***. “The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.” [ Adolf Hitler ]

This post provides excerpts from. “Screen Shot….Under Trump, the F.C.C. has used obscure regulatory powers to crack down on network TV. Some conservatives are pushing back” [ Jim Rutenberg; New York Times; 1/25/26]:

9] “The template was now set for Carr to give Trump what he had always wanted – muscle behind his previously hollow threats to punish the networks.”

13] “Cruz’s legislation could only protect the First Amendment privileges of those outside the government at the expense of those within. – an especially meaningful concern in a country where elected officials, at least in theory, speak for the people. An attack on their platform, no less than an attack on platforms like Facebook or X, could also be seen as an attack on a cornerstone of democracy.”

15] ‘…the Reagan and Bush F.C.C. commissioners, Fowler and Sikes, along with several other former F.C.C. commissioners, all represented by a group of public-interest lawyers including Schwartzman, submitted a petition to the F.C.C. calling for a end of the “news distortion” policy that Carr had used against C.B.S….The petition won the endorsement of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.””

7]. “…the Fairness Doctrine, requires stations to present all sides of important civic issues – and to grant free air time to those who could convincingly argue that their side was shut out. But it was scrapped in 1987, after a long campaign by conservatives who argued that it gave the F.C.C. undue power over speech. Its elimination set the terms for the subsequent explosion of right-wing radio and the template for Fox News.” {NOTE: and the subsequent POISONING of some American’s minds by relentless RIGHT-WING lies and propaganda; and – the statistical decline in American’s standard of living; now in the Trump DICTATORSHIP era known as “the affordability crisis”. – which, of course Trump lies and says the higher costs YOU face don’t exist!!!!!!!!!!!!]

*** ‘…in early 2009, we noticed a marked increase in politically motivated misinformation coming from Fox News…Following the 2010 election, the University of Maryland released a study finding that Fox News viewers were the most misinformed audience on any major news network…Fox..is something unprecedented in the United States: a news business that is willing to put politics above all else.” [David Brock, Ari Rabin-Havt, Media Matters: “The Fox Effect”]

1]. “..it was hard to ignore the fact that Trump’s entire second term seemed to be a grand exercise in coercive government, and in particular that the government effort to suppress free speech drew largely on the power of the government itself to speak freely.”

2] “The administration attacked network television with particular intensity.”

3] “Here was the crux of the matter. Cruz was talking about “jawboning,” a still evolving legal term. But the line between the bully pulpit and flat-out bullying was still being drawn. “Government officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills protected speech,” Cruz said.”

*** “The Republican Party is held aloft by a large, powerful and ever-growing industry of deceit. The purpose of much of conservative media is to lie to their audience.” [Stuart Stevens: “It Was All A Lie” For 25 years, Stevens was a major Republican strategist and media consultant]

4]. “In July, Suhr sent Carr a letter arguing that “the late-night shows are relentlessly left-wing” …in September, just days before the Kimmel incident, Suhr filed another formal complaint, arguing that the late-night host targeted the G.O.P. ticket consistently, which amounted to “a massive abuse of the airwaves.”

5]. “Bias, Suhr’s firm had argued, violated a long-standing. but seldom-used public-interest standard. It was a shaky legal interpretation, but it offered the F.C.C. a weapon in a much larger war to use its power to crack down on the networks, control what they broadcast and begin a new era of conservative mass media.” [NOTE: Big Brother, Joseph Goebbels, Stalin, Putin – would all love this!!!!!]

6]. “Trump, who spent more than a decade as the star of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” registers every televised knock on him as a serious political hit. Since his earliest days running for president, he has demanded that the F.C.C. punish the networks for any perceived mistreatment by stripping them of their licenses.”

***. “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” [ Hannah Arendt ]

8]. “Suhr told me he saw an opening to use the old F.C.C. rules to not only punish the networks for bias, but also …getting conservative content on the air.” [ Big Brother approves!!!]

10]. “Carr was clear about how he saw the stakes. “President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape,” he said shortly after.” [ Putin approves!!!]

11]. “Mark Fowler served as Ronald Reagan’s F.C.C. chair…led the charge to dismantle the Fairness Doctrine. Now 84 and a Trump supporter, he told me he was shocked nevertheless by the final terms the Paramount deal and the actions of the F.C.C.. he said it never occurred to him that the government would use what remained of the public-interest rules to compel broadcasters to alter their content.”

*** “When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about the big issues.” [ Thomas L. Friedman ]

12]. “Cantwell had gotten to a central challenge of any legislation against jawboning, which is that it, too, was a form of speech.”

14]. “Still, no matter how carefully written, the law could expose public officials to all kinds of lawsuits, some malicious, some justified, but all of them chilling, for better or worse.”

16]. “Suhr echoed Carr’s comments about the conservative turn from free-market orthodoxy….To him it came down to results.” [ Big Brother agrees!!!!]

*** “The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as the people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The American fascist[s].. method is to poison the channels of public information. With the fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.” [ Henry Wallace; 33rd U.S. Vice President ]

NOTE: We have now given YOU 149 posts about the monumental antidemocratic, corrupt, cruel, stupid Trump DICTATORSHIP. Please think. Please ask questions. And – refer to the Constitution’s Preamble – a statement of WHY, “We the People”. formed a new American government: “Justice..Tranquility”. – and the four magic words: ” promote the general Welfare..”
We criticize the Trump DICTATORSHIP because it FAILS to achieve those three very simple goals. WHEN, if ever, has the Trump DICTATORSHIP. intentionally acted to “promote the general Welfare”????????????

*** “Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.”
[ Justice Thurgood Marshall ]

*** “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves…” [ Abraham Lincoln; Second Inaugural Address ]

Well, Trump has officially done it – admitted he thinks some American citizens are “disloyal,” must be rooted out, jailed, perhaps exiled or executed. He, of course, won’t do the dirty work, as usual, he’ll have somebody else do it, in this case, the U.S. military – on American streets…….

1]. “president Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed using American cities as training grounds for the armed forces and spoke of needing U.S. military might to combat what he called the “invasion from within.” [“Trump urges military brass to quell ‘invasion from within'”; Ben Finley Konstantin Toropin, Evan Vucci; Assoc. Press.; 10/1/25]

*** “The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.” [Adolf Hitler]

2] “It’s a war from within,” [Trump] said. In that moment, the president again pitted himself against the wishes of the country’s founding fathers, historians and former military leaders say. Mr. Trump’s suggestion hat ‘we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military” is in tension with a core principle that the country’s armed services have long sought to preserve – that the military should be nonpartisan.”
“This principle, with its deep roots in American democratic traditions, is meant to ensure that the standing army initially feared by the country’s founding fathers serves the nation as a whole, and not one political party or leader.” [Helene Cooper: “Trump’s Military Goals Contradict Nonpartisan Roots”; New York Times; 10/3/25]

***. “May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.” [General, 34th President – Dwight Eisenhower]

Note; for perspective – research details on the May 4, 1970 tragedy at Kent State for context of what could happen if U.S. troops are called out to deal with ‘the enemy within.”

*** “Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.” [ General Douglas MacArthur ]

3] “I don’t understand the reasoning of several recent letter writers who have protested use of the term “fascist” to describe the behavior of the Trump administration.”

“Merriam-Webster describes ‘fascism” as “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime…that is associated a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”…

“Trump has violated and disregarded the law, condemned legal decisions he disagrees with, attacked individual judges and launched criminal investigations of attorneys who pursued cases against him. With his draconian cuts to federal spending, he has usurped powers reserved for Congress. he violated the Posse Comitatus Act when he deployed the national Guard to Los Angeles, D.C., Memphis and now Portland, and again when he directed 600 military lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges. Trump has targeted universities, journalists, corporate executives and governors. unable to stomach an election loss, he incited an angry crowd to attack legislators and law enforcement officers at the Capitol, then pardoned all who were convicted of these offenses. Now Trump has urged military officers to use U.S. cities as ‘training grounds’ and to suppress ‘the enemy from within.” [J.N.: letter to the editor; Minnesota Star Tribune; “This ‘enemy’ talk should make you nervous”; 10/2/25]

*** “{The tyrant} is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.” [ Plato ]

FOR CONTEXT: research the 1940s-60s McCarthy era “Red Scare,” when the power of “our” federal government was used to persecute innocent people accused of being “communists” [the enemy within]. Thousands had their lives ruined, lost their jobs, were blacklisted, were required to take “loyalty oaths.” Griffin Fariello’s oral history, “Red Scare,’ called it ‘the American Inquisition.” And/or – read David Caute’s “The Great Fear.”

Make sue YOU research attorney Joseph N. Welch, who’s question to Senator McCarthy lives on in American history as one of our “finest hours.” During the 1954 McCarthy-Army hearings, Mr. Welch, in exasperation, said to Senator McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

This won’t work with “our’ president, because Donald J. Trump has NO sense of decency or shame – BUT – we are waiting for somebody to ask him precisely that.

***. “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” [ Benjamin Franklin ]

NOTE: We will post more shortly on Nazi Germany 1933-38. What YOU need to know now: Hitler used government power against German citizens; people were required to pledge “loyalty” to Der Fuhrer; independent sources of power were eliminated/controlled. Sound familiar????????????

***. “I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.” [ Chris Hedges ]

*** “..Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions..are carried out with,
and not against, the power of the State: the correct order..was to first secure access to
that power and then begin the revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality;
he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead
he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.”
[ Alan Bullock: “Hitler, A Study In Tyranny” ]

1]. “Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison says he’s “trying to stop a dictatorship”…Ellison and fellow attorneys general are litigating against him on more than a dozen fronts…”He wants total and complete authority,” Ellison said, “with a thin, thin, thin, ineffectual veneer of democracy so that he can pretend legitimacy.”
[ Alison Kite: “If he keeps it up, I’ll keep it up”; Minnesota Star Tribune; 4/28/25 ]

*** “What Hitler aimed at was arbitrary power..from the first, he had no intention of having
his hands tied by any constitution.” { Bullock: “Hitler, A Study In Tyranny” ]

2] “..there is growing anxiety about the safety of our financial institutions..Trump fired Todd Harper and Tanya Otsuka..”This is the latest in a string of actions by the Trump Administration to subvert the law and undermine financial regulators that keep Americans’ money safe..” [ Michelle Singletary: “Are banks and your money still safe under Trump 2.0?”; Washington Post; 4/28/25 }

*** “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of the opposition,
it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures,
and it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone
lives in fear.” { President Harry Truman }

3] “President Trump on Saturday posted on social media a single sentence that appears to encapsulate his attitude as he tests the nation’s legal and constitutional boundaries.. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Mr. Trump..has repeatedly suggested..he has divine backing to enforce his will.” { M. Haberman, C. Savage, J. Swan: “Trump Suggests No Laws Are Being Broken If His Motive Is To Save His Country”; New York Times; 2/16/25 ]

*** “Devine right of kings is a belief..monarchs get their right to rule directly from God..it is
up to God to punish a wicked king. So far as the people are concerned, ‘the king can do
no wrong.'” [ the World Book Encyclopedia ]

4] “The list of measures purpose-built to cleave off a domain in which the law does not apply grows by the day: the pardons that bless and invite insurrectionary violence; the purges of career lawyers at the Justice Department..[and]..inspectors general across the government, and senior FBI officers; the attorney general’s command..lawyers obey the president over their own understanding of the Constitution; the appointment of people such as Kash Patel and Dan Bongino..; the president’s declaration that he and the attorney general are the sole authoritative interpreters of federal law.. the threat of criminal prosecution for speech deemed unfavorable by the president; and the verbal attacks on judges for enforcing the law.
“The singular aim of these tactics is to construct a prerogative state where cruel caprice, not law, rules…it is striking how Donald Trump’s executive orders reject some basic tenets of American constitutionalism..”
[ Aziz Huq: “A Warning Out Of Time”; The Atlantic; May, 2025 ]

*** “An authoritarian dictatorship like the Nazi regime stiffles real possibilities of control. the Nazis
abolished parliament and all chances of parliamentary investigation, they politicized the
judiciary, they scratched away the power of the rechningshof [the auditor’s office]..”
Adam LeBor, Roger Boyes: “Seduced By Hitler”}

5]. “After nightfall on Jan. 24, President Trump summarily dismissed as many as 17 of the most important guardians of integrity in the federal government – the inspectors general… Mr. Trump’s action was an overt defiance of a law..very much in keeping with the president’s imperious resistance to any form of accountability…Many of Mr. Trump’s first assertions of executive power blatantly exceed what is legally granted.”
[ “Trump’s Test Of the Constitution”; New York Times. editorial; 2/2/25 ]

*** “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not
be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course,

‘Americanism'” [ Halford Luccock ]

5] Some – of dozens – headlines on Trump violating laws and the Constitution:
– – “New White House memo is seen as a threat to lawyers”; [Shayna Jacobs; Washington Post; 3/25/25]
– “Judges Sound the Alarms”. [ Aaron Blake; Washington Post; 2/9/25 ]
– “Flouting With Vengeance”. [ Aaron Blake; Washington Post; 3/25/25 ]
– “AP barred from Oval Office despite court order” [ David Bauder; Assoc. Press; 4/15/25 ]
– “Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons betray the rule of law” [ Minnesota Star Tribune. editorial; 1/22/25 ]
– “Trump’s border czar doesn’t ‘care what judges think’. Do you?” [Mel Dickstein, retired judge; Mn Star Tribune; 3/28/25]
– “Trump ignores courts to rule alone”. [Cat Zakrzewski; Washington Post Weekly; 4/20/25]
– “Trump changes Rules To Let Federal Workers Wear Political Symbols” [Eileen Sullivan; New York Times; 4/27/25]

*** “Whenever Law ends Tyranny begins.” [ John Locke ]

“What surprised me at first was that most Germans..did not seem to mind that their personal
freedom had been taken away, that so much of their splendid culture was being destroyed…
in the background there lurked the terror of the Gestapo..for those who got too far out of line
….What seemed to matter most was that the Fuhrer was setting out to liquidate the past..He
was assuring the people that he would make Germany strong again.”
[ William Shirer: “The Nightmare Years 1930-1940” ]

1] “America’s Police State Has Arrived….”It’s the unmarked cars, a friend who grew up under an Argentine dictatorship…Those of us who have lived in countries terrorized by a secret police can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity….It’s the catastrophic interruption of daily life….It’s the forced mass transports of immigrants….It’s the growing irrelevance of the law and the helplessness of judges and lawyers….It’s the chilling stories that come by word of mouth….It’s the invisible hand of the authorities….It’s the shifting goal posts….It’s the lists….It’s the denunciations by concerned citizens….The United States has become a secret police state. Trust me, i’ve seen it before.”
M. Gessen: “America’s Police State Has Arrived”; New York Times; 4/6/25 ]

*** “Beneath the surface..Germany had undergone a rapid and sweeping transformation that reached deep into the fabric of daily life…At its core was a government campaign called Gleichschaltung..bring citizens, government ministries, universities, and cultural and social institutions in line with National Socialist beliefs and attitudes.”
[ Erik Larson: “In The Garden Of Beasts” ]

2] “As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system..the “normative state” remains in place while the dictatorial power spreads across society…the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely.. the “prerogative state”…
“The key here is that the prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. The two states cohabit uneasily and unsteadily….The trick was to find a way to keep the law going for Christian Germans who supported or at least tolerated the Nazis, while ruthlessly executing the fuhrer”s directives against the state’s enemies, real or perceived. Capitalism could jog nicely alongside the brutal suppression of democracy.”
[ Aziz Huq: ‘A Warning out Of Times”; The Atlantic; May, 2025 ]

*** “Throughout that first year in Germany, Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange
indifference to atrocity that settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and of
the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new
act of violence, without protest. It was as if he had entered the dark forrest of a fairy tale
where all the rules or right or wrong were upended.”
Erik Larson: “In The Garden Of Beasts” ]

3]. “When a president declares an “invasion” to justify shredding of thr Constitution, he’s not defending the nation – he’s declaring war on democracy itself…they are sidestepping constitutional protections and rounding up people en masse..This is not just overreach of executive power – it is tyranny…
“Even more horrifying, Trump is ignoring court orders to halt these unconstitutional actions. Hw is deliberately undermining the judiciary, proving once again that he does not see himself as a president constrained by law but as a dictator accountable to no one…
“If left unchecked, this power grab sets a precedent that no American is safe from arbitrary detention. Today it’s asylum seekers and immigrants. Tomorrow, it could be political opponents, journalists, or anyone who dares criticize the orange menace..” [ Thom Hartmann: “Welcome to Trump’s America: Where Immigrants Vanish, Courts Are Ignored, and No One Is Safe”; The Progressive Populist; 4/15/25 ]

***. “We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion,
and scorn toward those who disagree with us.” [ Lenin ]

4]. “The National Intelligence Council, drawing on the acumen of the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies, determined..the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the United States by the prison gang Tren de Aragua, a judgment that contradicts President Donald Trump’s public statements..” [ John Hudson, Warren Strobel: “Intelligence contradicts invasion claim”; Washington Post; 4/19/ 25 ]

*** “Our government has kept us is a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede
of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.”
[ General Douglas MacArthur, 1957 ]

SO – what do YOU think? We, obviously – not yet – don’t have what the Nazis and Stalin Soviets achieved. THE question for YOU: where are we on the continuum? Trump has politicized and weaponized parts of the U.S. federal government [ after claiming – without credible evidence it was done against him. How does this achieve what the Founders said in the Constitution’s Preamble: ‘..a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare..”????????? People HAVE been dragged off American streets – for what they said, for what they believe – without evidence or court procedures.
In the Trump-Musk DICTATORSHIP – are YOU safe, immune from this? Do YOU want to live in a climate of fear, uncertainty, manufactured hatred????????/

One of THE major components of the Musk-Trump KAKISTOCRACY is LIES, Misinformation, twisted information, DELIBERATE DISINFORMATION – a literal. POISONING of American minds. They are capitalizing on 90 years of FAR RIGHT. efforts to divide Americans, to camouflage the EAL villains – the top 1% and corporations – to manufacture hatreds and discontent.

Over the last 90 years, the FAR RIGHT has built up MANY propaganda outlets: foundations; phantom funding of “grassroots” groups; funded numerous “experts” churning out ‘studies,” books, articles, making media appearances; creating bogus “legal” theories like “originalism” and “textualism”; funding “legal” studies of “law and economics”; funding university level “studies”; supported FAR RIGHT media personalities and programs; building their own schools and universities; supporting entire media and internet organizations………..

A vital media outlet – local newspapers and media – have been devastated by the internet and being bought up by major media companies – who then DICTATE what is said. The loss os small, often “Mom & Pop” operations, has been a MAJOR loss in those communities, and, usually a blow to democracy.

Not content with all this. – the FAR RIGHT. has also engaged in a vast. CENSORSHIP. program to force local libraries and schools to remove materials ‘offensive” to THEM, often a single person’s views.
The Musk-Trump KAKISTOCRACY. is vigorously removing ANY material THEY say YOU shouldn’t see or read – virtually always the TRUTH on what happened, 1789-2025.

This is straight out of Orwell’s “1984,” when ‘big Brother” told YOU all you needed to know; and – what REAL dictatorships – Communist, Nazi, Fascist, Putin – do and did.

***YOUR defense – read mainline newspapers, books, magazines; listen to mainline news. Be very careful of ANY “news” on social media – how do you really know it isn’t a Russian or Chinese bot posing as your “influencer”??? Studies have shown that Republicans who DIDN’T listen to Fox News were more realistically informed than Republicans who did.

***A Beginning List – to help YOU ask questions:
– magazines: Mother Jones, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Church & State
– crucial books: “Democracy In chains” – Nancy macLean; “Dark Money” – Jane Mayer; “Evil Geniuses” – Kurt Andersen; – the money BEHIND the FAR RIGHT

– stealing prosperity: “The Betrayal of the American Dream – double Pulitzer winners Donald Barlett & James Steele; “Who Stole the American Dream” – Pulitzer winner Hedrick Smith
– economic inequality: “The Spirit Level” [international bestseller] – Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett; “The Price of Inequality” – Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz; “Economic Apartheid in America” – Chuck Collins & Felice Yeskel

– sabotaging democracy: “How Democracies Die” – Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt; “American Amnesia” – Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson; “The Big Myth” – Naomo Oreskes & Erik Conway; “Minority Rule” – Ari Berman; “Attack from Within” – Barbara McQuade
– fascism & authoritarianism: “How Fascism Works” – Jason stanley; “On Tyranny” – Timothy Snyder; “Twilight of Democracy” – Anne Applebaum; “On Fascism” – Matthew MacWilliams; “American Nightmare” – Henry Giroux

– Trumpism: “Authoritarian Nightmare” – John Dean & Bob Altemeyer; “It’s Even Worse Than You Think” – Pulitzer winner David C. Johnston; “The Cult of Trump” – Steven Hassan; “How The Right Lost Its Mind” – Charles Sykes; “It Was All A LIE” – Stuart Stevens, 25-year Republican lead campaign strategist
– corruption: “On corruption In America” – Sarah Chayes; “American Kleptocracy” – Casey Michel; “Corruption In America” – Zephyr Teachout; “Kleptopia” – Tom Burgis

– warnings: “Broken Government” – John W. Dean; “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks” – Thomas Mann & Norman Ornstein; “The Wrecking Crew” – Thomas Frank; “The Great Unraveling” – Nobel winner Paul Krugman
– corporate criminality: “Predator Nation” – Academy Award winner Charles Ferguson; “Selling Out” – Mark Green; “These Are the Plunderers” – Pulitzer winner Gretchen Morgenson & Joshua Rosner; “The One Percent Solution” – Gordon Lafer; “THe Devine Right of Capital” – Marjorie Kelly

– truth: “Murder The Truth” – David Enrich; “The Death of Truth” – Michiko Kakutani; “Erasing History” – Jason Stanley; “The Death of Expertise” – Tom Nichols; “The Digital Civil War” – Peter Daou; “Losing Reality” – Robert j. Lifton
– religious extremism: “Preparing For War” – Bradley Onishi; “American Fascists” – Chris Hedges; “The Power Worshippers” – Katherine Stewart; “The Theocons” – Damon Linker; “Thy Kingdom Come” – Randall Balmer; “Church & State” magazine – numerous articles on Christian Nationalism

***The TRUTH about the Trump-Musk KAKISTOCRACY is available – please read and find it!!! YOU can help save American democracy from the FAR RIGHT’S 9-year effort to create a THEOCRATIC OLIGARCHY in YOUR country

Job #1 – look up “The 14 Characteristics of Fascism.” Now, seriously and critically – examine post-1980 America. If YOU are serious – it should be OBVIOUS that powerful, well-financed, forces have changed 1789-1980 America into what is now, under long-established evaluation tools into a near- PLUTOCRATIC THEOCRACY. Trump-Musk have simply made it worse, more cruel, even more corrupt. Step by step, following PROJECT 2025,” they are centralizing power in the presidency. That current occupant is THE man the Founders feared, the anti-Washington.

1]. “In writing this book..I have found myself more and more fixated on one gnawing question. Is what we are dealing with merely a social movement of the right whose radical ideas must eventually face public scrutiny and a rise and fall on their merits? Or is this the story of something quite different, something never before seen in American history? Could it be – and I use these words quite hesitantly and carefully – a fifth column assault on American government?
“Pushed by relatively small numbers of radical-right billionaires and millionaires..profoundly hostile to America’s modern system of government, an apparatus decades in the making, funded by those same billionaires and millionaires, has been working to undermine the normal governance of our democracy…one such manifesto calls for a “hostile takeover of Washington, D.C.” [Nancy MacLean: “Democracy In Chains..The Deep History of The Radical Right’s Stealth Plan For America”] [Question: is PROJECT 2025 that plan???]

*** In November, 2024, America elected an ignorant 78-year old teenage cult leader as “our” president. What could possibly go wrong? How much damage to American society, business, government can he do?

2}. There were danger signs: World War I era persecution of German-Americans & “Red Scare”; the July-November, 1933 Far-Right plot to overthrow FDR; putting 120,000 innocent Japanese-Americans in WW II “camps”; 1940s-50s “Red Scare”; John Birch Society; Nixon; Reagan [Iran-contra & more]; Bush II [lying into Iraq war]; Trump I; steady growth of “Christian Nationalism”; “Originalism” & “law and economics” legal theories; The Federalist Society & corruption of America’s judicial system; changes in corporate morality; Republican authoritarianism in states they control; the 1987-2025 flood of FAR RIGHT DISINFORMATION ; the growth of Far Right militia groups in all 50 states; January 6, 2021 coup attempt; ‘PROJECT 2025″

*** “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” {Benito Mussolini]

3]. Do YOUR own research into FAR RIGHT goals, 1900-2025. Research WHY the original “Populist” and “Progressive” revolts by ordinary rural and urban Americans occurred. Research WHY laws and regulations were passed to control corporate power. People didn’t suddenly “hate” corporations, what happened in 1865-1900?

*** Chief Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court, Edward Ryan, to University of Wisconsin graduates, 1873: “There is looming up a new and dark power..The enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economic conquests only, but for political power…money is taking the field as an organized power. The question will arise..which shall rule – wealth or man, which shall lead – money or intellect; who shall fill public stations – educated and patriotic free men, or the feudal serfs of corporate power.” [accessed from “Selling Out”]

4]. Research Nazi Germany, 1933-41. What were ordinary people doing? What was the atmosphere like? How did the Nazis control public opinion? Find the extent of corporate support for the Nazis.
Consider: Jews were NOT the first to go into “camps.” Jews in “camps” had one of sic badgers: red for ‘politicals”; green for criminals; pink for homosexuals; black for “anti-socials”; purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses; yellow for Jews. Research the Nazi “justice’ system [Ingo Muller: Hitler’s Justice” – translation]
Other books to learn what it was like living in that dictatorship: Erick Larson: “In The Garden Of Beasts”; James & Suzanne Pool: “Who Financed Hitler”; Adam LeBor & Roger Boyes: “Seduced By Hitler”; Robert Gllately: “Backing Hitler”; William Shirer: “The Nightmare Years. 1930-1940”; Victor Klemperer: “The Language of the Third Reich”]

5] Since Trump”s 2017-2021 term, much serious research has been done. Much driven by fears of demons set loose. Some “must” reads for concerned Americans: Steven Livitsky & Daniel Ziblatt: “How Democracies Die”; Theo Horesh: “The Fascism This Time”; Jason Stanley: “How Fascism Works”; Timothy Snyder: “On Tyranny”; Anne Applebaum: “Twilight of Democracy”; John Dean & Bob Altemeyer: “Authoritarian Nightmare”; Henry Giroux: “American Nightmare”; in 2006, Chris Hedges: “American Fascists..the Christian Right and the War on America.”

*****YOU!!! As this is written in late February, 2025 – there are signs Americans are slowly waking up to the HUGE threat the Trump-Musk dictatorship poses. Congress critters met hostile town halls [“Republicans face angry voters in town halls”; S.Peoples & E.Tucker, A.Seitz; Assoc. press; 2/24] and “Signs of Strain As Tariffs, Cuts Begin..Consumer sentiment sours with Trump’s abrupt moves” [A.Rappaport; New York Times; 2/28]. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE???

***** YOU!!! – Ask yourself – are “reasons” given by Trump-Musk valid for their decisions??? Are they true in ANY sense??? Is what Trump-Musk are doing consistent with 1900-1980 American democracy??? The Constitution’s Preamble says “We the People”. crated a government to “establish Justice” and to “promote the general Welfare” – how does ANYTHING Trump-Musk propose to do accomplish these REQUIREMENTS?????

6]. The Founders intended Congress to be THE dominant branch. They INTENTIONALLY divided up power – “checks and balances.” Trump-Musk have tried to create a NEW form of American government – one that has authoritarian, FASCIST tendencies. Trump-Musk have PURGED the FBI, fired inspectors generals, ignored court orders, tried to control YOUR “free press,” violated numerous laws, moved to limit the Federal Reserve’s independence.

**!!**!! – Trump’s “rationale”: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” !!!!!!!!!!!

*** “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elected, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” [James Madison; Federalist. #47}