Category Archives: Nazis

The Nazi Seizure of Power, USA version

The Nazi Seizure of Power was a book I read in a history course back at City College. I’m pretty sure it’s still on my bookshelf.  It was a case study of the mechanics of how a democracy (in the case of Germany, a short-lived one) is overthrown by relentless lying propaganda, street violence, polarization of the population into enemy camps, vilification of the free press, willful defiance of law, death threats, capture of the government, purge of all professionals, control of mass media, mobilization of the police to enforce political will, political murders and loyalty oaths to an infallible madman leader.   Our democracy, problematic as it is, unlike the idealistic interwar Weimar Republic which lasted less than 20 years, is more than two hundred years old and has withstood fascist coup attempts before.  This time, it’s a coin flip at best, the flick of a virtual coin with the logo of a cute dog’s head on it, a doggie some call a doge.

With judge after judge correctly ruling on the unconstitutionality/illegality of most of Trump’s Project 2025 decrees, written by “Libertarian” billionaires at the Koch Foundation, Vice President JD Vance, Yale Law School graduate, self-made millionaire (with tactical assistance from fascist-friendly South African raised billionaire Peter Thiel) and favorite of smart rightwing rich people, channeled his inner Jared Kushner. Brazen stupidity, recent events prove again, often wins over the facts, reason and the law when you have the power to make it so. With this in mind the billionaires’ pick, JD Vance, insisted that when federal courts rule against the Unitary Executive they are usurping his power and their rulings may be ignored. After all, no less an iron-willed psychopath than self-made Andrew Jackson, who became wealthy capturing and selling runaway slaves, said the same thing. The Supreme Court may have ruled, but where is their army to make me obey them?

This Absolute Executive Discretion to Rule As He Sees Fit “theory” was the constitutionally incoherent argument made by federal judge Noemi Rao in ruling that a federal judge applying the law in the General Mike Flynn case was illegally “usurping” the executive’s unchallengeable power. Federalist Society all-star Rao was appointed by Trump to fill the smelly DC Court of Appeals seat left vacant when Federalist Society superstar Boof Kavanaugh was elevated to the Supreme Court. Rao was overruled 11-2 on appeal and even Trump’s Supreme Court wouldn’t take the case after that. Now Vance, the sitting vice president, makes the same idiotic, constitutionally abhorrent pronouncement, with all the casual gravitas he can muster.

When there was a shortage of protective gear for healthcare workers at a do-or-die moment in the desperate fight against a deadly pandemic, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner was in charge of the Covid-19 task force. When asked at a news conference why federal stockpiles of PPE were not being sent to overwhelmed states, Kushner, true genius that he is, indignantly retorted that “those are the federal supplies, those are for federal use, they are not for the states to use, they are federal!” As incoherent a pronouncement as I’ve ever heard spoken on behalf of any government. In fairness to Kushner, he is not a very smart person, though he is phenomenally arrogant and appears to believe that his financial good luck in life is proof of his brilliance. The Dunning-Kruger Effect in full, fragrant blossom.

Now Vance makes a comparably imbecilic pronouncement about the president’s right to violate the constitution, federal law and the rulings of the judiciary tasked with enforcing that law, at will, because … because not to do so renders presidential power to impose his own dictatorship a nullity under our constitution? The sad fact is, no articulable reason is necessary to a Nazi in office intent on seizing permanent power, it is strictly a matter of imposing the Leader’s inviolable will.

The even more horrific part is that fascism, though always nationalistic, is now, under global corporatism, a global movement, its leaders in every country acting in coordination to support each other’s “policy agendas”. Trump speaks to Putin regularly, also Orban, he tells Netanyahu, publicly, that the US will complete the ethnic cleansing job Jared’s childhood buddy, Bibi, spent a year working on. Trump happily does business with every fascist and autocratic leader in the world. So does Roman salute/middle finger extender, Supreme Genius Elon Musk.

Musk, a US defense contractor who regularly chats with Putin, used his leverage to get Congress to not touch his contracts with the government of China, in order to avoid the government shutdown he demanded shortly before the inauguration of his friend Donald. As for Musk’s more mundane motivations for shutting down the “administrative state”:

According to Musk’s own Grok artificial intelligence tool on X, the investigative departments of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as USAID, have all launched investigations into the practices and violations of Elon Musk’s companies. source

Willful, transgressive, transactional front man for autocratic billionaires, Donald John Trump, pulls a brand new government agency out of his apparently irresistible ass (to those who flock to kiss the “ring”), puckishly naming it DOGE. Look how cute it is!

The president has no power, under our constitution, to create a government agency, only Congress has that power. Still, no problem to a president radical in his views of power and ignorant of the workings of anything but his own will. DOGE, it is, with a mandate to cut two trillion in government spending so as to give that wasted money to our most wealthy citizens in a permanent tax cut. As czar of this imaginary agency, Elon Musk gets police to lock Congressmen and Senators out of actual government agencies he has shuttered and cut off funding to because, unlike the 18 recently fired Inspectors General whose actual job is to monitor agencies for fraud, waste and corruption, Musk is genius enough to intuit which agencies need to be closed for fraud, waste, corruption, anti-Nazi sentiments, wokeness, too many minorities hired, disloyalty to the Leader’s vision, threat to himself and so on.

Make no mistake about what these nominally American Nazis are doing. The innovation of Trump 1.0 was to commit many of his transgressive, sometimes criminal, acts publicly, proudly, defiantly. People who love Trump love him for this ballsiness, this “fuck you” honesty. See, if I brag about my ability to shoot someone in the fucking face with no consequences to me, and then I do it, how can you later hold me criminally liable, since I told you exactly what I was bragging I would do before I did it. Seal Team Six? Yeah, when the time comes I give them Kashyap’s enemies list with instructions to proceed with extreme prejudice. My pardon power is unchallengeable so I have a stack of laminated get of jail free cards for loyal people who do my violence for me. Murder at the word of POTUS is, in effect, blessed by the Supreme Court, the best Supreme Court billionaire money can buy.

We are in a world of shit, my friends. Denial is not an option, we all need to get off the couch and work together in any ways we can create. Courage and determined opposition are essential now to preserve the actual will of the people that our constitution cites as the source of government power, which depends on the informed consent of the governed. No matter how courageous, determined and smart our opposition is, luck will play a huge role as well in how things turn out.

When the looting starts, the shooting starts. Nazis have no hesitation to do what is necessary to advance their “policy goals” — if it requires killing boatloads of people, so be it. The 25th Amendment is on the table for the billionaires whenever Trump’s favorability numbers drop off the chart. So is a real assassination, as opposed to that highly politically advantageous but likely staged one right before the Democratic convention last summer. Everything in psychopath world is transactional, but, of course, you don’t need me to tell you that.

Triumph of the Will

In the days before television, before most people had the collected intelligence of humanity in their pockets and got constant personalized alerts for “news”, movies and radio were the biggest influences on masses of people. Hitler was a pioneer of the radio, dramatically broadcasting from a plane for the first time in history, and his team understood the power of pageantry and the movies. His Minister of Public Enlightenment, Dr. Josef Goebbels, took over German cinema early on (and the Poisonous Dwarf’s casting couch was infamous). A glorious bit of movie mythmaking, Triumph of the Will, was created by a young, innovative director named Leni Riefenstahl. The heroic depiction of a million person 1934 Nazi rally rendered as an impressive show of unity, strength, precision, passion, love of Germany and dedication to winning a war of will.

Triumph of the will is the achievement of every successful dictatorial type hell-bent on dominating and controlling others. Only what the leader wants matters, the only measure of value in their world, their only sign of their own worth as people, is getting blind obedience to their will.

You can see it in families and small social groups, where a formidably willful personality who will never take no for an answer imposes what they want on everyone else. You can see it in any corporate boardroom, where certain titans retain the last word and any opposition will be instantly squashed. We are seeing it now in our besieged government, where tyrannical personalities, acting in brazen disregard of legality, now above the law, (since their demented, willful front man can pardon anyone for anything and that pardon can never be challenged, per the 6-3 Nazi majority his party installed on the Supreme Court) cow everyone around them with the very real threat of career destruction and worse.

Every single one of these Nazi motherfuckers always does exactly the same things when they feel their will being challenged. They attack, they lie, they distract, threaten revenge, take revenge, they destroy anyone who stands in the way of their will, make grim examples of those who defy them, along with every hapless scapegoat they can find. Triumph of the will is the only thing that matters to these implacable monsters and they will violate any law, norm, put themselves through any humiliation, risk everything in their reckless march to victory. They see the world, idiotically, as populated by winners and losers, predators and prey, those worthy of everything and those who deserve nothing at all.

It is a horrific thing to find yourself up against one of these creatures. They are implacable, immovable, impulsive, easily enraged, capable of things the rest of us can barely imagine. For some primitive reason, many of them are always able to attract followers, defenders and enforcers. I have know a few of this type over the years, they are always the exactly same. Driven by a terror of their own worthlessness, they are determined to dominate others, in order to have a fleeting sense that they are worthy of great respect and unconditional love (conditioned on their omnipotence and ability to destroy all enemies).

In the end, after they have revealed an ugly side of themselves they cannot control, and all other strategies have failed, they will pour their heart out about how much they love you, right before they lunge forward to cut your head off. This type must be resisted and, better still, avoided. There are many, many, many more of us, people capable of compromise after reasonable discussion, than there are of them. The problem for humanity, one of these pieces of shit generally has many times more influence than non-psychotics. This is particularly true if you encounter one of great wealth. It is most true if the triumph of the will psycho in question is the richest man in the world and desperately believes his audacious genius is unmatched in every situation.

Straight talk from President Trump

Further proof of the Leader’s indisputable genius, in his own inimitable style:

In what sounds like an attempt to hand over air traffic control systems to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system and his AI company, Trump today said—and here are his words, as Aaron Rupar transcribed them—“We’re all gonna sit down and do a great computerized system for our control towers. Brand new. Not pieced together, obsolete, like it is, land-based. Trying to hook up a land based system to a satellite system. The first thing that some experts told me when this happened is you can’t hook up land to satellites and you can’t hook up satellites to land. It doesn’t work. We spend billions of billions of dollars trying to renovate an old, broken system, instead of just saying cut it loose, and let’s spend less money and build a great system one by two or three companies, very good companies, specialists, that’s all it is. They used 39 companies. That means that 39 different hookups have to happen. And I don’t know how many people of you are good in terms of all the kinds of things necessary for that. And it’s very complex stuff. But when you have 39 different companies working on hooking up different cities at different people. You need one company. With one set of equipment. And there are some countries that have unbelievable air controller systems. And they would’ve, bells would’ve gone off when that helicopter literally even hit the same height. Because it traveled a long distance before it hit. It was just like, just wouldn’t stop. Follow the line. But bells and whistles would’ve gone off. They have ‘em where it actually could virtually turn the thing around. It would’ve just never happened if we had the right equipment . And one of things that’s gonna be, I’m gonna speaking to John and to Mike and to Chuck and everybody, we have to get together and just as a single bill just pass where we get the best control system. When I land in my plane, privately, I use a system from another country because my captain tells me, I’m landing in New York and I’m using a sys— I won’t tell you what country, but I use a system from another country because the captain says ‘This thing is so bad, it’s so obsolete.’ And we can’t have that.”

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Predictably, Crooked Hillary apparently posted this piece of treasonous snark, false, sick claims that could have come directly out of the poisonous mouth of Lyin’ Ted, the guy with the ugly wife whose father killed JFK, RFK and the great William McKinley:

“US airlines had gone 16 years without fatal crashes. Then MAGA fired the FAA chief, gutted the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and threatened air traffic controllers with layoffs. Now there have been two fatal crashes. Hope your unvetted 22-year-olds fix things fast.”

There is not much light here in the shadow of the swastika.  We must be that light, for each other.

The Grey Lady politely opines

There are many things you can say about the US president riffing out an insane and illegal plan, pulled out of Bibi Netanyahu’s hateful ass and not run by any of Trump’s “advisors”, to forcibly evict millions of residents from Gaza and convert their former land into beachside condos for the wealthy. One thing, of course, is that it is an obvious distraction from what his illegally “empowered” financial benefactor, active neo-Nazi supporter and partner in crime, Elon “Stable Genius/Visionary” Musk has been doing with illegal data hacks, blanket agency lockouts, illegal agency closures and so on.

The Grey Lady notes that Trump is “unbound”, presumably because the party he took over, now serving the John Birch Society’s core values, controls all three branches of government, with a newly created, illegal fourth branch, pulled directly out of Charles Koch’s ass, led by an immature, vindictive, transgressive billionaire psychopath government contractor, running roughshod over law and democracy. OK, “unbound” sounds better than “unhinged” or “insane”, shows a bit of editorial restraint when describing the leader of the free world. I can take unbound, though, “untethered”, which means the same thing, carries a much more accurate connotation.

The “improbable idea” is another matter entirely. Unless it is perfectly fine to forcibly remove two million besieged Gazans from their densely populated, largely destroyed, longtime home. Improbable that Trump would be able to simply round them up and, as the Turks did to the Armenians a century ago, send horseback killers to bullwhip them into rivers and the sea to drown. Improbable unless Trump gets to build the beautiful concentration camps of his dreams, and equip them with machinery to make undesirable people simply disappear. Perhaps Elon Musk is working on this logistical challenge right now, in moments stolen from his main goal — colonizing Mars.

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. Here’s Trump’s White House chief of staff’s reaction to hearing unbound Trump’s improbable idea being broadcast live to the world, off the cuff, as the attention-starved rogue ratings hog so enjoys doing.

I didn’t find this telling photo of Susie Wiles, Trump’s soon to be former White House chief of staff, listening to his insane, er, improbable, plan to turn Gaza into a real estate development paradise, in the Times. It speaks volumes about how insane the improbable, unbound guy she works for is.

The New York Times, I have no words for how despicable the influential news source is, and how instrumental it is in preserving the ugly, unsustainable status quo we are living in right now. For every important investigative piece they publish, you can see dozens of daily examples of their bias for leaving things exactly the way they are. Why rock the boat when rich people are already getting so much bad press? It’s as though the 99% are making some kind of moral case that it is wrong for one greedy psychopath to have 400,000 million dollars while millions of his neighbors live in poverty and precarity.

South African billionaires gone wild

Here in the USA! USA!!! our culture has long idealized and revered the greediest psychopaths among us. A guy like Jeff Bezos, insatiably greedy, politically supple, unprincipled, is hailed as a genius and self-made billionaire (a billion is one thousand million dollars) for his innovation of successfully monetizing American consumerism and laziness. Jeff Zuckerberg got tired of being scolded by Democrats for allowing MAGA lies to go unchallenged for years on his fantastically successful “social media” platforms and decided to throw in with the rest of his self-interested ilk. He, like Bezos, takes no side politically, outside of maximized profits. Both of these American icons sat with Elon Musk, right behind Trump, as Orange Retribution was sworn in as dictator on day one. It’s hard to pick a worst among these psychotically greedy, destructive shit birds, but white South African raised billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel deserve special scrutiny.

Thiel (worth a paltry $11,200,000,000,) amazingly also an “out” homosexual (I guess having enough billions is truly “fuck you, I’ll fuck YOU” money in MAGAland), groomed soul-dead opportunist JD Vance, putting $15,000,000 into his Senate campaign fund (in a race Vance won by 7 points) after employing him for a few years and making him independently wealthy. Vance stands for nothing but himself (watch his origin story, Hillbilly Elegy, on Netflix for a nice Hollywood snapshot) and will do whatever Thiel and his cronies tell him to do, because they share the same interests. Thiel insisted on Vance as the VP and overcame Trump’s reluctance to have JD as number two (Vance certainly smells like number two…) When it comes time for the billionaires to induce a fatal heart attack in MAGA’s hero, Mr. Trump, President JD will not miss a beat stepping up to do what he needs to do for his backers and himself.

Musk, with his unnatural, barely human laugh, told someone on a podcast that he was going to “fucking prison” if Trump was not elected president. His companies faced many legal sanctions for Musk’s flamboyant “fuck you” management style and his flouting of numerous federal laws, including every labor law on the books. Musk’s little joke had the ring of truth, he might well have eventually wound up in prison (if we had a justice system that operated, as Merrick Garland said, without fear or favoritism). The threat of prison for Musk’s criminal activities was nothing that a little $270,000,000 quid pro quo wager couldn’t fix, a little deal with the transactional fascist felon he threw his full support behind. Now, as head of a fictional government department, “DOGE”, he has the entire federal treasury database, and the personal financial information of hundreds of millions of us, under his greedy fingers. Heather Cox Richardson with a few pertinent points:

Vittoria Elliott of Wired has identified those associated with Musk’s takeover as six “engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college.” [Ages 19 to 24, see photo below — ed.] They are connected either to Musk or to his long-time associate Peter Thiel, who backed J.D. Vance’s Senate run eighteen months before he became Trump’s vice presidential running mate. Their names are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran, and they have little to no experience in government. . .

. . . Today, Musk reposted a social media post from MAGA religious extremist General Mike Flynn, who resigned from his position as Trump’s national security advisor in 2017 after pleading guilty to secret conversations with a Russian agent—for which Trump pardoned him—and who publicly embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory. In today’s post, Flynn complained about “the ‘Lutheran’ faith” and, referring to federal grants provided to Lutheran Family Services and affiliated organizations, said, “this use of ‘religion’ as a money laundering operation must end.” Musk added: “The [DOGE] team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.”

In fact, this is money appropriated by Congress, and its payment is required by law. Republican lawmakers have pushed government subsidies and grants toward religious organizations for years, and Lutheran Social Services is one of the largest employers in South Dakota, where it operates senior living facilities.

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Got to be careful with the wrong kind of Christians, eh, general? Lutheran family services, Godless cucks, no doubt. Why not let insane “Christians” like retired General Mike “Lock Her Up!” Flynn decide who is carrying out the Son of God’s wishes here on earth?

We are in the ultimate battle of a war with people who have been organizing, planning and spending billions for decades to promote their “project” — dismantling American democracy and appropriating everything in the ensuing hellscape. Their project is to return the country to the glory days of the Gilded Age, when Robber Barons were unrestrained by the petty “pain” of the 99% and before women and minorities could vote. Make America Great Again, you know?

Here’s scholar Timothy Snyder with excellent ideas for how to fight back to preserve, and strengthen, our besieged democracy, which is in the midst of a hostile takeover by unelected billionaire sociopaths.

Fired Inspectors General, DOJ lawyers, FBI agents

Not surprising, when you have a compulsively lying, serial fraudster, criminally-inclined front-man for a cabal of infinitely covetous billionaire psychopaths as CEO of the Executive Branch, that laws, norms, fairness, merit, competence, anti-corruption enforcement, routine law enforcement will be cast aside as needed. Trump’s recent firing of eighteen Inspectors General, even ones he appointed, and his vindictive pursuit of anyone involved in any of his multiple federal prosecutions, or the prosecutions of those who loyally attacked Capitol police on his behalf, disgusting as it is, was also completely predictable. Legal guardrails are as hateful to career criminals as the public disclosure of the evidence of those crimes, as “accountability” itself.

Here’s one of the fired Inspectors General (non-partisan government watchdogs tasked with ensuring federal agencies are run efficiently, without intimidation, fraud, corruption, waste, lawlessness) describing the duties of the Inspector General.

Any Department of Justice lawyer who worked for Special Counsel Jack Smith in any federal prosecution of Trump was also summarily fired, without rational cause or the process they are entitled to as federal employees. Those who fight back will win reinstatement, eventually, and back pay and all the rest, but it will take years in court. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, The Mercers, Charles Koch and so on (ably assisted by the ‘apolitical’ Bezos and Zuckerberg, Disney, Paramount, Hitlerco, et al), will press their advantage, based on their front man’s bold, audacious, even insane initiatives. After all, the 6-3 extremist majority on the Supreme Court has already made it a matter of Constitutional law that an immoral or criminally insane president may commit any crimes in connection with his core, official duties, without fear of prosecution for those crimes. so why not push the envelope? Figure that out of the box Constitutional interpretation out, James Madison.

Note that the Department of Justice was founded in 1870 to enforce federal civil rights laws in the former Confederacy and throughout the United States.  Its mission has often been sidelined by racist Supreme Court decisions (the essential 14th Amendment was put into a judicial coma, for formerly enslaved individuals abused by states, for almost a century, though corporate “personhood” was birthed, under a perverse reading of the 14th Amendment, during that same period) and has not always lived up to its name.  On the other hand, DOJ is an independent agency dedicated to enforcing the Constitutional rights of Americans and prosecuting violators of federal law.  Until now.  Its mission, according to the Trump-appointed lawyer acting as its head (with a Trump criminal defense lawyer as his deputy), for the DOJ and FBI alike, is “to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”  Translates nicely from the original German führerwortes haben gesetzeskraft — the leader’s word has the force of law.

Now Project 2025/Koch/MAGA turns its attention to, eh, disloyal FBI agents who gathered evidence and helped bring violent January 6 criminals/martyrs who savagely attacked law enforcement to “injustice”. Life is dark under the shadow of the swastika and morality inverted. It is time to shed as much light as possible, to as many people, as any of us can reach.

Why fascists hate journalists

The first things a dictator on day one does is purge perceived enemies and consolidate the press to control the flow of information the public may get. Control the news, weaponize information/disinformation, control public opinion, control reality. First US commercial air disaster in 16 years, days after you decapitate the FAA by firing the head of air safety, his deputies and freeze hiring of air traffic controllers? “Incompetent, nasty Black bitches who, through illegal DEI, replaced expert white Christian men, resulting in mass casualties!” was POTUS’s very strong, equally ignorant and lying, opinion, as the bodies of children were being recovered from the Potomac River. That’s how you drive the news!

There is truth and there is such a thing as a lie. We have all experienced these things in our personal lives. The difference between the truth and a lie is generally easy to spot, as long as you have accurate information. If you have a full picture of what took place you are free to believe whichever one you like, but embracing a lie does not make it true. January 6, 2021 was a violent riot, a vicious attack on law enforcement that sent more than 100 officers to the hospital. The violence was based on an incendiary lie, deliberately spread during a $50,000,000 ad buy, and the attack was fomented by the man who knew he lost the election. This is true, no matter how many times you force your loyalists to call it a peaceful day of love.

This is where the press comes in, reporting truthfully or hedging to ensure the continued flow of corporate profits. In its compromise corporate media repeats that there is “an honest conflict” about whether the events we all saw were a riot, an insurrection, or merely “legitimate political discourse”. Say it until people who witnessed the ugliness are sick of arguing about which is true and which is a lie and check out in frustration.

For an alcoholic, sexually assaultive, manifestly unqualified White Christian Nationalist Secretary of Defense to proclaim that Black History Month will no longer be recognized by the Pentagon is not at all surprising, though it is sickening. Unless you believe that even though 150 years ago there was minor prejudice against some Blacks by a few Whites, and that even though Blacks are arguably imprisoned, and unarmed Blacks killed by law enforcement, in disproportionate numbers, that there is really no serious issue of ongoing institutional racism in our perfect nation (though Black women are mostly, well, nasty… as POTUS always says).

Choose your reality, but what is true remains true and what is a lie is still a goddamned lie, no matter how fervently you pray for it to be the truth, no matter how many of your tribe embrace it as true, no matter how many lying officials proclaim it.

Trump has long vilified and attacked all critics. He has always trained his beady eyes on any critical media, media that, for example, reports truthfully on the evidence of his misdeeds. He calls his campaign’s 140 documented contacts with Putin before the 2016 election a hoax, the closing of his fraudulent university, his fraudulent charity, his defamation of a woman he sexually assaulted, his clear violations of the Espionage Act, his two impeachments, his January 6 call to political violence, his pardon of those who gouged the eyes out of police officers, all fake news. He refers to all non-far rightwing media as “lying liberal media” (translated from the original German lugenpresse) and “the enemy of the People.” He should know, he is the people, the dictator is always the embodiment of all of us. That the dictator must terrorize and often kill many of us is a small price to pay for him to be the true embodiment of all of us.

Dan Rather wrote an excellent piece about how essential access to true information is to democracy, to keeping ourselves out of the clutches of destructively greedy, heedless madmen who want to keep us in the dark so their nefarious schemes may prosper. He nails our current challenge — bypassing crass corporate profiteering by media conglomerates who kowtow by paying millions to a wannabe tyrant who sues and threatens them, to get the journalistic truth of what we face into public discussion that we, the public, may act in an informed manner when selecting the government we consent to.

Dan writes:

They [the framers of the Constitution] enshrined freedom of the press in the very first amendment to the Constitution, up at the top of the Bill of Rights — not because they were great fans of journalists, but rather because they knew, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free … it expects what never was and never will be.” source

Self-portrait of an imbecile

The self-portrait referred to above is the petulant, childish quote in the selection below, here’s a short set up.

Moments after a tragic midair collision that killed everyone aboard a commercial plane and a military helicopter, while victims’ bodies were being fished from the Potomac River, the master salesman, Donald J. Trump, went to work, as presidents always do at times of national tragedy. Here’s Heather Cox Richardson, quoting his spiteful eight year-old level, eh, analysis of the situation:

Late this morning, Trump spoke to reporters about the crash, saying “We do not know what led to this crash but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and I think we’ll probably state those opinions now.” That opinion was that the people responsible for the accident were not of “superior intelligence.” He claimed that his Democratic predecessors had lowered standards for air traffic controllers (although the language he quoted from the FAA website was from his own time in office). “[W]hen I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first. And they put politics at a level that nobody has ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse.”

He continued: “The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg—a real winner,” apparently forgetting that the former transportation secretary was part of the Biden administration and left office on January 20. “Do you know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation? He’s a disaster…he’s just got a good line of bullsh*t.”

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The impulsive narcissist’s very strong opinions and ideas are that, regardless of what actually caused the disaster, Blacks, Hispanics and Women are incompetent because they are inferior to white, Christian, loyal white supremacist men who admire billionaires.   OK.  Narcissists are entitled to asshole opinions just like anyone else. What those asshole opinions had to do with the air disaster, the first involving a commercial airliner in 16 years, is a separate question. These Nazi types never miss the chance to create an opportunity to advance their destructive worldview.

Of course, there are also facts as well, and sometimes facts speak louder than reflexive other-blaming spouting of “very strong opinions” based on an insanely ignorant worldview.  Below are a few facts that we might have strong opinions about, even if we are uncritical enough to agree, with the Department of Defense under Fox weekend news host Pete “Deus Vult” Hegseth, that Black History Month is a bad idea because it makes little white Christian kids (and military personnel) feel guilty to learn about the history and struggles of a viciously persecuted minority here in the land of the free and the home of the White.

“[W]hen I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first. And they put politics at a level that nobody has ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse.”

Human experience contradicts propaganda/lies

Bob Garfield, with an excellent tale illustrating this point below.   When you meet people one on one it is a much different thing than forming ignorant opinions about groups of people based on prejudice.   It is human nature to hire friends and people like you, if you have the chance to do so, but it is not always the best way to take care of important business, obviously.   We hear the new MAGA press spokeswoman lying about “illegal” diversity and inclusion programs in government hiring, and “sanity restored”.  Listen to this jolly crucifix-wearing blowhard:   

Then read Bob’s closing argument paragraph, read his post setting it up, and send it to anyone who is likely to benefit from it, or choke on it.

By encouraging and mandating diversity and inclusion, over time, the tribes intermingle. The sense of unfamiliarity subsides. Preconceived notions, suspicions and biases gradually erode. In that environment, segregation and old-boys’ networks see their bonds weaken, eventually generating the very meritocracy those racist and sexist Republicans are forever demanding. But, of course, they don’t want a meritocracy. They want hegemony, just like in the supremacist bad old days.

The Reading Times is an anthropological study for the ages. If you get a free sec, please forward this post to the piece-of-shit Klansmen now running our country. And may they choke on it.

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American Christian hero

From Dan Rather, saluting some of the many heroes among us and urging us to be the heroes we need to all become to resist this onslaught of organized, billionaire funded lies, hatred, irrationality, greed, blind, deadly vengeance and unlimited destruction.

FOR STANDING UP TO THE BULLY-IN-CHIEF
The day after inauguration, the new president traditionally attends an interfaith prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. This year the televised homily was delivered by Bishop Mariann Budde, who has been the Bishop of Washington since 2011.

Budde addressed Trump, who was sitting in the front row, directly. “Mr. President, millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”

The look on the president’s face was worth more than a thousand words. To put it succinctly, he was displeased.

After the service, he vilified Budde on Truth Social as a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” and demanded an apology — an apology for being asked to be merciful, while sitting in a church. Budde, mercifully, declined to respond.           Source

This is the greatest example in recent current events of an actual Christian calmly facing down a nasty, brutish, petulant, transactional two year-old anti-Christ type determined to bend the world to his will, using bullying lies and an army of unreasoning, transactional Christian hypocrites as his sword and shield. If mercy toward the oppressed isn’t at the heart of the teachings of Jesus Christ, then my name is Donald Fucking Trump, Interfaith Pope of all Christian martyrs, living, dead, real and imaginary.

Pete Hegseth, number one at the Department of Defense, proud white Christian , with his Crusader tattoos and hatred of “others”, will tell you Jesus hated homosexuals, the poor, women, snitches, Jews, the meek, the weak, gun regulators, prosecutors, government watchdogs, demonic Democrats, advocates of human equality, anyone who questions his personal savior, Mr. Trump, an infallible emissary of God who has never been mistaken.  So will dark-skinned fascist liar Kashyap Patel, with his published Enemies List (a brown skinned guy Trump and Hegseth would normally mock as he got beaten up), Jewish Nazi Stephen Miller (another one Pete and Donald would ordinarily spit on), Trump’s personal lawyer (literally), employee of Qatar and Attorney General pick, Pam Bondi, and all the rest of those who claim to love the inimitable taste of their master’s never washed “ring”.

This is a moment when we all need to become the best heroes we are capable of becoming. Despair is not an option, it is a luxury that only helps evil triumph over the rest of us.