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Everything we now see and hear services one monstrous lie… that the Trump Regime is somehow a legitimate American Presidency. Any media reference to DOJ or the FBI, the State Department, and of course ICE, even ancillary organizations like the Kennedy Center, relies on the patently false premise that these institutions actually function in line with their mission statements in service to the public good. That’s a preposterous fiction. 

What makes the whole thing full Orwellian is that  the regime makes no effort to mask its sedition. Trump, Leavitt, Patel, Bondi, Musk, Noem, Rubio, Grenell – the list is endless – have been transparent in their declarations about pursuing agendas fully at odds with the oaths to the Constitution all swore to. It’s simply that the GOP, Democrats and nearly the full media landscape, don’t just ignore their overt criminality, but actually remold it to fit in as legitimate policy created in good faith by the Administration.

Kash Patel isn’t pretending to do anything other than obstruct justice in Minnesota. His direction to deny state investigators access to details about both ICE murders has been unequivocal. “Do something about it” is the attitude Trump demands from his yes people; all of them relish providing it. 

Marco Rubio sat through several Senate hearings where one former colleague after another denounced his craven destruction of USAID and his outright betrayal of Ukraine as anathema to virtually everything he was about as a Senator. Only pathological shamelessness could explain his indifference to the dishonor committee members vividly described. Yet and still, Rubio did nothing to conceal or revise the treachery he carried out from day one. He owned his obedience.

When Senator Chris Van Hollen outlined in detail Rubio’s slavish implementation of DOGE’s gutting of virtually the entire array of resources for Post-War US Diplomacy, mindless destruction that promptly created starvation conditions in a number of dependent areas, Trump’s lackey merely quipped “… your regret for voting for me merely confirms I am doing a good job.” No attempts to deny the gist of Van Hollen’s condemnation, just the full Pam Bondi approach of disdain for oversight.

Like the entire Trump Cabinet – which regularly displays how servile each member is during sickening roundtable spectacles that make North Korean photo ops seem contentious – Rubio has no problem accepting as his primary duty grotesque sycophancy. It’s everyone else’s problem to make it fit as the actual pursuit of US national interests. Tragically for all of us, few seem to mind making that effort. 

Nihilism is all about destroying what was previously created. For 30 plus years Fox/AM has indoctrinated its walking dead to believe the generational continuity of US governance has been a conspiratorial erosion of their once paramount societal status. The first Murdoch Presidency was contained by parameters it wasn’t yet prepared to destroy. The 2.0 version suffers no such limitations. 

Treason as an American Presidency is an era we very well might not survive in tact. When historians survey our epitaph years hence, they will surely scratch their heads about how the continual siege a totalitarian imposed on America could be fecklessly reduced to “affordability” and “overreach” issues. Perhaps ICE atrocities are snapping us out of our stupor and clarifying the menace we face. Pray it’s not too late. BC

History will determine that there was perhaps no more disastrous event than when Ronald Reagan dismantled The Fairness Doctrine in 1987. The prohibition on one-sided, advocacy-driven broadcasting formats served America well for almost 40 years. Its end presaged the poisoning of our national discussion… with ruinous results.  The most disgusting irony that now insults us every day is how Fox News hijacked the doctrines’ principle requirement… that broadcasters present news and information in a “fair and balanced” manner.

Fox charlatan Roger Ailes, along with a failed disc jockey named Rush Limbaugh, were visionary in understanding the market share that could be mined from White grievance and resentment with The Fairness Doctrine gone. The rest will be remembered as one of American history’s greatest tragedies, a stake plunged into democracy’s heart.

Fox and its AM talk radio accompanists ARE the original and primary tumor responsible for the civic cancer that is destroying us. Future scholars will be as flummoxed as to why this critical cause-and-effect connection was so discounted in real-time as post-war students were about how Hitler was able to beguile his minions. 

The record is clear on the culpability of both of America’s major political parties in the warping of our civic discourse. They allowed Rupert Murdoch, a foreign tycoon with a well-deserved reputation for Machiavellian pursuit of profits, to transform informing the American public from a revered duty to strictly an opportunity for profits. He and Ailes introduced and relentlessly enhanced a national news network founded on the premise that America’s entire news and information ecosystem was evil and corrupt, fully servile to the political well being of the Democratic Party and its sinister “elite” masters.

If Democrats were cluelessly neglectful of the danger Ailes and company posed, establishment Republicans were seditiously complicit in their efforts to harness Fox/AM’s hate to their electoral advantage. The bottom was reached when, after Trump insulted and slandered the entire 2016 Republican Presidential primary field, the GOP’s establishment leadership congealed to promote the full plethora of his first term outrages and twice direct rank and file to acquit patently impeachable conduct. Such craven opportunism turned out to be suicide as the McConnells, Cheneys and Bushes were devoured by Fox/AM’s rabble. 

Now the Republican Party is dead, in its place is the monster Fox/AM’s evolution was certain to end up with. The Democrats lay mortally wounded, still unable to summon the political will required to call MAGA what it is. And every minute of every day Fox/AM rejuvenates the fanatical ardor of its totalitarian mob. 

The beasts that now fully control American power are racing to implement one sick Trump imagining after another, destroying any constructive governance while creating everything required for a determinitive clampdown on opponents. Meanwhile, Democrats cling to the hope that the electoral system MAGA gratuitously assaults on the hour will deliver them the “Blue Tsunami” required to “put the brakes on Trump’s extreme agenda.” This despite the regime promising again and again to ignore the legitimacy of such a majority if not arrest its membership. 

This is the state of affairs we currently endure  What can be done? More than 30 years of 24/7 fixation on White bitterness and the lie of Lost Cause nobility created a unifying political narrative that has brought us to the abyss. And while we may have less than one year to figure out how to save ourselves, certainly the rage felt while witnessing this regime commit crimes against humanity and plunder our national treasure at will, not to mention trample our precious liberty, provides the high-test fuel required to power a movement.

But the spark will never ignite without clear-eyed leadership that recognizes our circumstance and is willing to message accordingly. If we can’t unify around a righteous narrative of saving America from the evils Trumpism now pursues without accountability… well, as Lincoln, the leadership standard a now deceased GOP abandoned made clear from within the wreckage of our last conflagration, we will perish.

Fox/AM packaged lies and manipulations to successfully sell ruin as salvation. This is a moment to demand leadership determined to sell the truth… that time is short for saving a democracy the world depends on as much as we do. What could be more important? BC

The quest for civil rights in America took a decisive turn in the mid-60s when national news operations showed the brutality of Jim Crow on the ground in real time. Most all of us not fully poisoned with the savage hatred racism from the crib incubates were shocked at dogs tearing into the legs of peaceful protesters. The frenzied sadism of Bull Conners and company created a tipping point, a referendum on decency. 

A collective understanding was reached that tolerating such barbarism was simply too much hypocrisy. No nation claiming to be “Land of the Free” could withstand such a blatant contradiction. But even more importantly, if you could countenance such abuse you weren’t much of a Christian; in fact, you were a pretty rotten person. And so the U.S. seemed to finally move on from the Civil War and genuinely changed for the much better. 

Now it appears we are right back where we started. Only this time it isn’t states defying the federal government; it’s the government defiling the states. This time it isn’t the dying breath of a lost cause; it’s a White House guided by the most grotesque lies southern mythology created. And this time the group being set upon came here of their own accord, lured by what now turns out to be fraudulent promises of humanity. They were not kidnapped from where they were born… they are instead now being abducted and forcibly exiled without due process to places many thanked God they had escaped from. 

To be clear, every one of us has been taught from grade school that the immigrant experience couldn’t be more American… after all, we are a “nation of immigrants.” Unlike slavery, which always stood as a violent insult to our founding principles, welcoming the “tired and hungry masses” has from the start been a primary national aspiration. None other than Ronald Reagan himself declared “anyone from anywhere can come and become an American.”  

The nightmare is showing up in Internet videos. They started as a trickle, but now flood most news platforms not consciously trying to suppress them. One vivid video account after another of masked gangs of mostly white and conspicuously overweight tormentors, armed to the teeth, descending on terrified Latino targets. Nothing seems beyond them in terms of gratuitous cruelty as they confront and seek to detain their prey. Most are clearly untrained, even absurdly unskilled, at the job of taking “suspects” into custody. So Federal agents often punch and flail as their victims scream for help, often as a crowd of bystanders yells helplessly at the thugs. 

Each episode is as shocking as the next. Yet and still, some are especially despicable, such as when ICE agents held a woman’s child hostage in her front yard to coerce her out of her home, a sanctuary they know they can’t legally enter. The child is surrounded by villains as his mother pleads with them to let him come to her. They respond by taunting her to come out to them. 

That this is actually happening here speaks to more than total civic failure; it clarifies the amorality 30 years of Fox/AM programming has produced in millions of Americans. If Jesse Waters and Greg Gutfeld can make light of it, how bad can it really be? Don’t believe your eyes, or your heart, trust them instead… Bill O’Reilly’s former personal assistant and a failed comic. 

Every day, 24/7, it is the same mantra. These illegals deserve what’s now coming to them. Promises made, promises kept. Don’t overthink things. Tough love is never easy. It takes fortitude.  At Auschwitz the Nazis proclaimed “work will set you free.” On Fox, and at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the message is “dehumanization and abject cruelty make you brave.”

While DHS refuses to respond to any press inquiries about its now constant violation of basic human rights, Director Kristi Noem “couldn’t be more proud of our ICE agents.” This, even as it’s now public knowledge the recruitment and training of new ICE personnel is so haphazard and chaotic that virtually no standards are being enforced and a majority of recruits are wholly unqualified for the job. So like most every other facet of this Keystone Cop regime, there is the certainty things will always get worse. MAGA knows no bottom. 

All of which circles back to the issue of what America is or isn’t able to stomach regarding clear and constant crimes against humanity. A shameful development of Trump’s 2nd term has been the lack of outrage from within the Democratic Congressional and Senate caucuses toward what is unfolding, even as the regime promises much more is on the way.

Of course, MAGA has flooded the zone with one outrage after another, a generalized assault on the rule of law and constructive governance. One can sympathize to a point about the difficulties triaging a list of priorities under such unprecedented circumstances. But from the start the silence has been deafening among most Democrats toward this stream of ICE atrocities. Regardless of whatever else is going on, how can stopping this madness not be priority one for any lawmaker with eyes, ears and a basic sense of decency?! 

The depressing explanation may be that in blue states thus far spared the full-scale ICE assaults that Oregon, Illinois and California have suffered, constituents still can’t get too worked up about a group they don’t fully empathize with. After all, an overwhelming majority of voters wanted undocumented immigrants deported coming into Decision 2024. Even after witnessing every day the ugliness of MAGA fascists fulfilling that campaign pledge, it’s not them and theirs being targeted. So the needle still hasn’t moved like it should to provide the sense of urgency the crisis deserves. 

That tragic disconnect assures that things will get worse before they get better. Far too few still can’t understand that if these criminals are not held to account for outrages against immigrants they define as scum, they surely won’t answer for transgressions against Black Lives Matter demonstrators they label as terrorists, or trans people they deem to be sexual deviants, or Jews they accuse of disloyalty, or liberals they just hate. It’s not a slippery slope; it is the edge of a cliff. 

Sixty years ago shocking footage from the Deep South forced Whites in the US  to realize the trials Black America was enduring mattered to the nation’s story and was worth confronting. Those of us not poisoned by MAGA hemlock better come to similar conclusions about the immigrant community and their essential connection to our country’s basic anatomy pretty damn quickly or their despair will surely soon be ours as well. BC

In late February of 1933, not more than a month after Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, an arsonist set the German Reichstag building ablaze. Located in the heart of Berlin, the venerable Reichstag was where the German Parliament met, so the crime attracted the nation’s focus. 

It is important to note that the police services in charge of investigating the fire were now fully under Nazi control. A few hours after the incident they confidently declared Communists were responsible.  Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist, was arrested at the site, and the Nazis promptly accused the Communist Party of seeking to overthrow the government. 

Within a day The Reichstag Fire Decree was enacted and  civil rights in Germany were abolished. A little more than a year later came The Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler and his inner circle murdered most everyone seen as an obstacle to his total dominance of German rule. The totalitarian control of Nazi edicts pervaded German life from that moment forward. 

When a nation gives way to fascism it quite literally falls apart, the logical result of accepting daily routines clouded by lies and deceit from the institutions meant to solve the governing challenges truth reflects. When facts are systematically repressed personal relationships, community ties, and  national unity become hostage to who can accept the emerging upside down status quo and who can’t. 

Many, maybe most, will sacrifice the civic duty and personal esteem democracy left unmolested to adjust in favor of continuing to pursue routines without interruption. Fewer won’t.  The tension between those unwilling to challenge a new fabrication based on the divisive intrigue despotism requires and those who refuse to accept it and feel disappointment, even betrayal, in friends and family who do will simmer and eventually boil over. The degree to which authoritarian control succeeds is easy to quantify; the first group steadily increases as the latter group is purged, or its members flee the country, or they just surrender and keep their mouths shut. 

Ironically, while a system falls to political extremism, those who move most ardently to confront its collapse are very often branded as at least equal part of the problem. Those desperately seeking to avoid conflict and hold on to normalcy lose interest in distinguishing who they resent for making waves. Many of those who give up the fight do so because of the toll taken on their close relationships.

Becoming a pariah is not pleasant, even if you believe in the lines you are drawing, the reasonable demands you are making. And the battle between criminals willing to lie and hurt for power and those who just want to put bread on the table, perhaps enjoy their famous chicken wings and the NFL every Sunday, is never any contest at all. Democracy dies in the shadows of avoiding drama. 

This last week has been particularly disheartening. One can detest a man’s murder and still be sickened by the MAGA crusade to make Charlie Kirk, not just a martyr, but a towering intellect and courageous communicator. The elevation of Kirk is the deification of Fox/AM, the enshrinement of its long crusade against liberal democracy. 

It’s not essential to go over Charlie Kirk’s well established record as a rightist provocateur. A two-minute Google session will provide all the education one needs as to whether or not his worldview reflected the values and traditions the American brand has stood for. It would be gratuitous to recite it here… and perhaps, now, dangerous. But it is clear that by the time of his shocking murder Kirk had become a ubiquitous symbol of the immense power Fox/AM’s platform provided those with the willingness and energy to both target the various audience blocs  it coveted and recite the relentless talk track it demanded. 

He deployed his youth and vigor, along with a willingness to confront critics directly, to beguile a younger generation of reactionaries the same way Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck had entranced their elders. Like his predecessors, who learned at the feet of OGs Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh, Kirk understood that the name of the game is validation, rendering otherwise bygone tropes of racial bias and societal intolerance we thought had been vanquished as destructive elements of our national conversation, not just acceptable but valuable, not merely understandable, but actually commendable. More importantly, critics of such thinking weren’t only wrong, they were sinister and dangerous. That perilous illogic is his legacy. 

But whatever Charlie Kirk may have wanted to achieve, whatever he hoped his legacy would be, at the end of the day in this sick nation he did more than his fair share to addle, his killing is being processed as nothing more than a pretext, no different from Berlin arson almost a century ago. Charlie Kirk’s abominable slaying has been ingested as a watershed justification for the MAGA menace to eliminate the remaining strictures on its ability to hurt who it pleases, destroy who it wants. 

Whatever “thoughts and prayers” were being offered to Kirk’s widow and children, they were surely drowned out by a line of the MAGA-Fox/AM political and media class that stretched around the block, each inciting violent retribution against “the radical left for Charlie”. Of course, the rot starts at the top, and these days our diseased POTUS is incapable of anything other than rank sedition and authoritarian tropes. His promise is to go after “each and every one of those responsible… for radical left political violence.” 

The MAGA (formerly Republican) Party leadership is seizing on the notion that Kirk’s slaying cleanses it pure, and calling attention to the fascism  it now actively embraces is a hate crime because “leftist hatred” is primarily responsible for US disunity. Meanwhile, in Huntington Beach, California a frightening crowd of unabashed Caucasian testosterone screamed in unison “White Men Fight Back!”  Few doubted their affiliation. 

What we are left with is fascism on the move, ready to get busy on a societal clampdown MAGA totalitarianism was always going to clammer for at some point. How we resist it requires what has always been demanded… courage, unity, but most of all a collective recognition of the crisis and what is at stake, which is everything. It is disheartening to see friends one loves and needs shrink from this basic set of responsibilities. It is more painful still to be ostracized for sounding the clarion call of what one knows is right. Yet and still, there are no other options now. The White Walkers are at the gate! BC

When children with autism, like my son Luke, move into adulthood, they leave a world dedicated to their care and well being to face a new reality that merely attempts to tolerate them. The politics of autism before the age of 22 are all about providing resources and activities designed to meet the group’s developmental requirements. The politics of life after 22 abruptly changes to dealing with the fact that every child you wanted to help becomes an adult society is forced to accommodate—most of whom need assistance more than ever. America did alright by children with autism. The adults they became? Not so much. 

Autism is a spectrum disorder, which means there is a wide range in how the condition presents in those it affects. From fully functional to being unable to use a bathroom or even feed oneself, Autism runs the full gamut. But this much is certain: for every success story about a child with autism successfully transitioning to productive adulthood there are several who will need constant supervision their entire lives. The only thing that changes for them is the amount of community resources their caregivers receive.  That is a fact. 

Luke is considered about the middle of the spectrum. He is verbal but not conversational. That means he can speak fluently and let you know any basic need or desire he has, but he is near fully incapable of conversation or detailing anything that is bothering him. He refuses to discuss any health or emotional malady he may suffer from, instead plaintively reassuring us that “I’m fine!” Of course, this is a tremendous problem, as everything becomes a guessing game, and resolution becomes a hit or miss slog. Otherwise innocuous conditions—such as a sore throat or constipation—go unaddressed and escalate from nuisance to substantial concern. 

Despite his autism, Luke was generally a very happy child, largely because his mother is one-of-kind. Sue made certain his days were filled with structure and activity. Fairfax County schools were, for the most part, all in on making sure 8:00AM to 3:00 PM supplied a support structure Luke could rely on. His routines were his lifeblood, and everything started with a school bus showing up at his front door. 

They call what happens to kids like Luke—when they turn 22 and suddenly most things they counted on disappear— “falling off the cliff.” For Luke nothing hurt more than when that school bus stopped coming. Suddenly there was a big, empty, awful void in his life. What organized his existence and provided the meaning necessary to look forward was no longer there; and no matter how hard we struggle to replace it, moving on is very difficult for him to do. He’s still trying. 

Now 25 and preyed upon by a condition that mimics seizures and baffles neurologists past their certainty it is related to OCD and not physiological, Luke heroically plows forward. But now his days have morphed into a constant battle against anxiety and frustration. He is preoccupied with trying to replace that bus, fill that hole. Some days he can, some days he cannot.

The worst episodes can be violent, although he isn’t attempting to hurt anybody. For his entire childhood we were successful at keeping him off any psychotropic medications. While many of his peers gained weight and became sluggish, Luke matured into a physical specimen with boundless energy. But now we have no choice… it’s Ativan or crisis once he goes dark. And no matter how many good days he can string together, one bad one is devastating  and feels like we are back where we started. 

Central to our hopes that Luke will find his way is the adult occupational program Sue was finally able to enroll him in. Five days a week, 9AM to 3PM he is deployed with some of his oldest friends to different local businesses who participate. With prompting and guidance Luke is a great worker, but we are under no illusions about his limitations. Without near constant supervision he loses focus and becomes more distraction than asset. Yet and still, he now has a new routine that he can rely on. It’s not the school bus, but it offers the central organization he must have to look ahead rather than dwell on behind. Without it he would be lost… we would be lost. 

Most all programs for disabled adults work on shoestring budgets that rely heavily on Medicaid funding. During the best of times they are all out to maintain staff levels, pay rent, and cover the myriad of expenses serving a group of fully reliant individuals requires. Everything seems hand-to-mouth with near zero room for error. Now they face legislation fashioned to close their doors. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), while adding near $4 trillion to the federal debt over ten years, mostly due to tax cuts for the upper brackets, will also slash Medicaid by $1 trillion over the same period. That means, based on the federal contribution to the 2023 Medicaid Budget of $614 billion, roughly 15 percent of crucial funding will be lost. States must now either make up the difference out of their end, something that likely would require always unpopular tax increases, or force programs to be eliminated. 

It is almost impossible these days to bring up the subject of autism with a new acquaintance and not have them immediately reply back about their own experience with a family member or close friend. Indeed, It is no longer hyperbole to say autism impacts near everyone to some degree. Yet the MAGA (formerly Republican) Party is desperately trying to pass a thousand pages of gratuitous cruelty that all agree will devastate programs few in this community can do without. 

For months now, both in the House and Senate, advocates of the disabled have pleaded with lawmakers by pinpointing exactly how the neediest will suffer should the bill become law. They have been met with indifference and disdain, even arrested for their trouble. After all, MAGA cultists believe empathy is synonymous with “woke,” compassion a liberal disorder. 

Incredibly, MAGA Senators were not satisfied with the amount cut in the House version of the BBB. Florida Senator Rick Scott – who as CEO of Columbia/CHA oversaw such extensive Medicare and Medicaid impropriety that the company eventually conceded to the Department of Justice in 2002 and entered into what was then the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history – thought $1 trillion in cuts too timid, and sought another $319 billion. Scott claimed he was just trying to preserve the program for “those who truly need it.”

American democracy has from the start been based on enlightened self-interest. Understanding that some things you support or oppose don’t directly impact you, but are instead part of a balance of competing interests pluralism demands, is how America has prospered since its inception. MAGA nihilism is assaulting that proposition every hour now in both chambers of Congress and the White House. 

The certain passage of the BBB will codify American oligarchy at the expense of its neediest citizens. More than a despicably regressive redistribution of resources, it provides the clearest indication to date that MAGA Party members will endanger their own electoral futures backing what they know will be reviled in cowardly subservience to Trump and his donor class. Or perhaps it demonstrates most of them believe free and fair elections will no longer burden them. Either way, all of us without chauffeurs and security details will suffer. Whether white or black, MAGA cultist or otherwise, countless families across America are about to discover their school buses won’t be coming by anytime soon. BC

Over ten days in January of 1943, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met off the coast of Morocco in what would be known as the Casablanca Conference. Despite the absence of Russia’s Josef Stalin—now an ally after Adolf Hitler shattered the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact by launching Operation Barbarossa eastward on June 22, 1941—Roosevelt and Churchill were determined to establish the broad strokes of modern history’s most significant military collaboration. 

At the top of the decision list was whether to pursue unconditional surrender. In retrospect, the decision to insist on it appears to be a no-brainer. After all, who would trust any truce deal Hitler would sign on to? And expecting the zealots of Japan’s military to accede to half-measures now seems ludicrous.  But it was less straightforward in real time, particularly to the British who, unlike the Americans, would have to occupy the same continent as Stalinist Russia after the war ended. 

Churchill considered Roosevelt’s view of Stalin naive and shortsighted. Several Eastern European governments-in-exile—especially Poland—expected Britain to atone for Neville Chamberlain’s Munich appeasement and for Stalin’s atrocities in territories ceded to him under the Non-Aggression Pact, by championing their cause in any post-war settlement. That would become far more difficult once the Red Army was occupying vast stretches of territory.

For his part, FDR had little sympathy for Churchill’s concerns about Russia. He was far more worried about the Red Army being defeated and the Reich redirecting its full might westward once again than about post-war power struggles. When they had talked at other times, Stalin had relentlessly pressed this point, repeatedly emphasizing the disproportionate sacrifices the USSR was making. Win the war first, FDR reasoned—Churchill’s post-war concerns would be problems worth having.

Deciding on a strategy of unconditional surrender carried immense repercussions and responsibilities. Once announced, the stakes would rise dramatically—Axis leaders, now understanding that they personally faced the hangman’s noose, had nothing left to lose. It was like a prosecutor in a criminal trial seeking the death penalty: the jury, fully aware of the gravity of a guilty verdict, knew it would carry the most severe consequences imaginable.

Responding to Donald Trump’s post last week on Truth Social calling for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, posed a reasonable question: “Who would we surrender to?” Indeed, there are no boots on the ground anywhere near Tehran, and neither Israel nor the U.S. had suggested anything about actually invading the country. The demand—like most of Trump’s posts on Truth Social—appeared out of nowhere, offering yet more evidence of how unserious yet dangerously volatile the U.S. has become since January.

It has long been clear that Trump reads little, if anything. He apparently disdains the practice so much that he refuses to engage in one of the presidency’s most crucial rituals: reviewing the daily intelligence briefing. His aversion is so pronounced that even his normally unquestioning inner circle is scrambling to repackage the information in a form he might actually consume.

For example, Deputy Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard has been floating the idea of creating daily video briefings—“like Fox News”—to put Trump at ease and make him more receptive to real-world developments. Even so, teaching an old dog and all that. Even if news of Iran achieving nuclear weapons status were delivered with a servile grin by Jesse Watters or Sean Hannity, there’s been no reported progress on getting Trump to pay attention to things that need to be read. After all, Trump has always insisted that flying blind is fine—because he prefers to “rely on my gut instincts.”

On Saturday, Trump reached deep into his intestinal tract and ordered a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities—something previous administrations, both Republican and Democrat (including his own first term, when adults still occupied the West Wing and led the Pentagon), had recognized as a perilous last resort. They understood such an action risked triggering a chain of events no one could control. Just how close Iran truly is to possessing a nuclear weapon remains a matter ongoing debate.

Israel justified its recent bombing campaign with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu declaring, “Iran has taken steps that it has never taken before: steps to weaponize enriched uranium.” However, as recently as March, Gabbard testified that Tehran’s weapons program remained dormant, stating, “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

Regardless, once Trump began posting about “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” the point became moot. As soon as the manic social media posts began, it was clear—as always with Trump—that the rational actor model no longer applied. Facts would take a backseat to whim; we were now on Mar-a-Lago time. On Saturday, that clock struck high noon, and without notifying NATO or informing Congressional Democrats, Trump plunged America into yet another Middle Eastern quagmire. Though avoiding foreign wars was one of the few consistent messages he conveyed during the 2024 campaign, when push came to shove, his inner autocrat seemed to understand instinctively that nothing distracts and legitimizes like a well-timed bombing campaign.

Of course, Trump declared the strikes a “spectacular success”—but that’s highly doubtful. First, because nearly everything he says is a lie inversely proportional to the superlatives he uses. And second, because common sense collides with any overly optimistic scenario. It’s hard to believe that, upon learning its sovereignty was being challenged, Iran didn’t activate long-standing contingency plans to relocate and safeguard uranium and centrifuges. Moreover, even the most optimistic weapons analysts have long acknowledged that the odds are long that even “bunker buster” munitions can penetrate deeply enough to decisively cripple enrichment operations.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—whose credibility far exceeds that of Orange Pinocchio—issued blistering rebukes last week following Israel’s bombing sorties against Iran. The agency reiterated its warning that “armed attacks on nuclear facilities could result in radioactive releases with grave consequences within and beyond the boundaries of the State which has been attacked.” Unsurprisingly, Trump has shown no concern for those ramifications and has given no indication of even briefly considering them.

Totalitarianism and outward aggression go hand in hand; one cannot exist without the other. New fears must always be stoked, new enemies always kept at the ready. Since January, Trump and the criminal MAGA Party—formerly known as the Republican Party, now dedicated to polishing his wing tips—have unleashed a torrent of fascist assaults aimed at sowing chaos, paralyzing American governance, and dismantling the rule of law. Yet all that destruction is now treated as yesterday’s news, as the normalization machine elevates a demented scoundrel to the status of statesman.

Sunday morning, The Washington Post blared the headline: “Trump promises tragedy for Tehran if it retaliates.” Dan Balz, the doddering dean of inside-the-Beltway punditry, gushed that the bombing was “both extraordinary and unprecedented… President Donald Trump has taken the United States to a place no previous president was prepared to go.” Talk about turning frozen burger patties into filet mignon.

Meanwhile, buried on page A3 was reporting on the chaotic collapse of Social Security customer service, with one employee noting that call times are “exploding.” Callers are no longer given wait time estimates, and field office operations have been severely crippled. One anonymous staffer blamed the crisis on “mismanagement driven in part by DOGE.” Just one of countless disasters deliberately set in motion by Trump—now overshadowed by a war he intentionally launched. Distract, scapegoat, and terrify: the ruinous triad of nihilist tyranny we must never surrender to. —BC

When the Nazis were elected into power in 1933, they controlled less than 3 percent of the German Press. The dominant media entity at the time was the Ullstein publishing house, created in 1877 by a prominent Jewish family. It grew to become Europe’s most successful publisher. By 1927 the firm had erected the newest and near-tallest building in Berlin as its headquarters, called the Ullsteinhaus. 

Needless to say, chief Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels had his sights set on the firm from day one of the Reich’s ascendance. Through a process that would be called “Aryanization” the Nazis first forced the Ullstein family to resign from the company’s board of directors. They then coerced the sale of the publishing empire, valued conservatively at $60 million, for less than a tenth of its market value. 

By 1937 the Ullstein Verlag had become the Deutscher Verlag (German Publishing House) and would operate as the central publishing organ of the Nazi Party for the rest of the Third Reich’s existence. Goebbels et al would enjoy the full resources built meticulously through decades by the Ullsteins, employing Europe’s most advanced information platform to ennoble and normalize a catastrophic agenda and the crimes against humanity it was created to pursue. 

History is clear about how ruthlessly the Nazis persecuted German media to conform reality to their nefarious worldview, to make lies truth. Certainly, Jewish journalists understood from day one any facts about the Reich would have to be sent out from abroad, publishing within Nazi-ruled confines was suicide. Those who courageously tempted fate in the regime’s early days were quickly made examples of, showing how merciless jackboot violence would be. 

It becomes tragically more accurate as the weeks pass to compare Nazi Germany’s descent into totalitarianism’s abyss with America’s current slide down MAGA’s nihilist slope. The previously unfathomable eagerness of US corporate media to normalize most all of Trumpworld’s stench, from the overt corruption of ridiculous Presidential pardons and Bitcoin receptions to the outright atrocity of disappearing immigrants to foreign hells, provides a vile point of comparison to Pre-WWII Nazi Germany. Nothing since last November has been more disheartening for patriots desperately in need of a daily rallying point to confront what can’t be allowed to stand.  

MAGA, like the Nazis, Soviets, Chinese Communists and every other regime who, as the great diplomat and historian George Kennan observed, share a pathological insecurity about the legitimacy of their rule and standing among other nations, fixates on validating its hatred toward an enemies list that only expands. Those who help it do so darken the future. Fox/AM created Trump, but ABC, NBC et al now sustains both him and the servile MAGA political class that works only to codify his rabid impulses. 

Every day we now witness the comfortable routine our craven press corps has fallen into: incite an unstable maniac with the latest criticisms his unhinged actions generate, roil all of his pathological insecurities like hostage negotiators daring the criminal to harm his captives, and then present the “policy” that results as normal. Meanwhile, the MAGA (formerly Republican) Party “crafts legislation” geared solely to legitimating a fascist kleptocracy. Really nothing too different from the Nazi consolidation of total power. 

Legislation gets no worse than the Tax Bill of 2025, passed last week in the dead of night by one vote in the House. Following up on its predecessor from the first Trump Administration, it needlessly extends tax  breaks while the nation is at full employment, adding trillions to the national debt. This time, however, it does so while stealing from the poorest sector of America, and harming virtually every area meant to help those without. It’s been accurately described as the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history, quite literally robbing from the poor to further enrich the upper brackets, all while adding between 4 and 6 trillion dollars to the national debt. 

What has changed radically this go-round is the press coverage of both content and process. In September of 2017, before owner Jeff Bezos decided soulless oligarchy was for him, The Washington Post editorial board did not mince words opining on the first Trump tax package: 

“This is tax reform, in other words, for dishonest political cowards. It is not a legacy that members of Congress should want to leave to their children.” 

Contrast that indictment with what the new and detested WaPo had to say last Sunday about what emerged from the House and how it passed:

“In the past week, as never before, Donald Trump showed mastery of the legislative process…The President is savvier about working the Hill today than he was eight years ago… The hard, sometimes dirty work of legislating might not be the easiest way to govern, but it is the most legitimate… This is how the legislative process is supposed to work.” 

During Memorial Day weekend Trump’s mental illness was on display wherever he went, whatever he did. He dishonored sacred West Point and military tradition by wearing a MAGA hat as he delivered an incoherent commencement address that slurred about everything from trophy wives to how he “rebuilt” the military and declaring that a less than 2-point 2024 election victory was “a great mandate… to do what we want to do.” Yet AP, who we’ve always counted on for truth in real time, cherry-picked the few innocuous stanzas of Trump’s address, telling its readers the President “lauded graduating cadets,” while mixing “praise, politics and grievances.” 

Later, Trump vomited an all-caps Memorial Day Truth Social post for the country:

“HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THEM BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE, THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER, AND RAPE AGAIN — ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY.”

It feels necessary to cite the rant in full, since network news sites like ABC News relegated it to an ancillary sidebar of Trump’s Arlington Cemetery speech, yet another fully politicized self-congratulation fest. 

Around the world brave journalists are persecuted every day. Reporting the truth in an authoritarian country is one of the most dangerous professions on earth. At our current rate of descent, American jail cells likely will soon house those courageous enough to challenge MAGA’s growing ability to clamp down on dissent. 

When it happens they will be martyrs created by the cowardice of the mainstream media bosses who couldn’t bend the knee fast enough as they calculated that going along was best for shareholder well-being or increased personal wealth, or simply avoiding the unpleasantness that standing up to Trump assures. A lawsuit here, nasty post there. The promise of a lost federal contract here, an IRS investigation there, maybe the threat of FCC malevolence. It took appallingly little effort, but most all have now fallen into line and present the unimaginable with routine bylines and stifled modifiers, national ruin as “a bid to reshape government.” History will condemn them. We can never forgive or forget their betrayal. BC

Easter is the day for Christians to fully appreciate the time our Lord Jesus spent with us and the miracle of him rising after the most painful persecution imaginable. The story of his life and teachings offers all the foundation any person, indeed any society could require to create conditions ideal for the harmony and cooperation that make the constructive pursuit of happiness possible. 

Tragically, this Easter also presents the necessity to righteously condemn how far astray the rank and file of American Evangelicalism has wondered from the What Would Jesus Do (WWJD) model, despite fully co-opting his name for an agenda he was crucified opposing. What these millions of misguided souls demand in the name of Jesus bares no resemblance to the tenets our Savior roamed this Earth preaching we must adopt. 

In fact, one is hard pressed to find much in the New Testament today’s theocrats actually favor. Instead, everything they base their moral superiority on originates in the cruelest and most unhinged bowels of the Old Testament, a volume of stories that feature men in whales and floods that consume the world, except for one well-constructed ark. 

At every turn the crowd who now boast ownership of the high ground obedience to the Bible bestows ignore the second volume’s near constant entreaties  to advocate for those without and offer mercy to the prodigals. What they steer toward and demand others yield to, are the cruelest and least tolerant proclamations of the narrative imparted before Christ was born. 

Psalm 35:10
My whole being will exclaim, “Who is like you, Lord?
You rescue the poor from those too strong for them,
the poor and needy from those who rob them.” 

Such guidance from the New Testament evaporates in the wind with this bloc. They much prefer  Old Testament screeds such as: 

“…anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or native-born, when he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death. “`If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death.”

Leviticus 24

So does the President their unquestioning support, along with the craven and cowardly servility of the political party their mentality consumed, has plagued us with. 

I suppose it would be unfair to simply aver evangelicals are gratuitous with regard to the wanton cruelty this regime is fixated on inflicting. However, at the least they view abiding it as the preferred option of a binary choice. Disappearing people to El Salvador vs. open borders that invites in rapists and murderers. Devastating vital safety nets for the poorest and most disabled Americans in favor of tax gifts to billionaires that blow up our deficit vs. countenancing fraud and welfare Queen scams, not to mention freebies to “illegals” that solid god-fearing citizens foot the bill for. Tolerating diversity vs. woke privilege for trans freaks who beat up on our girls in sports and ogle at our children in bathrooms. It’s not WWJD; it’s WSJD (What Should Jesus Do.) 

To millions who now ail us, Trump is biblically provided as both the means to win the crusade for protection of the unborn, the earlier in the procreation process the better, as well as God’s wrath against sodomite leftist obsessions like the LGBT agenda and the false history secular liberals want to constantly indoctrinate Christian children with. Bring the Bible (read Old Testament) back into schools!

Late last October during an event billed as The National Faith Summit, Jack Graham, a Plano, Texas mega church pastor, joined a bunch of other mega church pastors as they all laid hands on their Orange Deliverer.  “Jesus,” Graham extolled, “we thank you that you have raised up a man, Donald J. Trump, to be a warrior for the word of God and the wisdom that comes from God.” 

Once disgraced televangelist Paula White-Cain, now the head of the Trump White House’s “Faith Office,” who a 2006 Senate Report found had lavished her husband, herself and family members with over $2 million of parishioner donations, thanked Jesus for protecting Trump and “keeping your hand of blessing on him.” The huddle then dispersed and all closed out things by shuffling to The Village People’s YMCA… that well known musical embodiment of crossover piety. 

Today their “warrior” posted his Easter message for the nation who elected him POTUS. It’s worth transcribing in full:

“Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten! Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing — But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!”

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34

BC

Essential to the framework for sovereign countries is the idea that each ruling government is responsible for the people within its confines. After all, without such an assumption the principle of borders, separate economies, unique cultures and languages, virtually everything necessary to define distinct nation-states breaks down along with the international order the entire exercise is meant to undergird. 

After World War II and the Holocaust it enabled, the United Nations created a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Although non-binding, the US-led proclamation, adopted in 1948, constituted the mission statement of the International Bill of Human Rights (IBHR), which would form the basis for international human rights law moving forward. 

Since so much of the Nazi regime’s pogrom against European Jewry involved the practice of murderous deportation, it’s hardly surprising that the tenets of the IBHR regarding the subject are unambiguous. Summarizing them makes clear how horribly sinister Trump and the MAGA (formerly Republican) party’s intentions are. America is now in flagrant violation of virtually every protection international law has established for people subject to deportation. 

First, international law establishes a “Prohibition of Refoulement,” which bans nations from deporting people to other countries where their freedom and safety are endangered. It’s hard to imagine a more hideous example of that than a one way trip to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, literally hell on earth. 

Trump’s ghoulish powwow this week with El Salvadoran strongman, Bayib Buekele, unfurled his unapologetic ambitions to relabel all immigrants in the US, regardless of legal status, as criminals and terrorists, fully deserving the concentration camp conditions his new stooge made clear he was happy to provide.   Humane treatment of deportees, another IBHR priority, was only fodder for sarcastic ridicule of journalists with the temerity to wonder about the condition of Kilmer Abrego Garcia, the innocent US resident ICE sent to Buekle’s abyss.

Next, there is “Respect for Family Life.” This clause stipulates that concerted attempts to break apart families is a crime against humanity. Trump was already checking off that box during his first term. Back then it proved a bridge too far for even most Republicans to cross. No more. Disgusting incidents of ICE agents being confronted at schools, not to mention parents being whisked off the streets as their children watch, lay bare that this time around no quarter will be given to keeping families intact. 

Then there is the biggie, due process. The paramount right to a fair hearing and resources to challenge government efforts to expel you is the firewall against mass round ups and chaotic mistreatment. Here the grotesque symmetry between MAGA cruelty and Fox/AM has been on full display. 

Assuming anyone rounded up is guilty of a violent crime and not worthy of a privilege such as due process is the go-to talk track. Border czar Tom Homan led the way when ABC’s infuriatingly polite Jonathon Karl asked if ICE detainees get any chance to prove their innocence “before you take them out of the country and put them into a notorious prison in a country that they’re not even from.” “Due process. What was Laklen Riley’s due process,” Homan sneered, referring to the young murder victim Trump has commandeered to become the face of his libel that immigrants are only here for our blood. 

Fox’s Brian Kilmeade fleshed out the grotesque supposition further scoffing it was “impractical” before getting to the heart of the matter. “If we are going to give every one of these guys a day in court and a lawyer, we can’t do it, they don’t deserve it. Our system doesn’t need to be double-burdened.” The fascist echo chamber now presumes only true blue US citizens deserve the luxury of due process, certainly not “illegals” gaming the system to skate from their mayhem. 

Finally, there is the practice of mass deportation itself. International law could not be more clear… mass deportation is a crime against humanity. Trump promised to make pursuing it his top priority at every campaign stop. In fact, his pledge enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support as 9 in 10 voters favored the practice. Now we are seeing exactly what it looks like in all the depraved detail Stephen Miller can conjure. 

Hundreds of thousands of human beings, a large percentage who have been our friends and neighbors, employees, colleagues and bosses, are being targeted en masse for the worst government treatment man can inflict. This is a campaign we once led the world to condemn. Now it is our national shame. We can’t allow it to continue. BC

As the human wreckage of World War II and the Holocaust was laid bare with the complete surrender of the Axis  powers, there was an innate tendency to centralize blame for the catastrophe. Particularly in Europe, where the perpetrators weren’t part of a notably rigid Far Eastern culture, who demonstrated their fanaticism time and again on the battlefield, the fallback conclusion was to lay blame from the top down, start and mostly stop at the Wolf’s Lair. After all, Hitler was from the beginning the Reich’s international face, and Allied war propaganda campaigns had always signaled his elimination as synonymous with final victory. 

How much easier it was to simply assume a diabolical aberration, now dead by his own hand, bore most all of the responsibility for modern history’s ugliest episode. Bring his inner circle to justice, let the Russians handle their business their way, and turn the page. Streamlining priorities in line with progress, rather than getting bogged down in the how and whys of the past, offered a more direct path forward into a future filled with gargantuan economic, political and military challenges. 

The major problem with that approach lay in the fact that every hour our “ally,” Uncle Joe Stalin, whose army occupied vast tracts of Eastern Europe, was acting increasingly like a principle adversary, and those who paid attention understood his type of leadership was very similar to Hitler’s, which we ignored at our peril. US Diplomat George Kennan’s “long telegram” would soon detail the origins of Soviet authority, and how incompatible its “jealous need for power” was with any Western hopes for post-war cooperation. Moreover, as the previously unimaginable number of Holocaust victims kept climbing, it began to dawn on many that such an event could never be allowed to happen again and that a field of study devoted to all of its ugly aspects might not be a bad idea. 

German historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt moved into this vacuum to become the leader of 20th century totalitarianism scholarship. Her first book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, was published in 1951. It was groundbreaking work that explained in detail the unique characteristics and essential social dynamics behind total centralized control of a modern society exemplified by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. 

But her masterpiece was published in 1963 titled Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Its point of departure was the trial for crimes against humanity of Nazi deportation director Adolf Eichmann in Israel. Eichmann had escaped to Argentina after the war, but was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence operatives and brought to face justice in Jerusalem. 

The clear theme prosecutors pursued during Eichmann’s trial was the incomparable evil of the Final Solution and the necessity that the world must not allow architects like Eichmann to escape accountability. However, Arendt was not at all willing to leave it at that. She proceeded from a thesis that spread responsibility for the historic number of Holocaust dead with a far wider net.  

Arendt’s principle contention was that the level of “success” the Reich achieved in wiping out European Jewry could only be possible if they were granted an extraordinary level of cooperation at every step along the way. Occupied populations and their politicians, local bureaucrats and police, even Jewish Councils (judenrate), all contributed to a symmetry essential to kill so many people so quickly. Hungary, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed within months, most while Germany was in full retreat and certain to lose the war, was used by Arendt as the epitome of how atrocity can succeed when nobody resists.

In contrast, occupied Denmark, where King Christian X committed himself to protecting the nation’s Jews, and France, which supported an extensive partisan network, were cited by Arendt to show how ineffective Nazi extermination efforts were when confronted with even modest resistance. Although her contentions were controversial, the tremendous scope of her research, which literally tallied casualty numbers down to the very last victim, proved beyond a doubt that cooperating with totalitarians only produces worst case results. 

Flash forward about 80 years and America now suffers at the nihilist whims of a MAGA GOP,  an unapologetic totalitarian entity that no longer even bothers to deny its disdain for the rule of law, or its preparedness to sanction atrocity. In less than two months this regime has worked overtime to erase any doubts about how nefarious its agenda is. This time around “promises made, promises kept” could not possess darker overtones. Trump brazenly checks off every relevant box to confirm he gratuitously committed perjury when taking the oath of office January 25th on the same Capitol steps his servile minions stormed four years early at the behest of his stochastic terrorism. 

MAGA, like the Third Reich, is the embodiment of the worst collective human impulses that exist, ennobled for 30 years by Fox/AM. It is a nihilist ideology based in large part on the validation of jealousy, greed, petty resentments, self-inadequacy and disunity. It is anathema to everything the American experiment was supposed to embody, and is devoted to reversing the full breadth of our societal progress. The Republican Party now conflates being an insufferable asshole with courageous contrarianism, icky creepiness with out-of-the-box leadership, abject cruelty with long overdue “common sense.” In short, decent individuals with any degree of empathy need not apply. 

MAGA’s principle mission is to destroy victim groups Fox/AM has scapegoated for more than three decades, starting with immigrants and political opponents. On immigration, the regime has wasted no time pursuing atrocity, enthusiastically deporting victims masked ICE thugs grab off the street to Guantanamo and El Salvador’s notorious “terrorist confinement center.” It is clear Trump’s campaign assurances that criminal aliens would be the principle priority was just another lie, horror stories are already the common denominator. America is now unapologetically committing human rights violations as a matter of policy. Trump literally sets quotas he expects ICE to meet. 

As for dissidents Trump is not mincing words, even as he approaches full cognitive failure. His recent speech at the Department of Justice was nothing less than a clampdown manifesto. Speaking to a crowd of people sworn to be apolitical, Trump received rapturous applause when he promised that “we will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred…” by predecessors who “tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third world country. But in the end the thugs failed.” 

There is no doubt the goal is to create a deportation bureaucracy Eichmann would admire, employed to detain whoever the regime targets. Since incompetence is what Trump does best, it stands to reason that, even more than its Hitlerian forebears, MAGA criminal ambitions will require cooperation and passivity from all involved. Shamefully, thus far he has no reason not to be emboldened on that score. 

Across the board, American institutions are throwing in the towel before the first round even gets started. From the corporate media headed by the big three news networks which, since our election catastrophe has eased into a complicity comfort zone, to universities like Columbia that might as well put up signs saying “extort us for government funding.” From the disgusting spectacle of major law firms such as Skadden, Arps giving Trump a blank check on pro bono work to non-profits, school districts, even Major League Baseball becoming DEI-free Pleasantvilles, going along is now the go-to.

Any hopes a leading light emerges from Democrats we have relied on in the past flickers dimmer each day, as disunity and refusal to even recognize the full severity of our plight continues to characterize the party’s response to a thousand cuts the Project 2025 play book inflicts. Bernie and AOC are not Obama and Harris, whose continued disappearing act becomes more unfathomable by the day. Hakeem Jefferies was born to seize this moment; why he refuses to do so is deeply perplexing. A national general resistance simply can’t thrive without leaders who possess gravitas and are willing to put all of their skin in the game. Trump tells us daily how ugly he is and how repressive he wants his government to be; those at the top he threatens most must look him in the eye and demand he bring it on. 

Finally, there is us, everyday people on the ground. We who are fully cognizant of the disaster at hand. What can we do? What must we do? What should grass roots resistance look like? Incredibly, most Americans remain inattentive, wedded to routines that can still be carried out until MAGA nihilism renders them the nostalgia of a time before calamity. Protest, great. Call feckless lawmakers en masse, ok. But the ruinous catastrophe of last November was a collective failure. 

More than 75 million voted for a convicted felon who spent four years promising to be a fascist pestilence. Those who don’t understand that, don’t really care, or worst of all, embraced the results, must come to understand the price they will pay. They must hear the truth before we all suffer its consequences. They must understand the choice is now clear… good or evil, madness or sanity. However unpleasant things get telling them, they must be told, again and again, by all of us, whether it ruins the picnic or not. Resistance equals clarifying the options and refusing to be ignored. That is now the price of freedom; anything less is cooperation. BC.