Today is Friday, May 30, 2025. A very alarming opinion piece by Thom Hartmann for AlterNet details how close we are in launching a homegrown dictatorship in the form of the Trump Crime Family and it’s entitled “No administration has ever been this corrupt – and you just can’t look away anymore.”

Hartmann goes on to explain how all dictators are corrupt and how they “skim wealth out of the state’s coffers and public commons, and how they use the typical tools of dictatorship to intimidate good government advocates into silence: violence, threats, capture of police agencies and courts, intimidation of the press, cowing politicians, and prisons.” This is where we are heading already under Trump 2.0, Hartmann points out.

The writer of this piece also saw this reality in many governments around the world, particularly in Uganda under Idi Amin, the country of Haiti, the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos, Thailand during the military coup, Colombia, Peru, Russia, South Sudan, China in the 1980s, and a handful of others.

In every case, the media was cowed, courts were run by sycophants loyal to Dear Leader, and the police were largely unaccountable to the people while kleptocrats shoveled fortunes into offshore banks and American or British real estate.

Hartmann goes on to indicate how Americans are peculiarly blind to the birthing of a dictatorship here in America, since we’ve never had a president – until now – who publicly attempted to use his position of power to enrich himself (“even Richard Nixon had the good sense to try to hide the bribes he took from the milk lobby and Jimmy Hoffa”).

The path toward dictatorship begins when the leader takes power democratically, like in Russia and Hungary.

Here things relatively seem normal, although there’s an apparent zeal for “reforms” that appear questionable like replacing government functions with private contractors close to the leader, appointing incompetent but totally loyal toadies to run major essential agencies, and changing election laws making it easier for wealthy people to buy elections – think of Muskrat and his outsized influence on the last election – and harder for democracy advocates to vote.

Here is a chilling thought from Hartmann about this: “Those ‘reforms’ are the early warnings that, if not stopped quickly, a dictatorship is being birthed.”

What ensues from this inchoate dictatorship are loud complaints about “fake news,” “enemies within the government,” and “activist judges,” all language employed by this Orange Cheeto to portray his perceived enemies. “This is the second major warning that the newly elected leader is trying to move the country toward authoritarianism.”

Hartmann then notes that every senior official in every corrupt foreign government he’s ever met or negotiated with wasn’t particularly sagacious and definitely wasn’t qualified to hold the position of power they did. Now he points the finger at Dump’s cabinet of fools as an indication of this trend toward authoritarianism”: the secretary of Homeland Security (Kristi Noem) who doesn’t know what the term habeas corpus means, the Secretary of State (Pete Hegseth) who refuses to call Putin a war criminal, the Secretary of Education (Linda McMahon) who is a billionaire wrestling promotor, the Secretary of Health (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) who is a conspiracy-nut lawyer with no training in medicine, and the Social Security Commissioner (Frank Bisignano), just to name a few.

Thus Dump has put 13 of his billionaire buddies in his cabinet and stocked his senior-most roles in critical federal agencies with incompetent but reliably loyal bootlickers.

Soon the Dear Leader will eventually throw people into prison or bankrupting them for defying him or speaking out against him. Here with this final stage of a dictatorship, it might be critical that the country recognize that it is knee-deep in such a position.

This could also be the moment when Dear Leader is “forced” to use citizen armed militia violence, the legal system, and the military to crush his opponents and terrorize the general public.

As we’re heading down this inevitable path, Hartmann now sees that an inflection point in this second Chump administration would be June 14, the day of the “big, beautiful” parade for the Dear Leader in honor of his 79th birthday, where Little Donnie could drop what’s left of the mask of civility and begins what he considers a “necessary” crackdown to protect himself from being held to account for his corruption and lawbreaking.

Hartmann worries that if the protests are large enough on that day, the “final threads holding our republic together” could be broken. This could happen if Dump’s people infiltrate the demonstrations to provoke violence and cause property damage like what happened during a tiny handful of the George Floyd protests. As you might recall, Dump had considered using the National Guard to shoot protesters then. This could be the final test of America’s will to democracy, Hartmann states. If this doesn’t occur then, it will certainly come over the following year. He wonders: “Do we still have the will, the determination, and the courage to fight one more battle on behalf of democracy?” I seriously wonder myself.

Before I go, I wanted to mention the dark comedy that Elliot and I saw locally today, the film Friendship starring ever-reliable Paul Rudd and lesser-known Tim Robinson as a schlubby suburban dad who suddenly finds himself in the position of being a friend to the way-more-cool Austin Carmichael who recently moves into Craig’s neighborhood. The fun begins when a package is accidentally delivered to Craig Waterman’s house which is meant for Austin, his new neighbor up the block. The usually awkward Craig who thinks going to see a Marvel film is the apotheosis of high-brow entertainment is now pushed to seek out Austin’s friendship by his cancer survivor of a wife (Kate Mara) who is the owner of a small floral business.

It is Robinson’s performance as the off-center Craig that steals the film, easily away from Rudd who is used to doing these male-to-male bonding roles in other bromances. Craig comes across as a borderline psychotic in some very disturbing scenes like the time he curses out a potential client (he works for a digital marketer), the mayor of his town, in a presentation conference for no reason at all. When Austin dumps him for his bizarre behavior, he breaks into Austin’s house and steals a pistol from his former friend’s drawer. This item features prominently in the dark conclusion to this off-kilter film.

It is Austin who introduces Craig to adventure in the form of taking him through abandoned tunnels and treating him to his playing in a rock band and introducing him to his social circle of male friends. This is all very heady to the socially awkward Craig who soon idolizes his new male chum. But the whole scene unravels when Craig does a truly bizarre thing when he’s at Austin’s house hanging out with his bros. It happens when the pair practice some boxing moves in front of the guys and Craig punches Austin when it was certainly not the time to do so. He then ingests a bar of soap that promptly is read as uniquely strange.

The film is written and directed by Andrew DeYoung and it certainly is not a film for everyone since it’s very dark and twisted.

Have a great weekend.

And so it went!