In his Substack today, Gary Kasparov poses the question, "Why wouldn't they shoot somebody?" The answer is - it's all part of the plan, Project 2025 and the "Conservative Promise".
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) provides a summary: How NSPM-7 Seeks to Use "Domestic Terrorism" to Target Nonprofits and Activists. Please seek the link to the summary:
I agree. We need to constantly remind ourselves that these pathetic thugs are actually in the minority. Watch the action on the ground in Minnesota and Maine. Neighbors helping neighbors. Neighbors watching out for one another, driving their friends to work who are afraid they'll be snatched if they drive themselves. We can all do something, and doing something good during a time of great evil is important. It is our superpower. It is what will get us through this mess and to the other side of insanity.
Exactly! We have to flip the script and go on offense, but non-violently. My Indivisible group shared this. I know times are different but we can still outsmart the tyrants. https://youtu.be/r7dNLt5mC1A?si=gBpJV3CYfQHBm2fm
Build the resistance NOW! Read history, understand how fascism relies on you to give up. to stop hoping, to be compliant, to live in fear, how resistance has played a vital role in the collapse of every authoritarian and/or fascist state. Snyder's book 'On Tyranny" is a great place to start. Be of good courage! 💪🏽
Except for Alex Pretti and Renee Good and their loved ones, Timothy Snyder's good logic can yet prevail.
He says, "Those who actively lie are directly complicit in the deaths that just happen and in any deaths to come."
So indict Donald, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, J.D. Vance and all the other high officials who have actively lied to cover for repeated cold-blooded murder and to incite more murder, more cruelty, more swarming gangs of untrained thugs.
There’s no question it’s already happening. In her book, Autocracy, Inc., Anne Applebaum discusses how democracy can move away from us. In her podcast that I just started listening to, Autocracy in America, she says this is not something happening in the future, it is now. Joyce Vance in her book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable, encourages us to do all we can to keep our democracy. We recently protested against ICE in Evanston, IL, my husband, daughter and I. We must do all we can. As Prof. Snyder says, Trump should be impeached now; unfortunately, so many in the GOP are already putting a spin on Alex Pretty’s devastating murder. As if, for his parents, the loss of their young son is not enough. I have a lot of respect for the people of Minneapolis. It’s bitterly cold and they are out protesting. Their videos show proof of what happened to Alex Pretty. My hat is off to them. It takes courage!
Courage is something we all need to develop now. I have moved past anger and outrage and on to resolution. I am resolved to do everything I can, every day, to change the situation. Sometimes it's emailing my representatives. Sometimes it is forwarding an interesting article. Sometimes it's donating money, and sometimes it's simply being civil to everyone I meet. Do not let the thugs and haters steal your soul, your laughter, your joy, or your hope.
(I was responding to "Avoiding Reprisal" who wrote that it's "already happened." She said that somewhere else. No, we are in the midst of this, but is has NOT "already happened." That is defeatist talk.)
I wrote that it’s already happening. Not past tense. It’s happening right now. That is hardly defeatist talk. That is facing reality. Not being an expert in autocracy, I rely on the measured voices of experts like Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder. We have a country to save. Best not to split hairs.
As they progress with this thuggery it becomes more difficult to 'right the ship' but it is never too late. At this time we are probably talking about years, but it still can be done.
Perfectly said—“…the horror is the truth in itself.”
Thank you for this powerful piece.
Here is the other enraging piece: Mark Carney stood up at Davos and spoke truth to power while the rest of Europe sat on their hands applauding politely.
Where’s Macron’s follow-through? Where’s Scholz? Where’s Starmer? Carney drew the line. He said clearly: we’re building what comes next, with or without America. And then what? European leaders go home and do what exactly?
Wake the f*** up, Europe.
You’re watching state terror unfold in American cities. Federal agents murdering people on camera. Secret detention centers. Forced disappearances. The regime threatening your sovereignty, your alliances, your economic security. And your response is standing ovations and strongly worded statements?
Here’s what meaningful pushback looks like: Boycott the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the USA. Full stop. Make it hurt. You don’t send teams to a country operating paramilitary death squads in its cities. You don’t legitimize a regime kidnapping students for speech, detaining five-year-olds as bait, murdering nurses in the streets.
Activate the Anti-Coercion Instrument completely. Not threats. Action. Sanction regime officials. Freeze assets of corporations benefiting from Venezuelan oil theft. Expel US forces from European bases. Build defense independence now, not eventually.
Support Minneapolis directly. Send international observers. Document the atrocities. Provide sanctuary for those fleeing. Amplify what’s happening so the regime can’t operate in darkness.
Here’s what we can also do:
Write to all European embassies in Washington urging them to push back; all of their emails are online.
You can call them too.
In fact, call US embassies overseas too, and tell those people that are working there, on our taxpayer money, that they are not fulfilling their oath of office—-it states right there, in the oath “protect against enemies foreign and domestic”.
Pathetic!
The USA has become a disease spreading authoritarianism globally. Carney gets it. He’s the only major leader with the courage to say it plainly. The rest of Europe needs to follow through or admit they’re just waiting to see if appeasing the bully works.
It won’t. Argentina’s neighbors tried appeasement during the Dirty War too. It just gave the regime time to kill more people.
Push back now. Meaningfully. Or watch this spread.
Johan: YES! You state all the important pieces of this, it seems to me.
I think that as the stunned world leaders cowered, as they heard Mark Carney's clear and honorable and well informed short speech,it may take a short time for the message to register. Then what the Canadian PM said will begin to take hold.
I believe, and hope, that world "leaders" will get their a**es in gear an actually LEAD, instead of sitting subserviently in the shadows, terrified of offending the Megalomaniac-in-Chief of the United States.
Mark Carney shows how it is done. Full marks, PM Carney. You will be celebrated in history for this.
There's a lot of fertilizer in 30 million extraterrestrial bodies; sadly, that plan releases more unnecessary alien chemicals in our biosphere. Recommending cremation in our sun. Use Elon Musk's extraterrestrial rockets.
Thank God for Timothy Snyder. Fearless truth, clearly expressed for any person, Citizen or not, who pays attention.
Please send this message from Timothy Snyder to every person you know.
We are having our lives, our safety, our way of life, our beloved Country, stolen from us by a band of megalomaniacs intent upon destroying our Democratic Republic, and taking it over as authoritarians for the benefit of Billionaires only.
WAKE UP PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. NOW!
Yes! Wake up, people!!! And, yes, listen to Timothy Snyder. Every word. Also, speaking for myself (since I don't think I've heard or read this anywhere) - pay attention to Canadian writers and their readers' comments. Example: Today's newsletter from Charlie Angus / The Resistance, re death in Minneapolis. Pretty tragic we're where we are. And I repeat: Read the comments!!! Things are dire. Pay attention. There is nothing (at least nothing truthful) to be learned from idiotic Trump or Leavitt pressers. Sadly, I find the "reports" from Canadians not only enlightening, but far more credible.
This is so clearly, precisely, and expertly written. Everyone needs to read what Timothy Snyder has to say. Beware the legacy media where boundaries are blurred and crossed in "reporting" the news.
Tim, please keep sharing this and please consider going on YouTube with Heather Cox Richardson...you two are the voice of history and of reason...and of love. Thank you
AG Bondi & her "Civil Rights" attorney try to turn a brief peaceful protest at a church into a major federal criminal case using an 1870 anti-KKK law. Going after "the worst of the worst”? Domestic terrorists?
Resist MAGA gangster, grifter authoritarianism! Vote Sane. #VoteBlue!
Speak out & resist the lawless cruelty & violence. When (according to Trump & ICE) agitators, the worst of the worst, domestic terrorists etc are disguised in bunny hats, boxer shorts & feign disabilities
Now, gangland style ICE execution of 37 yr old peacefully filming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz0v3RiXaJM Legal holstered firearm that DHS & other feds falsely claim was “brandished” was in possession of feds before victim was shot at close range 10 or more times.
As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers wrote: Republicans could stop this at any time they wanted to. “All it would take to end the murder of American citizens by an untrained government goon squad is 16 Republicans in Congress voting with Dem[ocrat]s to defund ICE (or 23 to impeach and remove Trump—3 in House & 20 in Senate). That’s it. 23 Americans can vote for the public and end all of this.”
But the July law the Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured nearly $191 billion into DHS through September 30 2029 with almost $75 billion going to ICE and $67 billion going to Customs and Border Protection (FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, got just $2.9 billion or less than 2% of DHS).
Thanks Mike Johnson. I guess ICE and CBP don't go into your beautiful state. This weaponization of our government is on you buddy:
Per JM: "But the July law the Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured nearly $191 billion into DHS through September 30 2029 with almost $75 billion going to ICE and $67 billion going to Customs and Border Protection (FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, got just $2.9 billion or less than 2% of DHS)."
To some extent ICE is spinning out of Trump's control. Trump is annoyed that ICE's recorded murders of US citizens and ICE's documented rampant brutality take all the oxygen out of the room and leave little space for his daily attempted braggadocio.
Trump is a one-trick-pony so his reaction is to double down on the violence in an attempt to make us numb to its occurrence, thereby releasing space for his personal aggrandizement, to which he is clearly addicted. As part of his strategy Trump marches out Noem and Bovina to repeatedly parrot the regime's Orwellian interpretations of videos. Lies repeated often enough become the truth to the intellectually flaccid but most Americans are not falling for it.
Thank you, as always, for your thoughtful, compassionate, and insightful analysis. A voice of clarity in the midst of chaos.
On a separate note, I kept thinking I heard your writing - including a reference to Havel - in Mark Carney's speech in Davos. He's gotten your message about the politics of inevitability, and not just being opposed, but of the need to build the future you want to create. I think it's spreading to other governments because of that speech. So thank you for that, as well.
Judy, You are exactly right! We have been reading Timothy Snyder's work for over 6 years and he knows history, he knows the patterns, and he speaks truth. And so glad Mr. Carney's speech is being recognized around the world.
Tim Snyder's book called "On Freedom" published in 2024 is a great read.
Scott Galloway & Jessica Tarlov (on their Raging Moderates podcast) were discussing the pros and cons of a major economic strike a couple days ago. Made a lot of sense. Would take planning and would not be easy, but possibly well worth it. I need to listen to them again.
ICE can't be just disbanded. Those agents will still be a danger to us all. The ones who committed crimes must be tried for them, of course. What to do with the rest of them, though? I honestly don't know.
Connotation is important here. When someone says 'law enforcement', I and I believe most Americans think of local and state police, and the FBI. ICE has a more limited mission - enforcing laws having to do with customs and immigration. A force of 3000 ICE agents in Minneapolis, of all places, is 'law enforcement' only to credulous fools. I keep hearing that 'Alex Pretti failed to comply with an order'. ICE has no business telling someone to stop filming them. That is completely legal. Their order was nothing but harrasment, and it has no bearing on his shooting other than to demonstrate how lawless and brutal ICE has become. The notion that ICE are in Minneapolis to round up undocumented residents, rather than in, say, Texas, is laughable to all but mentally stunted MAGAs.
Thank you for you constant compassion, your prescient analysis, and your actionable wisdom. Thanks for your courage. As a family doc I’m going to post a prescription later today, another small flag flown in the great battle for our way of life. Here is the video, with what we all saw with our own eyes:
I watched your video. Although I had seen multiple videos, the length of yours shows more. The brutality is breathtaking! They pepper sprayed him, knocked him to the ground, kicked him in the head, and because that wasn’t enough for them, he was shot more than 10 times. And yes, one ICE monster clapped. The felon will pardon them. At some point they must be prosecuted at the state level and be held accountable for first degree murder and bring the accomplices of this murder to account.
The banality of evil refers to banal as in something that is so unoriginal that it is boring, not shocking.
The thing that is banal is watching our country make up excuses to treat our cities unfairly, and our citizens like shit. Treating them like they are war zones, when they clearly aren't. Treating them like granting them equality without brute squads is just inviting chaos, because they are incapable of self governance, so it's alright to institute "emergency Managers" or gerrymandered districts to "dilute" our communities impact.
Doing what the Republicans have done to "little blue islands" since the first RNC Culture War speech has become so banal that in order for it to shock, you need to have a guy like Trump following a playbook like Hitlers, with both Brownshirts and black shirts like Mussolini's out-numbering the police five to one, shooting people dead in the streets without allowing so much as a cursory investigation, while even Democrats still worry more about the sensibilities of suburban swing districts than injustices heaped on their urban base.
The Republican Culture war against American cities has become so banal that we are now here, and it is so ingrained that it has become the entire Republican Platform.
It has become a college subject teaching "politics as usual," along with "tough on crime" and the dangers of "Mob rule."
Our media ignored it as business as usual since Pat Buchanan's 1992 speech, and now it truly is as Banal as the "Völkisch" ideology that led to the NAZIs.
Maybe a Republican Senator could stand up and verbally recall that we don't do things this way in our Country. We have a porous border a lot further south than Minneapolis. The problem, as far as I can see, is that Texas and Arizona remain deeply red so political retribution and punishment is unneeded. ICE & CBP are providing Gym Jordan and James Comer with a masterclass on the weaponization of our own government against our own people because they vote Democrat instead of Republican.
In his Substack today, Gary Kasparov poses the question, "Why wouldn't they shoot somebody?" The answer is - it's all part of the plan, Project 2025 and the "Conservative Promise".
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) provides a summary: How NSPM-7 Seeks to Use "Domestic Terrorism" to Target Nonprofits and Activists. Please seek the link to the summary:
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-nspm-7-seeks-to-use-domestic-terrorism-to-target-nonprofits-and-activists
It's time for a political smackdown! We the People cannot allow the Trump Regime to replace our sacred US Constitution with Project 2025.
It's too late. It's already happened.
"No fate but what we make".
Giving up now is letting it happens. Giving up is siding with evil.
I agree. We need to constantly remind ourselves that these pathetic thugs are actually in the minority. Watch the action on the ground in Minnesota and Maine. Neighbors helping neighbors. Neighbors watching out for one another, driving their friends to work who are afraid they'll be snatched if they drive themselves. We can all do something, and doing something good during a time of great evil is important. It is our superpower. It is what will get us through this mess and to the other side of insanity.
That's the spirit, indeed 💪
We have come too far now. No turning back and never giving in!
Exactly! We have to flip the script and go on offense, but non-violently. My Indivisible group shared this. I know times are different but we can still outsmart the tyrants. https://youtu.be/r7dNLt5mC1A?si=gBpJV3CYfQHBm2fm
Build the resistance NOW! Read history, understand how fascism relies on you to give up. to stop hoping, to be compliant, to live in fear, how resistance has played a vital role in the collapse of every authoritarian and/or fascist state. Snyder's book 'On Tyranny" is a great place to start. Be of good courage! 💪🏽
It is never to late friend. For if it was Germans would still be nazi's.
I do admit that it will not be easy.... to many bad actors involved.... to many guns.
No, "Avoiding," it is not too late
Except for Alex Pretti and Renee Good and their loved ones, Timothy Snyder's good logic can yet prevail.
He says, "Those who actively lie are directly complicit in the deaths that just happen and in any deaths to come."
So indict Donald, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, J.D. Vance and all the other high officials who have actively lied to cover for repeated cold-blooded murder and to incite more murder, more cruelty, more swarming gangs of untrained thugs.
Start with the white supremist ideologues, S. Miller and C. Ruffo?
No, it's already happening. BIG DIFFERENCE!
There’s no question it’s already happening. In her book, Autocracy, Inc., Anne Applebaum discusses how democracy can move away from us. In her podcast that I just started listening to, Autocracy in America, she says this is not something happening in the future, it is now. Joyce Vance in her book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable, encourages us to do all we can to keep our democracy. We recently protested against ICE in Evanston, IL, my husband, daughter and I. We must do all we can. As Prof. Snyder says, Trump should be impeached now; unfortunately, so many in the GOP are already putting a spin on Alex Pretty’s devastating murder. As if, for his parents, the loss of their young son is not enough. I have a lot of respect for the people of Minneapolis. It’s bitterly cold and they are out protesting. Their videos show proof of what happened to Alex Pretty. My hat is off to them. It takes courage!
Courage is something we all need to develop now. I have moved past anger and outrage and on to resolution. I am resolved to do everything I can, every day, to change the situation. Sometimes it's emailing my representatives. Sometimes it is forwarding an interesting article. Sometimes it's donating money, and sometimes it's simply being civil to everyone I meet. Do not let the thugs and haters steal your soul, your laughter, your joy, or your hope.
(I was responding to "Avoiding Reprisal" who wrote that it's "already happened." She said that somewhere else. No, we are in the midst of this, but is has NOT "already happened." That is defeatist talk.)
I wrote that it’s already happening. Not past tense. It’s happening right now. That is hardly defeatist talk. That is facing reality. Not being an expert in autocracy, I rely on the measured voices of experts like Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder. We have a country to save. Best not to split hairs.
I say again: I did NOT write that to you. I was responding to "Avoiding Reprisal." Please look it up.
It has not happened. it's trying to happen. It's not too late. And shame on anyone who obeys this in advance.
As they progress with this thuggery it becomes more difficult to 'right the ship' but it is never too late. At this time we are probably talking about years, but it still can be done.
Perfectly said—“…the horror is the truth in itself.”
Thank you for this powerful piece.
Here is the other enraging piece: Mark Carney stood up at Davos and spoke truth to power while the rest of Europe sat on their hands applauding politely.
Where’s Macron’s follow-through? Where’s Scholz? Where’s Starmer? Carney drew the line. He said clearly: we’re building what comes next, with or without America. And then what? European leaders go home and do what exactly?
Wake the f*** up, Europe.
You’re watching state terror unfold in American cities. Federal agents murdering people on camera. Secret detention centers. Forced disappearances. The regime threatening your sovereignty, your alliances, your economic security. And your response is standing ovations and strongly worded statements?
Here’s what meaningful pushback looks like: Boycott the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the USA. Full stop. Make it hurt. You don’t send teams to a country operating paramilitary death squads in its cities. You don’t legitimize a regime kidnapping students for speech, detaining five-year-olds as bait, murdering nurses in the streets.
Activate the Anti-Coercion Instrument completely. Not threats. Action. Sanction regime officials. Freeze assets of corporations benefiting from Venezuelan oil theft. Expel US forces from European bases. Build defense independence now, not eventually.
Support Minneapolis directly. Send international observers. Document the atrocities. Provide sanctuary for those fleeing. Amplify what’s happening so the regime can’t operate in darkness.
Here’s what we can also do:
Write to all European embassies in Washington urging them to push back; all of their emails are online.
You can call them too.
In fact, call US embassies overseas too, and tell those people that are working there, on our taxpayer money, that they are not fulfilling their oath of office—-it states right there, in the oath “protect against enemies foreign and domestic”.
Pathetic!
The USA has become a disease spreading authoritarianism globally. Carney gets it. He’s the only major leader with the courage to say it plainly. The rest of Europe needs to follow through or admit they’re just waiting to see if appeasing the bully works.
It won’t. Argentina’s neighbors tried appeasement during the Dirty War too. It just gave the regime time to kill more people.
Push back now. Meaningfully. Or watch this spread.
— Johan
Former foreign service officer
Johan: YES! You state all the important pieces of this, it seems to me.
I think that as the stunned world leaders cowered, as they heard Mark Carney's clear and honorable and well informed short speech,it may take a short time for the message to register. Then what the Canadian PM said will begin to take hold.
I believe, and hope, that world "leaders" will get their a**es in gear an actually LEAD, instead of sitting subserviently in the shadows, terrified of offending the Megalomaniac-in-Chief of the United States.
Mark Carney shows how it is done. Full marks, PM Carney. You will be celebrated in history for this.
Thank you and a piece on this will drop in just a few minutes.
Subscribe and get my posts.
Johan, how to subscribe?
Please view my profile by clicking on my name and hit follow and then subscribe:
https://substack.com/@johanuniverseends?r=490k23&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile&shareImageVariant=image
Thank you for link. I couldn’t get your profile to come up but am subscribed now! 👍🏼
You have your finger right on it. Don't stop.
Love yours, Johan, on "Boycott the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the USA."
REAL law enforcement do NOT wear masks.
We need a law to that effect.
Now masks appear uniform, not like original hand maid. There they seemed afraid to be recognized. Now they are openly masked marauders
Really? Stop them now?
There's a lot of fertilizer in 30 million extraterrestrial bodies; sadly, that plan releases more unnecessary alien chemicals in our biosphere. Recommending cremation in our sun. Use Elon Musk's extraterrestrial rockets.
AMEN!!
Thank God for Timothy Snyder. Fearless truth, clearly expressed for any person, Citizen or not, who pays attention.
Please send this message from Timothy Snyder to every person you know.
We are having our lives, our safety, our way of life, our beloved Country, stolen from us by a band of megalomaniacs intent upon destroying our Democratic Republic, and taking it over as authoritarians for the benefit of Billionaires only.
WAKE UP PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. NOW!
Yes! Wake up, people!!! And, yes, listen to Timothy Snyder. Every word. Also, speaking for myself (since I don't think I've heard or read this anywhere) - pay attention to Canadian writers and their readers' comments. Example: Today's newsletter from Charlie Angus / The Resistance, re death in Minneapolis. Pretty tragic we're where we are. And I repeat: Read the comments!!! Things are dire. Pay attention. There is nothing (at least nothing truthful) to be learned from idiotic Trump or Leavitt pressers. Sadly, I find the "reports" from Canadians not only enlightening, but far more credible.
This is so clearly, precisely, and expertly written. Everyone needs to read what Timothy Snyder has to say. Beware the legacy media where boundaries are blurred and crossed in "reporting" the news.
Read On Tyranny.
Have read it multiple times and have given many copies of the book for gifts, including to my three grown daughters.
By his own admission, as well as by the admission of cabinet members, Trump is using ICE for extortion purposes.
If you just turn over all your state’s voter information databases, ICE will leave and stop shooting people!
Tim, please keep sharing this and please consider going on YouTube with Heather Cox Richardson...you two are the voice of history and of reason...and of love. Thank you
AG Bondi & her "Civil Rights" attorney try to turn a brief peaceful protest at a church into a major federal criminal case using an 1870 anti-KKK law. Going after "the worst of the worst”? Domestic terrorists?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmuH6JHqIf0.
Resist MAGA gangster, grifter authoritarianism! Vote Sane. #VoteBlue!
Speak out & resist the lawless cruelty & violence. When (according to Trump & ICE) agitators, the worst of the worst, domestic terrorists etc are disguised in bunny hats, boxer shorts & feign disabilities
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/24/us/minnesota-ice-violence-tactics-videos.html?smid=url-share
Now, gangland style ICE execution of 37 yr old peacefully filming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz0v3RiXaJM Legal holstered firearm that DHS & other feds falsely claim was “brandished” was in possession of feds before victim was shot at close range 10 or more times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdLhbQNELJY
As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers wrote: Republicans could stop this at any time they wanted to. “All it would take to end the murder of American citizens by an untrained government goon squad is 16 Republicans in Congress voting with Dem[ocrat]s to defund ICE (or 23 to impeach and remove Trump—3 in House & 20 in Senate). That’s it. 23 Americans can vote for the public and end all of this.”
But the July law the Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured nearly $191 billion into DHS through September 30 2029 with almost $75 billion going to ICE and $67 billion going to Customs and Border Protection (FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, got just $2.9 billion or less than 2% of DHS).
Thanks Mike Johnson. I guess ICE and CBP don't go into your beautiful state. This weaponization of our government is on you buddy:
Per JM: "But the July law the Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured nearly $191 billion into DHS through September 30 2029 with almost $75 billion going to ICE and $67 billion going to Customs and Border Protection (FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, got just $2.9 billion or less than 2% of DHS)."
To some extent ICE is spinning out of Trump's control. Trump is annoyed that ICE's recorded murders of US citizens and ICE's documented rampant brutality take all the oxygen out of the room and leave little space for his daily attempted braggadocio.
Trump is a one-trick-pony so his reaction is to double down on the violence in an attempt to make us numb to its occurrence, thereby releasing space for his personal aggrandizement, to which he is clearly addicted. As part of his strategy Trump marches out Noem and Bovina to repeatedly parrot the regime's Orwellian interpretations of videos. Lies repeated often enough become the truth to the intellectually flaccid but most Americans are not falling for it.
RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW!!
Thank you, as always, for your thoughtful, compassionate, and insightful analysis. A voice of clarity in the midst of chaos.
On a separate note, I kept thinking I heard your writing - including a reference to Havel - in Mark Carney's speech in Davos. He's gotten your message about the politics of inevitability, and not just being opposed, but of the need to build the future you want to create. I think it's spreading to other governments because of that speech. So thank you for that, as well.
Judy, You are exactly right! We have been reading Timothy Snyder's work for over 6 years and he knows history, he knows the patterns, and he speaks truth. And so glad Mr. Carney's speech is being recognized around the world.
Tim Snyder's book called "On Freedom" published in 2024 is a great read.
Yes - I finished it not too long ago. And I think On Tyranny should be required reading for high school civics classes.
A lot to be admired in PM Carney’s speech.
Robert Reich posts we need a general strike now. https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/sunday-thought-enough?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Agree!
I was discussing this with my husband last night. We agree, but are concerned for the small business owners that could be hurt.
Scott Galloway & Jessica Tarlov (on their Raging Moderates podcast) were discussing the pros and cons of a major economic strike a couple days ago. Made a lot of sense. Would take planning and would not be easy, but possibly well worth it. I need to listen to them again.
ICE can't be just disbanded. Those agents will still be a danger to us all. The ones who committed crimes must be tried for them, of course. What to do with the rest of them, though? I honestly don't know.
Give them brooms and tell them to start sweeping.
This gun of Justice won't be happening for years. We have to figure out a way to exist in this pile of crap.
Connotation is important here. When someone says 'law enforcement', I and I believe most Americans think of local and state police, and the FBI. ICE has a more limited mission - enforcing laws having to do with customs and immigration. A force of 3000 ICE agents in Minneapolis, of all places, is 'law enforcement' only to credulous fools. I keep hearing that 'Alex Pretti failed to comply with an order'. ICE has no business telling someone to stop filming them. That is completely legal. Their order was nothing but harrasment, and it has no bearing on his shooting other than to demonstrate how lawless and brutal ICE has become. The notion that ICE are in Minneapolis to round up undocumented residents, rather than in, say, Texas, is laughable to all but mentally stunted MAGAs.
We are dependent on states acting on their authority & I don’t see that happening.
And recall that blue states pay disproportionately more to the Feds than the red states. And now they are getting punished.
It's too late to think about fairness. That's off the table. We are way past that.
CA paid over $806 billion in 2024, alone, the highest of any state in the union, and we paid more $276 billion more than we received.
Thank you for you constant compassion, your prescient analysis, and your actionable wisdom. Thanks for your courage. As a family doc I’m going to post a prescription later today, another small flag flown in the great battle for our way of life. Here is the video, with what we all saw with our own eyes:
https://substack.com/@mccormickmd/note/c-204546124
I watched your video. Although I had seen multiple videos, the length of yours shows more. The brutality is breathtaking! They pepper sprayed him, knocked him to the ground, kicked him in the head, and because that wasn’t enough for them, he was shot more than 10 times. And yes, one ICE monster clapped. The felon will pardon them. At some point they must be prosecuted at the state level and be held accountable for first degree murder and bring the accomplices of this murder to account.
State charges, which Trump is trying to block. But it will come to that eventually. I believe they will be identified and tried.
Send them to Texas and make their use (and rehabilitation) an assignment for Greg Abbot.
Thanks, Doc. I have placed a candle in my window in remembrance of Ms. Good and Mr.Pretti.
The banality of evil refers to banal as in something that is so unoriginal that it is boring, not shocking.
The thing that is banal is watching our country make up excuses to treat our cities unfairly, and our citizens like shit. Treating them like they are war zones, when they clearly aren't. Treating them like granting them equality without brute squads is just inviting chaos, because they are incapable of self governance, so it's alright to institute "emergency Managers" or gerrymandered districts to "dilute" our communities impact.
Doing what the Republicans have done to "little blue islands" since the first RNC Culture War speech has become so banal that in order for it to shock, you need to have a guy like Trump following a playbook like Hitlers, with both Brownshirts and black shirts like Mussolini's out-numbering the police five to one, shooting people dead in the streets without allowing so much as a cursory investigation, while even Democrats still worry more about the sensibilities of suburban swing districts than injustices heaped on their urban base.
The Republican Culture war against American cities has become so banal that we are now here, and it is so ingrained that it has become the entire Republican Platform.
It has become a college subject teaching "politics as usual," along with "tough on crime" and the dangers of "Mob rule."
Our media ignored it as business as usual since Pat Buchanan's 1992 speech, and now it truly is as Banal as the "Völkisch" ideology that led to the NAZIs.
Maybe a Republican Senator could stand up and verbally recall that we don't do things this way in our Country. We have a porous border a lot further south than Minneapolis. The problem, as far as I can see, is that Texas and Arizona remain deeply red so political retribution and punishment is unneeded. ICE & CBP are providing Gym Jordan and James Comer with a masterclass on the weaponization of our own government against our own people because they vote Democrat instead of Republican.