Tuesday afternoon in Washington, D.C., seemed peaceful. On the Mall, near the Reflecting Pool, the breeze and overcast skies were somehow comforting and inviting.
I watched a couple taking wedding photographs, while others fed the ducks. A group of kids tossed a football, and while social media told us we were all doomed for a variety of reasons, for just a few minutes it didn’t seem that way. With the House adjourned for the shutdown and the Senate only taking periodic, futile votes to open the government, D.C. was easily 10 degrees cooler. All the hot air emanating from the politicians on Capitol Hill was nowhere to be found.
The tranquility was a welcome contrast to President Donald Trump’s recent rants about war zones, the enemy within, the “hell hole” of our cities — and to what a source close to Trump had just told me. “One party rule,” the White House insider said. “He and Stephen Miller believe they can make that happen.”
Perhaps my source is right. Late Thursday afternoon Trump continued his revenge tour. A grand jury in Maryland indicted his former National Security Adviser John Bolton on 18 counts of mishandling classified information. It’s funny that a president who kept classified information in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago could be part of a regime that would indict anyone on that charge.
Meanwhile, The government is in its third week of a shutdown. Trump is determined to keep the Jeffrey Epstein files from being released. Congress seems irrevocably broken.
We are in the end game.
We aren’t threatened with a constitutional crisis. We aren’t in danger of being taken over by a despot. We aren’t threatened with autocracy. We are in the middle of an autocratic takeover. We are ruled by a despot. Our Constitutional norms are in our rearview mirror.
We aren’t threatened with a constitutional crisis. We aren’t in danger of being taken over by a despot. We aren’t threatened with autocracy. We are in the middle of an autocratic takeover. We are ruled by a despot. Our Constitutional norms are in our rearview mirror.
While many of us deny this fact, some young Republicans love it. In a series of leaked text messages, they have openly embraced Adolf Hitler referred to Black people as “monkeys” and “the watermelon people.”
Trump essentially echoed those thoughts on Wednesday when he said he’d welcome a statue dedicated to Confederate general Robert E. Lee — you know, one of the greatest traitors in our history, the guy who led the racist Southern enslavers in a Civil War against the United States. The president said he knew that others felt the same way he did.
He isn’t wrong about that; many across the country would indeed agree with him. It is just the latest bellwether for the state of our dystopian nation.
It went almost unreported that Trump and his closest friends have bought much of the independent press. The Supreme Court looks likely to gut the Voting Rights Act, which would give the Republican Party as much as a 19-seat majority in the House. Trump is even trying to corner the market on the physical apparatus used to conduct our elections: Voting machines.
“This is one story that is extremely underreported by the media,” Mark Zaid, a Freedom of Information attorney and national security expert, told me on the podcast “Just Ask the Question.” “The consolidation of power by this administration is frightening.”
Zaid isn’t alone in his thoughts. According to former White House ethics chief Norman Eisen, we are experiencing a “full-throated shout of autocracy.” Eisen warned that Trump’s actions echo some of the “most ominous chapters of the 20th century.”
The government has no desire to alert us of the pain or alleviate it. You don’t need to read about young Republicans saying they love Hitler. The actions of the GOP show us the extent of their love.
The key to the administration’s consolidation of power, brought about in part by Trump’s palpable fear of being held accountable in the Epstein case, lies in two actions this week. In addition to the Voting Rights Act case before the Supreme Court, Dominion Voting Systems has been sold. Scott Leiendecker, the founder of a Missouri-based election technology company who previously served as the Republican director for the St. Louis City Board of Elections, purchased the company this week for an undisclosed sum. According to a press release, “As of today, Dominion is gone. Liberty Vote assumes full ownership and operational control.” The company has also dropped all lawsuits against prominent conservatives and the One America News Network.
“Why has Dominion Voting Systems been settling defamation lawsuits with Trump allies who falsely claimed the company stole the 2020 election? Because Dominion has just been bought by a company run by a former GOP election official. Be Warned,” Robert Reich posted on social media.
Remember what the late, great George Carlin said:
It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.
Much of the press has been neutralized. There is a silent war going on against Americans by a small, closed loop of billionaires. Elon Musk purchased Twitter. David Ellison acquired CBS News’ parent company Paramount in a merger with Skydance over the summer. The son of billionaire Oracle CEO — and close Trump ally — Larry Ellison, he set out to revamp the news division. On Oct. 6, David Ellison announced he had purchased The Free Press, a digital media company run by former New York Times Opinions editor Bari Weiss that prided itself on critiquing the “woke left,” and named Weiss as CBS News’ editor-in-chief.
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. He bowed to Trump. The Los Angeles Times caved as well. Sinclair has a stranglehold on local television network affiliates. More than 1,000 counties in this country have no local media presence. The greed and avarice of media barons are complicit in the government’s move toward one ruling party with no dissent.
“I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself,” the great grifter Ivan Boesky said in a commencement speech to the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 1986. Most of us will recognize the fictionalized version of Boesky, Gordon Gekko in the movie “Wall Street,” telling us that greed is good. Need I mention that a gecko is a cold-blooded lizard?
If serving greed is healthy, how does that square with the Bible that Donald Trump likes to throw around, as if he is Jesus himself? Matthew 6:24 warns us that you cannot serve two masters, which could be seen as a reason why Trump said recently that he doesn’t think he’s going to heaven: “I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to make heaven. But I’ve made life better for a lot of people.”
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He’d be hard pressed to find anyone capable of cogent thought who agrees with him. His avarice makes Boesky look like a Mormon Tabernacle Choir boy. And while Trump may be concerned about his post-mortem life, it certainly hasn’t kept him from convincing himself and others that only he has the solution to all our problems.
As his physical and mental health seem to be failing, his greed, fear and insecurity are leading him to kill everything that once made the United States great.
This weekend, in 2,500 locations across the country, millions plan to take part in “No Kings” protests. Trump and the feckless House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., have labeled them “Hate America” rallies. Certainly no one protesting Trump and his eager band of militant miscreants hates America — only what Trump has turned it into. If anyone has a hard time understanding that, they could take a look at the Presbyterian minister shot in the head with “non-lethal” ammunition while protesting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Chicago.
Or they could consider what happened to a clarinet player who was arrested after playing the “Ghostbusters” theme song outside a Portland ICE facility, which has recently become a site of daily clashes between federal agents and demonstrators. According to her loved ones, Oriana Korol, 38, and a parent of a three-year old child, was playing with her group — the Unpresidented Brass Band — during a protest Sunday evening when federal agents arrested her. She has since been taken to a jail in Washington State as her husband and bandmates demand answers about her arrest. “Why are they targeting a clarinet player? A clarinet player standing on the sidewalk far away from the street, following instructions?” her husband asked.
Anyone still unconvinced of Trump’s attempted consolidation of power could look at football in Florida. After a spectacular victory over the Texas Longhorns on Oct. 4, University of Florida students and fans stormed the field in celebration. Two students and two older men were handcuffed and arrested after police said they ran onto the field following a 29-21 victory over the then-No. 9 ranked Longhorns. It was a rare moment of exhilaration this season for Florida, whose record fell to 2-4 after Saturday’s loss to No. 5 Texas A&M. But police used a new law aimed at “punishing Trump protesters” to arrest the Gator fans.
The law, which took effect May 16, bans anyone from entering an area secured by law enforcement or a large, ticketed sports or entertainment event without a ticket — and carries penalties of up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. A review of statewide criminal records shows that the felony charges recommended by law enforcement in their cases would be the first filed under the law, which was designed to assist ICE and other federal agents. But like all autocratic laws, it is already being twisted to destroy those things in America in which we used to take joy — like an unexpected, emotional victory by your favorite college football team. Coaches and the school spoke out against the move. The charges, as of this writing, still stand.
The consolidation of Trump’s power is leading to ridiculous and frightening extremes. In the interest of suppressing dissent, the administration and its allies in Congress and in state government are hobbling every corner of American life, from politics to sports and entertainment. Most people are unaware of the consequences, while many members of the media do not understand those consequences — or how to report on them.
American humorist Will Rogers once remarked that we are living in a time where people are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians are a joke. That explains a lot.
“Liberty doesn’t work as good in practice as it does in speeches,” Rogers said, while Carlin reminded us, “That’s what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant,” of the ultimate truth. “It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
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