Autocracies' fatal flaw - fear

 Fear is autocracies' fatal flaw.  They come to power and hold power through fear, force, domination, threats, lies, imprisonment, and killing.  So, they think that terrorizing and instilling suffocating fear is their greatest strength.  And it is up to a point.

But where causing fear becomes their fatal flaw is when people are too afraid to tell their fearsome leaders the truth.  Nobody could tell Putin that his army was weak.  Nobody could tell Putin Ukraine was strong.  Nobody could tell Putin that America would lead Europe and other parts of the free world to help Ukraine humiliate him.  They were afraid.  And Putin is likely to lose Russia as a result.  The fear that he saturates his country with will likely kill him.

Nobody could tell Hitler he was stupid to open a second front against Russia in WWII. They were afraid.  And he ended up hiding in a bomb-proof bunker and killing himself.

Nobody could tell Mussolini that he was stupid to try to be a second Caeser.  And he was hung from a lamp post and beaten to death.

Nobody can tell Xi in China what he doesn't want to hear?  I don't know but that seems likely to me.  I hope he doesn't invade Taiwan.

Nobody could tell Trump that he lost the 2020 election (in his trusted inner circle) and he will end up being indicted and likely in prison. 

Fear keeps the leaders from knowing what is going on underneath them. Nobody can tell them what they don't want to hear.  No one can tell them that they are fallible, human, vulnerable, wrong, dumb, and just like everybody else.  They "shoot the messengers".  And remain ignorant, willfully ignorant, and eventually topple like the Great Osymandius of Shelly's poem - once mighty and long gone and long forgotten.

So, autocracies' ignorance fed mistakes are fatal flaws which lead to their collapse.  Tragically, they cause enormous terror, hardship, and suffering over the course of their terrifying, dominating rules. 

Democracies are clumsy, slow, inefficient, pulled in many directions - but stronger than autocracies, dictatorships, and fascist regimes.  They have a much better chance of having leaders seeing and knowing things they don't want to see or hear.  If we are lucky they modify their actions as a result.

Ignorance is fatal.  Knowledge is painful but can be decisive and allow a sustaining governance.

Just an overgrown baby? Or is it much worse?

 People are treating the gathering, stealing, hiding, and refusing to give back top military and intelligence secrets by The Former Guy as if he is just some kind of overgrown baby who wants to keep important things so he can look important to his sycophants.  

What?

I don’t assume that at all. Of course he is a ridiculously childish big baby.  But I think he plotted to take, and took, and hid documents that would benefit him “bigly”.  How could anyone think otherwise?  

These secrets are worth scores of millions of dollars to America’s enemies. American Intelligence and American Military have got to be working, right now, as if our worst enemies have seen these.  We have to be dismantling covert systems that have taken decades to build. 

We have to be trying to save those who have been exposed. We may have had key people already captured, tortured, imprisoned, or killed. 

These are not the actions of a whimsical, greedy little child. These are the actions of a greedy, corrupt, traitor selling to our enemies. 

It is hard for me to imagine a worse crime by a president or former president than selling secrets that protect American intelligence people, military people, and every American person. (Of course, if Republicans are stupid enough, corrupt enough, foolish enough to manage to get him into the White House again we and the world will have to watch as he discovers even more terrible crimes against America and against humanity he will come up with)

The Department of Justice may never prove that this creature sold these secrets, but American Intelligence and American military have to operate as if these secrets have been exposed.

Prison please.

Failed coup?

 Yevgeniy Prigozhin led an aborted military coup against Putin this weekend, got his mercenary army close to Moscow, turned around, and was assured safe passage to Belarus. Really?

What does this show?  Putin’s weakness?  Prigozhin’s miscalculation?  Lack of support for Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine?  

My hope is this topples Putin and Russia leaves Ukraine. But Prigozhin is not some kind of force for peace and democracy. He is a brutal barbarian whose job in life is brutal slaughter of human beings. 

Hoping for the best. 

Breakers of the Democracy Machine

The Republican Party has given up on Democracy, it seems to me.  They know there are too many instances where they can't persuade and win.  So, they have gone full autocratic/authoritarian/fascist.  The Supreme Court is on a mission to turn America into a combination White Supremacist Christian Theocracy (no abortion, no birth control, no independent powerful women, no gay sex or gay marriage, no teaching about slavery or the Jim Crow south, etc.) - and a billionaire-controlled Plutocracy (no regulations, no tax audits, no pollution controls, not much in the way of taxes on the billionaires, etc.)

The only way they can get what they demand is to end voting. The only way to do that is to destroy the "democracy machine" - the institutions of democracy - from voting systems, to a free press, to non-gerrymandered states, etc.  

Once this democracy-breaking Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights laws the extremist Republican red states enacted dozens of voter suppression laws.  Plus, giant corporations were given unparalleled influence over elections with massive inputs of money into elections once the democracy-breaking Supreme Court ruled that corporations were persons.

The former Republican president moved heaven and earth to overturn his loss to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.  He has promised, with the full-throated support of his Cult base, to seek revenge on all who oppose his kingly wishes.  And his autocratic media leaders make sure his MAGA Cult base never knows the thousands of truths that destroy his lies.  They lie.  They create the lies. They pound the lies into the cult over and over and over and over....

They know how to do propaganda - they had good teachers - from the Nazis to the Soviets to the Lost Causers to Putin's Russia and dozens of current autocratic nations around the world.  The playbook is out in the open and being followed with devastating effect.

They do this firmly believing that they are the good people, the people who are stopping the slide of America into sin and ruin.  And they think that since they are on the "side of angels" (and the side of prosperity creating unfettered corporations) they have a duty to keep the sinful and profligate masses from destroying their precious Theocratic and Plutocratic Country.  Thus - break democracy.  Destroy the country to save the country.

But...

This is America.  And America is founded on dream that All People are Created Equal, and people's personal freedoms and rights are sacred.  And I believe that dream is more powerful than all the manipulation, and lies, and threats, and corruption, and revenge that the breakers of democracy can manage.

I believe in America.

King Henry VIII - Trump?

 Maybe the deranged historical figure that The Former Guy is most like is King Henry VIII.  An overgrown, uncontrollable child who cannot conceive of being told what he can or cannot do. 

It is tempting to compare him to the ludicrous strutting Mussolini.  Posing in chin jutting postures of braggadocio and domination. 

It is tempting to compare him to Hitler and his bigoted hatred of what he considers races (and genders and sexual orientations) that are “inferior” to the “supreme white man”, himself most of all, of course. 

But maybe it is the actual king that he wishes he was, who destroyed all norms of behavior and all opposition to his depraved whims and passions. 

Enough already. 

Prison please. 

Trump and Trumpy icons are falling

 Donald Trump is being charged with violating espionage laws.  Prison could be his future.

Boris Johnson, the Trump-like politician that rode the idiotic Brexit movement to power has resigned from Parliament.

Berlusconi, the deeply corrupt but charismatic Italian Prime Minister, a pre-Trump Trumplike political and cultural icon, has died.

Pat Robertson, a founder of the toxic White Christian Nationalism, with all of it bigotry and hatred, has died.  

Maybe these are portents of a start of the decline of the MAGA craziness that has captured so many of our neighbors.

The stolen documents show U.S. nuclear programs and military vulnerabilities to hostile military attack - is this not treason?

 I don't see how the Trump theft of defense secrets is anything short of treason.  Here is info from the indictment - from historian Heather Cox Richardson:

"The indictment is, indeed, jaw dropping. 

It alleges that during his time in the White House, Trump stored in cardboard boxes “information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.” The indictment notes that “[t]he unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.” 

"These documents are not all those recovered—some likely are too sensitive to risk making public—but they nonetheless hold some of the nation’s deepest secrets: “military capabilities of a foreign country and the United States,” “military activities and planning of foreign countries,” “nuclear capabilities of a foreign country,” “military attacks by a foreign country,” “military contingency planning of the United States,” “military options of a foreign country and potential effects on United States interest,” “foreign country support of terrorist acts against United States interests,” “nuclear weaponry of the United States,” “military activity in a foreign country.” 

So it looks like he was collecting them during his presidency with the plan to take them with him if he needed them later.  For what?  Money?  Hundreds of millions of dollars? To blackmail the U.S. to stay out of prison?  To give them to his master, Putin?  

Also, these documents are secret in order to protect people, the men and women who gather this vital information, the men and women in the military who have volunteered to put themselves into harms way.  All of these people are now at risk.  Maybe some are already captured or killed?

Also, why would any of our key and necessary allies share any sensitive intelligence with the United States going forward if nearly half of the American voters voted for him - twice - and may vote for him a third time.  If their secrets are not safe don't they have to keep them from America?  

Putin has done a remarkably effective job of destroying American leadership in the world by doing all he could to get deeply corrupt nitwit elected in 2016.  The Former Guy has done enormous damage to American leadership in the world, and is doing his best to do more.

He took them from the White House, and he hid them, and he refused to return them. Who else has them?

And his terrified MAGA Cult politicians, along with his Kool-Aid drinking MAGA Cult voters, come to his defense.  Depressing to me.

I have friends who voted for this deeply corrupt, actually mentally ill, fascist wannabe person.  I hope their fantasy views of him are finally exploding.  I hope they can finally see him as the greatest danger to America and U.S. democracy is since Jefferson Davis.

Espionage?

 Trump has finally been indicted. Seven charges. They haven’t been spelled out yet, but they seem to include obstruction, conspiracy, and espionage. 

About time. 

He announced it on his fake Twitter account and let his violent followers know where and when he is to show up at the courthouse. Security is ramping up.  

Let’s see the actual charges, but it was pretty clear to me way back when the story first broke of the FBI search for docs that national security had to be the reason. 

Just tell the truth

 The only way a Republican beats The Former Guy for the nomination is to go after him, attack him, call out all all all all of his lies. How?  Just tell the truth. 

Here is some of what Chris Christie said in his announcement of his presidential run:

“Beware of the leader in this country, who you have handed leadership to, who has never made a mistake, who has never done anything wrong, who when something goes wrong it’s always someone else’s fault. And who has never lost,” 

“ He also has said that Trump “incited” the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol “in an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and the Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own words last week: overturn the election.”

“He called the former president a "coward" and a "puppet" of Russian President Vladimir Putin.” And the wayTrump would end the war would be to give Ukrainian to Russia.

“The grift from this family is breathtaking,  Jared Kushner and Ivanka Kushner walking out of the WhiteHouse and a month later get two billion dollars from the Saudis? For sitting next to the president for four years doing favors for the Saudis.”

“Let me be clear, in case I have not been already," Christie said after bashing Trump. "The person I am talking about — who is obsessed with the mirror, who never admits a mistake, who never admits a fault and who always finds someone else and something else to blame for whatever goes wrong, but finds every reason to take credit for anything that goes right — is Donald Trump."

“you have to be fearless, because he will come back, and right at you”

I would be happy to see Lynne Cheney also enter the race and tell the same truths. 

You have to take him down. His responses will be disgusting, but that should also simply demonstrate the truth of the truth tellers - this mentally ill lifelong criminal cannot be allowed back in power. 

Just tell the truth. 

Trusting America

 I choose to trust in the basic goodness and Spirit of America.  I choose to trust that America will be run by the Rule of Law rather than the Rule of Autocrat.  

I trust that The Former Guy, and his law-breaking cohorts, will be prosecuted and imprisoned for their violent attempt to overthrow democracy.  And in the case of the lifelong criminal and fraud - The Former Guy - I expect prosecution and punishment for a lifelong pattern of tax evasion, bank fraud, money laundering, witness intimidation and tampering, fraudulent fleecing of political donors, etc. etc. etc.  

And I expect The Former Guy to be tried and convicted of espionage for stealing and likely selling top secret military secrets and plans.

America has seen fascists try to overthrow American democracy in the runup to WWII as a very powerful Nazi and fascist movement masqueraded as "America First" people who were actually trying to destroy democracy in America and join with Hitler and Mussolini to create a country based on the Rule of Autocrat and destroy the Rule of Law.

They failed then, and they will fail now. 

America, and the dream and vision of America - where all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights and freedoms - shall prevail. Trump doesn't get to destroy democracy.  DeSantis doesn't get to destroy the personal freedoms of women, couples, people of color, gays and transgenders.

America is going to prevail over the bigotry and hatred being pumped into its people by those who think they can create a Russian/Chinese/Hungarian/Saudi Arabian/Turkish/North Korean autocracy.  The Rule of Law will stand.

Or so I believe.