Tag Archives: democracy

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, October 22, 2025. I’m posting this blog rather late tonight since Elliot and I were being hosted by our new friends on the second floor, “Randy” and “Burton.” We were invited over for dinner and Randy prepared a lovely dinner consisting of roasted chicken, coconut-flavored rice, and marinated cucumbers. For dessert, we all shared some sweet delicacies from a bakery Randy patronized in Astoria. All during dinner, we were greeted by Randy and Burton’s lovely 14-year-old cat, a Main Coon-type cat called Poofy or some name like that.

We were invited for 7 and we stayed at least 2 and a half hours. Elliot announced a little after 9 that he was getting tired, as we also decided to defer to Randy who was leaving for Portugal tomorrow night to participate in some sort of marathon. He mentioned that he was also spending some time in Paris before flying home to New York, and Elliot promised to give him several tips as to where to go in the City of Lights.

The only article I will comment on tonight then is one that should terrify President Poop and that is the online article in WGTC by Jorge Aguilar entitled “‘They’re dominating media institutions’: The No Kings movement just got a lot bigger, and Trump should be terrified.”

The thrust of the article is that the No Kings movement, the people behind the massive anti-Dump protest on October 18, of which I proudly participated in, is officially rolling out a nationwide response network that’s going to call on supporters to take new actions every single week. Boy, will this fascistic president be shitting in his Depends over this! The leaders of the movement told The Guardian there’s serious energy for “some type of disruption,” and they’re not messing around.

Future actions could include targeted boycotts, campaigns at universities, more street protests, and electoral organizing in local communities. This is huge news, and it signals the era of passive opposition is positively over, as one organizer put it, “The No Kings era is here, and it’s defined by widespread mass defiance of this regime.”

The sheer scale of this turnout is what should have the administration quaking. Tens of thousands of people like myself joined a national call earlier this week just to hear what’s next for the growing resistance. I emailed Indivisible just today to volunteer my skills to the organization and to receive communiques about what the next steps will be. “This broad showing is a big deal because it proves just how much opposition to Trump there is in every single corner of the U.S.”

The idea of a general strike is also on the table, and it’s one that has some serious top-tier support. Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, brought up the idea at his city’s rally, and labor leaders like the United Auto Workers president, Shawn Fain, and the Association of Flight Attendants counterpart, Sara Nelson, have both called for it.

The cofounder of Indivisible, Ezra Klein, said, “No successful antiauthoritarian movement in the history of the world has relied exclusively on one-day protests, even historic, incredible life-giving one-day protests like Saturday. Successful movements grow, they evolve, they diversify their tactics, and they do new things together. There are going to be big mobilizations in our future, but before that, there’s going to be overreach from this regime. We’re seeing it with our own eyes. They’re dominating media institutions, they’re dominating universities. They’re bullying businesses and political opponents, and we need to coordinate a way to respond quickly and powerfully with the full force of this movement. The era of capitulation and obey ion advance, that’s over.”

Some of the targets that this movement could be focusing on could be corporations or institutions that support the despicable MAGA platform. (By the way, I saw a wonderful sign this past Saturday in which the acronym was given a new identity as “MAGA = Morons Are Governing America.”) Other places of commerce like sports arenas could also be targeted to disrupt the flow of capital.

This is the only piece of good news I’ve heard about since the Orange Tyrant took office in January. Let’s show this corrupt regime the true power of the people.

Tomorrow I will probably be AWOL from here again since Elliot and I have invited this time our thirtyish friend “Taylor” over for dinner. He is the fiancé of our adopted niece, “Rebecca,” and we have cultivated his friendship ever since he entered our lives several years ago at our friends’ house in Easton, Pennsylvania, some Christmases past.

Have a good Thursday then.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

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!

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, April 22, 2025, Earth Day. (Of course, there was no formal recognition of this day by the Chump administration at all today.) If you inwardly thought that the country of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was veering toward authoritarianism in the second term of Dump, you were right, since there is an online NPR article by Frank Langfitt entitled “Hundreds of scholars say U.S. is swiftly heading toward authoritarianism” that corroborates your dark suspicions.

Thus a survey of more than 500 political scientists finds that the vast majority believe the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of autocracy.

“In the benchmark survey, known as Bright Line Watch, U.S.-based professors rate the performance of American democracy on a scale from zero to (complete dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy).” This is quite telling: “After President Trump’s election in November, scholars gave American democracy a rating of 67. Several weeks into Trump’s second term, that figure plummeted to 55.”

One of those professors, John Carey, a professor of government at Dartmouth and codirector of Bright Line Watch, said, “That’s a precipitous drop. There’s certainly consensus: We’re moving in the wrong direction.”

Carey said the decline between November and February was the biggest since Bright Line Watch began surveying scholars on threats to American democracy in 2017. In the survey, respondents consider 30 indicators of democratic performance, including whether the government interferes with the press, punishes political opponents, and whether the legislature and the judiciary can check executive authority.

Many scholars like Carey are deeply troubled by Dump’s attempts to expand executive power over his first several months in office. Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, and coauthor of How Democracies Die said, “We’ve slid into some form of authoritarianism. It is relatively mild compared to some others. It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy.”

When these scholars use the term “authoritarianism,” they aren’t referring to a system like China’s, a one-party state with no meaningful elections. Instead, they are referring to something called “competitive authoritarianism,” the kind scholars see in countries like Turkey and Hungary.

In such a system, a leader [like Chump] comes to power democratically and then erodes the system of checks and balances [like Dump]. Typically, the executive fills the civil service and key appointments – including the prosecutor’s office and judiciary – with loyalists [like Dump has]. He or she then attacks the media, universities, and nongovernmental organizations to blunt public criticism and tilt the electoral playing field in the ruling party’s favor.

Trump is using such autocratic tactics as having the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigate all of the major broadcast outlets, except for fucking Rupert Murdock’s Fox “Nonnews” network, which is decidedly pro-Dump in their Fox News Channel. In these fascistic cases, the FCC can revoke local broadcast licenses, which could damage the networks financially.

Princeton’s Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist who has spent years tracking Hungary, says this activity is eerily reminiscent of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban [a pal of this dear leader]. Orban took aim at the business model of Hungarian media, which heavily relied on state advertising.

One little hopeful sign here in the United States, despite its being led by a would-be autocrat right now, the scholars say, is the sagging popularity enjoyed by the Orange Turd which was not the case with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele who enjoyed overwhelming popular support among the populace which allowed them to change their countries’ political system.

For instance, Bukele, who met with Dump at the White House last week, has seen approval ratings over 90 percent and won reelection by a landslide last year. By contrast, a recent poll showed Dump’s approval rating falling to 43 percent, and he was reelected [sadly] with just under half of the popular vote. Also, millions of people – including myself – have risen up in massive protests across the country to oppose his illiberal policies.

Bright Line Watch, which conducted its survey in early February, said it plans to put out another in the field soon. Considering how unpopular Dump is right now, I’m sure that new survey will trend even further downward in Dump’s overall popularity rating.

So even though the situation appears dire right now in this country, there is a ray of hope contained in this reporting.

So I’ll be off for Los Angeles tomorrow. I’ll see you in early May.

And so it went!