters, [and] different kinds of aerosol chemical agents”, particularly against people just observing what’s going on.
DHS claims that “attacks” on federal thugs has increased at some made-up number that changes every time the claim is made, but the truth is plain to see: that violent attacks on peaceful protesters and anyone with brown skin has escalated beyond any number. Violence and cruelty under the "color" of the "law" is now “normal” behavior in this country.
Who is protecting the people from this lawless violence and denial of basic human rights that appears to vastly outnumber that committed by DHS' definition of “criminals”? In Portland at least, local police whose tactics against left-wing protesters has been under review since 2012, now face "outrage" by the Trump administration concerning the arrest of right-wing influencer Nick Sortor for assault as he joined "counter-protesters" in a deliberate effort to escalate hostility as a publicity stunt for his media platform.
But in Chicago and other cities where Trump has deployed federal and military thugs, police have refused to assist tax-paying U.S. citizens who pay their wages, and whose property is being routinely destroyed or stolen by ICE thugs. Instead local police are enabling or even participating in actions against not just the “illegals” but "suspect" U.S. citizens, protestors, the press and even government officials.
Of course this only undermines community relations and trust with local law enforcement. They claim that actions that would lead to suspensions or firings for themselves are outside their “authority.” But members of the effected communities perhaps would be justified if they believed that local law enforcement “tacitly” endorses behavior they wish they could engage in without consequence.
That leaves local politicians and the courts to protect people against the lawless armed thugs sent into their cities, but we see politicians who are demanding their right of oversight and accountability being the targets of thuggery and violence themselves (even U.S. senators), and court orders being effectively ignored or over-ruled by those with their own fascist agenda (i.e. the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court), where we see here 2 CBS News defending the "victimized" and "brave" fascist Amy Coney Barrett and her cohorts who are crushing the rule of law, civil and voting rights and due process in support of a dictator who they have given immunity from his crimes as well as effective control of the political process to rich oligarchs (of whom Trump is also one) through the "Citizens" United ruling.
Meanwhile press secretary and chief propaganda minister Karoline Leavitt gaslights the press every day with the exaggerated claims and outright lies that she is tasked to perform; the way she confidently lies to the press, you are convinced of her own pathology in telling them. She seems incapable of understanding that she is operating from the Nazi propaganda playbook, because she is simply repeating what Trump wants her to “communicate,” and what she is “communicating” is what Trump “learned” from reading a book of Hitler’s speeches, My New Order, given to him by a longtime acquaintance named Marty Davis, who as recently as 2020 was enough of a "friend" to support Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This book was given to Trump back in 1990 because the far-right Davis thought he’d “like it” as much as he himself apparently did.
So we know that at least a far back as 35 years ago that Trump was influenced by racist and fascist beliefs, but we could go much further than that. Trump's father was also a racist and Nazi sympathizer; his fascist beliefs were chronicled by Woody Guthrie in his song “Old Man Trump” back in the 1950s, and passed on to his son, a narcissist who was over-sensitive to his lack of intellect, and who only understood the infliction of violence and cruelty as "compensation" for his personal failures.
And it was also after the Trump Organization was investigated for racial discrimination by the LBJ DOJ in 1968 before it was sued officially by the Nixon DOJ in 1973 (Trump eventually “settled” the case so he wouldn’t have to admit “guilt”), and that people who knew Trump personally were not only aware of his racist and fascist beliefs, but those like Davis (who was not “Jewish” as Trump claimed) and Roy Cohn enabled these beliefs. Now that he has opened that Pandora's Box of evil, for Trump there is no “shortage” of such enablers who do what is needed to please him by putting into reality (as Hitler's henchmen did) the evil he merely sounds completely mad enunciating himself—not that evil and inhuman cruelty sounds or looks any “better” when it is “better” understood.
So why isn’t the press pointing out that Trump was given a book of Hitler’s speeches by someone who thought he’d “like” it as much as he did, and that his former wife Ivana said he kept that book near him for bedtime reading? Replace Jews with "illegals" and you have your scapegoat for all the ills of this country as the Nazis did. Of course the “liberals”—who during the 1930s Germany would have been any opposition political party—were essentially “disappeared” into concentration camps or banned altogether after the Nazi-staged Reichstag Fire.
So let's talk about "ancient" history. The rump of Reichstag legislature that was left “voted” for the Enabling Act in which they ended democratic institutions by simply giving away whatever “authority” they had, becoming simply a rubber stamp for Hitler’s decrees, fearful of raising any questions against The Leader, even as the economy was brought to the brink of total collapse before the onset of World War II.
First let’s recall what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. In a recent article in the Atlantic, Timothy Ryback pointed out that Trump’s fascination with tariffs mirrored that of Hitler: “From almost the moment Adolf Hitler took office as chancellor of Germany, tariffs were at the top of his government’s economic agenda.” The Nazi Party’s chief economic “theorist” was at the time Gottfried Feder, who declared that “National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes.” This “Germany First” policy aimed to restrict imports to virtually nothing, with Germany producing all of the German people’s needs—with some exceptions, such as oil which the country had little of.
In 1930, Herbert Hoover, against the warnings of his economic advisors, signed a massive Republican-passed tariff bill that only worsened the Great Depression here and around the world. Yet in 1932 most German economists were opposed to tariffs as a “fix” for the economy. As Ryback notes “Hitler had inherited a recovering economy: In December 1932, the German Institute for Economic Research reported that the crisis had been ‘significantly overcome’; by the time Hitler was appointed chancellor, in January 1933, the economy was on the mend.” Hitler’s main concern should have been “not messing things up.”
But that is exactly what this “very stable genius”—who was a failed “artist” who did not rise above the rank of corporal, but had strong nationalist “opinions” and the “gift” of “communicating" them to the easily persuaded since the country's defeat after the first world war—did. The conservative Centre Party—still thinking along the lines of a democratic state—convinced President Hindenburg to install Hitler as chancellor, in the "hope" that he and his radicalized party could be “controlled”—that is before the Reichstag Fire, which occurred just days before a new election in which the Nazis' extremist views were starting to be viewed with less confidence from voters as demonstrated by their falling support in the previous election.
Not surprisingly only the Nazis benefited politically from the fire. In a recently discovered 1955 affidavit, SA member Martin Lennings admitted that the half-witted Marinus van der Lubbe could not have set the fire, because he and others, who had been tasked to transport him to the Reichstag as the Communist scapegoat, discovered it was already on fire, set by other SA members; Gen. Franz Halder would later claim that Goering himself bragged at a party that he was the only one who knew the “truth” about who actually set the fire.
The Reichstag Fire Decree would subsequently suspend most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of the press, free association and assembly, and privacy rights in general. With political opposition banned or in concentration camps, the subsequent Enabling Act allowed Hitler to rule by decree permanently, which today we see as Trump attempting to rule by “executive order," as he continues to stoke outrage at the lawless violence of his street thugs as a "pretext" to invoke the Insurrection Act.
Not that some still tried to talk some sense into Hitler on economic matters. Ryback notes that Eduard Hamm of the German Industry and Trade Association attempted to tell him that there were very specific rules that aided in building capital, and “that free trade was based on trust, the rule of law, and adherence to contractual obligations.” No different than in this country where we see "TACO" Trump playing to rules he makes up and no one else understands, where we see job losses (why haven't we seen the September numbers yet? Is it due to the shutdown--or are they being "fixed") because of the effects of tariffs; the German economy was dependent on its exporting of industrial and manufactured goods, and starting trade wars that would stifle exports as much as they would deter imports did not make economic sense.
Hitler’s publicly expressed economic plans, like Trump’s, were mostly empty promises to the “people” while averting their eyes to scapegoated groups, but in “private” he shared the same fascist dogma as Mussolini’s definition of it as “corporatism”—meaning economic control by the corporate elites (you know, billionaires). Ryback noted that Feder’s “national socialist” economic ideas, which included “increased taxation of the wealthy” and “state supervision of large corporations” were no long part of Hitler’s thinking, since he needed the cooperation of industrial leaders for his future plans that had two primary goals: build up the military for and as yet undefined purpose, and imposing massive tariffs which he believed would aid in creating an “independent” German economy. But how would this new “economy” look in reality? For the short term, Hitler made it clear to his ministers, but not yet to the populace: “The future of Germany depends solely and exclusively on the rebuilding of the army.”And of course ridding the country of "illegal" Jews who allegedly "controlled" its intellectual and economic life.
Thus the German “economic miracle” was based largely on military spending (not the much “praised” building of the Autobahn), which at least on paper accounted for more than 70 percent of government spending. But this did not count the fake money “Ghost Budget,” which was later used by the Bush administration to fund the second Iraq War without raising taxes (let alone reversing its tax cuts for the rich) to pay for it, as what Trump is doing now to pay for his war against the people who will not only be paying for it now, but will continue to do so far into the future (with the “help” of Republican hypocrites) through massive debt increase and cuts in public programs.
For Hitler and the Nazi regime there were some problems with doing this, of course; by law it was illegal for the central bank to bankroll the government, and heavy deficit government spending that did not create jobs would cause inflation. Thus the creation of a “dummy company” that basically printed out fake money called MeFo notes, basically IOUs that could be rolled over indefinitely. Since this wasn’t real money that could be converted to Reichsmarks (and thus be even more inflationary), it wasn’t reported at all, and wasn’t officially counted in government expenditures.
But by 1938 this had become unsustainable, since there was only so much military hardware you could build if you were not actually “consuming” it (meaning replacing or adding more in wartime). This fake economy was threatening to collapse under its own weight (or more truthfully, the lack of it), and if for no other reason, Hitler backed himself into a corner where even though he wasn’t ready for war, he had no “choice” but to start a war earlier than desired to prevent total economic collapse. Once military spending became unsustainable, massive unemployment would be inevitable, since Corporate Germany was working hand-in-fist with Hitler (for each others' "favor") to achieve his military build-up aims, and not product for "public consumption."
Of course Hitler was not willing to admit the impending disastrous failure of his economic and trade policies, but having alienated Western countries (as Trump has done), Hitler “bullied” countries in Eastern Europe and in South America into accepting “barter” agreements to avoid using foreign exchange reserves.
But it was only a matter of time before all the gamesmanship of the Reichminister for the economy, Hjalmar Schacht, would inevitably run out of gimmicks. The lack of consumer goods decreased confidence in the Nazis’ economic policies among the populace, and when the time finally arrived when the financial and business sector no longer had confidence in the IOU’s they had been forced to accept, the Nazi government was forced to print increasingly worthless and inflationary "money" in contravention of the law to continue financing its military spending.
Schacht warned Hitler that spending on the military instead of what was good for the general population had to be cut or “incredible inflation” would occur. So what did Hitler do? He did as Trump would do. He fired Schacht and replaced him with a loyal, incompetent sycophant, Walther Funk—who was later convicted of crimes against humanity at the same Nuremberg trial that Schacht was acquitted.
The German economy had become like an untied balloon: if not continuously filled with air with “product” that the average consumer had no use for, it would simply deflate. Or if military spending continued to unsustainable levels, the balloon would eventually “burst”—and along with it the economy. Thus World War II (at least the European version of it) was less a matter of “if” than “when." Hitler had already spoken of expanding German “living space” in Mein Kampf; he was just forced to start the “expansion” before the German military was “ready” for the task.
What do we see so far since January 20? Hitler’s rule by “decree” is now Trump’s daily “executive orders.” We see fascist corporatism in which corporations and billionaires are “rewarded” with ever growing profits and welfare programs at the expense of working people as long as they support his anti-working people agenda. Like in Nazi Germany, we see most of the non-entitlement and debt interest government spending poured into the military and DHS thuggery under this administration.
Then there was that mass meeting with the military; do those generals and admirals realize now that they are taking orders from a crazed, criminal gang? Do they not realize that by shooting up boats and murdering civilians that they have supplied no evidence that they are criminal gangs transporting illegal drugs that they may in the future be found criminally liable for engaging in extrajudicial murder in contravention of international law, i.e. as war criminals?
We have been told that concerning the first boat in which 11 people were murdered, at least one was a fisherman who his wife said had left for work and never returned. That on that particular waterway there had been frequent traffic of people taking a short trip to Trinidad and Tobago where there was “trade” carrying low-priced oil from Venezuela to sell at a profit there? Of course now Trump is bragging that there isn’t even any fishing going on there because people are afraid of being killed.
“Suspects” on alleged drug boats according to international law deserve due process to confirm they are actually “guilty,” not instant execution. The stupidity of the Trump administration in this is not only are they guilty of extrajudicial murder (as are the military personnel involved in these actions), but in destroying the alleged "evidence" and “witnesses,” they are losing valuable "intelligence" to these, again, alleged drug operations. And forget about any "moral" authority the U.S. has left. Instead, what it appears is that this is all a publicity stunt in which all the evidence of Trump’s criminal acts are “destroyed” before they can be revealed to be a hoax.
And still we are not even nine months into the current Trump regime, yet every day it only gets worse, with a Supreme Court extremist majority acting increasingly like a Nazi court, rubber-stamping most of Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions.
Thus Hegseth told all those generals and admirals that if the victims of these attacks, regardless of who they truly are, “choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the War Department”—apparently like a cowardly bully, since alternatively we saw Trump rolling out the red carpet for war criminal Putin, desperately afraid to “test out” that “new philosophy” against a real enemy—so just call him your “friend.”
After fat-shaming his audience and insulting minority and female officers who didn't have bonespurs, Hegseth asserted he would be reviewing policy on how to conduct “bullying” and “hazing” without “fear of retribution.” By the way, Lords of Discipline has finally seen a Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber, so you can see in that film the kind of “hazing” Hegseth apparently wants the military to return to, despite his unspecified “qualifications” to avoid speculation on what this tattooed thug actually means.
Hilariously, Hegseth claimed that “standards have been manipulated to hit racial quotas as well, which is just unacceptable. This too must end. Merit only. The President talks about it all the time. Merit based.” If he’s talking about physical fitness, he is an idiot if he thinks white soldiers out-perform black soldiers; if he is talking about “competence,” he should be looking at himself and everyone else in the Trump administration, starting with the demented Orange Man with the bone spurs. And we need to get rid of those “Beardos” –an apparent reference to Sikhs in the military, but also possibly of Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman as well, given what this ignorant blowhard who never saw real action himself knows (insultingly to real soldiers, the part-time National Guardsman and reservist Hegseth received two Bronze Stars for "training" and public relations duty).
Hegseth went on to talk about the 1991 Gulf War like he was actually “there.” He was 11 years old. I remember it. 500,000 allied troops were sitting in Saudi Arabia for ninth months and then when they finally moved out after Iraq was mostly obliterated from the air, the “war” lasted all of four days when the desperate Iraqi soldiers still in the trenches just threw up their hands without firing a shot. Did it actually “end” the “war”? Was it really that "great" achievement that Hegseth claimed it was? Then why did the second Bush have to go back and “finish” the job with phony claims of WMDs and Al Qaeda links? Where almost 4,000 Americans died? Where we still have 2,000 troops stationed? WTF is Hegseth talking about?
Hegseth seemed to have missed out on the fact that since he refuses to discuss the specifics of what Pentagon spending is being allocated to, then we may question why he thinks Trump has “rebuilt” the military after years of alleged “neglect,” when in fact the “big beautiful bill” depriortizes the building of ships and aircraft for “other things,” the nature of which Hegseth reminded those in attendance:
We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for warfighters.
Against whom, again? Not against real enemies that Trump and Hegseth are too cowardly to test their bullying on. But we would be told more about that when the Orange Man made his appearance. Oh, there he comes, into a hall full of empty expressions and sound. “We built the military during my first term” that liar announces. “It was one of the greatest achievements. We had the greatest economy in history, and I built the military.” I counted four lies there already.
Trump “defined” the “enemy” not as Russia, China or even Iran and North Korea, but those “25 million” criminals, mental patients, gang members, drug traffickers and terrorists pouring into the country during the Biden years. He even suggested that those wishing to come here for freedom and work are actually murderers—and dumb enough to “admit” they are to CNN reporters; the ignorant bigot willfully “misinterprets” when migrants are actually saying they are escaping from people who are trying to murder them (like those U.S.-bred and exported gangs), but then again we have to deal with the kind of delusional mind that invents the following claim:
Fireman go up in ladders, and you have people shooting at them while they’re up in ladders. I don’t even know if anybody heard that. But — and I said, Don’t talk about it much, but I think you have to. Our firemen are incredible. They’re up in one of these ladders. It goes way up to the sky, rescuing people. And you have animals shooting at them, shooting bullets at firemen that are way up in death territory. You fall off that ladder, it’s over. It’s over.”
WTF??? Trump even has a “fix” for that: “They spit, we hit.” Huh???
Then Trump goes off the rails to admit who Hegseth and himself think the “enemy” is:
It’s amazing. It’s just like in Venezuela. You’ve seen the boats going. We can’t find any more boats there. They’re carrying drugs, massive. Every boat kills about 25,000 people. That’s what they have. They had fentanyl, mostly, and a lot of other drugs. And we take them out and we’ve taken out four. So and it’s on air. Everybody gets to see it. Not that we like to do that, but every boat kills 25,000, on average, 20.
I hate to sound like I'm repeating myself, but WTF???
There’s some people say more. You know, you see these boats are stacked up with bags of white powder. It’s mostly fentanyl and other drugs, too.
Trump sure loses his "train" of thought like a blind conductor. Did anyone actually see any of those bags on the boat? Or just people, maybe refugees? Well, they are at least "illegal," and that makes them "criminals" too.
And now we have a problem. General Kane says, Sir, there are no boats out there, not even fishing boats. They don’t want to go fishing. I don’t blame them. There’ll be no fishing today. But it’s amazing what strength will do because all we want to do is stop drugs from flowing into our country.
Yeah, who wants to be killed by an insane person? And where will Trump and Hegseth be finding people to blow out of the water next? Oh not to worry, they will find them right here in this country:
Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won’t get out of control.
We had gangs of 10, 12, 15 kids. And these military guys woke up to it, and they treat them with disrespect, and they just got pounded. They just got pounded.
Yeah, like those Guardsman who had nothing to do but rake leaves in a park were being "pounded" by "kids."
The gang just pounded and thrown into paddy wagons and taken back to their country. Some are so dangerous, we don’t want to even do that because we don’t want to. Some are stone-cold murderers.
What gangs? Did you see any of those “terrorist gangs” on the streets? I only saw working people at car washes, farm fields or at Home Depots being rounded up. Trump also seems to be watching too many old war movies with those "cool-looking" battleships, and old Westerns too:
But these service members are following in a great and storied military tradition, from protecting frontier communities to chasing outlaws and bandits in the Wild West. And our history is filled with military heroes who took on all enemies, foreign and domestic. You know that phrase very well.
Uh, what "phrase" is he talking about? The one about stealing the land of Native Americans, and massacring them if they didn't agree with, the "phrase" that motivated Hegseth to re-award medals to soldiers who murdered women and children at Wounded Knee? Trump and Hegseth want soldiers to be more like their personal hired gunman, like those employed by the cattle barons in the Johnson County War. Note too that far from proving their warfighter “prowess,” killing unarmed opponents like those people in little boats or assaulting little children sleeping in their beds only degrades these soldiers, like Hegseth did those “beardos” Grant and Sherman.
How does Trump justify this while rewarding his rich enablers with trillions in tax cuts and Wall Street profiteering as job losses and inflation mount? Do what Hitler did: claim he is for “peace” while inventing new “enemies” and instigating new “wars” against helpless foes (that he quickly lost control of), and against he own people, deploying ICE and other federal thugs like Nazi stormtroopers on the streets, operating entirely outside the law and under the direction of known racists whose contempt for basic human rights has been obvious from the beginning.
And like Nazis, Trump and his stooges gaslight the ignorant and a fearful “free” press with lies and exaggerated claims against the chosen scapegoats to justify actions that negatively affect anyone who isn’t part of the corporatism club. Once the far-right media and Republicans generally defended themselves by claiming that the El Paso mass shooter's manifesto was not "clearly" influenced by Trump's racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric; now, they are trying to convert the shooting of Charlie Kirk into a political movement justifying violent action, like the Nazis did after the killing of violent stormtrooper Horst Wessel.
Will the Republican version of the Reichstag stop being a rubber stamp for illegal and/or anti-people policies? Will the Supreme Court support lower court rulings attempting to put guard rails around the Constitution? We’ve seen little evidence that unprincipled toadies are willing to do that.
And we are only nine months into this fascist regime. This waking nightmare has only just begun. Those who don’t see or hear it must still be fast asleep—or be awake but acting as Satan’s demons (such as those pushing the fascist Project 2025), deceiving and possessing the minds of people to serve the Anti-Christ, who is using the current government shutdown for the latest effort by the far-right not just to kill the Affordable Care Act (blaming “illegals” of course), but to engage in more mass firings of governmental employees--and you are “frustrated” because the only “help” you can get is from stupid AI “customer service”...
...and killing programs for the poor that Trump calls a “government scam.”
This is what you call a "psychopath," a man who enjoys inflicting cruelty because it makes him feel "good." Even during those brief instances where "rationality" seems to come out of the blue, you know that Trump's worst impulses will soon win out, because he acts from his bloated gut, not what is left of his mind, as if there was anything ever "good" to be found within its dark recesses. Stephen Miller and those Project 2025 henchpersons know this, and they can commit all the crimes they want because Trump's moral and ethical standards are so corrupted he is incapable of judging or even knowing of their actions.
All this while he and his billionaire friends are raking in trillions in government welfare, as if they are all as “needy” as that incompetent “businessman” who has had six bankruptcies that those who were foolish enough to trust this increasingly unstable “genius” were just more of those dumb “losers,” just as Trump sees this country full of to abuse for his own sick-minded benefit.
We must remember that this is the man who "compensates" for his lack of intellectual capacity and simple human decency by the violent juvenile bully "ethic": "If they hit you, hit them ten times harder." Don't ask why they "hit" you in the first place. This is the man who his rabid spokespersons call a "humanitarian"?
This so-called human, who wages literal war against his own people, who along with Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem is threatening to imprison or wreak violence on critics and protesters instead of understanding them or engaging them in dialogue, yet he thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for (in truth) no other reason save that this racist resents that the "black" guy got one.
But Barack Obama (and this year's prize winner Marina Corina Machado, who seems to be under the false impression that Trump is "pro-democracy" too) received the prize and Trump hasn't because he had done something that Alfred Nobel himself stated should be the reason a group or person should receive the award: to those "who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations."
Did that sound like Trump during his inane UN speech? Or Trump making a veiled threat to the Norwegian finance minister to either influence the peace prize award, or Trump might do something with those "tariffs"? And what about his war against political opponents instead of dialogue? Trump thinks "peace" is when you don't get up after being beat on.
And again, this is only the beginning of this new nightmare world.
