“The Racism of MAGA Is as American as Apple Pie”: Nina Turner on Trump & 2024 Election

 

Poet's Nook: "Breath" by Carl Dennis

 

“It’s humbling to dwell on the need
For taking in a mouthful of air
A dozen times a minute
Whether we want to or not,
Whether the air available blows in
From a mountain meadow or from a swamp.

“Still, I’m proud of the deep breaths
That our featured speaker tonight is taking
While she waits to be introduced. Her voice
Mustn’t quaver as she exposes the lies
Told about our water and soil and air,
The claims they’re as clean as they’ve ever been.

“Though she doesn’t believe her words
Will be wafted around the world
On an irresistible tide of spirit,
At least she believes that her audience
Will try to give them a fair hearing
If she can deliver them with authority.

“When I think of what can be done
With a single breath, I think of the soloist
In the old recording I own, on seventy-eighths,
Of Mozart’s oboe concerto, of his sudden
Intake of breath at a silent beat
To fill his lungs for a soaring passage.

“I hope our speaker’s faith this evening
In the worth of her contribution
Is akin to the faith of the musician
As he sends his theme, finely phrased,
Out through the double reeds.

“May it meet with good luck
On its unpredictable journey,
Riding farther than many suppose
A theme can ride on a puff of air.”

The Wisdom of Barbara Brown Taylor

 

“The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.”

“Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.”

“Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.”

“What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”

“There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address.” 

“Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff’s office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar.” 

“The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.”

The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor… Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.”

“You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.”

“When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, ‘Here, I guess, since this is where I am.’”

“I like it much better than ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ — to be a seeker after the sacred or the holy, which ends up for me being the really real.”

“I asked God for religious certainty, and God gave me relationships instead. I asked for solid ground, and God gave me human beings instead—strange, funny, compelling, complicated human beings—who keep puncturing my stereotypes, challenging my ideas, and upsetting my ideas about God, so that they are always under construction. I may yet find the answer to all my questions in a church, a book, a theology, or a practice of prayer, but I hope not. I hope God is going to keep coming to me in authentically human beings who shake my foundations, freeing me to go deeper into the mystery of why we are all here.”

“Our shadows are often behind us, where others can see them better than we can.”

A Duty to Warn America: A Face-off with a Future of Fascism? by Thomas Drake

 

Source: CP

Is it a time of historical reckoning for America, in this social media dominated age, riddled by lots of gaslighting hyperbole and rabbit-holed halls full of meme-filled mirrored walls?

Is it just a caricatured stage play of days long political games with a crazy old man on one side telling people the country is like a garbage can occupied by enemies and overrun by immigrants and a place to dump on democracy — poisoning the blood and streams of America while appealing to the pro-bros disassociated from society?

And on the other side is a cheerleading ms congeniality, projecting a why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along plan focused on the dominion of democracy, while joyfully rationalizing an America high on its own shining city beamed from a mythical hill on the other?

It seems too many are living in a co-dependent alternative reality, addicted to an endless array of attention deficit disordered soap opera dramas, pitting Americans against each other.

Caricatures, stereotypes and the tossing around of pejoratives and projection are very much in abundance this election season, but behind some of them are disturbing realities.

For example, those who accuse others of Trump Derangement Syndrome, are in reality, really allergic to the truth and any evidence of holding Trump accountable and responsible.

Trump is clearly painting a very dark future that exists outside the bounds of law and civic decency who also clearly and willfully violated his oath as President with impunity to not preserve, not protect and not defend the Constitution, when he attempted to unlawfully remain in power.

So what’s really going on?

There is an insidious and insipid mind space war of memes and manipulation to accept without question a whole landscape of lies — and to denigrate and dismiss anyone who desists, resists or speaks out against those who distrust objective truth — despite what one sees with their own eyes.

What we are seeing is a reinventing of reality through a concerted and concentrated effort, by various disinformation and agitprop operations (both foreign and domestic), to own the climate of public opinion, occupy their minds and generate coded cognitive response patterns that suspend reason and deconstruct objective reality.

This is meant to trigger an induced subconscious switch to accept the replacement of grounded rationality with reconstructed irrationality — through base reactive emotion and dissociative counter-narrative mind virus manipulation.

Trumpism is a particularly virulent and toxic form of a neo-fascist, true believer fueled, cult-like, authoritarian, populist political movement bent on disabling and dismembering the rule of law, abandoning democracy and subverting the Constitutional Republic.

In other words, based on their own words and the blueprint written down in Project 2025, Trumpism, with all its compulsive narcissism and various confederate acolytes and nativist nationalist demands — possesses the express intent of turning America into an Orwellian Fourth Reich of AmeriKa, allergic to the unblinking eyes of history — while embracing a whole litany of lies, hate-infused tropes, racism, lawlessness, vindictiveness, ritual revenge and retribution and the urging of violence as well as calling out individual names and creating lists of ‘enemies from within’ to target and attack.

What’s at stake is NOT the false dichotomy and faux equivalency divisions of left right, liberal conservative or democrat republican — too often centered on disinformation and diversion. The mantra that is cast is do not believe the truth, but do embrace the lethality of lies — a stunning departure from widely accepted norms of plain civil decency, civic democracy and just basic humanity.

And when lies are surrogates for the truth, truth dies.

What’s REALLY at stake is the very heart, character and continuing promise of the Great American Experiment — replaced by the prospect of an AmeriCon on America with a retrograde rewriting of history and the full, no guard third rail unleashing of an autocratic klepto-chaoscracy — that sells out and sells off what is left of America.

This virulent neo-fascist form of raw, unchecked power is intended to control and suppress the lives and liberties of people it unilaterally decides are threats or even declared as internal enemies of the state resisting or speaking out against the abuse of unconsented authority and the dismantling of democracy.

It’s We the People who are on trial.

So we must stop and ask the really hard look-in-the-mirror question: What future do the majority of We the People want to keep?

Why? When looking out either the front window or the rear view mirror of history, objects of concern accelerating toward you that may create harm or injury ARE actually closer than they appear.

I, for one, do not want to see the arc of American history burn out upon the funeral pyre of fear and phobia even with all its faults and original sins — including slavery, atrocities against indigenous peoples, forcing native Americans onto reservations, blatant racism and discrimination against immigrants, the shame of internment camps during wartime, the exceptionalism of manifest destiny, rank militarism and the raft of tragic foreign misadventures for starters.

Yes, America is also a contradiction and and a paradox at the same time.

But do we really want to see the ugly specter of fascism with its confederate-laced flags of vendetta and violence flying high above the remains of democracy’s ashes — as much as some DO want to see it all burn down and slide into the whirlpool of soft tyranny with zero tolerance for opposing opinions and dissent or those daring to speak truth about abuse of power?

America continues to face serious problems and serious challenges and remains a very imperfect Union — including inadequate governance, failures in public safety and widespread political and corporate corruption — that are all too very real. Yet America also needs the most serious of people to help face and solve them.

Better to turn out and defend an imperfect Union and rededicate ourselves to the work of further unifying and forming a “more perfect Union” for the common good rather than tuning out and supporting division and disunion that could further disunite and end the dream of the Great American Experiment and turn it into a dystopian nightmare.

Who are the rest of the defending avengers and protectors of democracy?

It is us.

We really do not want to make fascism favorable or in fashion in America again and do so at our own peril.

History awaits the verdict.

The deafening bells of history are clanging very loudly in my ears.

I am reminded yet again of a quote from Benjamin Franklin that provides a stark relief in terms of what is at stake in America.

Elizabeth Willing Powel, a quite prominent woman from Philadelphia during the founding years of the US (yet erased from most histories), and based on the journal notes of delegate James McHenry of Maryland, purportedly asked Franklin, as the Constitutional Convention concluded, “What have we got — a republic or a monarchy?”

Franklin replied, “A republic — if you can keep it.”

Benjamin Franklin advocated for the rights of the individual and considered democracy and liberty as foundational cornerstones of the Great American Experiment.

I really don’t want to see or experience the remains of the Republic and democracy burn out in front of me by the spreading fire of fascism and authoritarianism — or as Padme said in Star Wars, “So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.”

As for me?

I have Obi Wan on repeat exclaiming, “Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy!” after Anakin angrily asserted to Obi Wan that he, Anakin, brought “…peace, freedom, justice and security…” to his new empire.

For further reading check out this deeply insightful and thought provoking article on the huge challenges democracy faces from the pathological forces hellbent on ruling America through raw power and authoritarianism.

It is time to heal, renew and recreate democracy in America — and to the Republic for which it stands.

What future do we want to keep?

Musings

 

Question: Can you really say that Donald Trump is grown (mentally) ?

Dismantling the American Empire (w/ Cornel West)

 

It is rare to hear a United States presidential candidate clearly and eloquently spell out the realities of the country — whether it’s the genocide in Gaza, rising economic inequality or the horrors of mass incarceration. Dr. Cornel West, renowned political activist, philosopher, public intellectual, author and now independent presidential candidate, recently engaged Chris Hedges on his show to give an update on his campaign and to highlight the critical issues that define his fight for justice and equality.

Worth Re-Reading: The Corporate Capture of the United States by Robert Monks (2012)

 

Source: Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance

American corporations today are like the great European monarchies of yore: They have the power to control the rules under which they function and to direct the allocation of public resources. This is not a prediction of what’s to come; this is a simple statement of the present state of affairs. Corporations have effectively captured the United States: its judiciary, its political system, and its national wealth, without assuming any of the responsibilities of dominion. Evidence is everywhere.

The “smoking gun” is CEO pay. Compensation is an expression of concentrated power — of enterprise power concentrated in the chief executive officer and of national power concentrated in corporations. Median US CEO pay for 2010 was up 35 percent in the midst of a lingering recession, while CEO pay over the last decade has doubled as a percentage of pre-tax corporate income. Yet there has been no justification for current levels of CEO pay based on economic value added.

When Lee Raymond retired as CEO of ExxonMobil at the end of 2005, after six years at the helm of the merged firm and another six as head of Exxon before that, he walked away with more than a quarter billion dollars in realizable equity. In his final year alone, Raymond received in excess of $70 million in total compensation — an hourly wage of about $34,500 calculated at 40 hours a week for 50 weeks. No metric can justify such a raid on the corporate treasury and shareholder equity, but Raymond is only a particularly egregious and early example of what has since become common practice. Little wonder that the driving concern of banks receiving TARP “bailout” money was to pay it back so as to escape any restriction on executive pay.

Retirement risk has been transferred to employees. During the same period that CEOs were doubling their own compensation, the “best” CEOs of the “best” companies abrogated the century-old commitment by employers to provide pensions to their workers. IBM has been the corporate leader in abolishing a “real” pension system for its employees. The 2006 elimination of on-going defined benefit plans will “save [IBM] as much as $3 billion through the next few years and provide it with a more ‘predictable cost structure’,” TK said at the time. Translation: The worker bees are on their own.

This is the essence of “capture” – CEOs are enriched, while all other corporate constituencies, including government, are left with liabilities. A relatively few autocrats have taken control over the policies and wealth allocation of the United States.

The financial power of American corporations now controls every stage of politics — legislative, executive, and ultimately judicial. With its January 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court removed all legal restraints on the extent of corporate financial involvement in politics, a grotesque decision that can have only one effect: maximizing corporate – not national — value. Today’s CEOs have been granted the power to direct political payments and organize PAC programs to achieve objectives entirely in their own self-interest, and they have been quick to use it.

More than $300 million was “invested” by corporations in the 2008 Presidential elections. The totals will be vastly higher in 2012 when the full impact of Citizens United is expressed, and the distribution will be politically agnostic. As Bill Moyers recently noted, President Obama “has raised more money from banks, hedge funds and private equity managers than any Republican candidate.” [1]

Capture has been further implemented through the extensive lobbying power of corporations. Abraham Lincoln’s warning about “corporations enthroned” and Dwight Eisenhower’s about the “unwarranted influence by the military/industrial complex” have been fully realized in our own time. Reported lobbying expenditures have risen annually, to $3.5 billion in 2010. Half of the Senators and 42 percent of House members who left Congress between 1998 and 2004 became lobbyists, as did 310 former appointees of George W. Bush and 283 of Bill Clinton.

Capture has focused on particular industries. Two powerful Democratic administrations have not been able even to propose a system of “single payer” health insurance. Meanwhile, business interests have assured that whatever program of “universal coverage” emerges will lock in the interests of the insurance and the pharmaceutical industries.

History has yet to sort out whether the second Iraq War served any national objectives beyond military and industrial ones, but the suspicion that oil interests played a critical role in the rush to battle is enhanced by Vice President Cheney’s refusal to reveal the names of the participants in his energy transition committee. Simultaneously, the inability to force public disclosure of those participants offers a window into how thoroughly the energy industry controls its own agenda, destiny, and information flow. Not only has the industry succeeded in achieving and maintaining special regulatory and tax treatment; in multiple other ways, it functions virtually as an independent state.

Capture has placed the most powerful CEOs above the reach of the law and beyond its effective enforcement. Extensive evidence of Wall Street’s critical involvement in the financial crisis notwithstanding, not a single senior Wall Street executive has lost his job, and pay levels have been rigorously maintained even when, as noted earlier, TARP payments had to be refinanced in order to remove any possible restrictions.

While several financial firms have paid civil penalties for their abuses, the amounts involved bear little relation to the malfeasance. US District Judge Jed S. Rakoff recently — and rightly — rejected the $285-million settlement agreed to between Citigroup Inc. and the Securities and Exchange Commission as “neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, not in the public interest.”

Worse, such fines as have been imposed on the financial industry are basically being paid by the government itself. At the same time that various regulatory agencies boast of record setting penalties assessed against banks, the Federal Reserve pays banks interest on money that is not being lent, resulting in an “interest margin” realized by U.S. banks in the first six months of this year of $211 billion — more than ample funding for any penalties suffered.

Finally, capture has been perpetuated through the removal of property “off shore,” where it is neither regulated nor taxed. The social contract between Americans and their corporations was supposed to go roughly as follows: In exchange for limited liability and other privileges, corporations were to be held to a set of obligations that legitimatized the powers they were given. But modern corporations have assumed the right to relocate to different jurisdictions, almost at will, irrespective of where they really do business, and thus avoid the constraints of those obligations.

As Nicholas Shaxson writes in Treasure Islands, “The privileges have been preserved and enhanced, but the obligations have withered.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury is estimated to be losing $100 billion annually from off-shore tax abuses.

Government cannot and will not hold corporations to account. That much is now obvious. Indeed, the dawning realization of this truth is what has informed the Occupy movement, but only the owners of corporations can create the accountability that will ultimately unwind the knot of government capture.

The essence of the problem is quite straightforward: a failed system of corporate governance. So is the cause: the unwillingness of trustee owners of America’s corporations to assert their responsibility, legal duty, and civic obligation to monitor and oversee the corporations they invest in. Fiduciary institutions own 80 percent of the outstanding shares of corporate America and thus bear at least 80 percent of the responsibility for present circumstances as well as 80 percent of the onus for saving the system itself. And the largest institutional investors — the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Harvard University, and others — must take the lead because (a) they should and (b) all other courses have failed.

Urban park by urban park, campus by campus, the Occupiers are bearing sometimes inchoate witness to America’s capture by corporate interests. Now, men and women of conscience need to reoccupy the boardrooms of America’s corporations. The boardroom is where the takeover began, and it’s where capture can finally be undone and a government of, by, and for the people, not the corporations, restored to the land.

Diddy and the American Dream

 

Republicans are drowning in Donald Trump's Lies by Heather Digby Parton

Source: Salon

I happened to spend some time with a highly intelligent 17-year-old over the weekend who's taking AP Government and is keenly interested in the election. She's following all the polling and the punditry and knows the ins and outs of the battleground map better than most adults I talk to. And she said something that struck me because I hadn't really considered it before. We were talking about the vice-presidential debate and she found it odd that it was so civil. She kept waiting for something to happen. And I realized that there are millions of people for whom Donald Trump's brand of demagogic politics is normal. They are either young like this person and have literally grown up in this era of bad feelings or they are those for whom politics wasn't of interest until Trump came along. That's a lot of people who don't know that it isn't supposed to be this way.

Granted we have had more spirited arguments in televised political debates than the one we witnessed last week between JD Vance and Tim Walz. But we never had the kind of debates like those that Donald Trump has participated in since 2016. It's also true that we never had election campaigns like Donald Trump's presidential campaigns and we certainly never had a presidency like his. You have to wonder, is this going to be the way it is going forward even after he's gone?

It's hard to imagine that it will be exactly the same. Trump is sui generis. But what has the next generation of GOP leaders learned from him that can be used for their own ambition? I imagine there are many things but I think there is one very clear lesson: You can lie with impunity.

Can we trust polling data? Experts break down how this data works and why it matters

Some of the new GOP leaders, like Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson, have obviously discovered that if they lie with a congenial look on their faces, there is no limit to how much they can get away with. Politicians have always lied to some degree, of course. In the past, we used to call it spin because they would not dare to just lie outright and essentially tell the voters that they shouldn't believe their own eyes or depend on their own memories. But what we are seeing today is a major shift in what is acceptable in politics — and it goes way beyond Trump.

Vance does not have a naturally pleasant personality but he discovered in that debate that if he didn't crudely disparage "childless cat ladies" or accuse Haitian immigrants of eating pets, he could lie flagrantly about the past and his plans for the future as long as he kept a smile on his face. Consider that he congenially but blatantly lied about having said that he favored a national abortion ban, that Donald Trump had saved Obamacare, that carbon emissions aren't the main cause of climate change (suggesting that climate change is "weird science") and that Chinese imports raised the cost of consumer goods. That's not spin. It's an assault on reality. Those lies and more went unchecked and I would guess that millions of people watching believed him because he said them with such a pleasant tone.

Out on the stump Vance plays to the MAGA crowd, but he's just as dishonest. One of his favorite lines is “They couldn’t beat him politically, so they tried to bankrupt him. They failed at that, so they tried to impeach him. They failed at that, so they tried to put him in prison. They even tried to kill him.” Whichever persona he assumes, attack dog or affable colleague, the lies are the one consistent feature of his speeches.

Another up-and-comer, Mike Johnson, ever the reasonable sounding fellow, has become adept at MAGA lying. Just this weekend he went on Fox News and said that the federal response to Hurricane Helene is a failure.

That's a lie and he knows it. You can ask any of the Republican governors and local officials in the affected area and they will say that the feds have been on the ground since before the hurricane hit and have been excellently coordinating the massive response.

In the past one would have expected this sort of thing from the likes of Florida gadfly Rep. Matt Gaetz but not the Speaker of the House. This kind of blatant falsehood is now completely normal among Republicans. Johnson, like Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, sat for a Sunday show interview over the weekend and refused to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election. 

They are spreading these lies on social media and television and are backed up by Trump's eager endorser Elon Musk and a massive disinformation campaign. The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Indiana, for example, shared a fake image to blast the Biden administration's handling of hurricane relief, writing on X that "it doesn't matter if this image is AI-generated or real."

Then there is Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who was once a respectable conservative and considered a strong candidate for president. Today he sounds like a Russian trollbot going the truther route on what he falsely called "the fake" September jobs report:

The last two reports have been revised up, but that is beside the point. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a non-partisan agency. Rubio knows this. He is lying.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Republicans do this reflexively now, without any fear of repercussions from their voters, some of whom actually respect them for doing it while those poor souls who actually believe what they're saying give them money and take their lives into their hands. There is no price to be paid for dishonesty and evidently they believe they have something to gain.

This didn't start with Donald Trump, although he's the first one to turn a profit from it. This really started back in the 1990s with Newt Gingrich and the primer written by Republican strategist Frank Luntz called "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" for Gingrich's political action committee, GOPAC. A few years later we were lied into the Iraq war by the Bush administration. New York Times Magazine published an article in 2004 by reporter Ron Suskind who interviewed a senior administration aide, presumed to be Karl Rove, also known as Bush's Brain:

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.

I'm not sure Rove thought it would devolve into an orgy of lying about everything, distorting even their own concept of reality, but that's where we are now. (Thanks a lot Karl.) Perhaps it was inevitable that a celebrity demagogue and pathological liar would take the mantle of "history's actor" and turn it into political World Wide Wrestling but the consequences of this little experiment are dire.

We owe it to my young 17-year-old friend to do everything we can to turn this country back into a reality-based community. No society can function swimming in deceit and corruption for very long. And right now we are drowning in it. 

A Devil's Playbook

 

Trump, The Purge, Black Nazis and the Language of Apocalyptic Lies and Violence by Henry Giroux

 

Source: CP

At a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump invoked a chilling convergence of law, order, and violence—a cornerstone of what can only be described as his politics of disposability. By referencing The Purge, a dystopian film where the government legalizes all forms of violence, including murder, for 12 hours, Trump escalates his rhetoric to a dangerous metaphor. In his hands, “the purge” becomes more than just a narrative device; it embodies a vision in which state-sanctioned violence reaches its grotesque climax. This is not just careless talk. Trump’s invocation of The Purge reveals a willingness to use governmental power as a tool of extermination, targeting those he deems undesirable—immigrants, Black people, journalists, educators, and anyone daring to challenge his white Christian nationalist, neoliberal, and white supremacist agenda. Trump’s language is more than rhetoric—it is an incitement to harm, a prelude to atrocities.

Trump’s reference to The Purge signals a deeper embrace of militarized, fascist rhetoric that frames politics as war, with no limits on legality, morality, or humanity. It is a language soaked in the blood of history, recalling genocidal campaigns against Native Americans, Blacks, Jews, and countless others deemed disposable by authoritarian regimes. It is a dead language, a violent lexicon that gives birth to politicians with blood in their mouths, who weaponize fear, bigotry, and hatred, cloaking their destruction in the false promises of patriotism and security. Trump’s words are crafted to shatter the civic contract, arm citizens against one another, create the conditions for a civil war, and pave the way for a society ruled by fear, enforced by a police state. This language does more than shelter fascists; it silences dissent, normalizes torture, and echoes the horrors of death camps and crematoriums. It is the language of the unspeakable and the unimaginable, a terror that blinds us to the terrors of the unforeseen.

For the far right politicians like Trump, J.D. Vance, and others, fascist rhetoric and politics are now displayed and enacted as a badge of honor. There is more at work here than an echo of former authoritarian regimes. The ensuing threats from Trump and his warrior-soldier types lead directly to the Gulags and camps in a former age of authoritarianism. The spirit of the Confederacy along with an upgraded and Americanized version of fascism is back. The corpse-like orthodoxies of militarism, racial cleansing, and neoliberal fascism point to the bankruptcy of conscience, an instance in which language fails and morality collapses into barbarism, and a politics where any vestige of democracy is both mocked and attacked.

What is clear is that there is a massive rebellion against democracy taking place in the United States and across the globe. And it is not simply being imposed from above through military dictatorships or the morbid charisma of alleged circus performers. People now vote for fascist politics and politicians such as Trump, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbot, and others of their anti-democratic ilk. MAGA Republicans openly celebrate politicians who not only proudly dismiss democracy but also make racist remarks. CNN reported that Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for Governor of North Carolina, once referred to himself as a “black Nazi” and “expressed support for reinstating slavery” on a pornography website’s message board over a decade ago.[1]  Hannah Knowles, writing in The Washinton Post, offered the following deluge of offensive comments Robinson made before winning the GOP nomination for governor. She provides the following summary:

There was the time he called school shooting survivors “media prosti-tots” for advocating for gun-control policies. The meme mocking a Harvey Weinstein accuser, and the other meme mocking actresses for wearing “whore dresses to protest sexual harassment.” The prediction that rising acceptance of homosexuality would lead to pedophilia and “the END of civilization as we know it”; the talk of arresting transgender people for their bathroom choice; the use of antisemitic tropes; the Facebook posts calling Hillary Clinton a “heifer” and Michelle Obama a man.[2]

Despite the fact that Robinson has a long history of making misogynist, racist and anti-transgender comments, Trump has enthusiastically endorsed him, absurdly calling Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.”[3] The latter comment made in spite of the fact that Robinson once accused King Jr. “of being a white supremacist.”[4] This shocking alignment with unapologetic racists and would-be fascists underscores how far the party has strayed from democratic and moral principles. This is a party for whom The Purge is less a dystopian film than a model for how American society should be organized.

That such shocking comments are left largely uncriticized by the American public is largely the result of disimagination machines such as the mainstream media and far-right online platforms, many of which have become platforms for billionaires spreading conspiracy theories, that have become powerful ideological fictions—pedagogical machineries of political illiteracy inflicting upon the American people an astonishing vacancy that amounts to a moral and political coma.  As one writer for New York Magazine succinctly summarized, powerful social media platforms are now home to dangerous, illiterate fictions. He writes:

Bill Ackman, a wealthy hedge fund manager turned Trump supporter began posting uncontrollably about a right-wing theory that there is (or was) a whistleblower at ABC News, claims the network gave its questions to Harris in advance of the presidential debate, and then perished in a car crash. [He adds that] Elon Musk, one of the world’s wealthiest people and a large financial supporter of Trump’s ground operation, predicted on his social media platform that Harris’s first act if elected will be to ban X and arrest Musk.[5]

The rapid spread of such unfounded conspiracies highlights the dangerous intersection of wealth, political influence, and misinformation. Stacked atop the ever-growing mountain of lies and relentless conspiracy theories are the ceaseless media stories peddling the absurd and grotesque falsehoods that sacrifice the truth and social responsibility for mindless and often cruel political theater. Trump and his supine backers have ushered in an age of fabricated narratives that become clickbait for an ethically spineless media landscape, where both centrist and right-wing outlets spectacularize eye-popping stories for profit. Let’s be clear, this ploy goes beyond a politics of mere distraction.

The merging of lies, ignorance, and violence was on full display when Trump in a presidential debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. These racist lies did more than spurn endless memes and jokes on social media and late night comedy shows, they also produced a familiar pattern in which the city was subject “to bomb threats that shut down the elementary schools…swatting attacks meant to intimidate community members, [and a series] of high-speed-networked harassment that over the last few years has largely focused on community events for queer and trans people.”[6]  Such lies give Trump’s merry band of white supremacists and proto-Nazis the opportunity to smear immigrants, people of color, and anyone else considered disposable. In this instance, such language is more than a vehicle for spreading lies and misinformation. As Toni Morrison reminds us, “this systemic looting of language…does more than represent violence; it is violence.”[7]

What is often overlooked in mainstream media discussions of attacks on immigrants, Black people, and other marginalized groups is the driving force behind these assaults: white nationalism. Trump’s attacks on Haitian immigrants, for example, are frequently dismissed as mere racism when, in reality, they are part of a larger, insidious white nationalist agenda. These attacks are about more than just racism; they are a key aspect of white nationalism, which targets anyone who is not a white, wealthy, straight, Christian male. Under the guise of white replacement theory, a wide range of people—beyond just people of color—are “othered.”

This same white nationalist logic underpins the far-right assault on women’s reproductive rights, which seeks to control women’s bodies in the name of preserving white dominance. This exclusionary agenda extends beyond moral failings within the corporate-controlled media, representing a broader and more dangerous convergence of power, technology, and language that defends the unthinkable, unforgivable, and indefensible. This indiscriminate destruction invades daily life without restraint, ushering in a new era of “pedestrian warfare” where Palestinians are reduced to subjects in a morbid experiment.[8]   Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Associate Professor of Medicine at the American University of Beirut, describes this devastation as the “literal weaponization of electronic devices,” underscoring the immense suffering and death inflicted by this strategy.[9]

These intertwined projects—rooted in white nationalism, patriarchal control, and the militarization of everyday life—are glaringly evident in the assault on women’s reproductive rights, which seeks to control women’s bodies, particularly encouraging white women to have more children out of fear that people of color are increasing in number. By focusing on reproductive control, white nationalism seeks to preserve and expand its dominance through the fear of a growing population of people of color. Together, these strategies reflect a broader agenda of racial and gendered control, where domination extends from the battlefield into the most intimate aspects of life. What we are witnessing is a calculated and deliberate assault on the very foundations of democracy, undermining the fabric of society with each repeated lie. This death dealing agenda and the conditions that produce it remain largely invisible in a “21^st-century media ecosystem” that spews out language that merged corruption, lies, profits, and clouds of vagueness.

Under such circumstances, the underlying causes of poverty, dispossession, exploitation, misery, and massive suffering disappear in a spectacularized culture of silence, commodification, and cult-like mystifications. As civic culture collapses, the distinction between truth and falsehoods dissolves, and with it a public consciousness able to discern the difference between good and evil. Too many Americans have internalized what Paulo Freire once called the tools of the oppressor. They not only accept the shift in American politics towards authoritarianism, but they also support the idea itself.[10] Trump’s enduring public support is a chilling reflection of his overt embrace of fascist politics. He openly calls for revoking the Constitution, boasts of wanting to be a “dictator for a day,” and threatens to weaponize the presidency to imprison political opponents like Liz Cheney if he regains power.[11]

Trump’s rhetoric of violence and hatred is not mere political theater—it is a calculated assault on the very foundations of democratic life. His words are designed to dismantle all vestiges of social responsibility and the social state, erode democratic institutions, and pave the way for authoritarian rule. Far from alienating his base, this dangerous rhetoric galvanizes it, exposing a deep and unsettling readiness among many to forsake democratic principles in favor of tyranny. In a just society, language is the lifeblood of justice, equality, and democracy. Yet, under Trump, language has become a weapon of division, driven by white nationalism, white supremacy, and fear. His apocalyptic vision is the canary in the coal mine, a stark warning of the perils that lie ahead if we fail to act. As the United States teeters on the brink of fascism, the corruption of language into a tool of violence and exclusion signals an urgent crisis. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of democracy itself.

A Working Definition of Racism by Ricky Sherover-Marcuse

1. Human beings are members of the same species. The term 'racism' is useful as a shorthand way of categorizing the systematic mistreatment experienced by people of color and Third world people both in the United States and in many other parts of the world. But this term should not mislead us into supposing that human beings belong to biologically different species. We all belong to one race, the human race.

 

2. The systematic mistreatment experienced by people of color is a result of institutionalized inequalities in the social structure. Racism is one consequence of a self-perpetuating imbalance in economic, political and social power. This imbalance consistently favors members of some ethnic and cultural groups at the expense of others. The consequences of this imbalance pervade all aspects of the social system and affect all facets of people's lives.

 

3. At its most extreme, systematic mistreatment takes the form of physical violence and extermination, but it occurs in many other forms as well. Pervasive invalidation, the denial or the non-recognition of the full humanity of persons of color also constitutes the mistreatment categorized as racism. Putting the matter in these terms may clear up the confusion, which is generated by thinking of racism merely as 'different treatment'. If we examine the facts, we will see that what is often called 'different treatment' is in reality inhuman treatment, i.e. treatment which denies the humanity of the individual person and their group.

 

4. The systematic mistreatment of any group of people generates misinformation about them, which in turn becomes the 'explanation' of or justification for continued mistreatment. Racism exists as a whole series of attitudes, assumptions, feelings and beliefs about people of color and their cultures which are a mixture of misinformation, fear and ignorance. Just as 'the systematic mistreatment of people of color' means 'inhuman treatment', so 'misinformation about people of color' designates beliefs and assumptions that in any way imply that people of color are less than fully human. These beliefs and attitudes are not just neutral errors; they are impacted misinformation: ideas and opinions which are glued together with painful emotion and held in place by frozen memories of distressing experiences.

 

5. Because misinformation about people of color functions as the justification for their continued mistreatment, it becomes socially empowered or sanctioned misinformation. It is recycled through the society as a form of conditioning that affects everyone. In this way, misinformation about people of color becomes part of everyone's 'ordinary' assumptions. 6. For purposes of clarity, it is helpful to use the term 'internalized racism' or 'internalized oppression' to designate the misinformation that people of color may have about themselves and their cultures. The purpose of this term is to point out that this misinformation is consequence of the mistreatment experienced by people of color. It is not an inherent feature of their culture.

 

7. The term 'reverse racism' is sometimes used to characterize 'affirmative action' programs, but this is inaccurate. Affirmative action programs are attempts to repair the results of institutionalized racism by setting guidelines and establishing procedures for finding qualified applicants from all segments of the population.

 

8. The term 'reverse racism' is also sometimes used to characterize the mistreatment that individual whites may have experienced at the hands of individuals of color. This too is inaccurate. While any form of humans harming other humans is wrong because no one is entitled to mistreat anyone, we should not confuse the occasional mistreatment experienced by whites at the hands of people of color with the systematic and institutionalized mistreatment experienced by people of color at the hands of whites.

 

9. Racism operates as a strategy of divide and conquer. It helps to perpetuate a social system in which some people are consistently 'haves' and others are consistently 'have nots'. While the 'haves' receive certain material benefits from this situation, the long range effects of racism short change everyone. Racism sets groups of people against each other and makes it difficult for us to perceive our common interests as human beings.

Racism make us forget that we all need and are entitled to good health care, stimulating education, and challenging work. Racism limits our horizons to what presently exists. Racism makes us suppose that current injustices are 'natural', or at best, inevitable: "someone has to be unemployed; someone has to go hungry." Most importantly, racism distorts our perceptions of the possibilities for change; it makes us abandon our visions of solidarity; it robs us of our dreams of community.