As conservatives become more radicalized and grow more detached from reality, their perception of the world is changing as well. In this video we’ll look at several delusional claims made by conservatives.
She is one of the people who claim to know more and be more moral than everyone else so she / them get to tell the rest of us how we must live and how our schools should be run. The article below shows how unqualified these people are to tell others how to live their lives. These people are simply self entitled ego driven people who feel entitled to rule over how others live, while often not living that way themselves. I won’t be coloring this one, too much in it is triggering to me.
Randy was visiting us the other day and we touched a bit on my abuse. For something realted. I told them something I had not told before. By the time I was 7 during my adoptive parents parties with their friends, I would be set / perched on the counter with all the booze and mixers and would be required to fix drinks for the people. They would come to me and hand me their glass, tell me what they wanted, I would make the drink and hand it back. If I did the job correctly and everyone left happy, I was rewarded but if anyone complained I was disciplined. Often right then and painfully humiliated. Sometimes I would have to stand at the counter and wait on the people playing cards, watching for their drinks to get low and offering to refill them. I learned to never let an empty glass go unaddressed. Needless to say, I did not go into detail and it was a brief mention.
A former Pennsylvania lieutenant governor candidate and outspoken voice in the conservative “parental rights” school movement has been charged with punching a teenager while hosting an underage drinking party at her Bucks County home in September.
Clarice Schillinger, 36, is facing criminal charges of assault, harassment and furnishing minors with alcohol during her daughter’s birthday party, according to the case filed in late October. Her attorney has denied all charges and said she will fight them in court.
Schillinger made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor as a Republican last year and has played an instrumental role in a political action committee that has poured more than $800,000 into Pennsylvania school district races since 2021. The PAC has focused on supporting school board candidates who opposed COVID-19 lockdowns and argue left-wing ideologies are invading the education system.
In the recent criminal case, Schillinger is accused of punching a partygoer several times in the face during a series of alleged outbursts by drunken adults at her home on Liz Circle in Doylestown, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
The documents state that during the event — which started Sept. 29 and went past midnight — Schillinger’s then-boyfriend allegedly grabbed a 16-year-old by the neck for intervening in a fight between the couple and hit a 15-year-old in the face during an argument over football. According to the allegations in court papers, her intoxicated mother also punched the older teen in the eye and chased him around the kitchen island. Police said they had cellphone recordings of some of these reported events.
To escape the unruly adults, several minors started making their way out of the home, even as Schillinger ordered them to stay, court documents allege.
Cellphone footage showed that as the teens gathered in the foyer Schillinger lunged toward one partygoer before others began restraining her. That individual told police Schillinger struck him three times with a closed fist but that he wasn’t injured, according to the affidavit.
Schillinger had been throwing a 17th birthday party for her daughter that night, hosting about 20 teens in her basement, where there was a bar stocked with New Amsterdam vodka and Malibu Bay Breeze rum, police wrote in the affidavit. In addition to supplying the underage group with alcohol, she allegedly poured liquor for the teens, asked them to take a shot with her and played beer pong with them, witnesses later told authorities.
State law makes it illegal to serve or allow minors to drink alcohol.
One of the teen’s parents called police early the morning of Sept. 30 to report the assaults and the underage drinking at Schillinger’s home. Investigators interviewed multiple teens who had attended the party, the affidavit states.
This wasn’t the first time police visited Schillinger’s home — which she’s been renting since the spring — for reports of an underage party, according to court documents.
Emergency dispatch data provided by the Bucks County Emergency Service Division logged at least four different calls at the address.
Buckingham Township police responded to a noise complaint call and possible underage party at Schillinger’s home on Sept. 24, the weekend before the birthday party, according to 911 data and court records.
Police reported in one affidavit spotting a number of beer cans strewn around the property and street that night. They also saw about 20 teens dart into the home and, when they tried speaking with Schillinger, found her to be “intoxicated and uncooperative,” the affidavit states.
Authorities responded to another noise complaint at Schillinger’s home involving “intoxicated subjects” just after midnight on Sept. 29, though an affidavit says police only made contact with Schillinger’s then-boyfriend, Shan Wilson, that night.
Schillinger is scheduled for a late January preliminary hearing. Her mother, Danette Bert, and Wilson were charged with assault and harassment in connection with the party, but those charges were withdrawn when they pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in early December, court records show.
In an email, Schillinger said that her case had been dropped and suggested Wilson, whom she described as an “angry ex boyfriend,” was behind the accusations. However, online court records show the case is still active, and a spokesman for the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that the charges are not being dismissed.
Schillinger has not responded to a request for further comment, including why she believes the charges against her were dropped.
While Wilson did contact the USA Today Network about the incident, the affidavit against Schillinger did not include any statements from him and relied instead on the testimony of teenage witnesses and the cellphone footage.
“Ms. Schillinger has dedicated her life to public service,” Schillinger’s attorney Matthew Brittenburg said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “Additionally, she has always been a law abiding citizen. Ms. Schillinger looks forward to the opportunity to defend against these allegations.”
Who is Clarice Schillinger?
Dissatisfied with school closures that followed the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Schillinger created a political committee to help fund school board candidates who made strict adherence to in-person education their top campaign promise.
That PAC, Keeping Kids In School, focused more closely to school districts near Schillinger’s former home in Ambler, Montgomery County, by giving out thousands of dollars to smaller PACs backing slates of candidates running on an “open schools” platform.
Bucks County venture capitalist and Central Bucks parent Paul Martino took notice of Schillinger’s PAC before the municipal primary in May 2021, and the two created Back To School PA later that summer.
Martino initially put up $500,000 of his own money for Back To School PA to disburse $10,000 checks to local school board races across the state.
Schillinger told the conservative news organization Broad+Liberty after that year’s election that Back To School saw an “incredible win” with 113 of 182 candidates supported by the PAC winning elections.
Back To School took credit for flipping at least six school districts in that story, including Pennridge and Quakertown Community school districts in Bucks County; Harrisburg City in Dauphin County; Hempfield in Lancaster County; Palmyra in Lebanon County; and Southeastern in York County.
The PAC also gave $10,000 to Bucks Families for Leadership, which was an earlier PAC Martino created and funded backing Republican candidates in the 2021 Central Bucks school board race.
Three of the five Central Bucks Republicans that ran in 2021 made it onto the board, but this year’s municipal election saw Democrat candidates sweep five seats and take a 6-3 majority.
While Schillinger’s original PAC and Back To School were described as bipartisan and focused on the single-issue of school closures by her and Martino, most of the candidates endorsed were Republican and often opposed to other pandemic mitigations like requiring masks in schools.
Schillinger threw her hat in the ring for public office in 2022 joining eight other candidates in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor. Schillinger finished fourth, gaining over 148,000 votes of the 1.2 million cast for that office.
Schillinger announced that Back To School PA would be going national during a July 25, 2022, episode of 1210 WPHT’s The Dom Giordano Program.
“Back To School USA is really going to be focused on putting candidates in place that will put our children and their education first,” Schillinger said. “Right now, we are not doing that. We are more focused on these woke and gender ideas.”
A website for the national PAC, created in October 2021, is no longer publicly accessible.
Martino told Lehigh Valley News in September that Back To School USA was “more of an idea right now” but indicated Schillinger was still involved in a fundamental way.
He declined to comment on the charges against Schillinger but wrote in an email this week that Back To School USA “never got off the ground” because other projects took priority last year.
The fundamentalist Christians and the maga right can not tolerate positive affirming media about LGBTQIA, independent women, or black people because it ruins their narrative. They want to push the idea that women need men to function and be whole, that blacks are lazy and less intelligent, and that the LGBTQIA are evil incarnate that will destroy everything good in the country / world and god hates them, so god will take it out on everyone if they are treated decently. They are desperate to push the 1950s social narrative that white men are good, the Christian god is the right and only god in public, and that cis straight is normal so every thing else is an abhorrent abomination. They are wrong and stuck in a regressive oppressive past, unable to let others enjoy the modern world. They are modern Amish, only they demand that everyone live like them. Without positive reinforcement the lives of LGBTQIA and minority kids are much harder, much more anxiety ridden, much more unpleasant. Kids learn to hate themselves. They learn that others hate them and are free to attack them. So they either keep hidden, missing out on great times straight cis kids are having along with a much higher risk of suicide. Hugs
We told you in a “Behind the Curtain” column last month that Trump allies are pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential appointees and employees in case he wins back the White House. Now we have copies of the exact questionnaires Trump allies are using — and that then-President Trump used himself during his final days in office.
Why it matters: These future Trumperswould staff an unprecedented effort to centralize and expand presidential power at every level of the administration.
Trump insiders are planning a far more targeted and sophisticated sequel to his haphazard first term, when internal feuding deterred policy wins or permanent changes to government.
The 2020 questionnaire — paired with the application the Heritage Foundation is currently collecting from job prospects for a future administration — points to a top-down government-in-waiting that would be driven more by ideology than by policy expertise or innovation.
Trump, the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination, is being explicit about his plans for retribution and disruption if he wins the 2024 election. So how he would staff his government is of immense consequence.
Driving the news: The 2020 “Research Questionnaire,”which we obtained from a Trump administration alumnus, was used in the administration’s final days — when most moderates and establishment figures had been fired or quit, and loyalists were flexing their muscles. Questions include:
“What part of Candidate Trump’s campaign message most appealed to you and why?”
“Briefly describe your political evolution. What thinkers, authors, books, or political leaders influenced you and led you to your current beliefs? What political commentator, thinker or politician best reflects your views?”
“Have you ever appeared in the media to comment on Candidate Trump, President Trump or other personnel or policies of the Trump Administration?”
The big picture: Similar questions are being asked for the Talent Database being assembled by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — the most sophisticated, expensive pre-transition planning ever undertaken for either party:
“Name one person, past or present, who has most influenced the development of your political philosophy.”
“Name a book that has most significantly shaped your political philosophy, and please explain its influence on your thinking.”
“Name one living public policy figure whom you greatly admire and why.”
Between the lines: An alumnus of the Trump White House told us both documents are designed to test the sincerity of someone’s MAGA credentials and determine “when you got red-pilled,” or became a true believer.
“They want to see that you’re listening to Tucker, and not pointing to the Reagan revolution or any George W. Bush stuff,” this person said.
See for yourself: As an exclusive for Axios readers, at the bottom of this story you can read both the Trump questionnaire and 2025 application in full.
Both documents are striking for their emphasis on what you believe rather than your credentials or accomplishments.
They reflect a vision for a centralized administration where people throughout the administration would pick up the phone and say: “Yes, sir.”
Details: The Heritage Foundationtold us Project 2025 officials have collected more than 5,000 applications — months before a Republican nominee is locked in.
Heritage president Kevin Roberts said recently that Project 2025’s mission is to get the next conservative president “ready to govern in the most aggressive, ambitious, audacious way to destroy the Deep State and devolve power back to the individual Americans.”
The groundwork by Heritage, which is nonpartisan in its tax designation, is technically available to any future conservative nominee. We’re told Project 2025 officials have briefed the Republican campaigns of Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Halley and Vivek Ramaswamy — and even the independent campaign of Robert Kennedy Jr.
But the presence of Johnny McEntee, former director of Trump’s White House Presidential Personnel Office, as a senior adviser to Project 2025 reflects the Trump-centric planning.
Behind the scenes: We hear Trump has been irritated by all the attention Heritage and other outside allies have gotten for the prefab administration that’s being assembled.
The Trump campaign’s top two officials, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, issued a statement in mid-November saying that “none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign. We will have an official transition effort to be announced at a later date.”
“Unless a second term priority is articulated by President Trump himself, or is officially communicated by the campaign,” they added, “it is not authorized in any way.”
“Behind the Curtain” is a column by Axios CEO Jim VandeHei and co-founder Mike Allen, based on regular conversations with White House and congressional leaders, CEOs and top technologists.
Please read the quote below from the post on Ten Bear’s site. Then think of the things tRump and his supporters claim they plan to do. Hugs. Scottie
White Rose survivor Jürgen Wittenstein described what it was like to live in Hitler’s Germany: “The government – or rather, the party – controlled everything: the news media, arms, police, the armed forces, the judiciary system, communications, travel, all levels of education from kindergarten to universities, all cultural and religious institutions. Political indoctrination started at a very early age, and continued by means of the Hitler Youth with the ultimate goal of complete mind control. Children were exhorted in school to denounce even their own parents for derogatory remarks about Hitler or Nazi ideology.”
Thanks again to Ten Bears for the link. This shows the claim they are against indoctrination in schools is not true, but instead the goal is to indoctrinate kids in a hard right wing fundamentalist Christian ideology. It is a return to the fake myth of the 1950s society and the removing of everything LGBTQIA and gender identity. Total authoritarian back to the dark ages regression. It is a rejection of all the social advancements of the modern age. Hugs. Scottie
One thing that is seldom mentioned about the removal of books from Florida classroom libraries: much of this activity may be illegal.
The school board in Escambia County, Florida, for example, is being sued over their decision to remove And Tango Makes Three and other books from public school libraries. And Tango Makes Three is the true story of two male penguins, Roy and Silo, who lived in the Central Park Zoo and raised an adopted chick. The woman who challenged the book, notorious Escambia County English Teacher Vicki Baggett, told Popular Information she was concerned it exposes students to “alternate sexual ideologies.” Baggett said “a second grader would read this book, and that idea would pop into the second grader’s mind… that these are two people of the same sex that love each other.” The school board appeared to have similar concerns. “The fascination is still on those two male penguins,” school board member David Williams said. “So I’ll be voting to remove the book from our libraries.”
Florida English teacher pushing book bans is openly racist and homophobic, students allege
In May, Penguin Random House, five authors, two parents, and the non-profit group PEN America sued the Escambia County school board in federal court, alleging that the school board’s actions violated the United States Constitution. The lawsuit alleges that the school board banned and restricted books “based on their disagreement with the ideas expressed in those books.” In so doing, the school board has “prescribed an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
The lawsuit is ongoing, and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) has intervened in the case, arguing that it should be dismissed. In an extraordinary filing earlier this year, Moody argued that the First Amendment does not apply to public school libraries and that school boards can remove any book for any reason — even if the motive is discriminatory.
In Moody’s filing, Florida argues that the purpose of public school libraries is to “convey the government’s message,” and that can be accomplished through “the removal of speech that the government disapproves.” The issue of what books are allowed to be carried by school libraries, Florida states, should be settled at the “ballot box.” According to the state’s filing, public school libraries “are not a forum for free expression.”
Florida’s argument has serious flaws. Indeed, Florida’s filing acknowledges that no court has ruled, as Florida argues, that public school libraries are a form of government speech. The issues with Florida’s legal position were detailed in an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs filed by two dozen law professors.
Florida is arguing for an expansion of the definition of “government speech” to include public school libraries. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito — one of the court’s most conservative members — warned in the 1996 case of Matal v. Tam that the concept of “government speech” is “susceptible to dangerous misuse.” Alito, writing for the Supreme Court, wrote that “we must exercise great caution before extending our government-speech precedents” because it could be used as a pretext to “silence or muffle the expression of disfavored viewpoints.”
Currently, “the government speech doctrine only applies to state programs in which the government conveys an official message that the public would recognize as such.” Public school libraries do not exist “to carry official messaging” for the government, the law professors note. Therefore, “[a]pplying the government speech doctrine to school libraries would create a dangerous incompatibility with the nature and purpose of those libraries.”
A federal judge recently rejected a similar argument made by the Arkansas government regarding the removal of books from public libraries. “Defendants are unable to cite any legal precedent to suggest that the state may censor non-obscene materials in a public library because such censorship is a form of government speech,” the judge ruled.
The law professors highlight that there is a Supreme Court case that directly addresses the government’s role in curating school libraries, the 1982 case of Island Trees School District v. Pico. In Pico, the Supreme Court recognized that school boards have significant flexibility in determining the contents of school libraries. However, the Supreme Court was clear that the scope of the school board’s power over school libraries is limited by the First Amendment.
Citing previous Supreme Court decisions, the plurality opinion in Pico notes that “students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate” and the “school library is the principal locus of such freedom.” As a result, it is unconstitutional for school boards to remove books from a school library in a “narrowly partisan or political manner.’” This appears to be exactly what is happening. And Tango Makes Three was removed from Escambia County school libraries because it didn’t conform to the school board’s political opinions about LGBTQ people.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit note that the precedent goes beyond Pico: “Every court that has addressed that issue… has rejected the position that libraries — including school libraries — constitute Constitution-free zones in which government officials can freely discriminate based on viewpoint.”
Florida realizes that Pico and related cases present a serious challenge to its position. In its filing in support of the Escambia County School Board, Florida argues that Pico should be ignored because it was a plurality decision. But the fact is that, in the 40 years after Pico was decided, the Supreme Court has never repudiated the case.
From “parental rights” to “authoritarianism”
The significance of Florida’s filing was recentlycovered in the Tallahassee Democrat, which interviewed several experts about the implications of the state’s arguments.
Ken Paulson, the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, noted that proponents of removing books from school libraries frequently say they are fighting for “parental rights.” But “[if] government speech determines what books can be in the library, the government is essentially saying your children can only see the ideas that the government has approved.” That is inconsistent, Paulson argues, with parental rights. “It’s authoritarianism,” Paulson said.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said Florida’s position goes against the fundamental principle “that no government entity can engage in viewpoint discrimination.” Caldwell-Stone said, if Florida prevails, it would transform schools from a place dedicated to “preparing individuals… to make decisions about their own lives” to “indoctrination centers for only one viewpoint.”
Thanks to ten Bears for the link. This is a scary and important read, and people need to understand what will happen this time if tRump and his ilk get into power again. We must put small time bickering of age and other things aside until the threat posed by these people are gone. If we don’t stand together and vote for Biden and other democrats in large numbers or democracy goes away and the US becomes a hell of inequality, no rights, no personal freedoms, and required living as you are ordered to do so. The LGBTQIA will be illegal, as will other personal freedoms. Reading material and movies will have to be state sanctioned and follow party lines, like in China. Hugs. Scottie
If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you…
If Trump is re-elected, he’d be America’s 47th president, so he’s named the plans for his second term “Agenda 47.” At best, it’s a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world.
Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans, include:
Criminalizing homosexuality
Part of Agenda 47, Trump says, is “finishing the job” he started as president between 2017 and 2021.
Just two hours after he and Pence were sworn into office, they removed all mention of LGBTQ+ issues from the White House website.
Two days later, his State Department deleted former Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology to the nation for the “Lavender Scare” government persecution of gays and lesbians during the McCarthy era 1950s and early 1960s. A month later, Trump’s Justice Department announced they’d no longer defend the civil rights of trans kids.
His Education and HUD offices both withdrew their court defenses of queer people, particularly students and those in homeless shelters, and his Secretary of State refused to mention to the Russian Foreign Minister the detention and brutal executions of gay men by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. On May 4, 2017 Trump signed an executive order letting the DOJ ignore claims of illegal discrimination against queer people and women throughout every single one of the nation’s federal agencies.
In September, 2017, Trump’s Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, officially ended that agency’s Title IX guidance requiring schools to do something about sexual harassment, including sexual violence, against women and LGBTQ+ kids. In response to a question from the media about the change in policy and gay men, Trump said that his Vice President “wants to hang them all.”
In January of 2018, Trump rolled out the “Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom” at HHS, which would backstop people who wanted to use the excuse of “deeply held religious beliefs” to justify explicit discrimination against queer people and women, or to simply to make life difficult for government agencies.
All of this is just the beginning. The Human Rights Campaign has documented page after page of anti-queer policies put into effect by Trump that will be resurrected and put on steroids in a second term.
Destroy academic freedom and gut our public schools
In the Agenda 47 section of his website, Trump explains how he’s going to use our schools and colleges to indoctrinate young Americans in rightwing ideology. He explicitly says:
“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”
Any colleges that continue to teach “under the guise of [racial] equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”
In other words, just like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary and Putin did in Russia, he’s going to bankrupt the nation’s schools and colleges if they continue to teach the true history of America and promote egalitarian values. As Trump notes at his website:
“[W]e are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all.”
Gut the EPA, OSHA, CPSB, IRS, the Labor Department, and other federal agencies that keep our air clean, our water pure, and protect average Americans from predation by the morbidly rich and their corporations
Back in the 1970s, Richard Nixon said he was going to use “impoundment” to strip funding from agencies his donors didn’t like, claiming that, even though Congress had appropriated budgets for them, he could, as head of the Executive Branch, simply “impound” the money and refuse to spend it. His plan to remake the federal government was interrupted by Watergate.
In 1974, Democrats in Congress got together and passed legislation outlawing this and Jerry Ford signed it into law. But Trump’s lawyers apparently think they can get it overturned through their appointees on the courts or even, if they can take both branches of Congress, through new legislation. As Trump says on his website:
“I will use the president’s long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”
Since the fossil fuel companies, banks, refineries, anti-union big employers, and their billionaires who fund the GOP hate all of these agencies, it’ll be a bonanza for them.
Not so much for working people, retirees, and those of us concerned about a livable future environment for our kids and grandkids, though.
Destroy the media and the truth
First, he wants to make it illegal for the federal government’s security services to notify social media platforms about Russian disinformation and other foreign efforts to swing elections, since nearly 100% of those efforts are coming from authoritarian countries in support of Trump and against democracy.
“I will ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information,” Trump proclaims on his Agenda 47 website.
He also wants to force social media to carry his buddy Putin’s trolls’ lies and attempts to pit Americans against each other, and limit the companies’ ability to label or block lies and propaganda. As Trump puts it:
“I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising Section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business.”
In Hungary, one way Viktor Orbán got rid of actual news media and replaced the ownership of all the nation’s major radio and TV networks, websites, and newspapers was by changing the libel laws so that public figures (like Orbán himself) could sue for libel when they thought they were treated unfairly.
They then sued company after company, commentator after commentator, reporter after reporter, into bankruptcy.
Orbán’s rightwing buddies could buy the media properties out of bankruptcy which is why now virtually all the media in Hungary is like Fox “News,” broadcasting suck-ups to Orbán and criticism of “liberals,” immigrants, and gays 24/7.
Trump wants to do the same here in the US.
When Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury came out with some unflattering characterizations of Trump in it, the then-president said:
“We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. And if somebody says something that’s totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled, will have meaningful recourse.”
Simply reporting on what Trump’s up to could bring lawsuits that would bankrupt even the Times or the Post, and, like in Hungary and Russia, pretty much end the existence of a free and independent press in America.
Turning America into a vigilante police state
Trump has promised to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists who tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House (and whose actions led to the death of four police officers), and put into place a national “stop and frisk” law that upends the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
It would also — like Duterte in the Philippines who executed over 10,000 people during his reign of terror — authorize the federal government to immediately execute anybody convicted of trafficking in drugs without further due process or appeals.
Republicans in Texas have already pioneered using vigilantes to hunt down women who’ve had abortions and the people who’ve helped them. Expect these vigilante-enforced laws to spread across the country with a second Trump administration, with groups like the Proud Boys and III Percenters becoming the modern-day equivalent of the old west’s 19th century bounty hunters.
In a flashback to Hitler’s “work camps” that preceded the death camps by five years, Trump’s also proposed building concentration camps around the country to house “millions” of undocumented aliens and his political enemies. As he noted in a speech on Veterans’ Day this year:
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” adding that Russia isn’t a problem. Instead, he said, “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
Presumably that means people like me and you, who would oppose his fascist agenda.
Corrupting the federal government
Way back in 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau thought he’d properly bribed President James Garfield by giving the president, during an in-person visit in the White House, a speech he’d written for Garfield to use. Garfield was polite but didn’t offer Guiteau a federal speechwriter’s job, which provoked a murderous rage: shortly thereafter, Guiteau met Garfield’s train and shot him twice, killing him.
The explicit and institutionalized practice of exchanging gifts and personal loyalty for federal jobs dated back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), arguably the second-most depraved president in American history behind Trump (which is probably why Trump hung his picture in the Oval Office; Jackson’s favorite nickname for himself — given him by the Cherokee he slaughtered — was “The Indian Killer”).
Jackson had elevated the practice of bribing the president — himself, at the time — to get federal jobs into an art-form: it was called the “spoils” or patronage system and was insanely corrupt. It was also, by Garfield’s presidency in 1881, routine.
After Guiteau failed to gain his “spoil” or “patronage” from Garfield and killed him, President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.
It separated all those government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats, whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of the guy who happened to be in the White House at any particular time.
It also explicitly outlawed bribing the president for a job. The goal, which it accomplished and has held for 140 years, was to end corruption in the bureaucratic branches of the federal government.
Donald Trump wants to functionally end the Civil Service system and replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself.
He tried to do this in the last months of his presidency through an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, (which Biden reversed on his first day in office) that reclassified those workers out of their Civil Service jobs and into political appointee positions, doing the same work but now entirely dependent on the good will of the president to keep their jobs.
The next Republican administration will almost certainly put Schedule F back into force, reestablishing the 1829 spoils system for the federal government, and ending any possibility that people in the government will push back against Trump the way they did during his presidency.
Making the nation’s police into Trump’s private enforcers
The Department of Justice was established by President Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War, in part to enforce federal laws protecting the rights of people who’d recently been freed from slavery.
After Richard Nixon tried to use it against his enemies (and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, went to prison for his efforts), Congress in 1978 passed the Ethics in Government Act which put a wall of separation between the DOJ and the White House.
Trump has explicitly proclaimed his intention to tear that wall down and go farther than Nixon ever imagined in using our armed investigative services for personal revenge and harassment of people he perceives as his enemies.
He wants the nation’s premiere police agencies to become his own personal enforcers, and has already said they will be hunting down “liberals,” Black Lives Matter protest participants, and Joe Biden, his family, and members of his administration.
He wants to imprison them, as well as the prosecutors and judges who have been participating in the effort to hold him to account for the crimes he committed over the past 7 years.
This politicization of law enforcement has been a first-order and primary feature of every authoritarian or totalitarian regime that’s risen to power over the past few hundred years, worldwide. It’s always one of the first things fascist leaders do when they seize power.
“Freedom cities”
In an apparent attempt to portray himself as a visionary like JFK, with his promise to send men to the moon and bring them back safely, Trump is promising to build “freedom cities” in his second term. The main feature he’s discussed is that people will get around in them in “flying cars.”
While it’s being portrayed as a goofy stunt designed to make him seem like an imaginative idealist, in fact there has been a movement among rightwing billionaires for some time to create cities that they basically run as little feudal fiefdoms, the same way the morbidly rich run their companies and their football teams.
Some libertarian billionaires assert that the only reason there’s never been a successful libertarian nation in the history of the world is because true libertarianism — government doing nothing but running the police, army, and courts and everything else left to private charity and business owners — “has never been tried.”
The ”freedom cities” could be a new libertarian experiment, or they may be the 21st century version of the old “company town,” where nobody has rights or protection of the law but is subject to the whims of the local billionaire owner. A group backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has already put forward what appears to be a plan to build a new city in California that they may or may not envision running along these lines. The group has so far purchased more than 53,000 acres of land, an area larger than the entire city of Beaumont, Texas, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Ending democracy across Europe and the world
Trump is also promising that he’ll end the brutal attacks against Ukraine on “day one” by simply turning the country over to his good friend, Vladimir Putin.
For the first time since World War II, this would legitimize a nation attacking another nation simply to seize their land, resources, and people.
It would greenlight China to do the same with Taiwan, and encourage every other tinpot dictator in the world to grab nearby territory that he wants. It would encourage war, and could very easily lead to a world war.
Abandoning Ukraine like this, along with Trump’s oft-stated preference to leave or end NATO and stop support for the UN, would lead the autocracies of the world — particularly Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea — to destroy the democracies in their sphere of influence, replacing those democracies with strongman autocracies.
The democratic experiment on this planet is only 250 years old, more or less, and this would signal a return to the way the world had been ruled for the 7,000 years prior to that: by kings, popes, mullahs, strongman warlords, and the morbidly rich.
Between Agenda 47 and Project 2025, Donald Trump and the rightwing billionaires who own the GOP have big plans for this nation, regardless of which Republican takes the White House next. They’re dead serious and far more well-funded than any of the groups that fight for and advocate democracy.
If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you.
Triple check your voter registration, especially if you live in a Red state where the voter purges have already begun, and make sure everybody you know is registered vote.
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DeathSantis keeps claiming that no books are being banned in Florida, that it is a hoax spread by groomers and democrats. Which to him and his ilk are the same thing. But he also claims the don’t say gay laws don’t target the LGBTQIA, but the way the laws are written they do have the effect of wiping out any representation of the LGBTQIA or the symbols of those groups from schools. Even anti-bullying programs had to be stopped because the way the laws are being interpreted they can not tell cis kids not to target or bully LGBTQIA kids. The real object is to drive any kid who is not cis or straight into the closet, into hiding, and instead of teaching respect, tolerance, and acceptance it teaches hate and bigotry. Hugs. Scottie
A quote from the linked article.
“It’s creating this culture of fear within our media specialists and even teachers who just want to have a library in their classrooms, so kids have access,” said Castor Dentel, a former OCPS elementary school teacher.
Parents, she said, can restrict what their own children read, making it hard to justify pulling so many books from classrooms. “They’re in a pile of we’ll-get-to-it-later and in the meantime, no one can read those books.”
The harm of so much censorship far outweighs the benefits of finding “a book or two that is offensive,” Castor Dentel added. “Look at all the chaos that has been created. It’s not worth it.”
A total of 673 books, from classics to best-sellers, have been removed from Orange County classrooms this year for fear they violate new state rules that ban making “sexual conduct” available to public school students.
The list also includes popular novels by Stephen King, Sue Monk Kidd and Jodi Picoult, classics like “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” “Jude the Obscure,” and “Madame Bovary,” and award-winning books like “A Thousand Acres,” “Beloved,” and “Love in the Time of Cholera.”
The rejected books include ones teachers say were once regularly taught in high school classes, such as “The Color Purple,” “Catch-22,” and “Brave New World.
Orange schools reject 673 books from classroom libraries for fear they violate new Fl law. The rejected books include "Paradise Lost," "East of Eden," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and "Madame Bovary." Story and list (first obtained by @FLFreedomRead): https://t.co/xNWZldrgeS
To fact-check Ron DeSantis’ claim that book bans in Florida are a “false narrative,” we started with the Florida Dept. of Education’s list of currently banned books https://t.co/rzGRjGtmRf
Yet as bad as these bans are, the thing that truly does piss me off the most about what Governor Puddingmitts and his fascist Rethugs are doing is they then LIE about it and insist they aren’t banning any books at all, not a one.
“It’s not censorship, if we do it. It’s restoring ‘parents’ rights’ to approve the curriculum.” That would be certain right-wing parents’ rights, and no one else’s.
Fudd looks kinda like Vivian Vance, like in that wonderful story from Tim Gunn’s childhood about meeting Miss Vance in J Edgar Hoover’s office, except that J Edgar wasn’t there too.
Paradise Lost, a 17th Century epic poem by John Milton which has been banned along with dozens of other absolutely classic works of literature, has NO sexual content, gay or otherwise.
It is being removed solely because radical fundamentalist Evangelicals object to its subject matter, namely the depiction of a former high angel who becomes jealous of Yahweh’s new favorite hominid toys and leads a revolt. As a consequence, Lucifer and his allies are cast down to Hell. That’s it. That’s the story.
But fundies hate it because Lucifer isn’t portrayed entirely as an unsympathetic character and because the story it tells doesn’t comport with their biblical dogma.
I’ve was suspicious that the buybull only tells one side of the story about Lucifer’s fall and his mission against humanity. Shouldn’t we hear from the other side too? I just love mythology.
The real message in Milton’s poem is a common but very true theme: “No one believes they are the villain in their own story.”
Essentially, what he was trying to do was to create a framework, a rationale to explain how and why a figure like Satan could come to be. In the end, the conclusion really was that the former angel Lucifer essentially got what he deserved.
But like I said, this whole story gets in the way of radical fundamentalist dogma, which when you think about it is at the core of all these book bans.
Scottie's Playtime 