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+--- Thread: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. (/thread-16405.html)
RE: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. - Peter Lemkin - 24-02-2025
F
Heather Cox Richardson
Feb 24
Something is shifting,” scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder posted on Bluesky yesterday. “They are still breaking things and stealing things. And they will keep trying to break and to steal. But the propaganda magic around the oligarchical coup is fading. Nervous Musk, Trump,
Vance have all been outclassed in public arguments these last few days. Government failure, stock market crash, and dictatorial alliances are not popular. People are starting to realize that there is no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power.”
Rather than backing down on their unpopular programs, Trump and the MAGA Republicans are intensifying their behavior as if trying to grab power before it slips away.
Trump’s blanket pardons of the people convicted for violent behavior in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol were highly unpopular, with 83% of Americans opposed to those pardons. Even those who identify as Republican-leaning oppose those pardons 70 to 27 percent. And yet, on February 20, the Trump Justice Department expanded those pardons to cover gun and drug charges against two former January 6 defendants that were turned up during Federal Bureau of Investigation searches related to the January 6 attack.
Then, on February 21, a number of people pardoned after committing violent crimes, including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio—who was sentenced to 22 years in prison—and Proud Boy Ethan Nordean (18 years) and Dominic Pezzola (10 years), as well as Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes (18 years) and Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who sat with his feet on a desk in then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office (four and a half years), held a press conference at the U.S. Capitol to announce they were going to sue the Justice Department for prosecuting them.
Kyle Cheney of Politico reported that the group followed the route they took around the Capitol on January 6, 2021, then posed for photos chanting as they had that day: “Whose house? Our house.” Protesters nearby heckled the group, and when one of them put her phone near Tarrio’s face while he was talking to a photographer, he batted her arm away. Capitol Police officers promptly arrested him for assault.
A number of the January 6 rioters were visiting the Capitol from the nearby Conservative Political Action Conference being held in Maryland. There, MAGA participants continued to normalize Nazi imagery as both Steve Bannon and Mexican actor Eduardo Verástegui threw fascist-style salutes to the crowd.
Yesterday, Tarrio posted a video of himself following officers who defended the Capitol on January 6 though the lobby of a Washington hotel where the anti-Trump Principles First conference was taking place. According to Joan E. Greve of The Guardian, Tarrio followed officers Michael Fanone, Harry Dunn, Daniel Hodges, and Aquilino Gonell, saying: “You guys were brave at my sentencing when you sat there and laughed when I got 22 f*cking years. Now you don’t want to look in my eyes, you f*cking cowards.” Fanone turned and told him: “You’re a traitor to this country.”
Today, the hotel had to be evacuated after someone claiming to be “MAGA” emailed a threat claiming to have rigged four bombs: two in the hotel, one in Fanone’s mother’s mailbox, and one in the mailbox of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor turned critic. After listing the names of several of the conference attendees—and singling out Fanone—the email said they “all deserve to die.” The perpetrator claimed to be acting “[t]o honor the J6 hostages recently released by Emperor Trump.”
Billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump are also ramping up their behavior even as the public is starting to turn against the government cuts that are badly hurting American veterans, American farmers, and U.S. medical research. The courts keep ruling against their efforts and their claims of finding “waste, fraud, and abuse” are being widely debunked. Rather than rethinking their course in the face of opposition, they seem to be becoming more belligerent.
On Saturday, Trump urged Musk to be “more aggressive” in cutting the government, although the White House has told a court that Musk has no authority and is only a presidential advisor. “Will do, Mr. President,” Musk replied. He then posted a command to federal employees: “Consistent with [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” Shortly after, emails went out giving workers 48 hours to list five things they had accomplished in the past week.
This sparked outrage among Americans who noted that Musk has spent 24 hours tweeting more than 220 times and engaged in public fights with two of the mothers of his children while allegedly running companies and overhauling the government, while Trump spent at least 12 nights at Mar-a-Lago in his first 29 days in office. S.V. Date of HuffPost noted on February 18 that Trump has played golf at one of his own properties on 9 of his first 30 days in office and that Trump’s golf outings had already cost the American taxpayer $10.7 million.
Reddit was flooded with potential responses to Musk’s demand, scorching it and Musk. The demand also exposed a rift in the administration, as department heads—including Kash Patel, the newly confirmed head of the FBI, as well as officials at the State Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of the Navy—asserted their authority to review the workers in their own departments, telling them not to respond to Musk’s demand.
Then users pointed out that the new government employee email system the Department of Government Efficiency team set up explicitly says that using it is voluntary, and that resignations of federal employees must be voluntary. Musk responded by sending out a poll on X asking whether X users think federal employees should be “required to send a short email with some basic bullet points about what they accomplished” in the past week.
The entire exercise made it look as if the lug nuts on the wheels of the Musk-Trump government bus are dangerously loose. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “Drunk on power and ketamine.”
Historian Johann Neem, a specialist in the American Revolution, turned to political theorist John Locke to explore the larger meaning of Trump’s destructive course. The founders who threw off monarchy and constructed our constitutional government looked to Locke for their guiding principles. In his 1690 Second Treatise on Government, Locke noted that when a leader disregards constitutional order, he gives up legitimacy and the people are justified in treating him as a “thief and a robber.” “[W]hosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law and makes use of the force he has under his command…ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another,” Locke wrote.
Neem notes that Trump won the election and his party holds majorities in both chambers of Congress. He could have used his legitimate constitutional authority but instead, “with the aid of Elon Musk, has consistently violated the Constitution and willingly broken laws.” Neem warned that courts move too slowly to rein Trump in. He urged Congress to perform its constitutional duty to remove Trump from office, and urged voters to make it clear to members of Congress that we expect them to “uphold their obligations and protect our freedom.”
“Otherwise,” Neem writes, “Americans will be subject to a pretender who claims the power but not the legitimate authority of the presidency.” He continues: “Trump’s actions threaten the legitimacy of government itself.”
In the Senate, on Thursday, February 20, Angus King (I-ME) also reached back to the framers of the Constitution when he warned—again—that permitting Trump to take over the power of Congress is “grossly unconstitutional.” Trump’s concept that he can alter laws by refusing to fund them, so-called impoundment, is “absolutely straight up unconstitutional,” King said, “and it’s illegal.”
“[T]he reason the framers designed our Constitution the way they did was that they were afraid of concentrated power,” King said. “They had just fought a brutal eight-year war with a king. They didn’t want a king. They wanted a constitutional republic, where power was divided between the Congress and the president and the courts, and we are collapsing that structure,” King said. “[T]he people cheering this on I fear, in a reasonably short period of time, are going to say where did this go? How did this happen? How did we make our president into a monarch? How did this happen? How it happened,” he said to his Senate colleagues, “is we gave it up! James Madison thought we would fight for our power, but no. Right now we’re just sitting back and watching it happen.”
“This is the most serious assault on our Constitution in the history of this country,” King said. “It's the most serious assault on the very structure of our Constitution, which is designed to protect our freedoms and liberty, in the history of this country. It is a constitutional crisis…. Many of my friends in this body say it will be hard, we don't want to buck the President, we'll let the courts take care of it…. [T]hat's a copout. It's our responsibility to protect the Constitution. That's what we swear to when we enter this body.”
“What's it going to take for us to wake up…I mean this entire body, to wake up to what's going on here? Is it going to be too late? Is it going to be when the President has secreted all this power and the Congress is an afterthought? What's it going to take?”
“[T]his a constitutional crisis, and we've got to respond to it. I'm just waiting for this whole body to stand up and say no, no, we don't do it this way. We don't do it this way. We do things constitutionally. [T]hat's what the framers intended. They didn't intend to have an efficient dictatorship, and that's what we're headed for…. We’ve got to wake up, protect this institution, but much more importantly protect the people of the United States of America.”
Senator King, along with Maine governor Janet Mills, who stood up to Trump in person earlier this week, are following in the tradition of their state.
On June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) delivered her famous Declaration of Conscience, standing up to Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), who was smearing Democrats as communists. “I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges,” she said. “I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”
On July 28, 1974, Representative Bill Cohen (R-ME), who went on to a long Senate career but was at the time a junior member on the House Judiciary Committee, voted along with five other Republican members of the committee and the Democratic majority to draw up articles of impeachment against Republican president Richard Nixon, fully expecting that the death threats and hate mail he was receiving proved that that vote would destroy his political career. But, Cohen told the Bangor Daily News, “I would never compromise what I think is the right thing to do for the sake of an office; it’s just not that important. Only time will tell if the people will accept that judgment.”
Days later, the tape proving Nixon had been part of the Watergate coverup came to light. “Suddenly there was a switch in the people who had been defending the president,” Cohen recalled. “That’s when people back in Maine, Republicans, started to turn around and said, ‘We were wrong, and you were right, and we’ll support this.’ ”
It’s a good week to remember that politicians used to use as a yardstick the saying: “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/tablet/2025/02/19/feb-13-18-2025-washington-post-ipsos-poll/
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/20/nx-s1-5304454/jan-6-pardons-drugs-firearms
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/proud-boys-leader-ethan-nordean-gets-18-years-in-prison-tying-for-longest-sentence-in-jan-6-insurrection
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/01/1197186891/proud-boys-member-dominic-pezzola-sentenced-to-10-years-in-jan-6-riot-case
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/court-sentences-two-oath-keepers-leaders-seditious-conspiracy-and-other-charges-related-us
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/21/proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-arrested-00205513
https://abcnews.go.com/US/former-proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-arrested-us/story?id=119057808
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2025/feb/21/steve-bannon-gives-fascist-style-salute-at-us-conservative-political-action-conference-video
https://www.justsecurity.org/108229/what-just-happened-musk-email-federal-employees/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-doge-musk-email-goes-seriously-sideways
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/18/politics/mar-a-lago-trump-remote-work-golf/index.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-golf-doge_n_67b50fbfe4b0319f377e6c6a
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5159062-donald-trump-elon-musk-advice/
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-grimes-child-sick-b2702570.html
https://people.com/ashley-st-clair-sues-elon-musk-for-sole-legal-custody-of-their-son-rsc-11684615
RE: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. - Peter Lemkin - 24-02-2025
Ruth Ben-Ghiat from Lucid <lucid@substack.com> [Ben-Ghiat is an authority on Authoritarianism]
February 23, 2025
Check off another box of the authoritarian playbook now being implemented in America. On Feb. 21, President Trump’s new Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, carried out a purge of top military officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the Chief of Naval Operations, and Vice Chief of the Air Force, General James Slife, as well as the judge advocates general (JAGS) of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, who oversee the military code of justice.
Purges are a feature rather than a bug of the authoritarian style of governance. Trump’s early actions against the military are a sign of how extreme his administration is going to be. It will be increasingly difficult to call this extremism out. The efforts of MAGA ideologues and politicians to get me banned from delivering the Bancroft Lecture at the U.S. Naval Academy before the election were a preview of that.
When and Why Do Autocrats Purge Militaries?
Some purges of the military take place within a more general crackdown against political and other elites, as in Stalinist Russia during the Great Terror, or Xi Jinping’s current shakeups of the PLA under the guise of anti-corruption campaigns. Others prepare large-scale mobilizations, as when Adolf Hitler purged the German armed forces a year before the invasion of Poland, or they come before an escalation of an ongoing conflict, as in Stalin’s 1941 purges.
When an established leader feels vulnerable, he might purge the military as part of “coup-proofing.” Officials can become scapegoats for a war going badly, as with Vladimir Putin’s 2024 purges of senior defense officials. Sometimes leaders can micro-manage military policy (as Putin has done intermittently since the start of the war), and this is a sign of weakness and insecurity.
If the authoritarian comes to power via a coup, the purges are immediate and part of the wrenching changes to establish new rules of engagement and codes of behavior appropriate for the use of lethality against a domestic population. That happened in Chile after the U.S.-backed 1973 coup, when the junta’s purges put non-compliant officials in prison, required officers and soldiers to torture thousands, and used military tribunals to deliver “justice” to civilian political opponents.
In general, politicizing a military and rewarding loyalty and ideological fanaticism over competence and professionalism enhances the possibility of negative outcomes. The United States will be no different.
What MAGA Did Not Want the U.S. Naval Academy to Hear
There is no doubt that Trump intends to politicize the military and make loyalty to his person the overriding ideal. He has spoken about possibly using the military against civilians, has amplified social media posts suggesting a civilian be subjected to a military tribunal (former Republican politician Liz Cheney, to punish her for her leadership of the House Jan. 6 committee), and has suggested that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley deserved to be executed.
This where the dismissals of the JAGs come in. Interviewed on Fox News, Hegseth justified the firings as a necessary removal of those who could potentially act as “roadblocks to anything that happens.” Bookmark that phrase, “anything that happens.”
Such shifts in military culture when authoritarians take over were the topic of my Bancroft Lecture. I announced the honor of having been selected to deliver it in this Sept. 2024 Lucid essay, which contrasts Trump’s authoritarian will to insult and humiliate the U. S. military with his “attachment to America's enemies, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping chief among them.”
While I made it clear in the Lucid essay that I would be speaking about Augusto Pinochet and Putin and not Trump (the flyer the Academy produced bears this out) a lecture on “Coups, Corruption, and the Costs of Losing Democracy,” was apparently undesirable to MAGA.
A coordinated campaign was cooked up that involved the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, media outlets such as the Washington Times, the Daily Signal, and at least eighteen Republican members of Congress.
These political operatives depicted me as a “partisan historian” whose physical presence at the Academy would “politicize” the Bancroft Lecture and constitute a violation of the Hatch Act, even if I did not mention Trump or U.S. politics during my talk. I was unacceptable as a person regardless of what I might say. I found this interesting as someone who studies how authoritarians target people and institutions.
Although one would think they had better things to do so close to a fateful election, seventeen GOP politicians signed a letter on Congressional stationary: they included Rep. Michael Waltz, now the head of the National Security Agency. Rep. Jen Kiggins (R-VA), who identifies herself on her website as a “former Navy helicopter pilot, Navy spouse, and now Navy Mom,” spearheaded the initiative. Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) wrote his own letter and had a separate campaign going, perhaps to get extra MAGA loyalty points.
The joint letter takes issue with me calling Trump an authoritarian in my Lucid essay. “In one such example, Ben-Ghiat falsely claimed that what motivates the former President is his ‘authoritarian character, desire to destroy democratic values and ideals, and loyalty to autocrats’ such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.”
Now, with the “negotiations” on Ukraine, Trump’s adoption of Kremlin talking points is out in the open. Before the election, saying that was apparently unacceptable, and the whole topic of authoritarianism and the military became toxic.
And so, a small purge was orchestrated, to make sure the Naval Academy fell into line when Trump got back into office and the real purges could take place. It was a loyalty test for the Naval Academy, and they passed it, but Trump and Hegseth will surely be back for more.
RE: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. - Peter Lemkin - 24-02-2025
posted Feb. 18, 2025 by Chris Hedges
The Trump administration’s war with the deep state is not a purgative. It is not about freeing us from the tyranny of intelligence agencies, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world, predatory corporations or the end of mass surveillance. It will not restore the rule of law to hold the powerful and the wealthy accountable. It will not slash the bloated and unaccountable spending — some $1 trillion dollars — by the Pentagon.
All revolutionary movements, on the left or the right, dismantle the old bureaucratic structures. The fascists in Germany and the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union, once they seized power, aggressively purged the civil service. They see in these structures, correctly, an enemy that would stymie their absolute grip on power. It is a coup d'état by inches. Now we get our own.
Rearguard battles — as in the early years of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany — are taking place in the courts and media outlets openly hostile to Trump. There will be, at first, pyrrhic victories — the Bolsheviks and the Nazis were stalled by their own judiciaries and hostile press — but gradually the purges, aided by a bankrupt liberalism that no longer stands or fights for anything, ensures the triumph of the new masters.
The Trump administration has expelled or fired officials who investigate wrongdoing within the federal government, including 17 inspectors general. Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, such as the FBI and Homeland Security, are being purged of those deemed hostile to Trump. Courts, as they are stacked with compliant judges, will be mechanisms for the persecution of state “enemies” and protection rackets for the powerful and the rich. The Supreme Court, which has granted Trump legal immunity, has already reached this stage.
“The original purge after the Shah’s fall sought to rid the ministries of senior-level holdovers from the former regime and to provide the revolutionary faithful with jobs,” reads a declassified CIA memo, dated Aug. 28, 1980, on the then newly formed Islamic Republic of Iran. “The second wave of purges began last month after a series of Khomeini speeches. Lower-level individuals who had been part of the Shah’s bureaucracy, those with Western training, or those who were deemed to lack full Revolutionary fervor have been retired or fired on an increasingly large scale.”
We are repeating the steps that led to the consolidation of power by past dictatorships, albeit with our own idiom and idiosyncrasies. Those naively lauding Trump’s hostility towards the deep state — which I concede did tremendous damage to democratic institutions, eviscerated our most cherished liberties, is an unaccountable state within a state and orchestrated a series of disastrous global interventions, including the recent military fiascos in the Middle East and Ukraine — should look closely at what is being proposed to take its place.
The ultimate target for the Trump administration is not the deep state. The target is the laws, regulations, protocols and rules, and the government civil servants who enforce them, which hinder dictatorial control. Compromise, limited power, checks and balances and accountability are slated to be abolished. Those who believe that the government is designed to serve the common good, rather than the dictates of the ruler, will be forced out. The deep state will be reconstituted to serve the leadership cult. Laws and the rights enshrined in the Constitution will be irrelevant.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump boasted on Truth Social and X.
The chaos of the first Trump administration has been replaced with a disciplined plan to throttle what is left of America’s anemic democracy. Project 2025, the Center for Renewing America and the America First Policy Institute compiled in advance detailed blueprints, position papers, legislative proposals, proposed executive orders and policies.
The legal cornerstone for this deconstruction of the state is the unitary executive theory, articulated by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissenting opinion in the case of Morrison v. Olson. In Scalia’s opinion, Article II of the Constitution means that everything not designated as legislative or judicial power must be executive power. The executive branch, he writes, can execute all the laws of the United States outside of everything that is not explicitly given to Congress or the judiciary in the Constitution. It is a legal justification for dictatorship.
Although the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 does not use the term “unitary executive theory,” it advocates for policies that align with the theory’s principles. Project 2025 recommends firing tens of thousands of government employees and replacing them with loyalists. Key to this project is the weakening of labor protections and rights of governmental employees, making it easier for them to be fired at the behest of the executive branch. Russell Vought, the founder of Center for Renewing America and one of the key architects of Project 2025, has returned as director of the Office of Management and Budget, a position he also held in Trump’s first term.
One of Trump’s final acts in his first term was signing the order “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service.” This order removed employment protections from career government bureaucrats. Joe Biden rescinded it. It has been resurrected with a vengeance. It too has echoes from the past. The Nazis’ 1933 “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” saw political opponents and non-Aryans, including Germans of Jewish descent, dismissed from the civil service. The Bolsheviks likewise purged the military and civil service of “counter-revolutionaries.”
The firing of over 9,500 federal workers — with 75,000 others accepting a less-than-ironclad deferred buyout agreement amid plans to cut 70 percent of staff from various government agencies — freezing of billions of dollars in funding and ongoing seizure of confidential data by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not about downsizing and efficiency.
The cuts to federal agencies will do little to curb the rapacious spending by the federal government if the military budget — Congressional Republicans are calling for at least $100 billion in additional military spending during the next decade — remains sacrosanct. And while Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine, part of his effort to build an alliance with the autocrat in Moscow he admires, he backs the genocide in Gaza. The purge is about gutting oversight and protections. It is about circumventing thousands of statutes that set the rules for government operations. It is about filling federal positions with “loyalists” from a database compiled by the Conservative Partnership Institute. It is about enriching private corporations — including several owned by Musk — that will be handed lucrative government contracts.
This deconstruction is also, I suspect, about increasing Musk’s cloud capital, his algorithmic and digital infrastructure. Musk plans to turn X into the “everything app.” He is launching “X Money,” an add-on to the social media app, which gives users a digital wallet “to store money and make peer-to-peer transfers.”
A few weeks after the announcement of X Money’s partnership with Visa, DOGE requested access to classified Internal Revenue Service data, including millions of tax returns. The data includes Social Security numbers and addresses, details on how much individuals earn, how much money they owe, properties they own and child custody agreements. In the wrong hands, this information can be commercialized and weaponized.
Musk is pursuing an “AI-first” agenda to increase the role of artificial intelligence (AI) across government agencies. He is building “a centralized data repository” for the federal government, according to Wired. Oracle founder, business associate of Elon Musk and longtime Trump donor Larry Ellison, who recently announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure plan alongside Trump, urged nations to move all of their data into “a single, unified data platform” so it can be “consumed and used” by AI models. Ellison has previously stated that an AI-based surveillance system will guarantee that “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on."
Trump has, like all despots, long enemy lists. He has pulled security details from former officials from his previous administration, including retired Gen. Mark Milley, who was the highest-ranking officer in the military during Trump’s first term, and Mike Pompeo, who was Trump’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Secretary of State. He has revoked or threatened to revoke, the security clearances of President Biden and former members of his administration including Antony Blinken, the former secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser. He is targeting media outlets he deems hostile, blocking their reporters from covering news events at the Oval Office and evicting them from their working spaces in the Pentagon.
These enemy lists will expand as larger and larger segments of the population realize they have been betrayed, widespread discontent becomes palpable and the Trump White House feels threatened.
Once the new system is in place, laws and regulations will become whatever the Trump White House says they are. Independent agencies such as the Federal Election Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Reserve System will lose their autonomy. Mass deportations, the teaching of “Christian” and “patriotic” values in schools — Trump has vowed to “remove the radicals, zealots, and Marxists who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” — along with the gutting of social programs, including Medicaid, low-income housing, job training, and assistance for children, will create a society of serfs and masters. Predatory corporations, such as the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, will be licensed to exploit and pillage a disempowered public. Totalitarianism demands complete conformity. The result, to quote Rosa Luxemburg, is the “brutalization of public life.”
The hollowed-out remnants of the old system — the media, the Democratic Party, academia, the shells of labor unions — will not save us. They mouth empty platitudes, cower in fear, seek useless incremental reforms and accommodation, and demonize Trump supporters regardless of their reasons for voting for him. They are fading into irrelevance. This ennui is a common denominator in the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. It engenders apathy and defeatism.
The “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act,” introduced by Congresswoman Claudia Tenny, is a harbinger of what lies ahead. The act would designate June 14 as a federal holiday to commemorate “Donald J. Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day.” The next step is choreographed state parades with oversized portraits of the great leader.
Joseph Roth was one of the few writers in Germany to understand the attraction and inevitable rise of fascism. In his essay “The Auto-da-Fé of the Mind,” which addressed the first mass burning of books by the Nazis, he counseled fellow Jewish writers to accept that they had been vanquished: “Let us, who were fighting on the front line, under the banner of the European mind, let us fulfill the noblest duty of the defeated warrior: Let us concede our defeat.”
Roth, blacklisted by the Nazis, forced into exile and reduced to poverty, did not delude himself with false hopes.
“What use are my words,” Roth asked, “against the guns, the loudspeakers, the murderers, the deranged ministers, the stupid interviewers and journalists who interpret the voice of this world of Babel, muddied anyhow, via the drums of Nuremberg?”
He knew what was coming.
“It will become clear to you now that we are heading for a great catastrophe,” Roth, after going into exile in France in 1933, wrote to Stefan Zweig about the seizure of power by the Nazis. “The barbarians have taken over. Do not deceive yourself. Hell reigns.”
But Roth also argued even if defeat was certain, resistance was a moral imperative, a way to defend one’s dignity and the sanctity of the truth.
“One must write, even when one realizes the printed word can no longer improve anything,” he insisted.
I am as pessimistic as Roth. Censorship and state repression will expand. Those with a conscience will become an enemy of the state. Resistance, when it happens, will be expressed in spontaneous eruptions which coalesce outside the established centers of power. These acts of defiance will be met with brutal state repression. But if we do not resist, we succumb morally and physically to the darkness. We become complicit in a radical evil. This, we must never allow.
RE: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. - Peter Lemkin - 24-02-2025
[size=12]The[/size] Libertarian Suicide Pact
Reason's Love Affair with Lawlessness
Mike Brock
As I sat in my hotel room, having just been evacuated from the Principles First Summit due to a bomb threat, I found myself reading Reason Magazine's recent article, by Christian Britschgi —“The Sunny Side of Donald Trump's Power Grabs.” The juxtaposition was jarring.
Moments earlier, I had been part of a gathering of anti-Trump conservatives forced to flee what organizers called a “credible bomb threat.” Initially, the threat was attributed to Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the Proud Boys. However, organizers quickly clarified that the threat came from an account “claiming” to represent Tarrio, with the email signed “Enrique T.” They emphasized that they couldn't confirm the email's true origin.
This uncertainty only added to the tension of the moment. In our current political climate, the line between real threats and provocative hoaxes has become dangerously blurred. Both serve to disrupt and intimidate, creating an atmosphere of fear and instability. But I'm sure Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are all over these threats of political violence.
The bitter irony of that last thought wasn't lost on me. Here we were, targets of political intimidation, while those tasked with law enforcement under the current administration seem more interested in settling political scores than protecting democratic discourse.
With the adrenaline of evacuation still coursing through me, I turned to Reason's piece. Its attempt to find a “silver lining” in Trump's assault on democratic institutions struck me as not just misguided, but dangerously out of touch with the gravity of our situation.
The threat that emptied our conference rooms wasn't an abstraction, regardless of its true source. It was a visceral reminder of the stakes we face. Yet here was Reason, blithely suggesting that Trump's autocratic tendencies might accidentally usher in some libertarian utopia in the form of smaller government.
Britschgi's piece in Reason is a masterclass in intellectual dishonesty, a veritable smorgasbord of false equivalences and willful ignorance that would make even the most ardent apologist for tyranny blush with embarrassment.
Let's start with his breathtaking equation of lawlessness with reduced government. One wonders if Britschgi has ever cracked open a history book, or if he simply prefers to marinate in his own ignorance. The distinction between principled small government and autocratic power grabs is not merely academic - it's the difference between a functioning democracy and a banana republic. But perhaps Britschgi finds the latter more appealing, provided it comes wrapped in a libertarian bow.
His blithe disregard for long-term consequences is nothing short of staggering. Britschgi seems to believe that the precedents being set by Trump and Musk will magically evaporate once they've served their purpose. One is reminded of a child who, having set fire to the house, expects praise for reducing the family's heating bills.
Britschgi's understanding of bureaucracy appears to have been gleaned from the back of a cereal box. The notion that replacing career civil servants with political sycophants will result in smaller government is so naive it borders on the criminally stupid. It's not a recipe for efficiency; it's a blueprint for personal fiefdoms and cronyism on a scale that would make Louis XIV blush.
But it's Britschgi's casual dismissal of constitutional violations as mere “proceduralism” that truly takes the cake. One wonders if he would be equally sanguine if it were his rights being trampled under the jackboots of expediency. The rule of law, it seems, is just another inconvenience to be swept aside in the grand march towards his libertarian fantasyland.
The false dichotomy Britschgi presents between inefficient bureaucracy and autocratic control is a rhetorical sleight of hand so clumsy it would embarrass a third-rate magician. The possibility of responsible reform within democratic norms apparently never occurred to our intrepid analyst. Perhaps nuance, like ethics, is not his strong suit.
His celebration of expanded executive power at the expense of congressional authority is nothing short of constitutional vandalism. Britschgi cheers on the dismantling of checks and balances with all the wisdom of a man sawing off the branch he's sitting on.
The naive view that fewer government employees will lead to less enforcement is so detached from reality one wonders if Britschgi has ever set foot outside his ivory tower. The potential for selective, politically motivated enforcement apparently escapes him—or perhaps he simply doesn't care, so long as it's his team doing the enforcing.
Britschgi's casual disregard for individual rights—particularly those of immigrants and birthright citizens—is not just concerning, it's morally repugnant. One wonders if he believes rights are merely privileges to be dispensed at the whim of whoever holds power.
His fundamental misunderstanding of constitutional design would be comical if it weren't so dangerous. The framers' vision of congressional supremacy isn't some quaint historical footnote - it's the bedrock of our system of governance. But perhaps Britschgi finds autocracy more efficient. After all, why bother with the messy business of democracy when a strong man can make the trains run on time?
Finally, Britschgi's myopic focus on short-term policy wins at the expense of long-term democratic norms is the intellectual equivalent of selling the farm to buy a cow. It's not just short-sighted; it's a betrayal of the very principles he claims to uphold.
In sum, Britschgi's article isn't just wrong—it's a dangerous capitulation to autocracy dressed up in libertarian drag. It's the kind of intellectual bankruptcy that gives comfort to tyrants and despair to defenders of liberty. If this is the best Reason can offer, one shudders to think what Unreason might look like.
One wonders, indeed, why I don't take libertarians seriously. Perhaps it's because pieces like Britschgi's reveal a movement so enamored with its own theoretical purity that it's willing to embrace autocracy, so long as it comes wrapped in the promise of smaller government. It's as if they've decided that the best way to protect the village is to burn it to the ground.
I've watched Britschgi and his ilk confuse libertarianism with nihilism, eagerly cheering on the dismantling of democratic institutions with all the foresight of a man sawing through the floorboards beneath his feet. They've become so obsessed with shrinking the state that they've lost sight of why we have a state in the first place.
This brand of libertarianism isn't just misguided—it's actively dangerous. It provides intellectual cover for authoritarians while pretending to champion freedom. It's a philosophy that, in its zeal to liberate us from the tyranny of bureaucracy, would deliver us into the arms of actual tyrants.
So why don't I take libertarians seriously? Perhaps because when faced with unprecedented lawlessness from the executive branch, their response is to applaud the collateral damage while offering tepid objections to the rest. Consider Britschgi's own words:
“Trump's efforts to cut government all by himself certainly do violate the spirit of the Constitution, regardless of whether courts determine this or that action violates the letter... What we're left with is Trump breaking what he can while he can.”
And yet, after this perfunctory acknowledgment, Britschgi has the gall to conclude:
“If I were to hazard a prediction anyway about where this roller-coaster ride is headed, it'd be that we end up with a president who looms supreme over a more lawless but much-diminished federal government... It's not great or perfectly libertarian, but it's better than the alternative of ever-growing government.”
This isn't principled analysis; it's intellectual acrobatics of the most craven sort. Britschgi and his ilk are so fixated on their goal of smaller government that they're willing to cheer on constitutional violations and the decimation of democratic norms to achieve it. They're not defenders of liberty; they're opportunists, ready to embrace autocracy so long as it shrinks the state.
While I'm being evacuated due to bomb threats—a stark reminder of the real-world consequences of political instability—Reason is publishing paeans to lawlessness, dressed up as clear-eyed pragmatism. It's not just morally bankrupt; it's dangerous. They've become so obsessed with their theoretical endgame that they're blind to the very real threats to liberty unfolding before our eyes.
I don't take libertarians seriously because when the moment came to stand firm against executive overreach and defend the rule of law, they chose instead to celebrate the destruction of governmental capacity as a win for freedom. It's a betrayal of everything they claim to stand for, and it reveals them as nothing more than faux-intellectual cheerleaders for autocracy in libertarian drag.
In the end, Britschgi and his fellow travelers at Reason have accomplished something truly remarkable: they've managed to make Ayn Rand look like a paragon of moral philosophy and practical governance. Their cheerleading for Trump's lawlessness isn't just misguided—it's a spectacular own goal, a self-immolation of principles so complete it would be comical if it weren't so dangerous.
These self-styled defenders of liberty have revealed themselves to be nothing more than intellectual arsonists, gleefully pouring gasoline on the fire of autocracy while congratulating themselves on reducing the size of the fire department. They've become so obsessed with their theoretical hatred of government that they've lost all sense of why we have a government in the first place.
One is reminded of Orwell's observation that some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. But Britschgi and Reason have outdone themselves—they've embraced ideas so catastrophically foolish that even most intellectuals would blush to entertain them.
So no, I don't take libertarians seriously. Not when their response to creeping authoritarianism is to check whether it's wearing a “small government” badge before deciding if it's a threat. Not when they're willing to trade the rule of law for a mess of pottage and call it a victory for freedom. And certainly not when they're penning love letters to lawlessness while some of us are dealing with bomb threats for the crime of defending democracy.
In their eagerness to shrink the state, they've instead succeeded in shrinking only their own relevance and respectability. They've become the useful idiots of authoritarianism, court jesters capering at the feet of would-be tyrants. History, I suspect, will not be kind to them. Nor, for that matter, will I.
RE: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. - Peter Lemkin - 24-02-2025
RE: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. - Peter Lemkin - 25-02-2025
Just Another Monday in a Dying Republic
Bomb Threats, Democratic Backsliding, and the Creeping Merger of State and Corporate Power
Mike Brock
Feb 25
I write this from a hotel room in Washington D.C., my head throbbing with what feels like a hangover. But it's not alcohol that's left me in this state—it's the weight of conversations, the gravity of realizations, and the crushing disappointment in those who should know better.
I came to the capital for a conference, but it quickly devolved into a series of hushed meetings and furtive conversations about the precarious state of our democracy. Corridors and coffee shops became impromptu war rooms, where concerned citizens and political operators alike grappled with the unfolding crisis. I should probably mention there was also a bomb threat aimed at intimidating anti-Trump conservatives. An event yours truly was present for.
But here's the truly terrifying part: I'm more afraid of the response to what's happening than I am of the events themselves. The threats to our democratic institutions are clear and present, visible to anyone willing to look. What chills me to the bone is the tepid reaction, the moral cowardice, and the intellectual gymnastics performed by those who should be on the front lines of resistance.
Hakeem Jeffries, faced with this existential threat, asks “what can we do?”—a question that reveals both their recognition of the crisis and their paralyzing uncertainty about how to confront it. It's a response that, while well-intentioned, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the moment we're in. The machinery of democratic governance is being dismantled before our eyes, and they're still operating as if we're engaged in a policy debate rather than a fight for the very survival of our constitutional order. Their hesitation, their search for 'leverage' within a system that's being rewritten in real-time, is not just ineffective—it's dangerous. While they ponder the proper procedural response, the foundations of our republic are being jackhammered away
Meanwhile, across the country, signs emerge that some Americans are waking up to the perversion that is the arrangement of Musk and DOGE, and the outright distortion of law and ethics it represents. It is, as I've been warning, a slow-motion coup unfolding before our eyes. The audacity is breathtaking: Musk runs his private empire while simultaneously demanding government employees send him weekly reports. Two plus two equals four, and this equation doesn't add up to anything resembling democratic governance.
This awakening, however limited, offers a glimmer of hope. But it's a race against time. While some citizens are just beginning to grasp the magnitude of the threat, the machinery of state is being rewired to serve private interests. The fusion of corporate power and government authority that the Founders feared and fought against is no longer a cautionary tale—it's our lived reality.
The arrangement between Musk and the administration isn't just a violation of ethics or a breach of protocol. It's a fundamental rewiring of how power operates in our society. When a private citizen, accountable to no one but himself, can demand oversight of government functions while simultaneously running companies that benefit from government contracts and policy decisions, we've moved beyond mere corruption. We're witnessing the birth of a new form of governance, one that blurs the lines between public and private power in ways that our system of checks and balances was never designed to handle.
And yet, even as this realization dawns on some, the response from our institutions remains woefully inadequate. The urgency of the moment demands more than just recognition—it requires immediate, decisive action. But where is the outcry from Congress? Where are the emergency hearings, the subpoenas, the demands for accountability?
Which brings me to Ukraine…
I don't even know where to begin. The sheer scope of moral and historical tragedy playing out before our eyes, as the United States openly sides with Moscow, openly lies about Europe's funding arrangements with Ukraine, and when corrected by Emmanuel Macron in real-time, Trump more or less suggests Macron is delusional about his knowledge about his own government's commitments.
This isn't just a policy disagreement or a diplomatic faux pas. It's a wholesale abandonment of truth, of allies, and of the very principles that have underpinned global stability for decades. Two plus two equals four, but in Trump's America, it seems that basic arithmetic is now subject to negotiation.
Consider the surreal spectacle of Macron, the President of France, gently correcting the President of the United States on basic facts about European support for Ukraine. This isn't just embarrassing; it's dangerous. When the leader of the free world can't—or won't—acknowledge reality, the entire framework of international cooperation begins to crumble.
But it gets worse. The U.S. has now aligned itself with Russia, North Korea, and Iran in voting against a UN resolution condemning Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Let that sink in. We've gone from being the bulwark of democracy to keeping company with the world's most notorious autocracies. This isn't just a shift in policy; it's a repudiation of everything America has stood for on the world stage since World War II.
And as if this weren't alarming enough, we're witnessing an unprecedented and dangerous alignment of private and public power in this arena. Elon Musk's Starlink, a critical communication infrastructure for Ukraine's defense, is now being wielded as a tool of extortion. The same Musk who runs DOGE, who demands weekly reports from government employees, who blurs the line between state and corporate power at home, is now playing kingmaker in an active war zone.
This isn't just a businessman making tough decisions. It's a private citizen, accountable to no one, leveraging control over crucial military infrastructure to influence geopolitics. The implications are staggering. We've moved beyond the realm of corporate influence into a new frontier where tech oligarchs can effectively hold sovereign nations hostage.
The fusion of Musk's private interests with U.S. foreign policy represents a perversion of democratic norms on a global scale. It's as if we've decided to outsource our diplomatic and military strategy to the whims of a billionaire. This isn't just a violation of the separation of powers; it's a wholesale abdication of the state's responsibility to its citizens and allies.
Two plus two equals four, and here's another simple equation: When private companies can dictate terms to nations at war, when they can shut off critical services at will, we're no longer operating in a world of democratic nation-states. We're sliding into a new form of techno-feudalism, where the lines between government, corporation, and warlord blur beyond recognition.
Trump's proposal to essentially ransack Ukraine's natural resources as payment for past support is not diplomacy; it's extortion on a global scale. It's the language of mobsters, not statesmen. And it sends a chilling message to every democracy under threat: America's support is now conditional on your ability to pay, not on the righteousness of your cause.
Meanwhile, Macron performs verbal acrobatics, trying to speak a more palatable reality into existence. His efforts to keep the peace process alive, while admirable, highlight the desperation of our allies in the face of America's moral collapse. When the French President has to articulate America's security commitments because the American President won't, we've entered truly uncharted waters.
The implications of this shift are staggering. We've undermined our own negotiating position and strengthened Russia's hand, not just in Ukraine but across Europe. We're not just abandoning Ukraine; we're signaling to Putin and autocrats everywhere that aggression pays, that borders are negotiable, and that America's word is worth less than the paper it's printed on.
This is what the erosion of democratic norms at home looks like when projected onto the world stage. It's a betrayal not just of our allies, but of our own history and values. We're watching in real-time as the edifice of global security, painstakingly built over generations, is dismantled by the very nation that was its chief architect.
The moral bankruptcy is complete. The historical tragedy is unfolding before our eyes. And unless we find the courage to stand up, to speak truth to power, to reassert the values that made America a beacon of hope and stability, we may soon find ourselves in a world where such courage is no longer possible.
This is the cost of our collective failure to defend democracy at home. This is what happens when we allow lies to go unchallenged, when we normalize the abnormal, when we choose comfort over confrontation. And make no mistake: the clock is ticking. Every moment we spend in denial, every instance where we choose expedience over principle, brings us closer to a point of no return.
Speaking of at home, the Trump Administration continues to run roughshod over civil service protections enshrined in law. While the courts have blocked many of these attempts, the administration is sharpening its blades for arguments before the Supreme Court, when certiorari is eventually granted on these cases.
Their weapon of choice? The Unitary Executive Theory—a constitutional interpretation so extreme it might be better termed the Elected Monarch Theory. Under this insane reading of the Vesting Clause, they argue that civil service protections, dating back to the Pendleton Act of the late 19th century, were never constitutional to begin with.
Let's be clear about what this means: They're not just trying to change policy or reorganize government. They're attempting to undo over a century of protections against corruption and political manipulation of the federal workforce. This isn't reform; it's a wholesale attack on the very concept of an impartial, professional civil service.
The implications are staggering. If successful, this argument would effectively transform every federal employee into a political appointee, serving at the pleasure of the president. It would turn the entire machinery of government into a personal fiefdom of whoever occupies the Oval Office.
Two plus two equals four, and here's another simple truth: A government where every official from the highest cabinet member to the lowliest clerk serves solely at the president's discretion is not a democracy. It's not even a republic. It's an elected autocracy, with a thin veneer of democratic legitimacy.
This isn't just a technical legal argument. It's an attempt to fundamentally rewrite the relationship between the government and the governed. It would eliminate the safeguards that prevent presidents from using the power of the state to punish enemies, reward friends, and entrench their own power.
The Founders, who had just fought a revolution against the arbitrary power of a monarch, would be appalled. They designed a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent this kind of concentration of power. Now, under the guise of 'original intent,' the administration seeks to create exactly the kind of unaccountable executive power the Constitution was designed to prevent.
And where are the self-proclaimed defenders of limited government in all this? Silent, or worse, cheering from the sidelines. They've become so fixated on shrinking the state that they're willing to hand over unprecedented power to a single individual, as long as he promises to use that power to dismantle the institutions they dislike.
Now, think about what this insane theory of executive power really means in practice. It's not just an abstract legal argument—it's a fundamental reshaping of every interaction you have with your government.
Imagine a world where the person behind the desk at the passport office owes their job not to their competence or experience, but to their loyalty to the president. Where the IRS auditor examining your taxes is there not because of their expertise in tax law, but because they donated to the right campaign. Where every perfunctory bureaucratic process you come into contact with—from applying for Social Security to getting a small business loan—is staffed based on political allegiance rather than professional qualifications.
Is this really what Americans want? Do we truly believe this will reduce corruption? Are you fucking kidding me?
This isn't just about inefficiency—though make no mistake, a government staffed by sycophants rather than professionals would be catastrophically inefficient. It's about the very nature of citizenship in a democracy. It's about whether you can trust that you'll be treated fairly by your government, regardless of your political beliefs.
Under this system, every government interaction becomes a potential loyalty test. Disagree with the president? Maybe your passport application gets “lost.” Donate to the wrong candidate? Perhaps your tax return faces extra scrutiny. Speak out against administration policies? Watch as your business loan application languishes at the bottom of the pile.
Two plus two equals four, and here's another simple truth: A government where every official serves at the pleasure of a single individual is not a government of laws, but of men. It's not a democracy, it's not even a republic—it's a patronage system writ large, a return to the spoils system that we thought we'd left behind in the 19th century.
The proponents of this theory will tell you it's about accountability, about making government more responsive. Don't believe it for a second. This isn't accountability—it's the weaponization of government against its own citizens. It's the transformation of public service into a partisan battleground.
And let's be clear—this isn't a partisan issue. It doesn't matter whether you're a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent. The idea that any president, of any party, should have this kind of unchecked power over the entire federal workforce should terrify every American who values their freedom and their rights.
This is how democracies die—not with a bang, but with a thousand small cuts to the institutions that protect us from tyranny. It's death by a thousand bureaucratic decisions, each one made not in the public interest, but in service to a single individual's whims and desires.
As we stand at this crossroads of history, the convergence of these threats—the erosion of civil service protections, the fusion of private and public power, the abandonment of allies, and the perversion of executive authority—paints a chilling picture of a democracy in free fall. We are witnessing nothing less than a fundamental rewiring of the American experiment, a shift from a government of laws to a government of men, from a republic to an elected autocracy.
The tragedy unfolding before us is not just political; it's moral and historical. We are betraying not only our allies and our values but the very foundations of the democratic order that generations before us fought and died to establish and preserve. From the Founders who crafted our Constitution to the civil servants who built our institutions, from the soldiers who defended democracy abroad to the activists who expanded its promise at home—we are squandering their legacy with breathtaking speed and recklessness.
Two plus two still equals four. The truth remains the truth, no matter how many lies are told to obscure it. And here's another immutable truth: Democracy, once lost, is hellishly difficult to regain. The window for action is closing, and it's closing fast.
So what are we to do in the face of this existential threat? First, we must shake off the complacency that has allowed this crisis to metastasize. We must recognize that this is not politics as usual, not a pendulum swing that will naturally correct itself. This is a deliberate, coordinated assault on the very foundations of our republic.
Second, we must resist—not just in words, but in actions. This means supporting and strengthening the institutions that preserve our democracy. It means demanding accountability from our elected officials, regardless of party. It means standing up for the rule of law, even when—especially when—it's inconvenient for those in power.
Third, we must educate. We must ensure that every American understands what's at stake, that they see through the fog of disinformation and recognize the clear and present danger to our way of life. We must make it impossible for anyone to claim they didn't see this coming.
Finally, we must have the courage to imagine and fight for a better future. In the face of those who would drag us backward into autocracy, we must articulate a vision of democracy renewed, of institutions strengthened, of a nation recommitted to its highest ideals.
The task before us is monumental, the odds daunting. But the alternative—surrender to autocracy, the death of the American experiment—is unthinkable. We stand now at the precipice, with the fate of our republic hanging in the balance. The choice is ours: Will we be the generation that lost democracy, or the one that saved it?
Two plus two equals four.
Democracy is worth fighting for. And the time to fight is now.
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and 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, Federalist No. 47.
RE: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. - Peter Lemkin - 26-02-2025
Absolutely fantastic interview with Alfred McCoy [Politics of Heroin in SE Asia] here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-830442635/the-rise-and-fall-of-the
The Rise and Fall of the French, Soviet and American Empires With the New Chinese Empire Already on Shaky Ground
I think a talk NOT to be missed - it nails everything about the BIG picture of/between USA/Russia/China/France, and a lot more! Very wise and observant person in a way most simply are not....
RE: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. - Peter Lemkin - 27-02-2025
Trump/USA sides with Russia, N. Korea against Ukraine.......We are now on the side of evil in this matter
RE: The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate. - Peter Lemkin - 27-02-2025
Musk seems to be the owner of the Government and Trump - Peter Lemkin - 27-02-2025
Musk seems to fully own and be in lead control of the USA Government in all sense of that term, and is boss of the entire lot of criminals, liars, cheats, fascists. It was a coup, but not by who we thought as its head. Hidden players are no doubt also involved......some foreign. One Russian. Most, I believe, are USA-born Fascists, Racists, Misogynists, Christian Nationalists, Mob-type Criminals, Nazis, Hateful Human-Scum.
February 26, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson
This morning, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought and Office of Personnel Management acting director Charles Ezell sent a memo to the heads of departments and agencies. The memo began: “The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt. At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public. Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hardworking American citizens. The American people registered their verdict on the bloated, corrupt federal bureaucracy on November 5, 2024 by voting for President Trump and his promises to sweepingly reform the federal government.”
Vought was a key author of Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump administration, and in July 2024, investigative reporters caught him on video saying that he and his group, the Center for Renewing America, were hard at work writing the executive orders and memos that Trump would use to put their vision into place. But his claim that voters backed his plan is false. An NBC News poll in September 2024 showed that only 4% of voters liked what was in Project 2025. It was so unpopular that Trump called parts of it “ridiculous and abysmal” and denied all knowledge of it.
But the policies coming out of the Trump White House are closely aligned with Project 2025 and, if anything, appear to be less popular now than they were last September. Under claims of ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been slashing through government programs that are popular with Republican voters like farmers, as well as with Democratic voters.
Yesterday, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas A. Collins celebrated cuts to 875 contracts that he claimed would save nearly $2 billion. But, as Emily Davies and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post reported, those contracts covered medical services, recruited doctors, and funded cancer programs, as well as providing burial services for veterans. The outcry was such that the VA rescinded the order today. Still on the chopping block, though, are another 1,400 jobs. Those cuts were announced Monday, on top of the 1,000 previous layoffs.
Despite the anger at the major cuts across the government, Vought announced that agency heads should prepare for large-scale reductions in force, or layoffs, and that by March 13 they should produce plans for the reorganization of their agencies to make them cost less and produce more with fewer people. Before Trump took office, the number of people employed by the U.S. government was at about the same level it was 50 years ago, although the U.S. population has increased by about two thirds. What has increased dramatically is spending on private contractors, who take profits from their taxpayer-funded contracts.
In his memo today, Vought instructed agency heads to “collaborate” with the DOGE team leads assigned to the agency, who presumably report to Elon Musk.
Also today, Trump signed an executive order putting the DOGE team in charge of creating new technological systems to review all payments from the U.S. government and then giving the head of DOGE the power to review all those payments. “This order commences a transformation in Federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans to ensure Government spending is transparent and Government employees are accountable to the American public,” the executive order says.
Make no mistake: This order transforms federal spending by taking it away from Congress, where the Constitution placed it, and moves it to the individual who sits atop the Department of Government Efficiency.
Yesterday the White House announced that the acting head of DOGE is Amy Gleason, who was hired on December 30, 2024, at the technology unit that Trump tried to transform into the Department of Government Efficiency. Nevertheless, members of the White House, including President Donald Trump, have repeatedly referred to Musk as “the head of [DOGE].”
Musk appeared to be in charge of the first Cabinet meeting of the Trump administration today. As Kevin Liptak and Jeff Zeleny of CNN reported: “If anyone was still in doubt where the power lies in President Donald Trump’s new administration, Wednesday’s first Cabinet meeting made clear it wasn’t in the actual Cabinet.” Katherine Doyle of NBC News described “Senate-confirmed department heads spending an hour as audience members.”
A photograph of the meeting in which Musk, wearing a Make America Great Again ball cap and a T-shirt that said “Tech Support,” appears to be holding court while Trump appears to be sleeping reinforced the idea that it is Musk rather than Trump who is running the government. When Trump did speak, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale noted, his remarks were full of false claims.
Cabinet officers, who had brought notes for the statements they expected to make, sat silent, while Musk, the unelected billionaire from South Africa who put more than a quarter of a billion dollars into electing Trump, spoke more than anyone except Trump himself. Trump didn’t turn to Vice President J.D. Vance until 56 minutes into the meeting, and Vance spoke for only 36 seconds.
But Trump appeared to be aware of the popular anger at Musk’s power over the government and today dared the Cabinet members to suggest they weren’t happy with the arrangements. “ALL CABINET MEMBERS ARE EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON,” Trump wrote on his social media channel this morning. “The Media will see that at the Cabinet Meeting this morning!!!”
“Is anybody unhappy?” Trump asked the Cabinet officers during the meeting. When they applauded in response, he commented: “I think everyone’s not only happy, they’re thrilled.”
—
Notes:
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/OPM-OMB-Memo-Guidance-on-Agency-RIF-and-Reorganization-Plans-Requested-by-Implementing-The-Presidents-Department-of-Government-Efficiency-Workforce-Optimization-Initiative-2-26-20.pdf
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/02/trump-administration-tells-agencies-to-begin-conducting-reductions-in-force/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/poll-project-2025-broadly-known-severely-unpopular-voters-rcna172660
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-project-2025-policies-the-trump-administration-is-already-implementing
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2025/trump-executive-orders-project-2025/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/25/veterans-affairs-contracts-canceled/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/26/veterans-affairs-contracts-canceled-reversal/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency-cost-efficiency-initiative/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/15/politics/russ-vought-project-2025-trump-secret-recording-invs/index.html
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-praises-project-2025-2000245
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/us/politics/amy-gleason-doge-administrator.html
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/politics/fact-check-trump-cabinet-meeting/index.html
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-must-read-this-uproar-over-malicious-and-malicious-cuts-at-va
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/26/trump-executive-order-musk-doge
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-elon-musk-dominate-first-cabinet-meeting-rcna193836
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/politics/cabinet-meeting-musk-trump/index.html
Bluesky:
annabower.bsky.social/post/3lj4iyds7nk2y
sundaedivine.bsky.social/post/3lj46qlsapk2i