“The warlords who sacked Rome did not intend to doom Western Europe to centuries of ignorance. It was not a foreseeable consequence of their actions. The same cannot be said of the sweeping attack on human knowledge and progress that the Trump administration is now undertaking—a deliberate destruction of education, science, and history, conducted with a fanaticism that recalls the Dark Ages that followed Rome’s fall.” Adam Serwer, ‘The New Dark Age’, The Atlantic
“There was a time in the music business that a song paying homage to Hitler, even one by a hit rapper, would have been shut out of popular culture. Not so in the age of TikTok and X. Controversial rapper Kanye West’s latest antisemitic provocation—a song with the hook “Heil Hitler”—is going viral on social media after being removed from streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. “ – Anne Steele and Katharine Sayre, Kanye West’s Antisemitic Song Plays On In Social Media Despite Bans On Social Media, WSJ, May 17-18
"Trump's approach to power looks like that of Viktor Orban of Hungary and Reycep Erdogan of Turkey, argues Steven Levitsky - a Harvard University scholar. Those strongmen won in legitimate elections then stacked the decks in their favor by rewarding allies, punishing adversaries. Crippling the media and civil society they turned the state into an instrument of their political preservation. According to Levitsky: 'This is actually much faster than we saw in the first 100 days of Orban or Erdogan'. What worries him most is how slow U.S. society has responded." - Time essay, 'Trump's First 100 Days', by Eric Cortellessa, May 26, p. 31.
"Science, for 500 years since Copernicus, has yielded answers that the right hates and fears. Couple that with the cost of doing modern science, and you have the perfect target and excuse for an Ur-fascistic, theocratic government that worships the Almighty Dollar...and in doing so becomes impoverished. Evolution will soon be a target for the further abuse of power. The impact will deep and swift, and will end science, medical science, and destroy the pipeline of new scientists in all fields including agriculture, doctors, and eventually, dentists, pharmacists, veterinarians, etc." - NYTimes Comment
Adam Serwer in a blistering analysis for The Atlantic published last Tuesday – and then Serwer appearing on ALL In
the same night – said it all: Donald Trump's administration is pushing a "deliberate destruction of
education, science, and history," Serwer wrote— and it recalls the "Dark
Ages" that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.
As Mr. Serwer noted (and also explained to Chris Hayes):
"Every week brings fresh examples. For instance, Trump is threatening colleges and universities with the loss of federal funding if they do not submit
to its demands, or even if they do. The engines of American scientific inquiry
and ingenuity, such as the National Science Foundation and the National
Institutes of Health, are under sustained attack. Historical institutions such
as the Smithsonian and artistic ones like the Kennedy Center are being
converted into homes for MAGA ideology rather than historical fact and free
expression."
This purge is already snuffing out free thought across the country, wrote Serwer, adding:
"Libraries are losing funding, government-employed
scientists are being dismissed from their jobs, educators are being cowed into
silence, and researchers are being warned not to broach forbidden subjects.
Entire databases of public-health information collected over decades are
at risk of vanishing. Any facts that contradict the gospel of Trumpism are
treated as heretical."
The purge includes shutting down the Job Corps, demolishing the potential for youths' advancement. Then attacking the intellectually and culturally superior blue states that protect the rights of immigrants, i.e. that under the Constitution they are also entitled to due process. But the embedded Gangster state has decreed that Maryland and 7 other states could now lose billions in federal funds after being declared a self-identifying “Sanctuary State Jurisdiction” on Friday by the Trumpites.
And I already warned how the MAGA Nazis torched research in space science and astronomy, e,g,
And, as if to add insult to injury Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last week issued a health report citing studies that don’t exist, the news organization Notus discovered. Now Kennedy wants to bar government scientists from publishing in real medical journals such as the Lancet “because they’re all corrupt.”
So there's no issue of contention that we are hurtling toward a dominion of dummies, dolts and DoDos. A universal collective of the 77 million idiots and gullible fools that voted Dotard back into power on Nov. 5th last year. And, of course, such an outcome would make any authoritarian lick his chops. Why not? The anticipated loss of intellect and reason - not to mention facts- opens the gateway to servility with all and sundry simply obeying the Master, his every dictate and demand.
Millions of lower IQ voters showed the power available when a swamp of lies and misinformation is able to overtake truth to the extent of choosing lies and propaganda over protecting democracy, see e.g.
The destruction of archives of knowledge as well as the millions of brains that forged it, of course, leads to the general loss of intellect and reason - which is what we have seen. Especially in the young Gen Z set who diverted to Trump in significant proportions back in November. And many of whom form the millions who made the vapid viper Hitler -worshipping Kanye West a star on social media. (See WSJ excerpt at top).
All of which underscores the importance of what Thomas Jefferson's wrote in his Notes on Virginia, i.e.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED"
Jefferson knew every government would disintegrate if the "rulers" alone determined its fate. There would always be tyrants, kings etc, seeking to impose their will, like Trump. This is why he expected the PEOPLE had to become its safe depositories, i.e. in protecting their democratic Republic. But if archives of knowledge, research and related data are destroyed, then ignorance and gullibility will reign - and the people's minds cease to be improved. So tyranny wins. That is the cusp of where we are now.
See Also:
by Thom Hartmann | June 5, 2025 - 5:33am | permalink
It wasn’t all at once (although sometimes the last three months seem that way). Authoritarianism never is. It happens drip by drip, crisis by crisis, until people forget what normal even felt like.
This is how fascism seduces a nation: not by storming the gates, but by wearing down our ability to be outraged. And Donald Trump, more than any political figure in modern American history, has weaponized this steady march into moral and civic numbness.
Ten years ago, if you’d told Americans that a U.S. president would attempt to overturn an election, openly praise dictators, take naked bribes from both foreign potentates and drug dealers, call the press the “enemy of the people,” cage children, pardon traitors and war criminals, and promise to act as a dictator on his first day in office, they’d have laughed. They would’ve told you, “That can’t happen here.”
But it did. And now the real danger is that we’re getting used to it.
And:
Trump says he fired museum director as his budget targets Smithsonian
by Thom Hartmann | May 28, 2025 - 5:24am | permalink
U.S. President Donald Trump opened Memorial Day in the most disgusting way possible, not by praising our fallen heroes but by attacking Democrats. He wrote on his Nazi-infested social media site on Monday morning:
Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds…
When the President of the United States calls members of the oldest political party in the world and a former president “scum,” it’s not just another ugly outburst that embarrasses America before the rest of the world: It’s a warning sign. A bright red flag.
It tells us that something far more sinister than partisan posturing is afoot. Something our media has already decided to overlook in their perpetual effort to normalize the abominable.
And:
Parsing The "Hitler - Trump Psychiatric Files
And:
by Joseph Gerson | May 29, 2025 - 4:58am | permalink
Dear Taka,
You asked for news and some analysis about what is happening here in the U.S. You may be sorry that you asked.
Back in February, I shocked a Bikini Day* workshop by reporting about what could only be described as fascist assaults on U.S. constitutional democracy. Unfortunately, I was not exaggerating. Trump and his MAGA allies are in the midst of fighting a counterrevolution to consolidate white supremacy, to multiply the obscene wealth of the richest oligarchs—especially Trump and his family—in the tradition of monarchs and feudal lords, and to impose the structures and repression necessary to maintain a plutocratic, and potentially military, dictatorship.
And:
by Thom Hartmann | April 1, 2025 - 4:57am | permalink
If Putin wanted to kill America, how would he best do it? Exactly like this:
— Install a puppet or ally inside the government; as Lincoln foresaw, a tyrant doesn’t need to invade. He just needs to rise from within. Trump has repeatedly echoed Kremlin talking points, undermined NATO, attacked Ukraine, praised autocrats, and created chaos at home. If Putin picked a candidate, it would be Trump — and the intelligence community has confirmed Russian efforts to help him win in both 2016 and 2020.
— Dismantle American institutions from the inside; Putin’s best move would be to encourage the erosion of U.S. government capacity: devalue science, underfund law enforcement, defund agencies, destroy trust in elections, and sabotage public health. All are happening as you read these words.
And:
by Henry Giroux | May 30, 2025 - 4:56am | permalink
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
— Milan Kundera
In an age where culture is the primary battlefield, authoritarianism thrives on ignorance, historical amnesia and the brutal aesthetics of cruelty, all normalized as common sense. This is a policy of scholasticide – a full-scale assault on the past – one that aims to erase not only history but the very capacity to critically engage with it. We witness this in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, where education is methodically destroyed, universities obliterated and unimaginable violence becomes the foundation of daily life.
In this chaos, young minds are stripped of the tools to understand their history and collective selves, to challenge power and to envision a future free from oppression. Such policies are not only crimes against individual lives; they are crimes against history itself, erasing the very memory of resistance and the struggles that have shaped the present.
And:
by Jeremy Brecher | May 26, 2025 - 5:08am | permalink
On January 1, 2025 I published a report called “Defending Society Against the MAGA Assault: A Prospectus for Action.” I am happy to say that many of the proposals I made there for what I called “social self-defense” are already being initiated. Recent and upcoming Strike! Commentaries take stock of what has been accomplished so far and lay out strategic perspectives on the next phase of the struggle to protect society against MAGA devastation.
What We Can Expect
U.S. President Donald Trump and his enablers are conducting an “administrative coup” against Congress, courts, and civil society. This assault is being conducted on multiple fronts. It seeks unlimited power; the demolition of any possible base to restrict its power; unlimited accumulation of wealth for its followers; and a cultural revolution to enshrine autocracy, repression, racism, sexism, hatred, cruelty, and disinhibition as internalized values of the American people. So far it has met significant but spotty resistance.
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