*** “Men with power have an extraordinary capacity to convince themselves that what they do conincides with what society needs done for its [own] good.” Raymond Vernon ]
This post presents excerpts from “Return of The Big Stick…..Hoe Donald Trump’s Embrace of ‘Realism’ is Becoming a Blank Check for Brutality”. [ Linda Kinstler; New York Times Magazine; 1/25/26 ]:
10] “..for Trump, the threats posed at home and abroad are seemingly the same, and so is his response. Armed government agents have arrested and killed U.S. citizens as part of Trump’s immigration policies; the federal government has strong-armed universities into accepting its agenda by withholding research funding; the Federal Communications Commission uses mergers as leverage to influence media coverage.”
11] “The second Trump administration may very well mark the start of a violent global age of Machtpolitik. “Trump is different than all of his predecessors because of his contempt for international law and international institutions,” Mearsheimer said …past presidents…correctly understood that those laws and institutions were in America’s interest..”
9] “For Porter, it is not realism that defines the Trump era but rather its “corrupt cousin,” Machtpolitik, which pursues power for its own sake and is defined by a “sort of violent exhilaration of destruction, nihilism and vengeance.” Trump’s penchant for theatrics and bombast, his obsession with status and his use of power to enrich himself and his family – all these are characteristic elements of his darker ideology….”By losing all restraints, you destroy yourself, Porter said.”
*** “Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.” [ Frank Herbert ]
1] “President Trump’s aide Stephen Miller blithely articulated the outlook that has taken hold of the White House. “We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller said. “These are iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
2] “That National Security Strategy, released in early December, gave a name to one of the organizing principles supposedly governing the administration’s foreign. policy: ‘flexible realism.”
3] “The realist school of foreign policy is rooted in the belief that the world is fundamentally ungovernable and that politics comes down to power.”
***. “Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of our own choosing.” [ George Orwell: “1984” ]
4]. “While the varied strains of realism are plentiful and sometimes contradictory, the Trump administration is channeling one of the crudest forms….By invoking realism to justify their actions abroad, Trump and his associates are treating it as an alibi for a distinctly American imperialism, a pretext for belligerence.”
5] “There are iron laws of world politics that they don’t understand,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. “Realism is all about realizing that in a competitive world, you want to be smart and go for genuine strategic advantage, not just pointless displays of power.”
6] “Critically. 20th-century realists accepted that all power is necessarily bound by constraint, hemmed in by the limitations of geography, politics and human nature. To lose sight of this is to risk slipping into much darker territory.”
*** “My power depends on my glory, and my glory on my victory. My power would fall apart were I not to support it with new glory and new victories. Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest alone can maintain me.” [Napoleon]
7]. “For Walt and other realist thinkers, Trump’s aggressive and chaotic actions on the world stage – his antagonism of U.S. allies, threats of territorial conquest and assertions that the U.S. is not afraid of putting “boots on the ground”. – undermine any claim he could make to practicing a realist foreign policy.”
8] “The incoherence of Trump’s foreign policy is explicitly memorialized in the National Security Strategy.” [Which is criticized in point #9 above]
12]. “Trump and his deputies have revealed how profoundly they disdain the norms of global governance and demonstrated their willingness to use force to get what they want. On Jan. 9, the president signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from dozens of international organizations.”
*** “In public affairs, stupidity is more dangerous than knavery.” [ Woodrow Wilson; 28th U.S. President ]
Tag: trump
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXIX. – Weaponizing Government to Control Speech
***. “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 ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXVIII. – Trump Builds The Corporate State
*** “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
[ Benito Mussolini ]
This post takes YOU back to review the “Public citizen News” of Sept./Oct., 2025. A quick read of headlines helps YOU understand HOW the Trump DICTATORSHIP has quickly built a corporate state.
a]. “Not a Border Crisis, but a “Free Trade” Crisis” [Meena Rakasi]
1]. “…how decades of corporate-led trade agreements have displaced millions of people, stripping them of their livelihoods and forcing them to migrate to survive.”
2] “U.S. manufacturing workers have long decried free trade agreements that empty out factories and create ghost towns.”
B] “Revolving Door Trump 2.0 Officials Create Fossil Fuel Playground”. [Alan Zibel]
1] “On the first day of his second term…Trump declared a “national energy emergency,” falsely blaming the Biden administration’s push for a transition to renewables for a supposed crisis….it laid the groundwork for a sweeping attack on federal agencies and states to serve fossil fuel interests.”
***. “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentration in the hands of a few. but we can’t have both.” [ Justice Louis Brandeis ]
C] “Litigating for Democracy: Public Citizen’s Fight Against Trump’s Power Grab”. [editorial]
1] ‘..the Trump administration is unilaterally and unconstitutionally dismantling the federal government..”
2]. ‘That data base went dark after Russell Vought – one of the primary architects of the infamous Project 2025 manifesto – took charge of the Office of Management and Budget…Vought believes that Trump has virtually limitless power – including the power to ignore Congress.”
D] “How Insurance Regulators Fuel Climate Change Profiteering” [Rick morris]
1]. “Homeowners and renters across the U.S. are feeling the sting of skyrocketing insurance rates…insurance corporations are exploiting the crisis to line their pockets…most profitable year in history…record bonuses.”
2] “Regulators are supposed to stand for the public interest over corporate power. But..they’re handing the pen to the insurance industry to write the rules…This isn’t just regulatory capture – it’s regulatory surrender….”
*** “Perversely, Trump’s drain-the-swamp administration proceeded to crystallize and put into practice. – in barefaced ways unseen in the United states for a century. – exactly the type of systematic corruption Americans decry.”
[ Sarah Chayes: “On Corruption in America” ]
E] “Trump Puts Big Tech Above the Law”
1] “…Big Tech’s lavish support for Trump’s inauguration and campaign has already paid dividends in dropped federal investigations and weakened oversight.”
2]. “Many of the tech leaders represented companies under active federal investigation….has already dropped or halted a third of the tech-related federal enforcement actions inherited from the Biden administration.”
F]. “Trump Administration Aims to Shut Down Public Participation in Federal Rulemaking” {David Rosen}
1] “The Trump administration is advancing a deregulatory strategy that strikes at the heart of democratic accountability: eliminating the public’s right to weigh in on federal rules.”
2] “To advance its corrupt agenda, the Trump administration is arguing that agencies can ignore public participation requirements…when the president directs them to do so. – a position that has no basis in law.”
***. “We are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth. When you have a few people who are so wealthy they can effectively buy the political system, the political system is going to tend to serve their interests.” [ Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize Winner; Economics ]
G] “Political Games: Trump’s Rescissions Law Threatens Lives and Democracy”. [Sara Faraj]
1] “the Trump administration is playing political games with human lives. A so-called ‘rescissions bill,” permitting the Trump administration not to spend previously appropriated money..”
2] “The rescission model threatens to undermine Congress’s constitutional power of the purse and concentrate authority in the executive. if a president can rescind funding that Congress has already enacted, no public program is truly safe.”
H] “Trump and Allies Threaten to Worsen Health Care, Putting Lives at Risk”
1] ‘..Trump has disrupted, depleted, and desecrated our nation’s already fragile health care system, putting millions of lives in jeopardy.”
2] “The report highlights the threat posed by Trump’s health officials…..Kennedy….Oz…O’neill..”
3] “The report also describes the chaos Trump and his allies unleashed in the early months of his second term..”
4]. “Trump fired several inspectors general who were ensuring that agencies are accountable to the American people..”
*** “…there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the “money touch”. but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.” [ Theodore Roosevelt; Republican; 26th U.S. President ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXVII. – A Blueprint For How To KILL DEMOCRACY
*** “Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted.” [ Max Lerner ]
This post presents excerpts from. “Twelve Steps to National Collapse: A Blueprint for How Democracies Die” [Thom Hartmann; The Progressive Populist; November, 2025 ]:
Historian Kevin Kruse: “We’ve had f**kups in the White House before, but never a president who seemed so deliberately intent on being a f**kup. It’s been said before, but if these people were actual agents of an enemy power seeking to divide, dismantle and destroy the USA, they wouldn’t be ding anything different.” [NOTE: think about “The Manchurian Candidate.” With his love for Putin, is Trump the REAL “Manchurian Candidate”?????]
From the “Dictator’s Playbook,” the simple 12-step formula:
1] “The first step would be to turn Americans from E Pluribus Unum…into hate-filled warring factions. Turn us against each other. Divide us by race, religion, gender, region, education, income,…cities or rural areas.”
2]. “Next, we’d want to immiserate as many Americans as possible, creating a huge pool of mostly white men who are pissed off because they’ve been left behind economically and feel locked out of the American Dream…Destroy unions…Gut programs…Shift manufacturing overseas…Build media operations that demonize ‘the other”…Ban books…Spread hate and conspiracy theories…”
3] “Third, we’d want to destroy people’s faith in straightforward news…”left-wing bias”…”enemies of the people”…attack the media relentlessly.”
4] “Fourth, shatter people’s faith in reality itself. Challenge science and expertise. Flood the zone with conspiracy theories…”….Attack vaccinations and measures to slow climate change. “Sow confusion until they no longer know who to believe, and then offer yourself as the only source of truth.”
5] “Fifth, deconstruct international alliances that go back centuries by alienating traditional friends and embracing openly hostile foes while tearing up norms of defense, trade, and commerce.”
6]. “Sixth, fracture citizen’s faith in their elected officials and the government itself.” Legalize the rich and corporations buying legislation “by claiming that “money is speech” and “corporations are persons.” Define opposition political parties as “radical,” ‘dangerous,” and “outside the mainstream.”
7] Seventh, turn the military and police forces..against its own people. making them terrified of challenging armed, masked men..” Vilify ..”minorities like immigrants and, when they’re “under control,” turn those forces against anybody who dissents from the new single-party rule.”
8]. “Demolish faith in the nation’s currency by seizing political control of the central bank while villinizing its leadership.”
9]. “Ninth, run scams to accumulate as much wealth as possible in the hands of Dear Leader and his close cronies while refusing to raise the minimum wage so as to keep people in poverty.”
10] “Tenth, use the power of government to force institutions. – corporations, universities, law firms. – into complete submission and even explicit collaboration in the enshitification of the nation.”
11] “Eleventh, seize control of the legislative and judicial branches so your law-breaking, election-rigging, and bribe-taking is never held to account. Openly and brazenly break laws…”
12] “Twelfth, turn the nation’s premier law enforcement agencies into tools for punishing political enemies while ignoring the crimes of friends of the regime, thus destroying faith in equality under rule of law and terrorizing anybody who speaks out.”
***. “Where law ends, tyranny begins.” [ William Pitt, the Elder ]
Thom Hartman. to YOU: “History shows that any democracy can fall into tyranny if its citizens grow cynical, give up, or look away. The question. – the only question that matters now. – is whether enough of us will choose to stand up, to act, and to reclaim what generations before us fought and bled to pass along.”
The Trump DICTATORSHIP has its “Blueprint to kill a Democracy.” it’s known as. “Project 2025.” Details have, are, being carried out. Authors are IN the Trump DICTATORSHIP..
THE. QUESTION: are YOU. willing to act, speak up, protest, vote out Trump and his Republican enablers??????
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXVI – Corrupting The “Department of Justice”
*** “Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.” { Justice Louis Brandeis ]
“The Unraveling of the Justice Department”. [Emily Bazelon, Rachel Power; New York Times Magazine; ll/30/25. Some excerpts below from “more than 60 attorneys” who worked in the Justice Department:
20]. “I wouldn’t even call it the Justice Department anymore. It’s become Trump’s personal law firm.”
[Note: Read this again – think what this means for “the rule of law.”]
15] “Trump pardoned a series of white-collar offenders….His family was wealthy…someone who defrauded everyday folks in Ohio….they’re better off spending their money on a political donation, drawing Trump’s attention..”
8]. “The way we did investigations drastically changed….That process turned upside down. it was outcome driven.”
[Note; FACTS didn’t count – ideology and connections did]
4]. “It was inconceivable to me they’d fire people for no reason except they’d worked on cases that were now disfavored….It flipped the culture of the institution. it’s a culture now of fear. And they are losing people all the time, very good people, who were the future of the department.”
*** “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” [ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ]
1] “President Trump’s second term has brought a period of controversy…Trump and his appointees have blasted through walls designed to protect the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency from political influence; they have directed the course of criminal investigations, openly flouted ethics rules and caused a breakdown of institutional culture.” [Note; read this again, word-by-word. this IS the destruction of “the rule of law.”]
2] “..the lawyers narrated the events that most alarmed them…described being asked to drop cases for political reasons, to find evidence for flimsy investigations and to take positions in court they thought had no legitimate basis. they also talked about the work they and their colleagues were told to abandon. – investigations of terrorist plots, corruption and white-collar fraud.” [ Note; read this again! – the Trump DICTATORSHIP is deliberately sabotaging American security]
3] “On his first day in office, President Trump made ir clear that lawyers loyal to him would lead the Justice Department.” [Note: – just like in any other dictatorship]
5]. “Pam Bondi..issued a first-day flurry of 14 memos that radically redefined the department’s mission. One mandated that government attorneys “zealously defend” the president’s agenda..” [Note; thus the title of this article!!!]
*** “I don’t want to know what the law is, I want to know who the judge is.” [Roy Cohn – check his biography!!!]
6] “What happened to PIN was an alarm blasting everywhere. that’s when I was like, “They’re just going to break every rule. They don’t care.”
7]. “The E.P.A. found in 2021 that the new standard would save thousands of lives and that the health benefits would outweigh the cost of compliance. The Trump administration put the litigation on hold in preparation for rolling back the regulation.” [Note: Trump just decided to endanger YOUR. health. Big Question: WHO asked him to do this???]
9]. “The idea of the investigation was that Perkins Coie supposedly engaged in illegal discrimination against white men. But Perkins Coie is an extremely white firm – only 3 percent of the partners are Black. When my colleague pointed that out, the leadership didn’t care. They’d already reached their conclusion.” {!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
10] “Our laws gave American companies cover so they could resist shakedowns to pay bribes….People across the political spectrum saw promoting the rule of law abroad as important for promoting American interests and national security. You could see these ideals fall away quickly in the moves the administration made.”
***. “When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There – a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator. – so decrees.” [ Jessica Mitford ]
11]. “Mel Gibson has a history of domestic violence….It was strongly suggested to me that Mel Gibson is someone who had a personal relationship with the president and that really should be all I needed to know.” [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
12] “Erez Reuveni, acknowledged in court that the Trump administration wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia….In previous administrations, including Trump’s first term, the government routinely worked to get people back when they were deported without legal authority. In this case, however, Bondi put Reuveni on leave and trhen fired him.” [Note; a highly respected attorney is fired because he told the truth. What else do YOU need to know?]
13] “When the president issued his executive order related to voting, the Civil Rights Division was initially charged with defending it. But many provisions of it were an unlawful power grab..”
14]. “It’s unprecedented to shift resources away from national security to this degree….You have to have good, experienced, trained people doing this work on a daily basis. If you don’t, because you demand they do immigration shifts, there is real danger to national security and public safety.” Note: apparently, to the Trump DICTATORSHIP, a few undocumented immigrants are a bigger danger than Russia or China]
***. “My task is not to make men better but to make use of their weaknesses.” [ Adolf Hitler ]
16] “Bondi fired around 20 prosecutors and support staffers who worked on the special counsel Jack smith’s investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his refusal to return classified documents after leaving office…..Trump demanded the prosecution of several of his perceived political enemies…Based on the results of investigations by career prosecutors, Erik Siebert…told senior Justice Department officials he did not think there was sufficient evidence to indict Comey or James.”
17] “No one should be charged with a crime because the president says. “Do this,”….”
18]. “This is the whole problem with the White House directing criminal investigations. This is what you get. We won’t get the benefit of credibility from judges that we had, and I’m even more concerned about juries. I really fear the Justice Department. – which has a good record of convicting dangerous, violent people. – won’t see the same success rate, becuase people will think it’s not on the level.”
19] “It shows the president has no regard for ethics or rules or the appearance of impropriety or any of the guardrails we used to have before… The Mar-a-Lago case was buttoned up. They begged him to give them the documents so it wouldn’t rise to the level of the F.B.I. going in to get them. To say there’s abuse here. – it’s absurd.”
*** “There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men.”
[ Ludwig von Mises ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXV – “ICE Is Watching You”
***. “At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” [ Abraham Lincoln; 1837 ]
“ICE Is. Watching. You” [Tressie McMillan Cotton; New York Times; 2/6/26]
This post presents excerpts from. ICE Is Watching You”:
6]. “Many of us have come to believe that our data is something outside ourselves, when, in fact, data is our self.”
7] “Imagine what our country would look like if a federal agency compiled everything it could find about you on the open market and then paired it with your most sensitive personal data and the full weight of the federal surveillance apparatus. The result would be a system that could not only track you but also pretty accurately predict your choices, behaviors and vulnerabilities.” [NOTE: does this sound like “1984” ????? ]
10] “Emily Tucker, the director of Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, suggested the agency could be constructing a surveillance system that, in my estimation, would make “Minority Report” look like child’s play. Homeland Security, she said, “is increasingly emphasizing interoperability in its contracting.” That is a strong sign that the agency wants to connect a range of databases……”They are seeking data about every aspect of the lives of everyone,” she said.” [NOTE: “1984” ??? ]
15] “A militarized federal police force that acts out of loyalty on the whim of a political leader who relishes retribution and adulation is the tip of the iceberg….This kind of weaponry could effectively nullify our Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable search and seizure. it could also more easily enable the government to trample on your free speech. And it could do all of this without meaningful transparency or oversight.”
***. “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later; the logic of their position demanded it.”
[. George Orwell: “1984” ]
1] “In the latest stop in Donald Trump’s war on liberal democracy, federal agents in Minneapolis have shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti…”
2] “The gun and the phone are both weapons – one a tool for violence and the other a tool of control.”
3] “That phone represents a greater power, one that could outlast Trumpism. ICE knows that it cannot shoot us all. But the Department of Homeland Security is close to being able to track us all.”
4]. “The federal government, whether Democratic-or-Republican-controlled, has repeatedly failed to institute meaningful, urgently needed regulation of or legislation about data privacy that matches the scale of our risk.”
***. “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, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” [ Harry Truman; 33rd U.S. President ]
5] “Democratic administrations…thought Silicon Valley chief executives were the good guys. So they enabled their sci-fi aspirations….Then many chiefs turned heel, helping the Trump administration aggressively scale up a data dragnet that will eat our civil liberties for lunch, if we let it.”
8]. “In a citizen video from Maine that has been widely shared online, an ICE agent told a legal observer that he was taking a picture of her license plate to add her to a “nice little database” that will label her a “domestic terrorist.”
[ YOU know nothing about an ICE agent, BUT, he knows EVERYTHING about YOU ]
9} “..on Jan. 30, the Times reported that ICE was exploring ways to integrate advertising technologies and the data associated with them into its operations, specifically asking potential vendors the extent to which data could be collected on “people, businesses, devices, locations, transactions, public records.”
11] “If combined with the facial recognition and social media monitoring commonly deployed byt the Department of Homeland Security, those reams of data would turbocharge ICE’s terror campaign in the short term and destroy American civil liberties in the long term.”
*** [ ‘BIG BROTHER. IS. WATCHING. YOU” – “1984 ]
12]. “…Senator Ron Wyden….told me that the federal government is “weaponizing private data” against citizens and noncitizens. Of particular concern…was….what this administration cannot buy, it will simply take.”
13] “The Trump administration has been taking advantage of state-level data that has been aggregated by a third party nonprofit data clearinghouse called Niets….there are far too few restrictions on who can use that data and how they can use it.”
14] “You only need to know this: Whatever is happening with your data, it is important enough to the most egregiously lawless administration in American history that it be collected and consolidated.”
16] ‘.. it all starts with the American people understanding that our freedoms are now bound up in who controls our data.”
*** “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
George Orwell; “1984” – Or, is it Donald Trump; 2025-20XX ??? ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXIV – Measuring How Far Toward Autocracy Trump Has Brought America
***. “Of all the evils that infest a state, a tyrant is the greatest; his sole will commands laws, and lords it ovr them.”
[ Euripides ]
This post presents excerpts from the New York Times editorial. “Trump’s Stifling Of Dissent Reaches A New Level”. [2/8/26. It is the first update since October, 2025]:
A]. “The crackdown on dissent and speech in Minnesota..follows a pattern that is common in countries that slide from democracy to autocracy..”
B]. “The wide-ranging abuses in Minnesota are the main reason for change….The true goal seems to be instilling fear in people who oppose Mr. Trump’s agenda.”
C]. “The acceleration in the stifling of dissent and speech is broader than what’s happening in Minnesota.”
D] “The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that the leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an electin and hold power. Once that stage is reached, the change is extremely difficult to reverse.” {NOTE: The danger is what the Trump DICTATORSHIP will do to rig the November 3, 2026 and November, 2028 elections.]
Below are the 12 metrics of “The. Autocracy. Index” A 0-10 scale is used.
1]. “Stifling speech and dissent”. “4”. “The repression of speech and dissent is ‘central”. to an authoritarian takeover.”
2] “Persecuting political opponents”. “5”. “Mr. Trump’s Justice Department has become an enforcer of his interests.”
3] “Bypassing the legislature”. “4”. “When a democracy slides toward autocracy, the leader often finds ways to neuter the legislature..” {Trump has violated laws and gutted congressionally authorized agencies.]
***. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and the. judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” [ James Madison ]
4] “Defying the courts”. “2”. “At times, the Trump administration has openly defied federal judges.”
5] “Declaring false emergencies”. “5”. “Autocrats often curtail democracy by declaring an emergency and arguing the threat requires them to exercise unusual degrees of power.”
6] “Using the military at home”. ‘2’. “Authoritarians frequently and performatively use the military for domestic control.”
***. “It is the old practice of despots to use part of the people to keep the rest in order.” [ Thomas Jefferson ]
7] Vilifying marginalized groups”. “6” “Authoritarians tend to demean minority groups, trying to turn them into perceived threats that provide justification for a leader to amass power.”
8] “Controlling information”. “2”. “Authoritarians seek to depress inconvenient truths.” [NOTE: this site disagrees with this low grade. the Trump DICTATORSHIP has taken numerous steps to control and pervert truth.]
9]. “Trying to take over universities”. “2”. “a signature policy of Mr. Trump’s second term has been his attack on higher education.” [NOTE: this site vigorously disputes this low grade for a “signature policy.”]
*** “Truth is the most precious thing. That’s why we should ration it.” [ V. Lenin ]
10] “Creating a cult of personality”. “6”. “Emperors and kings often glorified themselves by displaying their portraits everywhere.”
11] “Using power for personal profit”. “7” “Mr. Trump glories in his administration’s culture of corruption.”
12] “Manipulating the law to stay in power” “2”. “In Mr. Trump’s second term, he has shown worrisome signs of trying to entrench the power of the Republican party…” [NOTE: this site VIGOROUSLY protests this absurdly low grade – see l/6/21 !!!!!!!!!! See the persecution of ANYBODY trying to hold Trump into account !!!!!!!!!!!!!! ]
*** “The aggressiveness of governments grows in proportion to the increase of their internal despotism.”
[ Leo Tolstoy ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXIII – ICE Exists to Enforce One Mans Will”
***. “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others…One does not establish the dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” [ George Orwell: “1984” ]
This post presents excerpts from. “ICE Exists to Enforce One Man’s Will” {Radley Balko; New York Times; 1/25/26]. Read this – and pray. – that YOU. have an American democracy on January 20, 2029.
19]. “We can still stop these abuses of power, but we need to be clear about what we’re facing. This is no longer a conversation about law enforcement or immigration policy. This is about authoritarianism.”
4] “The lies this administration is telling about Ms. good aren’t those you deploy as part of a cover-up. They’re those you use when you want to show you can get away with anything. They’re a projection of power.”
10] “…the administration has embraced fear tactics long associated with totalitarian regimes. Until now, law enforcement officers in the United States rarely masked their faces….it’s just been accepted that masked policing isn’t consistent with democratic society.”
***. “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?” [ Mahatma Gandhi ]
12] “The administration has resurrected tactics that professional policing groups have deemed dangerous or counterproductive….Federal agents have shot into cars at least 10 times since September. This, too, is prohibited by most big city police agencies, in part because it’s too easy to mistake a driver’s intent.”
17] “In refusing to investigate Ms. good’s death, the Department of Justice is, at a minimum, indicating that it doesn’t believe that preventing similar deaths is important. But the real explanation may be more sinister. Since she was killed, we’ve seen multiple videos in which immigration officers refer to her death to threaten people lawfully observing or recording them. The real motivation appears to be make all the other Renee Goods out there, the liberal so-called wine moms watching over immigration raids, wonder if they might be next.”
***. “The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.” { Edmund Burke }
1] “I have been covering policing for more than 20 years and have read and parsed a lot of these statements. The Department of Homeland Security’s response after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis this month is something else entirely.”
2] “The Trump administration’s response to ms Good’s death made no such concessions….There was little empathy for her family…pronounced the shooting not only justified but an act of heroism..”
3] “It isn’t just the lying; it’s that the lies are wildly exaggerated and easily refutable…..”
5] “…since the protests in Ferguson, Mo., America has engaged in a high-stakes dialogue about police abuse and accountability….What Mr. Trump is doing with federal immigration forces has rendered those debates obsolete.”
6]. “The surge of federal forces into Minneapolis …isn’t about law enforcement at all. It is about an administration declaring. – explicitly, at times. – that the purpose of federal law enforcement isn’t to uphold the rule of law or promote public safety but to enforce the will of a single man.”
***. “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
[ Theodore Roosevelt; Republican; 26th U. S. President ]
7] “Administration officials quickly declared those shootings [Parias & Martinez] justified. – and righteous. – with hyperbolic language similar to that used after ms. good’s killing. Those claims would also later be disproved..”
8] “..nearly all of the administration’s responses to deaths in custody, shootings or other accused abuses have used maximalist language to venerate immigration officers, dehumanize their victims and villainize anyone who doesn’t support the Trump administration.”
9] ‘..after federal agents dragged Aliya Rahman, a U.S. citizen, from her car and arrested her, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson referred to her as an agitator who was obstructing immigration operations. In fact, she was trying to get to a doctor’s appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center…”
11]. “Instilling fear is a drawback only if your goal is public safety. this administration has made it clear that it doesn’t want marginalized communities. – immigrants, Somali U.S.citizens, residents of Latino neighborhoods and so on. – to feel safe.”
13] “Videos from cities where Mr. Trump has sent federal agents have shown agents attempting to stop fast-moving vehicles with techniques that most police departments prohibit or reserve for rare confrontations…”
*** “Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.” [ Edward Abbey ]
14]. “It’s clear that immigration officials are routinely breaking the law.”
15]. “We’ve seen the unlawful arrest and incarceration of Somali refugees who have legal permission to be here, warrantless raids on private homes and reports of detainees be denied access to lawyers.”
16]. ‘..Todd Blanche, said on Fox News that there will be no federal investigation into her killing. The administration has already said the F.B.I. will not share the evidence it collected with the local police so they can conduct their own investigations. This is the very definition of a cover-up. It’s just being done in lain sight.”
18]. “It’s one thing to tank or slow-walk an investigation. It’s quite another to publicly declare that no investigation will happen…and then announce that you’ll be investigating the victim’s partner and supports instead.. Both paths are unethicl and corrupt….The administration’s actions…are a declaration that there will be no accountability and that it would prefer to instill fear rather than trust.”
*** “It is not infrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, – to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are pooer or weaker than themselves.” [ Samuel Adams ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Crazinesss, CXXXXII. – Constitutional Rights Under Assault In Minnesota
***. “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.” [ John Adams; 1776 ]
This post presents excerpts from “Constitutional rights are under assault in Minnesota” [ E. Thomas Sullivan, Richard Painter; Minnesota Star Tribune; 2/17/26. Both are law professors. ]
1] “During Operation Metro Surge, the American public was flooded, mostly through right-wing media and social media, with imaginary insurrection scenarios and speculation about the beginning of a civil war in Minnesota. Elon Musk posted explicitly on X…that there is an “insurrection” in Minnesota. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
2] “The claims of looming civil war are just a pretext for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act….here is no insurrection.”
12] “Democratic accountability of public officials is being impaired. It must be restored. The survival of our republic depends upon it.”
***. “Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.” [ John Locke ]
3]. “There are..important rights at stake. We begin with the First Amendment: right to freedom of speech and assembly, which includes the right to peacefully protest without harassment, arrest and assault by federal officers.”
4] “Next comes the Second Amendment, violated in the killing of Alex Pretti. Pretti should not have been assaulted, much less executed for having a legally licensed, holstered handgun that was not used to threaten federal officers.”
5]. “The Fourth Amendment requires that a search warrant be authorized by a judge to enter a home or work[place, not just an ICE “administrative warrant.”
*** “We must support our rights or lose our character, and with it, perhaps, our liberties.” [ James Madison ]
6] “Fifth Amendment [due process] requires that the government gives a person adequate notice of criminal charges and an opportunity to defend oneself. The decisionmaker must be neutral and unbiased.”
7]. “The Tenth Amendment embodies the federalism doctrine governing the relationship between States’ rights and the power of the federal government. Rights that are not delegated to the federal government nor denied to the states in the Constitution are vested and flow to the states and to the people.”
8] “Furthermore, the 10th Amendment guarantees Minnesota the right to enforce its own laws, unless expressly preempted by federal law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. this includes criminal statutes..”
*** “Where the rights of men are equal, every man must finally see the necessity of protecting the rights of others as the most effectual security fro his own.” [ Thomas Paine; 1795 ]
9] “Under the 14th Amendment, persons born in the U.S. or naturalized, and subject to the jurisdiction, are granted both U.S. citizenship in a state. These important citizenship rights…cannot be taken away by the federal government. ICE cannot rely on immigration laws to arrest natural-born citizens in Minnesota or anywhere else.”
10] “Sadly, much of the blame is with the Supreme Court and its highly controversial 2024 criminal immunity decision in Trump v. the United States. When a president is immune from criminal prosecution, his subordinates…think that immunity also flows through them…inferring that they can commit crimes, even murder, and get away with it.”
11] “As for the Insurrection Act….There is no insurrection.”
*** “In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance.” [ Phyllis Wheatley; 1774 ]
The Trump DICTATORSHIP – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXXXXI. – Americans Respond to Trump’s Iranian War
***. “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; 1957 ]
“An unconstitutional, unlawful war” [letters to the editor; Minnesota Star Tribune; 3/4/26} Excerpts:
1] In the United Nations charter, “The U.S. and all signatory nations agreed to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other nations and agreed to wage war only in self-defense or when authorized by collective action. The charter is a binding treaty obligation of the U.S….and thus one of the laws that President Donald Trump swore to “take care” to faithfully execute… Iran did not attack the United States. There is no evidence that any attack by Iran was imminent….Trump has also acted without any congressional authorization, thereby violating the constitutional order that places the power to declare war in the hands of Congress.” [ T.V. ]
*** “Kill, Destroy, Sack, Tell Lies; How much you want. After victory nobody asks why?” [Adolf Hitler]
2]. “There are no stated objectives, yet Trump tells us the bombing of Iran will continue until they are achieved. He promised voters that he would end wars but over the past year he has ordered military strikes in at least six nations…Trump is a pathological liar…He is responsible for the recent killing of Americans by immigration officers, the arrests of hundreds of innocent people…He does not tolerate political dissent and speaks vilely of people of color….Trump is a major threat to global stability..” [ C. D. ]
*** “When people speak to you about a preventative war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.” [ Dwight D. Eisenhower ]
3]. “After the U.S. attack on Iran, Trump commented on the first few deaths of American service personnel in Kuwait this weekend. He said they were “true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation.” But in 2018 at a ceremony in France, he called American service members who died in war “suckers” and “losers.” Well…which is it? Maybe in wars he starts it is different because he is scrambling to justify his attack while deflecting the problems of his domestic agenda…” [ S. O. ]
*** “That wars and rumors of wars are the great threats to political stability and to liberty needs no demonstration. Total war means total subjugation of the individual to the state.” { Justice Robert Jackson ]
4] “What do the Trump administration’s recent actions in Minnesota, Venezuela and Iran have in common? A lot. All are examples of exactly the types of behaviors tat we can expect of an authoritarian leader seeking to consolidate his hold on power. …authoritarian leaders often pursue a dual strategy of oppression at home and military adventurism abroad. The latter is often used to distract from or provide a rationale for the former. The threat of [interference] by Trump and his allies in the coming midterm elections…was elevated even before the recent use of force overseas. Now that threat is greater. The real danger will come from the real or manufactured threat of counterattacks and terrorism stemming from these wars. Given the track record of Trump and his enablers, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision these being used as pretext for the curtailing of civil liberties or the promotion of conspiracies about election integrity, or whatever else Trump and his enablers come up with to ensure the election outcome they want. For dictators, the more wars, the better.” [ T.S. ]
*** “The friends of humanity will depreciate war, wheresoever it may appear; and we have experienced enough of its evil in this country to know it should not be wantonly or unnecessarily entered upon.” [ George Washington ]
5]. From Minnesota Star Tribune 3/5/26. “letters to the editor”:
“Hours before the strikes began, the foreign minister of Oman, who was mediating negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, said “substantial progress” had been made and a deal is “within our reach.” What was Trump’s rush to war? On March 3, in the White House, Trump explained to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, without offering one shred of evidence, that Iran was going to attack first.” he said, “I felt strongly about that.” So there you have it. Trump’s explanation for putting sons and daughters in harm’s way. His explanation for the death and destruction throughout the Middle East. He had a feeling.” [ M.H. ]
***. “{The tyrant] is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.” [ Plato ]
With Justice For All 
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