You’re breaking laws, and ruining lives, but have you ever considered the possibility that you may, someday soon — cross the wrong person?
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I know that we’re in a kind of End of History moment where there’s so much chaos and so much news that we sort of hear about everything all at once while also missing key developments that deserve our unified attention.
That’s how I felt when I learned that the former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, had been arrested, shackled, and forced onto a plane to the Netherlands, where he was turned over to the Hague Tribunal for prosecution of crimes against humanity.
Duterte, it should be noted, was known as “Asia’s Trump.” The two were mutual admirers.
In these times of reckless endangerment to all Americans by an American president and his cohorts, this was heartening news indeed. It reminds us that no one is immune from ultimate accountability if they do terrible things to others, no matter what their allies on the Supreme Court may say.
Because this is not about “bad politics.”
We’re talking about a giant criminal gangbang, a huge bloodletting carried out against the public and the body politic. Add to that the threats to seize foreign countries by force if necessary, and we’re dealing with someone who clearly opens himself up for international charges.
While Donald Trump and his inner circle may resist voices in their heads telling them not to be complete monsters, those who encourage and enable these corrupt agents of chaos may, at some point, suspect that collaborating with Trump and his inner circle will come back to bite them in a big way.
That suggests to me some strategies that have not yet been tried, or even contemplated.
What about a nationwide rollout of billboards and public service announcements reminding Trump’s enablers of what happened to others who committed crimes against the public in the past? Two obvious golden oldies that bear updating: the Nuremberg trials that in 1946 brought harsh justice to Hitler’s murderous henchmen, and the 1973 Watergate hearings that brought down President Richard Nixon and led to prison sentences for many of his high-placed collaborators.
But first, let’s be crystal clear about the enormity of what is going on.
Moral abominations, broken rules, broken laws, and possibly even heinous crimes, all self-serving in one way or another — and all creating a sickening stew of brazen corruption.
Besides putting the miscreants on notice, we also must stop coddling those Americans who avert their eyes from the damage they themselves are doing by letting other people do their thinking for them. These “other people” — the MAGA shouters and manipulators — have mastered a tribal lingo to mirror the prejudices and fears of a large segment of the US population, tell them whom to blame and hate, and incite them to cruel and ultimately self-destructive actions.
It’s not OK to be intellectually lazy, disdain reliable information sources, and express contempt for facts. It’s not OK because that kind of laziness ultimately undermines democracy, which depends for its existence on a reasonably informed citizenry. Then again, all too many Americans seem to be tired of democracy — and we must stop coddling them as well.
It may require shock therapy. Like an ad campaign — more billboards — reminding half of Americans how foolish they have been, how they have been suckered, and that it is never too late to own up to being taken advantage of and to change your ways for the better: “Come out of the cult — your family misses you!” Or: “It’s a way better world when you see it with your own eyes!”
This tough-love approach is decidedly an uphill battle, but it’s worked in a fair number of situations where vulnerable people allowed themselves to buy into some authoritarian, pseudo-religious construct that was destroying their critical reasoning; harming their mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing; and draining their bank account.
Is Maga a Cult?
Warnings from Cult Education Institute:
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- Believe their leaders are only source of true information
- Believe in unrealistic conspiracies and persecution
- Have zero tolerance for criticism, or even questions
- Follow leaders who offer no financial transparency
- Ignore well documented abuses of group leaders
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More importantly, this blunt approach may motivate some non-culties who are on the fence to break ranks while heartening the right-minded but currently deflated Americans who would appreciate any signs of vigorous reckoning with the madness.
A lot of “former” Trump cultists, a lot of relatives of prominent regime figures, are available for testimonials.
They should be put on tour. Mary Trump, the president’s outspoken niece, is hardly the only one to know the true score. Recently, Vice President JD Vance’s cousin, Nate Vance, an ex-marine, has surfaced to tell how he spent three years volunteering with Ukraine’s defenders on the front lines, and emphasizes JD Vance’s own stated lack of interest in actual information about what is going on there. It’s powerful stuff. Nate Vance said:
Just because I’m related to you doesn’t mean I’m going to stand by and watch you get my comrades killed. … When JD justifies his distrust of Zelenskyy by the “reports” he has seen, I thought I was going to choke.
He went on to call the vice president “one of Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots.”
Hints of Serious Wrongdoing
Further evidence of potentially criminal wrongdoing emerged this past week. The White House ordered the FBI to stop doing background checks on senior administration appointees. That, right there, is a huge red flag, because the FBI is trained to do this — and is the only institution that is qualified to do so.
Abrogating this vetting process suggests they’re hiding something bad.
Why would the White House shift that responsibility to the Department of Defense, which is neither supposed to do nor qualified to do that? This, to put it frankly, stinks.
Meanwhile, the administration, having taken so many dubious actions and now facing a flood of legal challenges, struggles to keep up a defense of its initial offensive moves. Trump and Elon Musk have to deploy one wave after another of scared, poorly trained attorneys on the front lines to secure their assault on the American people. Sounds a bit like Putin and Ukraine, no?
One federal judge in particular felt it necessary to explicitly state what is so terribly wrong at Trump Central, as epitomized by its legal tactics:
At the hearing in San Francisco, [US District Judge William] Alsup castigated a Justice Department attorney arguing on behalf of the Trump administration for submitting “sham” documents and “stonewalling” efforts to gather facts and testimony, incensed that the acting Office of Personnel Management director, Charles Ezell, refused to testify in court Thursday, as the judge had previously ordered.
“I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth,” Alsup told Assistant US Attorney Kelsey Helland, the lone Justice Department lawyer arguing at the hearing.
“You will not bring the people here to be cross-examined,” the judge said. “You’re afraid to do so, because … it would reveal the truth. This is the US District Court. … I’ve been practicing or serving in this court for over 50 years, and I know how we get to the truth.”
The Tech and Media Bros Continue To Kowtow
We have to keep adding names to our list of quislings and cowards who do not deserve our patronage. And using our consumer power to send them a message by boycotting their products and services.
After Musk and his overhyped companies, there’s Jeff Bezos and his, and then Mark Zuckerberg and his. And more. And now there’s Univision, which is perfectly happy, in the finest capitalist tradition, to sell their own ethnic comrades down the river.
Univision, a network catering to Spanish-speaking Americans, has been airing Homeland Security ads that warn immigrants the government will find and deport them. This kind of terror inducement should not be mistaken for providing people with useful information on the situation, as responsible media do.
The people running Univision are good friends with Trump.
The Bulwark quoted a source within Univision who, like many there, is deeply troubled by this acquiescence to power:
I’ve only known journalism in the States, I haven’t done journalism in Mexico — they take care of whoever is in political power in Mexico — so I just feel that is trickling down in the States.
What Univision actually should be doing is pointing out how bad the Trump team is at governing.
Musk and DOGE keep making mistakes and claiming, without clear evidence, great success in uncovering fraud, but now they’re covering up the records of their doings to make it harder to document their errors. Still, as The New York Times discovered, errors keep multiplying in DOGE World.
Meanwhile, we need to do a better job of showing the bewitched public what kind of people their heroes are.
From postings on social media, it’s clear many of them consider Trump, Musk, and their colleagues extremely diligent, capable, and hard-working individuals.
Yet Trump inarguably puts in far less time at the office than most prior presidents, literally often just three hours or so a day of mostly ceremonial and self-promoting activities.
As for Musk, according to Politico, he ordered a massive TV for his White House-adjacent office — so he could play video games. All of life is a giant game to him, where you can whack others at will, and just laugh it all off.
We need to remind that bunch that what they’re doing is dead serious. For all of us. And there will be consequences.
