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Autocracy

Autocracy

Why an autocracy is bad

From Hillary Clinton:

  • “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.

  • This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security. Firing hundreds of federal workers charged with protecting our nation’s nuclear weapons is also dumb. So is shutting down efforts to fight pandemics just as a deadly Ebola outbreak is spreading in Africa. It makes no sense to purge talented generals, diplomats and spies at a time when rivals like China and Russia are trying to expand their global reach.

  • . . . . Let’s start with the military, because that’s what he claims to care about. Don’t let the swagger fool you. Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries. Does anyone really think deleting tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen makes us more safe? The Trump Pentagon purged images of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb that ended World War II because its name is the Enola Gay. Dumb.

  • Instead of working with Congress to modernize the military’s budget to reflect changing threats, the president is firing top generals without credible justification. Five former secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats, rightly warned that this would “undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security.” Mass layoffs are also hitting the intelligence agencies. As one former senior spy put it, “We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.” Not smart.

  • . . . All of this is both dumb and dangerous. And I haven’t even gotten to the damage Mr. Trump is doing by cozying up to dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, blowing up our alliances — force multipliers that extend our reach and share our burdens — and trashing our moral influence by undermining the rule of law at home. Or how he’s tanking our economy and blowing up our national debt. Propagandists in Beijing and Moscow know we are in a global debate about competing systems of governance. People and leaders around the world are watching to see if democracy can still deliver peace and prosperity or even function. If America is ruled like a banana republic, with flagrant corruption and a leader who puts himself above the law, we lose that argument. We also lose the qualities that have made America exceptional and indispensable.

  • If there’s a grand strategy at work here, I don’t know what it is. Maybe Mr. Trump wants to return to 19th-century spheres of influence. Maybe he’s just driven by personal grudges and is in way over his head. As a businessman, he bankrupted his Atlantic City casinos. Now he’s gambling with the national security of the United States. If this continues, a group chat foul will be the least of our concerns, and all the fist and flag emojis in the world won’t save us.

  • 2025 April - Trump took one of his most chilling steps toward retribution last week, when he directed the government to investigate two officials in his first administration: Chris Krebs, who headed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. The reasons Trump is out to get these two men are clear enough. Krebs, whose work focused on election security, was fired for refusing to say that fraud tainted the 2020 presidential election; as I wrote back in November of that year, Trump targeted him “not because he did a bad job, but because he did too good a job and said so.”

Actions of the illegal authoritarians

  • 2025.4.25: The Arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan is not an action to enforce the law. The action was taken in a way to maximize publicity and with the most fanfair possible because the purpose of the arrest is to threaten and intimidate all judges with the risk that they too may be abruptly arrested if they issue rulings that Republicans disagree with.

  • 2025.4.15: Trump threatens Harvard’s tax-exempt status after freezing $2bn funding

  • 2025.4.11: Letter sent by US. Govt to Harvard

  • 2025 April - Trump is willing to halt money for school lunches for American children in Maine, but is unwilling to halt payments to a prison in Ecuador to encourage the prison to release an innocent man https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-activates-nuclear-option-after-judge-s-ruling-on-associated-press/ar-AA1D2FUE

  • 2025.April - “opening sentence” Of Trump and Witch Hunts.

    • Trump has complained for years that he is subject to the worst witch hunts in history. He claims he is treated unfairly and is forced to endure court trials to determine his innocence or guilt. He has ranted with anger that charging him with crimes is one of the greatest injustices any person in history has ever had to endure. And yet, he willingly and gleefully denies a trial, and punishes a person without even charging them with a crime, to prison for life. Trump cries about being subjected to witch hunts while simultaneously burning others at the stake without even charging them with a crime. Do you not see that Trump’s actions violate the core principles of any democracy or republic? Trump’s sycophant’s like Pam Bondi and … Levitt forcefully declare that (Abrego Garcia) did not belong in America and that Trump’s actions were correct, but they say words that don’t address the injustice at all, and their words are not spoken denounce a lie or correct an injustice. The words are only spoken for the benefit of the members of the Maga cult that may experience doubt about the purity of their leader. The words are spoken to give MAGA words to focus on that helps them stay steadfast in their MAGA beliefs, and not question their leader’s actions.
    • Why does Trump do this? Obviously because it pisses off the large population of the country that fails to worship him. He and the MAGA cult take great joy in distressing and upsetting those who don’t accept their dogma.
    • Trump could easily bring back (Abrego Garcia) from El Salvador. He could do so by withholding the money the U.S. pays El Salvador for holding the prisoners. Trump withholds millions of dollars that pays for the lunchs of children in Maine simply because the governor of main won’t do his bidding. Trump withholds billions of dollars from Harvard because Harvard won’t change the way they have operated for the last two centuries and do Trump’s personal biddings. But Trump doesn’t care about American children, nor educating Americans at great institutions, nor people being sent to life in prison without even being charged with a crime. He only cares about himself and getting what he wants.
    • The president of El Salvador could easily release Abrego Garcia, but he won’t because he knows he is gaining favor with Trump by doing so. Like any authoritarian, he is happily willing to sacrifice the rights of one man for his own personal gain.
    • The message sent by Trump is clear: If you attack the U.S. Capitol and brutally beat up police officers on his behalf, you get a pardon. But if you speak out about the killing of Palestinian Christians and Muslims by the Netanyahu regime, you get deported.

  • 2025 April - Lisa Murkowski said she fears retribution. Another reason Trump should not be president. Never before has “EVERYONE” needed to fear speaking out in disagreement with a president because they can be punished for doing so. Trump is the only president in U.S. history that uses punishment, retribution, and fear with everyone to intimidate, extort, and coerce them to do what he wants. This makes Trump the most anti-American president in our history. It is another fact demonstrating that he is not fit for office because he violates the very oath he swore to protect. There is no rule of law. There is only Trumps petty desires, desperate need for admiration, and his retributions governing our entire society.

Pure Narcissism things:

  • 2025.5.1 - A military parade to honor himself on his birthday. This does NOT save the U.S. money - that money could be spent on better things that the Republican’s have already destroyed in this administration.

Centralized control of all messaging, to not prevent mistakes, but to prevent undesired truths from leaking

An autocracy would rather stifle all communication in order to prevent an undesired truth from getting out, than to let comms flow and deal with any honest mistakes that are made.

Removal of oversight of possible government corruption:

  • 2025.5.19 - 250 attorneys at the Justice Department out because they will no longer be allowed to pursue violations of civil rights by police departments and as the DOJ is focused only on enforcing the Republican’s Executive Orders. Article

  • 2025.5.22 - Trump administration asks Supreme Court to block watchdog access to DOGE documents

  • 2025.5.15 Trump is destroying the Department of Justice, and the rule of law: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/trump-destroying-doj/682681/

  • 2025.5.14 - Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, sacked the acting head of the National Intelligence Council, which co-ordinates the work of government intelligence agencies, and his deputy. Both had worked for America’s intelligence services for decades. A spokesperson said that the dismissal was part of efforts to end the “weaponisation and politicisation of the intelligence community”.

  • 2025.5.9 - “Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General shall review all ongoing Federal consent decrees, out-of-court agreements, and post-judgment orders to which a State or local law enforcement agency is a party and modify, rescind, or move to conclude such measures that unduly impede the performance of law enforcement functions.” Basically what this is saying through all the lawyered bullshit, is that the America-attacker is weaponizing the Justice Department — which by the way is supposed to work for US, not him — to infiltrate local law enforcement shops and give them all sorts of ungodly powers bestowed by King Crud to wreck the lives of whomever they want, whenever they want.

  • 2025.5.1 Ice agents wear masks to hide their identity. When did our legal govt officials start doing that?

  • 2025.4.28 - Just hours ago, Trump’s appointees at the Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, purged the entire leadership team of the DOJ’s voting section – the career experts whose job it was to make sure every American can vote safely and fairly. [1]

  • 2025 April - The administration reportedly sacked Shoshana Chatfield, a vice admiral in the navy and senior NATO official. She is the latest victim of a purge of America’s national-security apparatus,

  • 2025 March - Trump firing NSA directors on April 3rd for lack of loyalty to him.

  • 2025 March - Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, was reportedly sacked, along with his deputy. Article

  • 2025 March Trump firing of Inspector Generals - who did better at finding waste and fraud than musk

  • 2025.May - The “Dispatches” article by George Packer in the May edition of Atlantic Magazine explains in small part how Trump’s advisers and aides are forced to go allow with Trump’s atrocities: “When a leader requires his underlings to say what they know isn’t true—up is down, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, Ukraine is to blame—it’s a test of loyalty and a show of dominance. Ritualized humiliation is essential to an authoritarian regime. Trump forces aides, advisers, and the friendly press that he allows into the room to utter absurdities on his behalf in order to bind them closer to him, and thereby frees himself from any restraint. They know from the example of more courageous or less careful colleagues that any quiver of independence will doom them politically, and perhaps even harm them physically. Almost immediately, it seems, they cease to be troubled by conscience or even motivated by fear. As they become more machinelike, they forget that they ever held a different idea, or any idea at all. You can see it in their relaxed features and smoother delivery.” Article

Together, we must now say NO:

  • NO to Trump’s plan to make America poorer, less safe and less free on purpose, by design
  • NO to the ridiculous tariffs that are driving up costs, harming our economy and torching our alliances
  • NO to aligning out interests with Russia and abandoning our traditional allies who have kept us prosperous, safe and free for generations
  • NO to outrageously attempting to annex countries who are part of NATO and Europe, and are our allies by binding treaty
  • NO to ending our support of the health and welfare of the global poor, that is causing millions to die and turning our country into mass murderers and global pariahs
  • NO to illegally and unconstitutionally dismantling the federal government, unilaterally ending Congressionally mandated programs of all kinds and allowing Musk to steal our private data for his own enrichment
  • NO to ripping apart our world-leading scientific and research ecosystem that has allowed American companies to beat out those of every country in the world
  • NO to doing extraordinary harm to the health of every day Americans by cutting access to care, assaulting vaccine regimes here and around the world and de-funding our cutting edge research institutions
  • NO to tax cuts and the disabling of the IRS that will starve our government of needed revenue and explode the deficit while cutting programs vital for the middle and working class
  • NO to stripping the rights and freedoms away of women in America that are common throughout the world and that have been in place here for 50 years
  • NO to people being snatched off the street by plainclothes ministry of interior agents into unmarked vans with no warrants or due process
  • NO to the vile profiting off the Presidency and ushering in an age of unprecedented corruption