Revere Them As Royalty, As Gods
National Guard Troops
At Los Angeles Civic Center, Federal Building
June 9, 2025 (Daniel Terna / NYT)
"How did you go bankrupt?""Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."-- Ernest Hemingway; The Sun Also Rises (1929)
When things happen, they come in a waterfall, a cascade, a torrent. If you haven't been paying attention, they will seem to appear as if by magic, out of nowhere. But they never do.
What's unfolding is not a surprise. It's not hyperbole, or an exaggeration. The Leader wants a blood sacrifice on the altar of his madness. His Orcs are working Sir Sir, yes Sir, to manufacture it.
Every passing day increases the possibility of live rounds being fired, someone dying -- and when that happens, all bets are off. It's what they want.
SFPD Faces Off Against Anti-ICE / Deportation Protesters,
San Francisco Mission District, June 9, 2025 (Lauren Elliot / NYT)
The Past Is Present, And Tense
Even with everything that's happened since January 20th, convincing people to believe that we're deep into a fascist coup and to do something is hard. And, we've had nearly a decade to understand that what's happening, right now, was coming.
In the long-ago 2021 (via The Soul Of America), Adolph Reed posted an observation ("The Whole Country Is The Reichstag"):
"The right-wing ... [has] a single concrete objective—taking absolute power in the U.S. as soon and as definitively as possible. And [they] even seemingly want, to destroy the social fabric of the country [in taking power] ...
"Discrediting government ... has been a component of the GOP game plan .. and Democrats have reinforced [that] in their own way. ...Four decades of retrenchment and privatization ... steadily increasing economic inequality and government’s failure to address it in any meaningful way [fuels a] lack of confidence, distrust, and hostility toward government ... and eventually even the idea of the public itself. And [Right-wing billionaires who] bankroll the ultraright have taken advantage of that, [stoking] frustration and rage into a dangerously authoritarian political force."
Campaign Commercial For Every Maga Rethug Candidate In 2026 --
Presuming We're Allowed Elections
(Los Angeles Civic Center, June 8, 2025)
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I grew up in the Fifties and Sixties. I believed in our long national Narrative of America as an imperfect country, always trying to Do Better, on a constant upward (and so, of course, liberal) arc into an inevitable future. That this idea looked identical to the post-WW2 economic boom enjoyed by white Americans, and may not have been good for other humans in other places, took time to learn.
National Guardsmen On The Streets Of Newark, NJ; April, 1967
In that Narrative, Watergate, Vietnam; riots every Summer in major American cities, and the National Guard in the streets; Nixon, Reagan, Bush; Forever War -- all could be seen as tragedies, regrettable episodes. So was the political Right. They were a Fringe, on the wrong side of history. The future would belong to a moderate, Liberal culture: always upwards. Of course it would.
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This Will Be On The Exam
Please listen to me when I say this -- and I want to be wrong -- but 50 years later, the children and grandchildren of the Silent Majority, the Birchers and the Klan, are back.
They're bully-mean in their MAGA caps and January 6, 2021 - Civil War T-Shirts. They see the world through small, piggish eyes, and they hate you.
They Have Pledged Their Lives And Sacred Honor, To This, The Leader
They hate Colored People and Foreigners, and Eggy-heads, and Libs and Gay and Trans People; and them Eee-leets, weak and soft. They think vaccines and science are evil. They love god; yes they do (somebody's god, anyway), and America. But they hate you, and want you to suffer and die.
America's Owners are delusional, and rich. Very, very rich. They don't like Trump, or the Base, or anyone who isn't part of their class. But they believe in keeping control of things, and expect some... regrettable, drastic measures are necessary. They want the same fate for you that The Base does.
The Base will be manipulated into doing those drastic things -- as people like them have done, time and again. And after the mass arrests, the kangaroo courts (if any), the private prisons filled; the mass graves covered over -- the Base will sing 'Amazing Grace' in celebration of 'god's great victory' over the evil demons they've expunged.
The likelihood this may play out, here in America, is no longer hyperbole. And I'm not the only person saying so.
In Middle Of Fascist Takeover
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I'll Take 'White Nationalist Political Narratives' For A Thousand, Alex
In 2021, author George Packer noted in The Atlantic that America's national narrative, Our Story, is a string of crises -- all leading to 'how we got out of it'. How we overcame and went on to even greater triumph: Upwards, always upwards.
But, Packer said, we don't have one unified Story of America -- we have four. The one chosen by the religious and political Right is that of a beautiful America, stolen from its people by immigrants, noisy and uppity People of Color, Women, Liberals, Socialists; LGBTQ+, and (the Base won't say so out loud, yet) Jews and Muslims and Catholics.
The issues Trump had campaigned on waxed and waned ...What remained was the dark energy he unleashed... Trump’s people still talked about freedom, but they meant blood and soil. Their nationalism was like the ethno-nationalisms on the rise in Europe ... Trump abused every American institution ... and his people cheered. Nothing excited them like owning the libs.
The beautiful America can only return when these demon-possessed culture-despoilers are destroyed. When our Blood and Land is cleansed and purified. Then all will be good again.
America's Right has been told to prepare, and plan, for a confrontation -- final, bloody, retributive; like battle on the plains of Armageddon.. Trump's core sycophants -- Miller, Noems and Gabbard, Homan, Patel and Hesgeth -- are using this narrative like a blueprint. It's the logical culmination of forty years of victimhood propaganda and hatred.
They've tied their fate as human beings to making this happen. It's why there are armed troops in Los Angeles. Something has to happen. It's the story arc of a cheap thriller -- Rising Action, leading to a Cliffhanger Climax; then to a Resolution -- and the ending is inevitable: It's Victory. It's "Owning The Libs".
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You Heard The Fist Here First
In the face of ever-more open corruption and misuse of presidential authority, the Democratic Left is splintered. Democratic leadership is divided at the DNC, and with few exceptions, Congressional leaders seem to focus on how the Right will be judged in the historical record. They send sternly worded letters, and make focus-tested remarks on PBS.
But it's 2025. This is Crazy Donny 2.0. American democracy is a store that's being looted right in front of us. It's clear, then, the People must act. We're human beings, and You Don't Own Us.
The Left needs to come together around popular leadership who gives voice not just to criticism of Crazy Donny and his Lieutenants, but in defining why we're standing up -- a vision that doesn't include the Neoliberal shuck-and-jive of the Clinton and Obama years. All this shouldn't even be a question.
The Leader, During The 2024 Campaign
The lies and hatred broadcast for forty years by Limbaugh, by the Murdochs and their hand-picked talking heads, are in the "historical record". But the Right thinks: we're Owning The Libs. It is all about the naked use of power, and using that power to enrich yourself.
Los Angeles is a provocation. The situation is like a madman with a gun, who keeps walking towards you while screaming, Don't get any closer!! I'm warnin' ya!! I told ya -- stop comin' at me!! Finally, he shoots you, shouting, See what you did?? Told ya!! Told ya!! You Libs made me do it!!
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Troops Loudly Cheered Him; Booed Mentions Of Biden And "Gavin Newscum";
Los Angeles... [is] a trash heap... Generations of Army heroes
did not shed their blood... only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion...
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City Of Angles
This is playing out in Los Angeles. It's a test: Crazy Donny and the Rethugs say America is being invaded and that's all he needs to "save" the country through mass ICE raids, no due process, deportations. Protests occur; troops are federalized. How quickly will People normalize military occupation? How quickly will a cowed media downplay coverage of any public protests in response?
Los Angeles is a crisis, manufactured to fit the political narrative fed to the manipulated Base. It's an excuse for what The Leader and his Lieutenants want -- an America resembling Russia, or North Korea.
They either have to make that Dystopia real -- to pull the trigger -- or give up their power. I suggest they will burn everything to the ground before they give up anything.
Los Angeles is a scaled-down version of what that vision looks and feels like. It's a public warning to other state Governors, to ordinary citizens. It's an operational prototype for bringing the ICE immigration excuse to a city near you -- federalizing National Guards; bypassing Governors and Mayors. If thwarted, Crazy Donny may invoke the Insurrection Act, his 'legal' basis for occupying America; he loves to double down.
If The People don't rise up and peaceably, legally, push back on all of this, the Right wins. They'll Own The Libs. Only, they don't just want to own us. They want to destroy us.
They demand not only that People fear them, but revere them, like royalty; like gods.
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