BARR MUST RESIGN

Bill Barr is a believer in the unitary presidency, the theory that the president has complete power over the executive branch, including the judiciary department; immunity from oversight; as well as other powers in direct violation of Article II of our Constitution and its framers' intent. We need legislation to uphold the independence of the judiciary, now protected only by norms easily violated by Trump and his AG henchman. And Barr should resign over his interference in the Stone trial, for lying about the Mueller report, and for using the judiciary for vendettas against Trump's opponents - even Barr is ashamed of himself, hence his embarrassment over Trump's tweets which reveal him to be the Trump tool he is.

As LONG AS YOU STAY SMALL

The children at the border have evaporated the commercials show happy banks surely everything will stay the same and I will not be affected the documents about the children at the border have evaporated on the commercials the banks are happy surely I will not be affected I am small and will stay that way I AM AFRAID I didn't mean it when I said never Trump but Sheila did and she doesn't think we are happy and the same take her I am here in the happy bank it chimes so jovially the children at the border are no longer there we would care if they were the banks are happy jovially chiming and the commercials are the same happy happy and nothing will change as long as I stay small.

Trump's Second, Third, and Fourth Terms

I am having a hard time dealing with the post-truth environment tonight. The Russian military is at it again, hacking the 2020 election, the same actors that hacked 2016. The president tweets that he is protecting people with pre-existing conditions even as he is in court to eliminate these protections. Tonight, the constant barrage of lies and propaganda intensifies through new media outlets that outFox Fox (OAN). How easily we have adapted - no outrage, no people in the streets, everyone at home watching their six hours of repetitive hypnotic advertising, binge eating and binge watching. Honestly, I thought we would put up more of a fight. I was wrong. Welcome to Weimar.

RACIST CUTS FOR RACIST WALL

Trump's cuts to planned military construction projects for his racist wall steals $400 milllion for 10 projects desperately needed for jobs and infrastructure in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Schools and day care centers for our service peoples' children have also been axed across the country. All this is in clear violation of the Constitution, which states that only Congress has the power of the purse. Will Congress takes this lying down? Sadly, its belly-down supine posture says, thanks, sir, please give me another.

"ACCUSE YOUR ENEMY OF WHAT YOU ARE GUILTY"

One of Josef Goebbels's propaganda principles was "Accuse your enemy of what you are guilty." As Congress investigates Jared Kushner's substandard Baltimore "Kushnerville" rentals, Trump lashes out in racist attack upon Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings, representative of Baltimore. Now Trump is attacking whole ciites. You would think people would rise up and vote against him in the next election, but the tactic worked as voter suppression in Detroit in 2016: See, the subtext of his message ran, the Democrats have left you in poverty, have left you in the lurch, why vote for them? I hope the consciousness raising by the Baltimore Sun and the black Obama officials helps, but Trump is a master at propaganda and must never be taken lightly.

NAZISM IN A NUTSHELL

Nazi theorists followed by Bannon and Miller advocate creating a feudal state - literally. The "deep state" they wish to destroy is education, social services, envionmental protections, anything that impedes the ruling class's amassing of wealth and power. Race wars keep people preoccupied, divided, and disempowered. Believe these people when they tell you who they are.

TWITTLER

STRUDEL AND MOVIES

In Nazi Germany there were brilliant movies and groundbreaking art, not to mention delicious strudel and heartstopping sports. And there was money to enjoy them all. Yes, somewhere Jewish families were being separated and sent to camps, and the chancellor became the Fuhrer and attacked the press and controlled the judiciary, but this all seemed like it would pass any day and the opposition would soon rise . . And how bad could things be with such delicious strudel and movies?

Constitutional Crisis

Another blow to the separation of powers from the proponents of the unitary executive, or the philosophy behind Trump's expanding article 2 powers: Emmet Flood, Trump's attorney, argued in a letter today that the president's advisors work for him, and "not for the people" (that is, we taxpayers who pay their salaries). Therefore, Trump may forbid these advisers to testify before Congress. With the executive's defiance of lawful congressional subpoenas and its wholesale annexation of the judiciary in the person of AG Barr, who will "supervise" the 14 investigations referred by Mueller much as he did the Mueller report, we are galloping headlong toward an authoritarian government. We should be in the streets about this.

ON TRUMP SUPPORTERS

There are many books on the market that urge us to listen to Trump supporters, to be kind and respectful of them. I find Trump supporters, who enable a vulgar, lying white supremacist, who spew racial epithets and insane Q conspiracy theories, morally and intellectually reprehensible. They have supported child separation, "good people on both sides," and attacks on the free press.There have to be limits to tolerance, especially when actors actively attack the rights and freedoms of others. Trump supporters are fascists, are creating a unitary authoritarian executive, and are destroying democracy. I hold to my right to condemn them like the Nazis that they are.

THE POWER THAT INTENDS TO STAY

So, this is how the dictatorship comes, with basketball games and favorite cop shows. By attrition, a law at a time. Information is hidden and propaganda blares; the whistleblowers are quietly arrested, and the lies, simple, big, repeated often, stare. The power that intends to stay forever flaunts custom and rule, riles up lumpenproletarian crowds, loud, louder, accusing opponents of what they term you. A germ warfare of words ensues. Gorka is hired by Sinclair; fascism is doled out with Dole pineapples, McCafe frappes. A public eats the words and naps.

A METONYMY

The Wall is a metonymy for institutional racism and atrocities like the policy of family separation. Ditto Trump's national emergency, which is based on wholesale lies that everyone, Trump supporters included, knows are lies. These lies are now the basis for a radical, largely unlimited expansion of presidential power. If your antennae aren't twitching grave danger right now, you don't know history, or haven't learned from it.

Where Do Your Interests Lie?

As a white Eastern European woman, I know my interests are aligned with people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and other disenfranchised minorites. White male supremacists do not deem white women equal - they see us as slaves who also provide sex. Hitler spelled out the role of women in Nazi Germany: Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). And evangelicals bring Biblical authority to the subjugation of women. As a white woman, my interests are #neverTrump: queer, worker, interfaith, rainbow, pink, diverse, global. And now more than ever, as fascism closes in, we had better realize where our interests lie. 

NAZI "THEORISTS"

You need to know what the Nationalists read in order to understand their comic-book-like evil objectives. Their Nazi "theorists" would seem parodical, like Batman villains, if they weren't taken seriously by Bannon, Gorka, and Miller, and spoonfed to an eager president. Julius Evola, "fascist intellectual" (yes, an oxymoron), who wrote "rape is the ultimate manifestation of male desire," is a favorite of Bannon's, largely due to murky mysticism and even murkier thinking. Generally, Nazi theorists want to establish a dark age or feudal state with a few ubermensch lords. "Dark, I love dark!" Bannon rambles. This is the guy that Rebecca Mercer (Cruz and Trump funder) calls 'the Leni Riefenstahl of our movement." It's pathetic, but it plays with readers of The Daily Stormer.

Lineage

People often take me for Jewish, and that has always pleased me. My lineage is quite different (gentile, Ukrainian cossack, in fact). But, as some of you know, my parents and grandparents were interned in Nazi concentration camps during WWII, so I naturally gravitated to people with awareness about the Holocaust. There was also our shared love of borscht and horseradish and pickled fish. And - a certain tingling on the radar for Nazi catch phrases like "America First" and "I'm a nationalist." From what I've learned, we are witnessing the rise of Nazism in the United States, led by Trump, and although people of color, Muslims, Jews, and LGBTQ folk are the visible and immediate targets of the storm troopers he has incited to violence, trust me: we are ALL under attack. #neverTrump

RULES OF PROPAGANDA

Do not underestimate Trump. He has effectively followed Hitler's racist and rapist playbook for power and has divided our nation to the point of civil war. We are surrounded by disinformation and propaganda and the press and freedom of assembly are in grave danger. 
Remember the rules of propaganda, of which Trump is a master, and teach others to resist.
1. Make the lie big.
2. Make it simple so that your least intelligent follower can grasp it.
3. Repeat it often.
And . . .
4. Accuse your opponents of what they accuse you, to confuse and undermine. If your followers are an angry mob, call Democrats an angry mob; if you are extreme and dangerous, call Democrats extreme and dangerous. Etc.
Watch for these tactics, and educate others, and resist, resist, ,#resist.

An Intellectual Dark Ages

My worst fear about Trump et. al. is coming true: Trump is writing the history books. In the heartland, the age of the Earth is 6,000 years per Biblical begats and the theory of evolution is censored. Climate change research is not only ignored, it is destroyed. The Holocaust didn't happen; Helen Keller and Hillary Clinton have been removed from the curriculum in Texas; neo-Nazis and Confederates are "good people"; Republican candidates for Congress praise slavery. Evidence-based disciplines such as science and journalism are attacked as "fake." Trump's constant propaganda of big lies repeated often is working- our children are numb with apathy or animated with right-wing reaction. Unless a change comes soon, I see all Trump's lies dutifully recorded for future students, starting with "More people attended his inauguration than any in history, period."

So, this is living under fascism . . .

So, this is living under fascism . . . the avocados I buy are still ripe and delicious, the trees in Riverside Park still speak of the beauty of eternity, my friends still write exquisite poetry and prose. But a weight hangs over me, a sadness, a loss . . . . Today, I noticed the long tail of a rat scurrying beneath my favorite park bench, and I cannot sit there anymore. It is that loss of security, freedom, dignity, the knowledge that honesty and fair play are forever gone, that the rules will never be respected again and like the rats, outrages will continue to multiply and authoritarian rule alone will stand. And we can patch things up a bit, but life will never be the same. Is this when I, writer and poet, go to work? Yes, otherwise, what good am I?

THE ART OF WAR

The ancient military tactician Sun Tsu said in his Art of War: "When you are strong, appear weak; weak, appear strong." We have been laughing at the Trump administration, and they sprung a second Supreme Court nomination on us. No one in the leakiest of White Houses leaked a word about their campaign to install another extreme-right justice. Let's face it - net neutrality gone, world alliances shifted, two major propaganda arms installed - we've been outplayed, my friends. This is not Saturday Night Live - let's not underestimate our opponent.

"God doesn't want you to retire."

White evangelicals are the driving force behind Trump. But living in a liberal bubble, it is difficult to appreciate the insanity of their thinking, for want of a better word, and the degree to which Republican politicians manipulate them with the Bible. 
For example: Representative Greg Gianforte of Montana (the one who beat up the Guardian reporter) was talking about social security to a constituent. He asked, "How old was Noah when he died?" The constituent dutifully answered, "600." "So, God doesn't want you to retire!" retorted the Republican.
Or, Jay Sekolow (Trump's lawyer) writing about the end of days and claiming Trump to be the only hope against the Apocalypse.
Or, states like Texas asking writers of textbooks (me among them) not to mention the age of the Earth or evolution, as creationism replaces science.
The evangelical movement forgives Trump everything because they believe he is fulfilling prophecy and will bring about a theocratic state, with them in charge. Only one of the reasons I am a #neverTrump.