The Proverbial Firehose

Addressing the entire daily gusher of Trumpism's willful ignorance and authoritarian madness is impossible. Where to start?

As a doc, here: The only scientifically sound way to study the effects and efficacy of any pharmaceutical is a placebo-controlled, prospective, double-blind study, wherein control and treatment groups are matched for factors other than the medium under study, and in which neither the subjects nor the investigators know who’s taking what until it’s over. Drawing retrospective conclusions from pre-existing, uncontrolled data isn’t.

RFK, Jr, who’s ignorant of science and appoints only people who reject it, promised he’d discover the cause of autism by September. Having no ability to conduct a proper investigation, nor time enough and judgment, he unearthed a publication that aggregated prior Tylenol studies. That it challenged Trump’s ability to pronounce its generic name was likely unintentional. 

The association between acetaminophen and neuro-developmental disorders, of which autism is one, was thin at best, and the authors so stated. Some of the included reports showed none at all. Nevertheless, desperate to have something, anything, by his promised deadline, Bobby regurgitated it, undigested. Lacking comprehension but not self-regard, Trump bought it like bitcoin. Since then, his Truthless Antisocial posts, reminiscent of his bleach, light, ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine cures for Covid, esteemed physician that he is, have multiplied the recklessness. If it weren’t so dangerous, it’d be laughable. 

With time running out, after years claiming vaccines are culpable, RFKJ, or the worm in his brain, grabbed whatever was handy. Curiously, before this clock-stopping breakthrough, he’d cut millions in funding for autism research. The last thing he wants is proof he was wrong. 

More could be said, but there are other pressing matters.

Remember when America’s assiduous guardians of democracy, U.S. Reps James Comer and Jim Jordan, were rooting out “government weaponization” by President Joe Biden? When, after years of made-for-Fox shoutings (once known as hearings) they came up with nothing? Now, when Trump’s weaponization is as obvious as the bronzer border on his face, the silence from those justice warriors resounds throughout our democracy, the demise of which they’re pursuing with Trumpophilic zeal. 

Blind to historical echoes and current implications, the Make America Gruesome crowd will cheer whatever Trump does. To everyone else, forcing the indictment of James Comey through the compliant hands of Pam Bondi should be recognized as step 999 on the journey of a thousand toward dictatorship. Also his pledge to go after others on his enemies list, including former Democratic presidents. His plan to redefine protest and disagreement, constitutionally protected in times past, as domestic terrorism takes it far past the line. The goal is to eliminate all forms of opposition, on the thinnest of pretenses. It ought to illicit revulsion in every thoughtful American. Among the FoxoMAGAfied, it’s received worshipfully.

The dire ramifications can’t be overstated. Absent pushback from conservatives-in-hiding, it could be the end. “The land of the free and the home of the brave,” indeed.

When Trump-appointed prosecutor Erik Seibert found no grounds to indict Comey and resigned instead, Trump chose a yes-woman with no prosecutorial experience who did as ordered, despite being advised against it by other DOJ prosecutors. Corruption? Weaponization? With Republican-controlled Congress and six-ninths of the Supreme Court scrambled-egging him on, he needn’t hide it. He just threatened federal funds to NYC if its citizens elect a particular mayoral candidate. Holy Mike Johnson refuses to seat a newly-elected Democratic representative who’d be the determinative vote to release the Epstein files. Respect for democracy and elections? Not in MAGAmerica.

Been to Portland lately? Our son and his family live there, happy and unafraid. To justify another military invasion, Trump called it “war-ravaged,” which, even when those few downtown blocks saw not-peaceful protests, it never was. Today, that’s as far from the truth as Trump always is. Local responses have been pure Portlandia, but it’s no joke. More than Trump’s election lies, this unwarranted show of military force augurs the end of freedom, and not just in blue states. His hunger for power is borderless. His aim is intimidation, leading to subjugation everywhere. Does anyone still wonder how it happened in 1930s Germany?

The master plan has been employed by dictators since history began. If Trump is ill-equipped to have studied it, the people truly in control, Project 2025’s Stephen Miller and Russell Vought, know it by cold-blooded heart. They’ve been grooming him as their figurehead since before he rode that escalator down. And downer. 

Before the election, Trump made his anti-democracy intentions unmistakable. MAGA elected him because of it. The only surprise is how quickly American institutions, including media and universities, law firms, and congressional and red state Republicans flecked their genues. Do those hoary final words of the National Anthem still apply?

Will military leaders cave, too? After the embarrassment they were subjected to at Quantico by an obviously unfit Commander in Chief and a preening, peacocking “War” Secretary, maybe not. We can only hope.

Donnie Does D.C.

 

Trump’s latest “law and order” fantasy isn’t about law and it sure as hell isn’t about order. It’s about power. Naked, unaccountable, permanent power. And he’s aiming the first strike straight at Washington, D.C.

The plan is as blunt as it is dangerous: put federal troops in the streets of the capital, under his personal command, no local authority in the way. Use D.C.’s status—no governor, no state sovereignty—as the legal crowbar. Call it “restoring safety.” Wrap it in a flag and sell it to people who think authoritarianism is fine so long as the boots aren’t on their necks.

Then, once the shock wears off, do it again—Chicago. Philadelphia. Atlanta. Los Angeles. Anywhere a political opponent holds office or a crowd holds a sign becomes a “security threat.” Send in troops. Normalize it. Repeat until soldiers patrolling our cities feels routine.

He’s been rehearsing for years. Lafayette Square—troops and riot police gassing peaceful protesters so he could strut to a church and hold up a Bible—wasn’t an accident. It was a live-fire test. There was outrage, but no real consequence. The precedent stands.

The District is the perfect laboratory for an aspiring autocrat. No messy state constitution, no governor to push back, just a Congress that will tie itself in knots and a Supreme Court stacked with loyalists. Once troops are in, there’s no natural brake. And the moment military control of civilian streets is treated as “normal,” it becomes the default answer to dissent anywhere.

This isn’t about crime. Trump doesn’t care about crime unless he thinks it’s committed against him. This is about eliminating obstacles—political, legal, and literal. Federal troops don’t answer to city councils or police chiefs. They answer to him. If he controls the chain of command, he controls what gets shut down, who gets arrested, and which “orders” matter. And because they wear uniforms, he gets to sell it as patriotism.

The cheering section will love it. The shrugging middle will think, “Maybe it’s necessary. Maybe it’s temporary.” That’s the fatal mistake. No strongman in history has handed back power once he’s grabbed it. They keep it. They expand it. They justify it with every crisis they can gin up.

Picture the rollout: Troops in D.C. suppress a protest—doesn’t matter what it’s about. The media covers the crackdown; he calls them traitors and sends “security” to their offices. Legal challenges crawl through the courts while the precedent metastasizes. Next, a spike in crime—real or invented—in a city with a Democratic mayor becomes the excuse for “federal intervention.” Local cops are told to coordinate with the military, meaning obey them. From there it’s a straight line to troops “monitoring” polling stations, “securing” state legislatures, “protecting” his rallies. By then, the Constitution will be something read at ceremonies while the real operating manual is a stack of executive orders signed behind closed doors.

Once this gets baked into the system, it’s not just Trump we have to fear. Any future president—left, right, or lunatic—will have the same weapon. The Founders didn’t give the executive this kind of domestic military power for a reason. They knew what it would be used for. Trump’s betting most Americans have forgotten.

He’s not even subtle. He says “dominate the streets” and people clap. He says “take back our cities” and people nod. He’s counting on fear—of crime, of immigrants, of each other—to grease the skids. Fear makes people trade freedom for the illusion of safety every time. And once you’ve traded it, you don’t get it back without a fight.

D.C. is the first domino. It’s where he can make this legal, visible, and irreversible. If he pulls it off, he’ll have proven that Americans will tolerate soldiers policing their own citizens if you tell them it’s for their own good. That’s the green light to do it anywhere. Everywhere.

This is not a hypothetical. This is a man with a proven taste for using force against civilians, an open desire to silence opposition, and a legal loophole big enough to drive an armored convoy through. He is telling us what he wants. He is telling us how he’ll do it. And if we wait until the plan is “official” to object, we’ll be objecting to soldiers in our streets—not the idea of them.

Stopping it means naming it now, hammering it now, refusing to let anyone sell it as “temporary” or “necessary.” Because the moment it’s accepted in one city, the rest of the map is just a matter of time. The capital is the test. The country is the target. And the man aiming at it has never missed an opportunity to turn fear into power. If we let him fire this shot, we’ll spend the rest of our lives trying to pry the gun out of his hands.

Note: this was written entirely by ChatGPT, using the prompt, “800 words about Trump military takeover of D.C. in the style of Sid Schwab.”

Paving The Road

My next column in The Everett Herald:

Bosses fire employees. Therefore, Trump removing Alex Vindman and million-dollar-donating Ambassador Sundland for complying with legal subpoenas and responding truthfully is no big deal. Same with firing Elaine McCusker at DOD who warned withholding military aid from Ukraine was illegal. Fox “news,” rightwing radio, and Trumpists demand the head of Mitt Romney, who finally manifested integrity born of faith and respect for his oath. His “physical safety” would be at risk, says CPAC, were he to attend. It’s all good. 

When William Barr took control of all future investigations of political candidates, Trumpists smelled no rats. Same with his announcement of an “intake process” for Rudy Giuliani to send him dirt on the Bidens. With the mass resignations of attorneys prosecuting Roger Stone, after Barr’s takeover of the case, there’s no reason for concern that the DOJ is now, officially and solely, an instrument of presidential power. As in Putin’s Russia. When Trump attacked the federal judge in charge, Republicans remained silent, comfy in their reconstituting Reichstag. No worries.  

No klaxons were sounded when Trump’s Treasury Department handed private-citizen Hunter Biden’s financial information to Senate Republicans, having refused when House Democrats requested Trump’s. Unconcerned about current costs of Tribe Trump’s protected travels, they’ll investigate how much Biden cost taxpayers for security on business trips. 

Outrage over young Biden’s income from Burisma dissipates with JaVanka making over eighty-three-million while in the White House; and with Trump’s who-knows-how-much from foreign and domestic swamp-dwellers renting his properties. The hundred-million-plus his “I’ll-be-too-busy-to-play-golf” golf trips have cost us? It’s fine: he’s ours.  

Those who don’t find this frightening are those who don’t recognize America’s accelerating descent into authoritarianism; or who do, and welcome it. Those unfazed when information critical to Congressional oversight is withheld by a “president” and by agencies whose mission is to protect the nation, not Trump. Those unconcerned when Secretary of State Pompeo bans reporters who ask hard questions. It’s fine. He’s Trump’s. 

If Trump has the right to fire those who revealed his intended extortion, what of his and his adulators’ demand to expose the whistleblower, whose claims proved accurate? Rand Paul, libertarian, did it. Illegally. Why would a distruster of government do so, other than to silence other potential revealers of government criminality? And why do no Constitution-loving, government-distrusting Republicans seem to care? 

It’s not hard to understand. Purely out of selfishness, and personally safe, or so they imagine, from the depredations of the more powerful, such people ignore intimidation and muzzling of people willing to speak out against crimes committed by their protectors. 

We’ve seen it before: they’re sure it won’t happen to them, and don’t care when it happens to others. It’s Trumpism unchained. It’s the “lesson” Trump learned, dear Susan, from people like you. And your party.  

Laws created to guard against Trump’s authoritarian abuses aren’t enough, especially when our chief law-enforcer is a sycophantic tool. Free societies depend on the willingness of citizens to respect the law, the absence of which among his followers Trump has always exploited; and on others feeling safe in speaking up when they see leaders who aren’t. It’s why, until Trump, whistleblowers were shielded. 

Following the totalitarian playbook, Trump is purging those who have or might yet sound alarms, across all departments, including Justice, State, and Treasury, Secretaries of which are bending abjectly to Trump’s will, abdicating independence and their duty to us. Now he wants “his” military to punish Vindman. So it’s DOD, too.  

This is precisely the unrestrained despotism against which our founders created checks on executive power. Abetted by cowed Congressional Republicans and supporters who rationalize his worst, Trump is destroying those checks. His message to future truth-tellers: DON’T. 

Recalled by Trump for her incorruptibility, Ambassador Yovanovich knows of what she speaks: "I have seen dictatorships, where blind obedience is the norm and truth-tellers are threatened with punishment or death. We must not allow the United States to become a country where standing up to our government is a dangerous act." 

We’re there. Even in America, whose democratic institutions are more deeply embedded than, say, Turkey or Poland, where they’re collapsing rapidly, or Russia, where Trump’s role model Putin was able to end its march toward democracy in a couple of years, institutions are only as strong as people’s willingness to defend them. Trump won’t. Barr and Pompeo won’t. Trumpists sure as hell won’t. Are there no actual conservatives left who will? Time is running out.

A High Price To Pay

Saturday's newspaper column, today:

You shouldn’t need to be a historian or member of a minority group to observe Trump’s increasingly incoherent, malevolent rallies and fear for our country. In me, of Jewish heritage, they create a physical feeling of revulsion, literally a cold chill. Which is why I can’t write gently. Montana was the worst yet. 

It should escape no one that those in attendance adored everything Trump said, no matter how hateful or false, about the opposition party, journalists, abused women, investigators, immigrants, and anyone who’s criticized him. The veneration presumably includes his endorsements and hiring of white supremacists. Their chants, shouts of approval, stomping the risers, are barely distinguishable from terrifying rallies known for generations, hosted by fledgling despots, continuing after the subjugation was complete. 

These are frightening people, enthralled by a man who fans their grievances, promotes resentment of those unlike them, in the pursuit of unchecked power. To which, like Congressional Republicans, they appear happy to assent. Those rallies, the attendees’ faces, Trump’s self-satisfaction as he feeds their resentments, prove it CAN happen here. Lacking only in numbers, it already has.  

It’s what Trump got right and President Obama got so wrong. The latter, long after it was clear he’d misjudged the distribution of good will among Americans, continued to appeal to generosity and compassion. Yes, he said some careless things, easily misinterpreted, understandably seen as condescending. Yes, he wrongly believed health insurers would act in good faith. But he kept speaking of shared values. Even as Republicans met on his inauguration day to plan unwavering, unanimous obstruction, regardless, as one of those present admitted, whether it hurt America, President Obama continued to seek a path. 
 
Trump, on the other hand, saw the suppurating dark side, and reichly concluded it could be easily manipulated (he should know!). If both Trump and President Obama saw Americans struggling, only the former saw it as something to be cultivated and exploited. Yet unknown is whose vision will prevail, but for now Trump’s ugly rallies suggest his measure of the hate and fear and ignorance out there, primed for stoking, appears to be winning. 

My drawing of distinctions between Trumpists and conservativism have fallen short. Better than I, true conservatives like George Will, Max Boot, and others, have made the case for voting against their party, for now, to save the Republic. The contemptuously mined hate, fear, and ignorance are most obvious at those ominously intensifying rallies. It’s hard to understand how anyone who claims to be unlike those people can stay on board. 

To deny sharing Trumpic animus and bigotry while maintaining support is approval by default. It places particular priorities above decency and the survival of democracy. That sort of rationalization extenuates Trump’s authoritarianism, condones looking away because of some singular issue considered overridingly important. 

I’ve conversed with some for whom abortion is an example (how many of his multitudinous liaisons...?), outweighing the ascent of autocracy. Convinced Democrats want abortion on demand at all stages of pregnancy, they couldn’t be more misinformed. Weirdly, they’re also climate change doubters. 

For others, it’s the hyperbolized scourge of illegal immigration. Believing Trump’s lie that Democrats want open borders and free-range criminals, they applaud separating children from parents, for its message to stay away, immorality notwithstanding. All have said they felt insulted by my characterizations of Trumpists. 

It’s fair and honest criticism, but it begs amplification; so I ask if there’s no bridge too far. Do your personal concerns – or pocketbooks -- excuse ignoring Trump’s dictatorial attacks on his opponents, his threats and lies, his fomenting hatred for journalists (except Fox’s, most of whom are the opposite), his bullying mockery? Is there no point at which protecting the institutions of democracy supersedes your issues? Not the health of your children and theirs, as they face no-hoax climate change and deregulated pollution? 

Not protecting voting rights, access to healthcare, public education? Not Trump calling Kim, who pantsed him in public, a “great guy;” not facilitating murderous Vladimir Putin’s dream of weakening NATO, calling him “just fine,” then meeting him in private? How about taking down the FBI agent in charge of countering all Russian espionage? Not a little curious?  

Surely we share some values too indispensable to renounce. Aren’t truth, and democracy itself, among them? Borrowing from an apocryphal Churchill quote, now we’re just haggling over your price. 

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Under The Radar?

Here's something fairly obvious that hadn't occurred to me: by appointing so many "acting" officials, including several US attornies, Trump has bypassed confirmation hearings, and has a bunch of high-level people accountable only to him. Just another example of flouting the rule of law, yet one more cynical piece of the march to unchecked power.

... Senators have a right to ask prospective U.S. Attorneys how they plan to enforce federal law on marijuana, and, of course, the legislators have the right to vote these officials down if they don’t like their answers. But Sessions has installed acting U.S. Attorneys in much of the country—including in such high-profile locations as Manhattan and Los Angeles—and senators can’t exert any oversight of them. This gesture of contempt for the Senate’s role in confirmations is reflected well beyond the Justice Department. Throughout the government, Trump has nominated many fewer officials to Senate-confirmed positions than his predecessors; instead, Cabinet secretaries have filled these crucial positions with acting or temporary officials who avoid scrutiny from senators...

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