I told Michael James, the writer recently featured here, that I wished more journalists had the strength of character to oppose authoritarianism now threatening democracy. Doing so involves professional risks because the Trump/Musk administration is supported by plutocrats who control major parts of the USA economy. There are also risks to an individual’s safety and well-being because one of the persons currently exercising power has pardoned dangerous criminals and marshalled massive numbers of would-be oppressors who, like him, ought to be in jail.

Mr. James commented:

While I’ve been very successful by most measures, I didn’t go as far as I could have because of my tendency to say what I thought. But, guess what? What’s happening now is evidence that staying on the right path can eventually get you to where you belong.

A few months ago, Truthout writer Jeff Swenson said:

Trump’s vitriolic and dehumanizing rhetoric has also contributed to an unprecedented culture of misinformation and truth-denying that has become so widespread since 2016 that it’s now a central feature of politics and a defining condition of the widespread violence, lawlessness and militarization shaping U.S. society. 

Mouths Full of Blood: Trump and His Backers Spread Lies, Violence and Fascism

I was pleased to see Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne speak bluntly about our current situation. Excerpts:

I wonder if we have underestimated the gravity of the situation the democratic world faces.

Even now, as the United States hurtles toward autocracy – the petty grotesqueries perhaps tell the story better than anything else: a reporter barred from the White House for not using the name “Gulf of America,” President Donald Trump naming himself chair of the Kennedy Center by a “unanimous” vote of its board – the tendency is still to describe events in relatively conventional terms…

The United States, under Mr. Trump, cannot be considered an idle bystander in the great twilight struggle between the democracies and the dictatorships, as it was in the 1930s. It is now on the side of the dictatorships.

The United States that openly threatens to invade Panama or Denmark – or to annex Canada – has not just stepped outside international law, including the basic Westphalian proscription of attempts to alter borders by force. Neither does a country that launches trade wars on a different country every day, including countries with which it has longstanding free trade treaties, reveal a simple lack of commitment to a rules-based approach to international trade. It is engaged in an all-out assault on both. It has become an outlaw state.

And in this regard, too, it is aligning itself with the dictatorships… America, under Mr. Trump, is no longer necessarily part of the democratic world: neither fully democratic in its own affairs, nor committed to the welfare of other democracies, but hostile to both. If the international order is to be preserved, then, it will have to be preserved, in part, from the United States.

The democratic world will have to get along without America. It may even have to defend itself from it…

Michael James Update

OK, HELLO WORLD…

I didn’t expect to write again so soon, but I am humbled and overwhelmed with gratitude to see that more than 50 thousand people around the world have shared my post about the need for us to rise up against the authoritarian regime currently being installed under US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.

I thank you all for your interest in my thoughts on what is occurring in the world, and, since you want to know what I think, well, I’m going to tell you – in a second.

Before I get to that, today’s story is primarily for Trump voters and supporters who have arrived en masse on shares of my post to declare pretty much in unison, “This is what we voted for! Get over it!”

I’ve noticed a trend of older angry white men in their 50s, 60s, 70s – and even older – spewing venom, vitriol and curses to those of us alarmed by what is happening to democracy in America.

To them I say, “Shut up! This isn’t about you. You had a lifetime to make this country a fair and better place, and you failed.

This existential fight is about those who will inherit and inhabit this planet long after your lives have ended. So, I don’t care what you have to say – and nobody else should, either.

Sit yo’ asses down!”

That said, this is my attempt to bridge the gap between those of us who feel democracy is in peril and those of you who claim this perilous path is what you wanted when you took to the polls and returned Donald Trump to The White House.

While I ask the rest of you to follow along, here’s my message to the MAGA folks:

“PLEASE WAKE UP!!!”

Wipe your eyes, clear your minds and realize that no matter what you’re saying now with the world on fire, even if you supported Trump, this is NOT what you voted for.

Let me list the ways…

1. You DID NOT vote for farmers to lose their jobs.
2. You DID NOT vote for your entire federal government to be dismantled under the guise of, wait for it, “waste and corruption.”
3. You DID NOT vote for hundreds of thousands of your fellow Americans to be tossed into the streets and left jobless and hopeless at the snap of a Trump-appointee’s unqualified finger.
4. You DID NOT vote for chaos and fear to be instilled into our longest-standing allies in Canada and Europe.
5. You DID NOT vote for a cadre of the richest men in not just America, but the entire world, to aid and abet in the demise of democracy and the fall of the United States of America.
6. You DID NOT vote for higher prescription drug prices and for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to be gutted – leaving you to look to a totalitarian government who views the benefits you EARNED your entire life as entitlements.
7. You DID NOT vote for a man who vowed to PUT AMERICA FIRST who only shows unabashed deference to two men on the entire planet: Elon Musk and Russia’s Vladmir Putin.
8. You DID NOT vote for the imminent recession and possible depression that will affect “the other side” just as much as it will affect you.
9. You DID NOT vote for the worldwide trauma response that is enveloping the planet who are turning their fearful eyes to America, which was once the brightest beacon of hope in the world.
10. You DID NOT vote for tyranny replacing the sound of freedom ringing.

What I am saying, people, is that Elon Musk, Donald Trump and all those inexperienced, unqualified puppets he’s placed at the highest levels of government look like us, but to paraphrase American rapper Kendrick Lamar, are NOT. LIKE. US.

Over the course of a thousand lifetimes, they will never know the despair of losing a home, not having access to medical care, not being able to feed their families or give up their freedom.

Since so many of you need reminding, here’s what you DID vote for:

Lower inflation. Lower food prices. Border security. A robust economy. Affordable medical care. A return to core American principles, morals, ethics and values.

You voted to put America First.

You didn’t vote to annex Canada, buy Greenland, redevelop and own the Gaza Strip, seize the Panama Canal, rename the Gulf of Mexico or for the return to the use of plastic straws.

But this is what you’re getting – whether you wanted it or not.

You’ve been played. Donald Trump moved the goalposts, and it’s getting late in the day to reverse the damage being done.

The billionaire class, the Gods in whom you trust, are taking over the world.

Your world.

So, you ask me, a regular American like many of you, “What can we do?”

Well, the first step is the hardest.

Wake up!