The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate.

[Peter Lemkin]

April 11, 2025. On April 4, Trump fired head of U.S. Cyber Command, or Cybercom, and director of the National Security Agency, or NSA, General Timothy Hoff, apparently on the recommendation of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who is pitching her new opposition research firm to vet candidates for jobs in Trump's administration.

Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall wrote in Newsweek yesterday that the position Hoff held is one of the most sensitive and powerful jobs in America. Kendall writes that NSA and cybercom oversee the world's most sophisticated tools and techniques to penetrate computer systems, monitor communications around the globe, and, if national security requires it, attack those systems.

U.S. law drastically curtails how those tools can be used in the U.S. and against American citizens and businesses. Will a Trump loyalist follow those laws? Kendall writes, every American should view this development with alarm. Just after 2 a.m. Eastern Time this morning, the Senate confirmed retired Air Force Lieutenant General John Dan Kane,

who goes by the nickname Raisin, for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a vote of 60 to 25. U.S. law requires the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have served as the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Naval Operations,

the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, or the Commander of a Unified or Specified Combatant Command. Although Cain has 34 years of military experience, he did not serve in any of the required positions. The law provides that the president can waive the requirement if the president

determines such action is necessary in the national interest, and he has apparently done so for Cain. The politicization of the U.S. military by filling it with Trump loyalists is now, as Kendall writes, indisputable. The politicization of data is also indisputable. Billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGIE, claims to be saving Americans money,

but the Wall Street Journal reported today that effort has been largely a failure, despite today's announcement of devastating cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that monitors our weather. But what Doggie is really doing is burrowing into Americans' data. The first people to be targeted by that data collection appear to be undocumented immigrants.

Jason Kobler of 404 Media reported on Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has been using a database that enables officials to search for people by filtering for hundreds of different highly specific categories, including scars or tattoos, bankruptcy filings, social security number, hair color, and race. The system, called Investigative Case Management, or ICM,

was created by billionaire Peter Thiel's software company, Palantir, which in 2022 signed a $95.9 million contract with the government to develop ICM. Three Trump officials told Sophia Kai of Politico that doggy staffers embedded in agencies across the government are expanding government cooperation with immigration officials, using the information they're gleaning from government databases to facilitate deportation. On Tuesday,

doggy software engineer Aram Mogadasi sent the first 6,300 names of individuals whose temporary legal status had just been canceled. On the list, which Mogadassi said covered those on the terror watch list or with FBI criminal records, were eight minors, including one 13-year-old. The Social Security Administration worked with the administration to get those

people to self-deport by adding them to the agency's death master file. That file is supposed to track people whose death means they should no longer receive benefits. Adding to it people the administration wants to erase is financial murder, former Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O'Malley told Alexandra Burzon, Hamed Aliaziz, Nicholas Nihamas, Ryan Mack,

and Tara Siegel-Bernard of the New York Times. Those people will not be able to use credit cards or banks. On Tuesday, Acting Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, Commissioner Melanie Krause resigned after the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security agreed to share sensitive taxpayer data with immigration authorities. Undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes,

in part to demonstrate their commitment to citizenship, and the government has promised immigrants that it would not use that information for immigration enforcement. Until now, the IRS has protected sensitive taxpayer information. Renee Marsh and Marshall Cohen of CNN note that multiple senior career IRS officials refused to sign the data sharing agreement with DHS,

which will enable HHS officials to ask the IRS for names and addresses of people they suspect are undocumented because of grave concerns about its legality. Ultimately, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant signed the agreement with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Kraus was only one of several senior career officials leaving the IRS,

raising concerns among those staying that there is no longer a defense against the potential unlawful use of taxpayer data by the Trump administration. Makina Kelly of Wired reported today that for the past three days, doggy staffers have been working with representatives from Palantir and career engineers from the IRS in a giant hackathon.

Their goal is to build a system that will be able to access all IRS records, including names, addresses, job data, and social security numbers that can then be compared with data from other agencies. but the administration's attempt to automate deportation is riddled with errors. Last night, the government sent threatening emails to US citizens, green card holders,

and even a Canadian in Canada, terminating your parole and giving them seven days to leave the US. One Massachusetts-born immigration lawyer asked on social media, does anyone know if you can get Italian citizenship through great-grandparents? The government is not keen to correct its errors. On March 15, the government rendered to prison in El Salvador a legal U.S.

resident, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whom the courts had ordered the U.S. not to send to El Salvador, where his life was in danger. The government has admitted that its arrest and rendition of Abrego Garcia happened because of administrative error, but now claims, without evidence,

that he is a member of the MS-13 gang and that his return to the U.S. would threaten the public. Abrego Garcia says he is not a gang member and notes that he has never been charged with a crime. On April 4th, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Sheenas ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.

no later than 11.59 p.m. on April 7th. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which handed down a 9-0 decision yesterday, saying the government must facilitate Abrego Garcia's release, but asked the district court to clarify what it meant by effectuate, noting that it must give due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch

in the conduct of foreign affairs. The Supreme Court also ordered that the government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospects of further steps. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained what happened next. Judge Sheenas ordered the government to file an update by 9.30 a.m.

today explaining where Abrego Garcia is, what the government is doing to get him back, and what more it will do. She planned an in-person hearing at 1 p.m. The administration made it clear it did not intend to comply. It answered that the judge had not given them enough time to answer and suggested

that it would delay over the Supreme Court's instruction that Sheenis must show deference to the president's ability to conduct foreign affairs. Sheenis gave the government until 1130 and said she would still hold the hearing. The government submitted its filing at about 12.15, saying that Abrego Garcia is in the custody of a foreign sovereign.

But at the 1 o'clock hearing, as Anna Bauer of Lawfare reported, the lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, said he did not have information about where Abrego Garcia is and that the government had done nothing to get him back. Ensign said he might have answers by next Tuesday. Sheena says they will have to give an update tomorrow.

As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently warned, if the administration can take non-citizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens. Indeed,

both President Trump and White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt have proposed that very thing. Tonight, Trump signed a memorandum to the Secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture, and Homeland Security, calling for a military mission for sealing the southern border of the United States and repelling invasions.

The memorandum creates a military buffer zone along the border so that any migrant crossing would be trespassing on a U.S. military base. This would allow active-duty soldiers to hold migrants until ICE agents take them. By April 20, the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security are supposed to report to the

President whether they think he should invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to enable him to use the military to aid in mass deportations.

[Peter Lemkin]

Heather Cox Richardson
Apr 15

Today, U.S. president Donald J. Trump met in the Oval Office with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, along with a number of Cabinet members and White House staff, who answered questions for the press. The meeting appeared to be as staged as Trump’s February meeting with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, designed to send a message. At the meeting, Trump and Bukele, who is clearly doing Trump’s bidding, announced they would not bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home, defying the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bukele was livestreaming the event on his official X account and wearing a lapel microphone as he and Trump walked into the Oval Office, so Trump’s pre-meeting private comments were audible in the video Bukele posted. “We want to do homegrown criminals next…. The homegrowns.” Trump told Bukele. “You gotta build about five more places.” Bukele appeared to answer, “Yeah, we’ve got space.” “All right,” Trump replied.
Rather than being appalled, the people in the room—including Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Attorney General Pam Bondi—erupted in laughter.
At the meeting, it was clear that Trump’s team has cooked up a plan to leave Abrego Garcia without legal recourse to his freedom, a plan that looks much like Trump’s past abuses of the legal system. The White House says the U.S. has no jurisdiction over El Salvador, while Bukele says he has no authority to release a “terrorist” into the U.S. (Abrego Garcia maintains a full-time job, is married to a U.S. citizen, has three children, and has never been charged or convicted of anything.) No one can make Trump arrange for Abrego Garcia’s release, the administration says, because the Constitution gives the president control over foreign affairs.
Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel noted that “all the people who should be submitting sworn declarations before [U.S. District Court] Judge Paula Xinis made comments not burdened by oaths or the risk of contempt, rehearsed comments for the cameras.” They falsely claimed that a court had ruled Abrego Garcia was a terrorist, and insisted the whole case was about the president’s power to control foreign affairs.
As NPR’s Steven Inskeep put it: “If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?”
On April 6, Judge Xinis wrote that “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for [Abrego Garcia’s] arrest, detention, or removal.… Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” The Supreme Court agreed with Xinis that Abrego Garcia had been illegally removed from the U.S. and must be returned, but warned the judge to be careful of the president’s power over foreign affairs.
At the Oval Office meeting, when Trump asked what the Supreme Court ruled, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller said it had ruled “9–0…in our favor,” claiming “the Supreme Court said that the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed 9–0 unanimously.” Legal analyst Chris Geidner of Law Dork called Miller’s statement “disgusting, lying propaganda.”
He also noted that when the administration filed its required declaration about Abrego Garcia’s case today, it included a link to the Oval Office meeting, thus submitting Miller’s lies about its decision directly to the Supreme Court. Geidner wished the administration's lawyers: “Good luck there…!”
Legal analyst Harry Litman of Talking Feds wrote: “What we all just witnessed had all the earmarks of a criminal conspiracy to deprive Abrego-Garcia of his constitutional rights, as well as an impeachable offense. The fraud scheme was a phony agreement engineered by the US to have Bukele say he lacks power to return Abrego Garcia and he won't do it.”
As Adam Serwer wrote today in The Atlantic, The “rhetorical game the administration is playing, where it pretends it lacks the power to ask for Abrego Garcia to be returned while Bukele pretends he doesn’t have the power to return him, is an expression of obvious contempt for the Supreme Court—and for the rule of law.”
Serwer notes that if the administration actually thought there was enough evidence to convict these men, it could have let the U.S. legal process play out. But Geidner of Law Dork noted that Trump’s declaration this morning that he wanted to deport “homegrown criminals” suggests that the plan all along has been to be able to get rid of U.S. citizens by creating a “Schroedinger’s box” where anyone can be sent but where once they are there the U.S. cannot get them back because they are “in the custody of a foreign sovereign.”
“If they can get Abrego Garcia out of the box,” Geidner writes, “the plan does not work.”
On August 12, 2024, in a discussion on billionaire Elon Musk’s X of what Trump insisted were caravans coming across the southern border of the U.S., Trump told Musk that other countries were doing something “brilliant” by sending streams of people out of their country. “You know the caravans are coming in and…who’s doing this are the heads of the countries. And you would be doing it and so would I, and everyone would say ‘oh what a terrible thing to say.’”
He continued: “The fact is, it’s brilliant for them because they're taking all of their bad people, really bad people and—I hate to say this—the reason the numbers are much bigger than you would think is they’re also taking their nonproductive people. Now these aren’t people that will kill you…but these are people that are nonproductive. They are just not productive, I mean, for whatever reason. They’re not workers or they don’t want to work, or whatever, and these countries are getting rid of nonproductive people in the caravans…and they’re also getting rid of their murderers and their drug dealers and the people that are really brutal people….”
Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder explained the larger picture: “On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.” He compared it to the Nazis’ practice of pushing Jews into statelessness because “[i]t is easier to move people away from law than it is to move law away from people. Almost all of the killing took place in artificially created stateless zones.”
Yesterday, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) requested a meeting with Bukele today “to discuss the illegal detention of my constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.” He said that he would travel to El Salvador this week if Abrego Garcia “is not home by midweek.”
Judge Xinis has set the next hearing in Abrego Garcia’s case for tomorrow, April 15, at 4:00 p.m.
Today, Dauphin County Magisterial District Judge Dale Klein denied bail for Cody Balmer, the 38-year-old man charged in connection with the arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro on April 13, saying he is a danger to the community. Balmer allegedly set alight beer bottles full of gasoline in the same room in the governor's mansion where, just hours before, the family had held a Passover meal. Shapiro and his wife Lori, their four children, and another family were asleep in the house. Emergency personnel rescued the people and pets, but the historic mansion sustained significant damage.
Balmer said he has a high-school education. He is currently unemployed, does not have any income or savings, and has been living with his parents. Balmer was charged with assault in 2023, allegedly punching both his wife (from whom he is now separated) and their 13-year-old son in the face during an argument. He was due in court this week. His mother says he has mental health issues.
Balmer said he “harbor[ed] hatred” for Governor Shapiro and would have beaten him with a hammer if he had found him.
Governor Shapiro called it “an attack not just on our family, but on the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania…. This type of violence is not okay. This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society. And I don’t give a damn if it’s coming from one particular side or the other, directed at one particular party or another, or one particular person or another. It is not okay and it has to stop. We have to be better than this. We have a responsibility to all be better.”
—
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-presidency-tarrifs-bukele-visit-04-14-25/index.html
https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/news/press-releases/van-hollen-requests-meeting-with-president-bukele-to-discuss-return-of-kilmar-abrego-garcia-announces-intent-to-travel-to-el-salvador-this-week-if-abrego-garcia-is-not-returned
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/bukele-trump-court-order/682432/

[Peter Lemkin]

White Supremacist Terrorgram Network Allegedly Inspired Teen Accused of Killing Parents and Plotting Trump Assassination
by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica and FRONTLINE, and James Bandler, ProPublica April 17, 2025, 11:30 a.m. EDT

A Wisconsin teenager accused of murdering two family members and plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump was inspired by Terrorgram, a white supremacist network that operated on the Telegram messaging and social media platform for half a decade, according to federal court records.
The Terrorgram community, which has been linked to around three dozen criminal cases around the globe, including at least three mass shootings, was profiled last month in stories and a documentary produced by ProPublica and FRONTLINE.
The court documents allege that Nikita Casap, a 17-year-old from Waukesha, Wisconsin, wrote a three-page manifesto calling for the assassination of Trump in order to “foment a political revolution in the United States and ‘save the white race’ from ‘Jewish controlled politicians.’”
In his manifesto, Casap allegedly encouraged people to read the writings of Juraj Krajčík, a longtime Terrogram figure who murdered two people in an attack on an LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2022, according to the court records. Casap also allegedly recommended two publications produced by the Terrorgram Collective, a secretive group that produced alleged hit lists, videos and written publications — including instructions for building bombs and sabotaging critical infrastructure — and distributed them throughout the Terrorgram ecosystem.
Launched in 2019, Terrorgram was a constellation of scores of Telegram channels and chat groups focused on inciting acts of white supremacist terrorism and anti-government sabotage. At the network’s peak, some Terrorgram channels drew thousands of followers. Over the past six months, however, the network has been disrupted as authorities in Canada, the U.S. and Europe have arrested key Terrorgram influencers and community members.
But the violence hasn’t stopped.
Casap in February allegedly shot and killed his mother, Tatiana Casap, and stepfather, Donald Mayer; stole their property; and fled in their Volkswagen Atlas, Waukesha County prosecutors say. He was arrested in Kansas. Prosecutors have charged the teen with two counts of first-degree homicide, as well as identity theft and other theft charges. He is expected to be arraigned on May 7, according to court records.
A witness told local investigators that Casap “was in touch with a male in Russia through the Telegram app and they were planning to overthrow the U.S. government and assassinate President Trump,” according to charging documents in the Wisconsin case.
The newly unsealed federal court filings indicate that the FBI is investigating Casap in connection to the alleged assassination plot.
The bureau declined to comment on the matter.
Last fall, federal prosecutors accused two Americans of acting as leaders of the Terrorgram Collective and charged them with soliciting the murder of federal officials and a host of other terrorism-related offenses. The U.S. State Department has officially designated the Terrorgram Collective as a terrorist organization, as have officials in the United Kingdom and Australia. The two Americans have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“Do absolutely anything you can that will lead to the collapse of America or any country you live in,” Casap allegedly wrote in his manifesto, according to an FBI affidavit. “This is the only way we can save the White race.”
The teen’s writings and online postings that are cited in the affidavit indicate that he is a believer in militant accelerationism, a concept that has become increasingly popular with neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists over the past decade. Militant accelerationists aim to speed the collapse of modern society through acts of spectacular violence; from the ruins of today’s democracies, they aim to build all-white ethno-states organized on fascist principles.
Matthew Kriner, executive director of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, a nonprofit think tank, called the alleged Casap plot unique. “It’s the first time we’re explicitly seeing an individual tie an accelerationist act or plot with the president of the United States as a means of collapsing society,” Kriner said. “I think what we have here is a fairly clear-cut case of an individual who is being groomed to take drastic terrorist action in an accelerationist manner.”
Casap’s public defender could not be reached for comment.
A Telegram spokesperson said, “Telegram supports the peaceful exchange of ideas; however, calls for violence are strictly prohibited by our Terms of Service and are removed proactively as well as in response to user reports."

 
[/url] A “Goofy” DJ’s Secret Life at the Center of an Online Terrorism Network
[url=https://www.propublica.org/article/matthew-allison-dj-terrogram-collective-boise-dallas-humber]
A ProPublica and FRONTLINE review shows that Casap was recently active in at least five extremist Telegram channels or chat groups, including a Russian-language neo-Nazi chat in which posters uploaded detailed instructions for crafting explosives, poisons and improvised firearms. He was also a member of a chat group with more than 4,300 participants run by the Misanthropic Division, a global neo-Nazi organization.
Casap, according to the federal documents, also sought out information online about the Order of Nine Angles, a cult that blends Satanic concepts and Nazi ideology and has increasingly turned to Telegram to recruit and proselytize.
“This is a clear example of how Terrorgram continues to influence murder,” said Jennefer Harper, a researcher who studies online extremism. “Nikita was influenced online by an assortment of ideologies and groups that intersect with the Terrorgram ecosphere.”

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

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Original text:
The Christian fascists and oligarchs gleefully handing Donald Trump his sharpie and executive orders are not making war on the deep state, the radical left or to protect us from “antisemites.” They are making war on verifiable fact, the rule of law and the transparency and accountability that is only possible with a free press, the right to dissent, a vibrant culture and a separation of powers, including an independent judiciary.
All of these pillars of an open society, as I detail in my book “Death of the Liberal Class,” were degraded long before Trump. The press, including public broadcasting, academia, the Democratic Party, a corporatized and banal culture, a judiciary that serves the billionaire class and a Congress bought by lobbyists, have been disemboweled. They are easily picked off. Few want to rise up to defend them. They sold us out. Let them die.
“The loss of the liberal class creates a power vacuum filled by speculators, war profiteers, gangsters, and killers, often led by charismatic demagogues,” I wrote in “Death of the Liberal Class” in 2010. “It opens the door to totalitarian movements that rise to prominence by ridiculing and taunting the liberal class and the values it claims to champion. The promises of these totalitarian movements are fantastic and unrealistic, but their critiques of the liberal class are grounded in truth.”
Fascism is birthed by a bankrupt liberalism that has surrendered its traditional role in a capitalist democracy. It no longer ameliorates the worst excesses of the ruling class and the empire by instituting incremental and piecemeal reforms. It scolds and moralizes the disenfranchised workers it betrayed.
Media outlets prioritize access to the powerful more than truth. They amplified lies and propaganda to propel us into a war on Iraq. They lionized Wall Street and assured us it was prudent to entrust our life savings to a financial system run by speculators and thieves. Life savings were gutted. They fed us the lies of Russiagate. They slavishly cater to the Israel lobby, distorting coverage of the genocide and university protests to demonize Palestinians, Muslims and student protestors. They dance to the tune of their corporate advertisers and sponsors. They render whole sections of the population, whose misery, poverty, and grievances should be the principal focus of journalism, invisible.
Universities have transformed into corporations. Senior administrators, who often have a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, with little or no experience in higher education, along with sports coaches who have the potential to earn the university money, are highly compensated with salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, with prized coaches and college presidents earning in the millions.
A little more than 10 percent of faculty positions are now tenure-track. Nearly 45 percent are contingent part-time employees or adjuncts. One in five are full-time, non-tenure-track positions. Universities, by radically reducing tenure-track and adequately paid positions, have become extensions of the gig economy. Adjunct professors and graduate workers are often forced to apply for Medicaid, take second jobs teaching at other colleges, driving for Uber or Lyft, working as cashiers, delivering food for Grubhub or DoorDash, walking dogs, house sitting, waiting on tables, bartending and living four or six to an apartment or camping out on a friend’s sofa.
A poorly paid faculty that lacks job security does not raise issues that challenge the dominant narrative, whether about social inequality, predatory corporations, the crimes of empire, Israeli genocide or our state of permanent war. If they do, they are dismissed. Senior university administrators, meanwhile, are awarded bonuses for “reducing expenses,” by raising tuition and fees, cutting staff and suppressing wages. This instability assures wealthy donors that the neoliberal ideology that is ravaging the country, along with enabling the genocide in Gaza, will not be questioned by academics fearful of losing their positions. The rich and the powerful are lauded. The working poor, including those employed by the university, are forgotten.
As Irving Howe pointed out in his 1954 essay “This Age of Conformity,” the “idea of the intellectual vocation —the idea of a life dedicated to values that cannot possibly be realized by a commercial civilization — has gradually lost its allure. And it is this, rather than the abandonment of a particular program, which constitutes our rout.” The belief that capitalism is the unassailable engine of human progress, Howe writes, “is trumpeted through every medium of communication: official propaganda, institutional advertising, and scholarly writings of people who, until a few years ago, were its major opponents.”
“The truly powerless people are those intellectuals — the new realists — who attach themselves to the seats of power, where they surrender their freedom of expression without gaining any significance as political figures,” Howe noted. “For it is crucial to the history of the American intellectuals in the past few decades — as well as to the relationship between ‘wealth’ and ‘intellect’ — that whenever they become absorbed into the accredited institutions of society they not only lose their traditional rebelliousness but to one extent or another they cease to function as intellectuals.”
The two ruling parties sold the con of neoliberalism to deindustrialize the country, impose punishing austerity, eradicate the freedoms to organize and gut regulations to protect the public from exploitation. They empowered corporations to pillage and consolidate their wealth and power, giving rise to monopoly capitalism and some of the greatest levels of income inequality and wealth inequality in American history. The banks, communications, oil, weapons, agricultural and food industries guarantee profits by fixing prices, skirting or even abolishing financial, health and environmental protections, and abusing their workers. This assault on New Deal regulations, soon to be entirely obliterated under Trump, disenfranchised the working class that in desperation voted in a demagogue to save them.
As funding for the arts dried up, artists, like public broadcasting which was designed to give a voice to those not tethered to corporate interests, were left searching for grants and corporate sponsors. The result was a withering away of artistic and journalistic integrity.
Friedrich Nietzsche in “Beyond Good and Evil” holds that only a few people have the fortitude to look into what he calls the molten pit of human reality. Most studiously ignore the pit. Artists and philosophers, for Nietzsche, are consumed, however, by an insatiable curiosity, a quest for truth and desire for meaning. They venture down into the bowels of the molten pit. They get as close as they can before the flames and heat drive them back. This intellectual and moral honesty, Nietzsche wrote, comes with a cost. Those singed by the fire of reality become “burnt children,” he wrote, eternal orphans.
Culture in a functioning democracy is radical and transformative. It expresses what lies deep within us. It gives words to our reality. It makes us feel as well as see. It allows us to empathize with those who are different or oppressed. It reveals what is happening around us. It honors mystery.
“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through the vast forest,” James Baldwin wrote, “so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”
The war on independent intellectual inquiry, art and culture is done to prevent us from looking into the pit, from making the world a more “human dwelling place.” The “burnt people” have been silenced or marginalized. Some 16,000 books were banned in schools and libraries before Trump took office, bans that are accelerating as more books are purged. Culture in authoritarian states celebrates an idealized past that never existed and a present that is self-delusional.
Mass culture feeds the human thirst for illusion, excitement, happiness and hope. It peddles a blind patriotism and the myth of eternal material progress. It urges us to build images of celebrities or ourselves to worship, especially on social media. The result has been a cultural decay whose apotheosis will be Trump’s Garden of Heroes and the lavish Christmas pageant being planned this winter at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Politicians from the two ruling parties are funded by the dark money provided by billionaires and corporations. These politicians, in our system of legalized bribery, do the bidding of their owners in Congress. The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called this form of government “inverted totalitarianism.” Inverted totalitarianism retains the institutions, symbols, iconography, and language of the old capitalist democracy, but internally corporations have seized all the levers of power to accrue ever greater profits and political control. It uses the international legal system to plunder resources in the developing world, including the overthrow of governments that challenge corporate dominance. It prioritizes profit over justice. It weakens labor laws and eviscerates workers’ protections and rights.
The dynamiting by the Trump administration of these decayed and corrupt institutions will mark the end of the American experiment and the shift from inverted totalitarianism to dictatorship. It will usher in a corporate dystopia, which will resemble, albeit in a much crueler form, China’s totalitarian capitalism with its pervasive state surveillance, draconian censorship, unelected and unaccountable ruling class and the crushing of popular movements including labor unions. We will descend into the world of magical thinking that is the hallmark of all despotisms, one where the language we use to describe ourselves and our society bears no relationship to reality.
It is imperative to the authoritarian project that all independent institutions, no matter how weakened or decayed, be neutered. Trump, Axios reports, has been “lashing out” at “fake polls” showing his sinking approval ratings and calling for the news outlets that publish them to be “investigated for election fraud.” This is the sentiment of all dictators. Ban inconvenient facts. Once these institutions are silenced or captured, the cracks in the old edifice that allowed a muted dissent will be sealed. Fear will be the glue of social cohesion. Tepid criticism will be criminalized. Internal security, immigration enforcement and the military will be lavishly funded, creating Trump’s own version of an unaccountable deep state, while social programs will be defunded or shuttered.
Central to this project will be the great leader cult. The abject servility towards the great leader was on display at Trump’s celebration of his first 100 days with his cabinet, all of whom had navy blue and red baseball caps in front of them bearing the message “Gulf of America.” Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a typical display of sycophancy at the meeting, gushed: “Mr. President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever, ever. [I’ve] never seen anything like it, thank you.”
[img=550x366.41483516483515]https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F260d79a2-ffef-4874-ae6a-0f9a2c4821f0_1456x970.webp[/img]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk puts on a second hat that reads "Gulf of America" during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Trump will get his birthday military parade, his two 100-foot high flag poles on the White House lawns, and perhaps, if the proposed bills in Congress pass, his face carved on Mount Rushmore, alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. He will see his birthday become a federal holiday, his face on new $250 bills and Washington’s Dulles International Airport renamed Donald J. Trump International Airport. He will build his National Garden of American Heroes. And of course, he will get the overturning of the 22nd Amendment to allow him to serve a third term. President-for-life.
“Children will be taught to love America,” the Svengali-like Stephen Miller intoned. “Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding. So as we close the Department of Education and provide funding to states, we’re going to make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology.”
Trump’s vipers are snuffing out what is left of our open society, putting the finishing touches on the dirty work begun by billionaires and corporations. This is the end of a process. Not the start. Trump had a lot of help.
There is a word for those who did this to us.
Traitors.

[Peter Lemkin]

There are new sources of video that this old Forum's software can't show. I experimented around and can bypass that for you. Just click on the url and it will open the video - a wise one. This one is on Fascism in today's USA!

https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/fas...hare=false

[Peter Lemkin]

Another good one. Click on the url to see the video on DENIAL, even in 'progressives' in the USA now.

https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/on-...hare=false

[Peter Lemkin]

Yet another [I think] good analysis - this by two former MSM people [kicked off for being too anti-Trump] - focused on a lot of things, but starting with the White House 'assassination with racist lies' of the President of South Africa....

https://open.substack.com/pub/katiephang...hare=false

[Peter Lemkin]

What the Nazis behind Trump are pushing for.......