POST 1238
Quote Of The Mid-Week
From Harry Littman’s December 8 post, Trump’s Alternate-Reality Government:
Donald Trump is surely the most prolific and brazen liar ever to occupy the White House. From day one of his first term, when he confabulated wildly about the crowd size at his inauguration, he has fabricated nonsense so promiscuously that people—supporters and antagonists—have just come to assume you can’t trust what he says.
But in the last few weeks, Trump and his Administration seem to have broken through the lying speed of light, emerging into a whole new universe of bullshit.
The “lying speed of light” – gotta love that.
Fascism In Plain Sight
Click me to review the document.*
From What’s the difference between an authoritarian and a fascist? by C. Clark Kissinger, December 4, 2025:
“Mussolini, Hitler, and Trump were all brought to power with reactionary mass movements involving the conscious participation of a significant percentage of the population and with the support of a section of existing power and wealth”
He goes on:
“The Trump/MAGA team believes that only those who stand for ‘traditional American values’ (white supremacy, male supremacy, Christian supremacy, xenophobia, traditional gender roles, and American global dominance) are fit to rule. And they are supported by a cohort of billionaires.”
Who are these people who believe we should be ruled by them and their notions of hateful “traditional American values”? Does MAGA** really mean a hoped for return to feudal times and feudal wars? Does it call for a return to the Dark Ages through an end to vaccinations so that hundreds of millions will die needlessly? After humanity having completed the decades long Herculean task of eliminating smallpox, do we really want to unleash it to visit us again with horrible suffering and death? Same question for polio, hepatitis, measles and more.
Does MAGA really mean we should insist upon the destructive and often homicidal cruelties of the so-called traditional American values listed? Should there be constant violence to establish dominance?
These foot soldiers on the march toward fascism are people who called for “herd immunity” during Covid-19. They tell us that we don’t need vaccines that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. insists give people Covid-19, cause autism and don’t work to protect people from the disease. Good thing he has both a medical degree and the bona fides of a healthcare scientist. Oh wait. He actually has no healthcare or scientific credentials and knows nothing unless he read it in a post by some UFO loony spouting craziness.
You need to be clear that herd immunity means everyone gets exposed to the disease and the few who survive are the rulers of the universe. Are you okay with rolling the terminal illness dice on Aunt Sophie, Mom, Dad, you and your siblings and friends – everyone you care about?
You can read “reactionary mass movements” as our so-called populism, which is actually a minority of the population ginned up by lies coming from hateful talking heads to piss MAGAs off over some real and lots of imaginary offenses. Our “say anything outrageous and offensive on (anti-) social media” is a boon to manipulators, high on their own stash of grievance. They pay no price for lying and now we actually expect our feckless leaders and followers to lie constantly. Witness Pete Hegseth’s meandering lies about his involvement in what is nearly universally seen as murder on the high seas. It’s been called out only by those with the uncommon courage to say what is blatantly obvious. That courage shouldn’t be uncommon.
But the lies give rise to popular piss-off, which keeps the liars in power. That’s a price we pay for limp-wristed journalism using words like “unfortunate” instead of “cowardly;” “questionable accuracy” instead of “pack of lies;” and “uncommitted” instead of “spineless.”
Note in Kissinger’s paragraphs above the references to billionaires and their complicity in government malfeasance. Their caving to power is the most cowering and intentionally myopic of things, as they see some short term riches and blind themselves to an absolutely certain long term powerlessness and they ignore the simple imperative to do the right thing. They are bought for a relative pittance, leading to our collective downfall. Witness: all the organizations that caved to Trump this year over his threats of financial penalty.
Liberals didn’t escape Kissinger’s analysis. He sees so many hiding in the shadows apparently scared of their own backbones.
At the end of the day, they are more frightened by a mass movement to oust Trump than they are by fascism.
Pitiful, if he’s right.
Their fright doesn’t bode well for those of us who think this country should still be of the people, by the people and for the people.
We have to get out of the Trump/MAGA fascism doom loop if we are to save our democracy and protect and defend our Constitution. That’s on us.
And I ask yet again, “Who will lead?”
Profile In Awfulness
That’s the title of yesterday’s The Borowitz Report on Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). He says that Cotton lies, and “His biggest whopper? That he cares about ‘American kids.’” Borowitz then unmasks Cotton’s hypocrisy, completing his post, writing, “Tom Cotton is an embarrassment to Arkansas—and given that the state’s governor is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that’s saying something.”
The educational value of this short piece is that Cotton is the poster child for all but a few Republicans in Congress. Their cowardliness is as boundless as their denial of obvious reality. If either of your senators or your representative answers that description, they need your unbridled condemnation, because otherwise they won’t just be spineless; they will become spineless fascists.
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* Trump and his likewise hatred stoked sycophants, his evil flying monkeys, need enemies in order to make their message seem powerful to followers. They focus on “others” and everyone and everything that is against their tyranny,
Antifa is just that: it’s anti-fascism. What the hateful manipulators don’t tell you is that there is no antifa organization. It’s just a term for those of us who believe in and want democracy, not tyrannical fascism.
** MAGA: “Malignant And Global Agony”
es
Goes fast, doesn’t it?
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Mid-Term Election
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