Tag: Authoritarianism

Vermin And Blood

Since the next general election is less than a year away now is a good time to start paying attention to the candidates and their messages.

Some may think that I and others spend too much time on the possibility of a Trump victory in November….but people need to know what they will get with their precious vote.

Donald the Orange seems to be channeling his inner Adolph….I wrote about his Veterans Day speech which was a re-word of a Hitler speech…..but in case you were too damn business to read it…..

Trump’s Veterans Day Speech

For Christ sake READ IT!

But wait there is more…..

In that speech he term ‘vermin’ was thrown about….

The word “vermin” – in German “das Ungeziefer” – was frequently used by Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and other Nazis to refer to Jews, Roma, queers, communists, socialists, and others considered undesirable. They picked up the term from, among others, the late 19th C. Italian criminologist, Cesare Lombroso, and the German/Hungarian physician Max Nordau who used it to describe the scourge of delinquency and the supposed degeneracy of contemporary literature and art. From them, and from the writings of Frederick Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler, the Nazis developed the idea that Jews, socialists and other proscribed persons were parasites, vampires, and vermin. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “[The Jew] remains the eternal parasite, a sponger who, like a terrible bacillus, spreads out more and more as soon as a favorable medium invites him to do so.”

When questioned about the Nazi resonance of “vermin”, Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung both denied it and doubled down: “[T]hose who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” Realizing that the phrase “entire existence will be crushed” sounded Nazi, Cheung amended his statement. He was only referencing his opponents’ “sad, miserable existence” he said, not their “entire existence.”

Vermin

But wait there is even more….

“Blood traitor” or “blood poisoning”….I have heard these terms used many times here in the South meaning inter-racial marriages and fornication…..and guess who jumped on this fascist bandwagon?

Former President Donald Trump said immigrants coming to the U.S. are “poisoning the blood of our country,” a remark on Saturday that quickly drew a rebuke from his chief Democratic rival as President Joe Biden’s campaign likened the words to those of Adolf Hitler.

“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd at a rally in New Hampshire. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

Trump then repeated the use of “poisoning” in a post on his social media website Truth Social, saying overnight in an all-caps post, that “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”

The term “blood poisoning” was used by Hitler in his manifesto “Mein Kampf,” in which he criticized immigration and the mixing of races. “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” Hitler wrote.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-says-immigrants-poisoning-blood-181843345.html

Terms staright out of a fascist playbook.

Anyone using the terms ‘vermin’ or ‘blood poisoning’ is a fascist….they pretend top be something else but their words give them a way.

Please learn everything you can about any candidate before you give them your vote.

Do not sleep through this portion of the campaigns for while you snooze our country is bleeding and to the point that death could be certain.

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Jack Boots And Brown Shirts

There seems to be a consensus in some circles that Donald the Orange will win the 2024 election. There are many things that that vision conjures up…..authoritarianism, fascism, rule by a steel hand, loss of rights and so on and on…..but the one thing that disturbs me the most is his rhetoric about using the military within out own borders.

I wrote about the possibility after I heard him speak….in case no one was paying attention I give you my thoughts then….

Will ‘Jack Boots’ Come Home To Roost?

How could he get this across where American people would go along?

I read what one person thought of a way he could possibility use the military….

When my colleague Tom Nichols, who taught at the Naval War College for 25 years, warns people that Donald Trump might be a threat to democracy, they often ask him to prove it. Yes, Trump has said dictator-like things, but if he won a second term, aren’t there barriers in place to prevent him from acting on his rhetoric? Would he really be able to persuade senior command in the military to use force against American citizens? Would he be able to get past the Geneva Conventions? Wouldn’t Congress or the courts intervene to stop him from acting on his worst impulses?

Nichols has never served in the military, but he knows its rules and its culture well. And he has watched over the years as some of his students became more openly partisan. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, Nichols explains how a reelected President Trump could bend the military to his will and how political schisms in the military could happen. He emphasizes how close Trump came to achieving some of his goals in his last term, how ill prepared we are as a democracy that assumes a “minimum level of decency in the people who are elected to public office.” And he breaks down his personal nightmare scenario.

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2023/12/how-trump-could-manipulate-military/676341/

The podcast is fascinating…..

If you want to be afraid of another Trump presidency then look no further for a reason NOT to vote for this megalomaniac….

How can anyone with half a brain want this person anywhere near the levers of power?

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The Rise Of The Fourth Reich?

With the victory of Wilders in the Nederlands I thought I would take a closer look at what is happening here in the good old US of A.

It is looking more and more like the tide of Fascism is coming at a break neck pace to the US and the 2024 election will tell the tale.

There has been much talk and speculation that a Trump win in next November contest would spell disaster for this country (something I agree on)

There is a specter on the horizon of a republi-fascist coming…..

The ridiculous Trumpenleft fascism-denying criticism continued even after the orange beast sent thousands of his frothing backers to physically attack the US Capitol in an effort to block Congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election –  the putsch attempt that Trump wanted to participate in alongside AR-15-toting Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and Proud Boys.

Here we are now coming up on the third anniversary of January 6.  Trump and his party have been screaming it off the rooftops ever since: they are a fascist menace to what’s left of US democracy. And now they may well come to power in 2025 with a fully worked up plan for the Christian white nationalist takeover of the US state.

I have been documenting this at painstaking length here and on CounterPunch across the Biden years and cannot repeat all the details here (my writing on this topic is probably already at the word count level for a small book).

That said, here are four of the most relevant recent developments:

The Republi-Fascist Specter Looms

Trump is looking for few good men (fascists)…..

During a Sunday morning panel, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin referenced a recent Axios report by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, in which they exclusively report ex-President Donald Trump “allies are pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024.”

Watch this video….

Could Trump be yet another Mussolini?

Good question and the answer is….

Former senator and MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill is comparing former President Donald Trump to fascist leaders such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, saying that Trump is “even more dangerous” because of his extreme self-centeredness and lack of political center.

McCaskill made these remarks during a discussion on the New York Times‘ analysis of Trump’s recent rhetoric against his political enemies.

McCaskill pointed out that Trump’s use of derogatory language, such as calling his opponents “vermin,” echoes the tactics employed by Mussolini and Hitler in their drives towards autocracy and dictatorship.

https://okmagazine.com/p/donald-trump-more-dangerous-mussolini-hitler-political-analyst/

From experience we know that Trump hates some Americans….the handicapped, minorities, etc….and demonizing people is what fascists and authoritarians do….every speech he makes seems to be sermon of hate….kinda like the 20s and 30s in Germany.

Donald Trump’s hate sermons are becoming even more intense and combustible. As he comes ever closer to openly quoting Adolf Hitler and the other 20th-century fascists, his behavior is clearly intentional and strategic.

Trump publicly admires and praises tyrants and demagogues and views them as role models. If he returns to power in 2025, he intends to create an American Fourth Reich. Consider Trump’s speeches, interviews and social media posts over the last few weeks.

At a rally in Hialeah, Florida, last Wednesday, Trump painted a picture of a hellish (predominantly white) America overrun by serial killers and other human monsters from foreign (and predominantly nonwhite) countries, insisting that only he could save (white) America from the death and contamination caused by Democrats and “the left.”

https://www.salon.com/2023/11/20/working-reich/

Does Donald the Orange want to set up his own little Reich with him as the master of all?

You bet your ass he does!

Just look at the speech he made on Veterans Day….it smacks of fascism…..period!

Trump’s Veterans Day Speech

Please stop being a blind follower!

Think about the future.

With Trump our future looks pretty damn bleak.

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The First Amendment–WTF?

We have people telling us that the jack boots are on the way…..dismiss their thoughts if you will but think about this incident in Kansas…..

Police officers and sheriff’s deputies raided the offices of a Kansas newspaper on Friday, taking computers and cellphones, apparently in response to a confidential source providing documents to the paper’s staff. The officers seized “everything we have,” said Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the Marion County Record. The message of the raid was clear, Meyer said, per the Kansas Reflector: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.” With the equipment gone, Meyer said he’s not sure how the weekly’s staff will be able to send the next edition to press on Tuesday night.

The Record had run news articles about Kari Newell, a restaurant owner, having been convicted of drunken driving and continuing to drive without a license. Its reporters were expelled from a public session with Republican US Rep. Jake LaTurner, though he had invited them, by Newell last week, which the Record published a story about here. The officers brought a search warrant with them for the raid, which involved the City of Marion’s entire police force, but it seems to be in violation of federal law—which requires law enforcement officers to subpoena materials, not just seize them. The magistrate judge who signed the warrant did not answer a request by the Reflector for comment. Nor did the police chief immediately respond to a request by Courthouse News Service.

Police went to Meyer’s home at the same time with the warrant, which lists allegations of identity theft and unlawful use of a computer. The executive director of the Kansas Press Association said the police raid is unprecedented in the state. “An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know,” Emily Bradbury said. “This cannot be allowed to stand.” Meyer, whose journalism career has included nearly a half-century at the Milwaukee Journal and the University of Illinois, said he’s never heard of such a raid. “It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” he said, and “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”

This raid has caused one death….a 98 year old mother…..

The day after police raided the office of the Kansas newspaper she co-owned, along with her own home, Joan Meyer collapsed and died. Meyer co-owned the Marion County Record with her son Eric Meyer, the paper’s publisher, and along with the newspaper office, police also descended on their home Friday. According to the Record, Joan Meyer, who was 98 and “otherwise in good health for her age,” watched in tears as police seized her computer as well as a router used by her Alexa smart speaker (leaving her unable to use it for assistance, the paper notes), left a mess of cords tangled on the floor, and pawed through her son’s papers. She wasn’t able to eat or sleep after that, the paper says, and on Saturday, she collapsed at her home and died. The paper says the raids contributed to Meyer’s death, leaving her “stressed beyond her limits.”

  • “Died in the line of duty”: In an opinion piece at the Kansas City Star, Melinda Henneberger agrees with the Record‘s assessment, writing of Meyer, a journalist since 1953, “It is not hyperbole to say that this attack on the people’s right to know appears to have killed her.” Henneberger says that one of the last comments Meyer made was to tell a colleague of the police raid, “These are Hitler tactics.”
  • News organizations condemn raid: Thirty-four media outlets, including the AP, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, signed a four-page letter to Marion’s police chief condemning the raid and calling on the department to immediately return all the materials that were seized, CNN reports. “There appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search … and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement’s ability to conduct newsroom searches,” the letter reads.
  • Business owner’s involvement: The raid appears to be connected to local businesswoman Kari Newell. The Record received a tip that Newell had her driver’s license suspended after a DUI and yet continued to drive without a license; ultimately, suspecting the information had been leaked “as part of legal sparring” between Newell and her estranged husband amid divorce proceedings, the newspaper decided against publishing a story about it. (It did, however, publish a story about Newell kicking its reporters out of a congressman’s open forum and a follow-up story about Newell herself, at a city council meeting, falsely accusing the paper of having illegally obtained the DUI info about her; that story goes into great detail about the timeline of the paper’s involvement with Newell.)
  • Business owner’s statement: Newell released a lengthy statement on Facebook denying any involvement in the police raid. “It’s truly beyond me how people think I alone am capable of having a newspaper raided. Even in small town America we have the same processes any larger city does to make this happen,” she writes, going on to allege that identity theft was involved in gaining information about her.
  • As for those allegations: The newspaper denies Newell’s allegations, and explains that a reporter legally used her own personal information to obtain the same information that had been received in the tip, which was available publicly—and that, after deciding not to publish a story about the matter, the paper instead notified local police about the allegations that Newell drove without a license. Local police then alerted Newell to what was going on, and the raid followed.
  • Police respond: According to the Kansas Reflector, the Marion Police Department posted its own statement to Facebook Saturday claiming that while federal law protects journalists from searches and seizures, that law doesn’t apply if reporters are suspected of a crime (in this case, apparently, the supposed identity theft Newell alleges took place). “I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated,” the statement reads.

https://www.alternet.org/marion-county-record/

I know I bitch about the media and its antics but with all that aside I still believe in a free press….and that the people have a right to know the whole story.

SO if you do not believe we are heading in the wrong direction then maybe you should open your eyes and pay closer attention to what is happening in our beloved country.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–28Feb23

Is DeSantis coming after Disney World?

The governor of Florida has taking control over the state’s institutions….he has come after individual rights,  books, education, even dogs and now he is after Disney…..”the happiest place on earth”…. but for how long?

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday savored his victory over the Walt Disney Co., selecting new members of a governing board under legislation he sought after the company objected to a parental rights bill he favored last year. “Today, the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” the Republican said at a Reedy Creek fire station in Lake Buena Vista, CNN reports. “There’s a new sheriff in town and accountability will be the order of the day.” The governor announced his replacements for the board, who require state Senate approval. They include DeSantis supporters such as conservative activists, a major Republican donor, and the spouse of the new chairman of the state GOP. DeSantis said the board is scheduled to meet next week, “so buckle up.”

Under the bill DeSantis signed on Monday, the board members will oversee infrastructure, services, and taxing authority for the special district that reigns over Disney’s theme parks in central Florida—clout that had belonged to the company. DeSantis hinted at exerting control over Disney’s content as well, per Deadline. “I think that all of these board members very much would like to see the type of entertainment that all families can appreciate,” he said. Members of both parties have been critical of DeSantis’ move. “Disney stepped into the fray. They lost,” former Vice President Mike Pence said last week. “But the idea of going after their taxing authority, that was beyond the scope of what I as a conservative limited government Republican would be prepared to do.”

DeSantis has become the very embodiment of the word authoritarian.

What other targets are in his demonic sights?

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“lego ergo scribo”

Authoritarianism 101

There is much being said about the coming 2024 election….there is even some talk of a radical plan to re-shape the very structure of the American government.

All that talk made me think of a series looking at the possible coming battles……

Now more about this radical plan…….

Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios.

The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.

During his presidency, Trump often complained about what he called “the deep state.”

The heart of the plan is derived from an executive order known as “Schedule F,” developed and refined in secret over most of the second half of Trump’s term and launched 13 days before the 2020 election.

The reporting for this series draws on extensive interviews over a period of more than three months with more than two dozen people close to the former president, and others who have firsthand knowledge of the work underway to prepare for a potential second term. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive planning and avoid Trump’s ire.

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term

Read another take of this possible plan…..

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/22/authoritarianism-101-trump-plot-purge-civil-servants-if-reelected-draws-alarm

Report: If Trump Wins in 2024, His Allies Want to Unmake the Entire Federal Government

This whole scenario should scare the living crap out of any American that loves this country and wants the republic to endure…..

There is so much happening and the civil war is coming like it or not.

You can either stand by and watch the republic die or you can educate yourself and fight for the very existence of our country.

Please choose the later….we are depending on you.

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Welcome To Trumpistan

This is what the state of Florida should be known….Trumpistan…..thanx to the authoritarian BS by the governor….De Santis.

The gov and the Repub legislature is giving America a true look at the heart of the GOP

It has been a long and painful month in the Florida legislature for opponents of the state’s Trumpist governor Ron DeSantis and his loyal band of rightwing Republicans. A slew of bills has advanced attacking everything from diversity rights, abortion protections and free speech in schools, in addition to a proposal that would legally shield white people from feeling “discomfort” over the state’s racist past.

And last Wednesday, an anti-masker physician, hand picked by the governor and apathetic about the value of Covid-19 vaccines, was backed unanimously by a Republican senate panel as the next surgeon-general following a walk-out by Democratic politicians frustrated by Joseph Ladapo’s evasiveness.

To hear DeSantis tell it, the “freedom state” of Florida is merely following the will of a populist citizenry in defying the perceived tyranny of the federal government, determined to protect liberty in the face of a deadly pandemic that has claimed more than 64,000 of their fellow residents, and standing up against the “indoctrination” of children.

…

The issues that Republicans see as a priority for Florida are red meat to DeSantis’s conservative base. They include the 15-week abortion ban bill, which received a chaotic hearing on Thursday, and moves to give parents more say over classroom curriculum and control of school libraries. In Polk county this week, education officials went from school to school pulling 16 books flagged by a conservative parents’ group as inappropriate, including Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestseller The Kite Runner.

They include bills to strengthen the governor’s fierce anti-immigrant stance by locking out from state or local government business any company involved in the transportation of undocumented migrants.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/31/florida-republicans-draconian-bills

Florida is becoming the poster child for authoritarian Repubs in other Red States….

Will the voters allow this screaming trip into chaos continue?

How far will these anti-democratic forces go?

Good question right?

Is Trump and his worshipers trying to destroy democratic rule?

Yes they are!

Hows can this be?

“Citizens do believe what they are hearing and if they hear it long enough and consistently enough and if that’s all they hear, they absolutely don’t think it’s a lie, they think it’s the truth,” Walter said.

“You know, they’re good people,” she added. “They are trying to do what they think is right. It’s the leadership that’s cynical. It’s the leadership that knows better who is feeding them lies consistently. They’re priming their supporters to believe that democracy isn’t worth defending because they don’t want democracy anymore.”

We the voter need to get our collective heads out of our butts and go to the polls on election day and send these political slugs out to pasture.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

American Caesar

No this is not some random review of the book by William Manchester, American Caesar: Life of Douglas MacArthur….rather about what is happening in this country today.

This post is about Trump and his embracing the tenets of authoritarianism…..

Donald Trump was hardly the first U.S. president to voice his support for authoritarians. But while President Richard Nixon saw it as practical to have an alliance with Spain’s dictator Gen. Francisco Franco — arguing that at least El Generalísimo kept Soviet troops out of the streets of Madrid — he never praised Franco as a role model for the United States. Trump and his loyalists, in contrast, have openly praised far-right authoritarians like Hungary’s Victor Orbán, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

This open admiration for authoritarianism among Trump supporters is the focus of articles by The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes and Vox’s Zack Beauchamp. Sykes, a Never Trump conservative, has stressed that one doesn’t have to be a liberal to believe in liberal democracy — and he warns that democracy is something that the MAGA right is outright contemptuous of.

“Something genuinely odd and disturbing is happening on the right,” Sykes observes in his column. “Ideas that would have been unthinkable just moments ago are now being normalized, and if anything, the drift toward authoritarianism seems to be accelerating. This includes the explicit embrace of the idea of an American dictator — an American Caesar. Literally and seriously.”

Sykes cites some specific examples of Trumpian authoritarianism. In Arizona, State Sen. Wendy Rogers, a far-right MAGA Republican, has advocated imprisoning the “entire Maricopa County Board of Supervisors” over a dispute about the 2020 election. And the pro-Trump publication American Greatness has praised Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/trump-authoritarianism/

These symptoms have been simmering under the society for 40 years and all it took was the right loudmouth bozo to bring the division to a boil.

Reagan turned the fire up and each election raised the boiling point a little more….until the full boil came with the election of Donald the Orange.

Why is this happening?

Since aggression provokes fear, and fear promotes aggression, a dangerous feedback loop has been established, dividing the nation to such a degree that something like civil war seems imminent. It may be a “cold civil war,” but there will still be violence, destruction, and death. There will also be more gridlock in Washington, which makes any kind of progress impossible. It is hard to calculate the suffering that could have been avoided with a functional Congress, but we can be sure it is substantial. And if the division gets too severe, which is where we are headed, there will be a point of no return. Social chaos and economic collapse will follow, the United States will lose its status as a superpower, and life as we know it, will cease. If the pandemic showed us anything, it is that despite how advanced we are technologically, we are not protected from disaster, and our way of life can change overnight.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-supporters-2654459460/

This nation is at a crossroads and our future depends on which direction we choose….right now the choice is not looking too promising.

Will we survive?

I say we can but it will take some hard decisions and difficult solutions and I do not think we are ready yet to make those choices.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Feeding The Authoritarians

Closing Thought–13Jan21

After the breaching of the Capitol building made me think about who was feeding these slugs to make them commit such affront to the country…..not including the uneducated babbling from some on social media.

It is no secret that I do not think much of most so-called “think tanks”….mainly because most of them start with a conclusion and they have the analyst fit the meat of the paper to fit the conclusion they desire.

But what is a think tank in actuality?

A think tank is an organization that gathers a group of interdisciplinary scholars to perform research around particular policies, issues or ideas. Topics addressed in think tanks can cover a wide range, including social policy, public policy, economic policy, political strategy, culture and technology. Think tanks can also be referred to as think factories or policy institutes.

Then there different types of think tanks….

  1. Ideological tanks- These organizations work towards solving a problem based on an ideological philosophy. Also known as advocacy tanks, research is targeted towards convincing policymakers to adopt their solutions.
  2. Specialist tanks- These institutes have a specific thematic focus, such as foreign policy, poverty or the environment.
  3. Subnational tanks- These are government-related think tanks that work at smaller stages than the national level. For example, think tanks that focus on a specific state’s policies.
  4. Practical tanks- Referred to as “think and do” tanks, these institutes are similar to non-governmental organizations (NGO) and conduct more practical efforts, such as funding charity projects.

Now that you know this….let us move on….

I found that many Right wing “think tanks” seem to promote the more authoritarian premises…one comes to mind readily is the Heritage Foundation which feeds many of the polices of the GOP.

Read about it here…..https://www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Commanding-Ideas-Think-Tanks-as-Platforms-for-Authoritarian-Influence-Rolland-Dec-2020.pdf

Don’t get me wrong….I think most of these organizations, Left or Right, have a false impression they push as part of some agenda.

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“lego ergo scribo”

Is The GOP Approaching Authoritarianism?

I open with a thought….

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

I could end this post at this point….but since I am an opinionated SOB I shall continue…..

Donald Trump as president has ushered in a roomful of policies that are starting to look like the authoritarianism of such countries as Hungary and Turkey…..

The GOP is starting to look a lot like an autocratic party, a large study into political identity has found.

Experts from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden said the US Republican Party had become more illiberal and populist in recent decades and that its recent retreat from democratic norms has left it resembling authoritarian ruling parties like Hungary’s Fidesz and Turkey’s AKP.
“What we see is that the disrespect of political opponents, the encouragement of violence and also the violation of minority rights … they have all clearly increased with the Republican Party in recent years, since [President Donald Trump] came in the leadership but also before that,” Anna Luehrmann, V-Dem’s deputy director and one of the lead authors of the study, told CNN.
 
The message is clear…..the presidential rhetoric is clear……only the ignorant it is NOT clear……
 
As the 3 November U.S. presidential election approaches, the country faces an unfamiliar danger. While Americans have grown used to a certain level of rancour in these quadrennial campaigns, they have not in living memory faced the realistic prospect that the incumbent may reject the outcome or that armed violence may result. That has changed in 2020 because of the emergence of risk factors that would spell trouble in any country: political polarisation bound up with issues of race and identity; the rise of armed groups with political agendas; the higher-than-usual chances of a contested outcome; and most importantly President Donald Trump, whose toxic rhetoric and willingness to court conflict to advance his personal interests have no precedent in modern U.S. history. The risk of unrest may ebb and flow as the final days of the campaign unfold, but it is almost certain to remain, and it will increase if either side forms the impression that the vote has been rigged.
 
And it is getting worse the closer we get to the decision of 2020…..

Experts are warning that political violence could erupt around the election, but some believe the early stages of a civil conflict have already unfolded.

A new conflict would look nothing like the first Civil War, more than 150 years ago, and instead would likely resemble an insurgency like those seen in Colombia, Ireland and Syria — and possibly already in the U.S., reported Vice.

“A conflict in the pre-insurgency stage is difficult to detect because most activities are underground and the insurgency has yet to make its presence felt through the use of violence,” the CIA Guide to the Analysis of Insurgency notes. “Moreover, actions conducted in the open can easily be dismissed as nonviolent political activity. During this stage, an insurgent movement is beginning to organize: leadership is emerging, and the insurgents are establishing a grievance and a group identity, beginning to recruit and train members, and stockpiling arms and supplies.”

 
Who would have thought the Party that wraps itself in the flag at every chance would be the Party that lead to the destruction of the republic that they pretend to care so much about?
 
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