The Generalist

One's identity is far more than one's profession.

Civic Concerns

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Keeping Track

The very unpopular and much lied about Project 2025 is notching off its “accomplishments” one-by-one as congress allows the executive branch unfettered sway even when the actions are lawless overreach. Here is a website that’s keeping score and citing the sources.

PROJECT 2025 TRACKER

This does not, of course, track items on the more hidden agenda of intended covert consequences that is disabling and eliminating the means to hold anyone accountable. Much of the factual reporting and more candid analysis is showing up in independent media like Substack.

The NY Times has a series titled “The Opinions” and if you are trying to understand the lack of GOP and mainstream media opposition to all of this evil, I recommend you listen to “There’s a reason even smart people surrender to Trump” (below).

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There’s a reason …

This thirty-minute interview explores how we are being manipulated into anticipatory compliance contrary to our deeply held values. The GOP fell into line first, and now they are coming for the rest of us.

Opinion | There’s a Reason Even ‘Smart’ People Surrender to Trump
M. Gessen and Patrick Healy try to reckon with the president’s whiplash authoritarianism.

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Look What’s Going Down

Free Press

The administration is attacking the funding of listener-supported non-commercial radio by attacking the long tradition of acknowledging funding provided by businesses. The intent is to put a chill on non-promotional sponsorship announcements. You have heard them; they tell you the name of the business and something about what they do, but there is no call to action or promotional claims. Attacking stations and networks like PBS, NPR, and WHYY has only one purpose: to suppress news and opinions that don’t conform to the alternative facts of the administration’s propaganda machine.

In parallel with this, high journalistic quality news media are being replaced with low quality sources that spread conspiracy theories and the administration’s deceptions.

Will they seek to suppress or disrupt internet communications? Access to the Internet is in the hands of the FCC, now led by a GOP loyalist.

Justice

The purging of the FBI, and the Justice Department of those deemed not loyal to the President is clearly a move intended to tip the scales of justice to serve #47 instead of the people.

Separation of Powers

The Supreme Court has been made partisan; Congress fails in its role of advice and consent by approving nominees whose character, inexperience, and partisan loyalty make them obviously unsuited for elevation to powerful and critical office.

Law

The President is immune from prosecution. If they do his bidding, his cronies are all but assured of pardons. The Inspectors General, our watchdogs, have been dismissed. Agency leadership that follows the law, in defiance of #47 gets furloughed.

It’s already tyranny!

The behavior of Putin’s legislators, no dissent unless #47 gives it the nod, is what we are seeing in the GOP Senate and House.

Read what Timothy Snyder says about all of this. It’s expert opinion, not media hysterics.

The Logic of Destruction
And how to resist it

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What I Read

I shake my head at how I move through the day doing normal things while America is being eaten from within. Momentous, lawless, destructive, world-shaping events are happening by the hour. I go to my board meetings, update websites, and write this little offering for friends and relatives. There is a surreal quality to the ordinary. Life since the inauguration of #47 has been a nightmare, and the dread of what’s next permeates my mood. Yet people do the trivial, ordinary hum-drum stuff, exchange pleasantries, and generally go about business as usual.

Many have given up on mainstream media.  I don’t listen to or watch the news except for the online on-demand NPR news.  However, I have certain news analysts I have found to be trustworthy and good filterers of the flood-the-zone hype, shock, and outrage. 

  1. Heather Cox Richardson Letters from an American
  2. Joyce Vance Civil Discourse
  3. Robert Reich (His Blog)
  4. Doug Muder Weekly Sift
  5. David Kurtz Talking Points Memo
  6. Judd Legum Popular Information
  7. Chris Baxter Spotlight PA

Each day you can scan two or three of these in just a few minutes and understand what is important to know about.

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Why it’s a Coup

“The ongoing actions by Musk and his followers are a coup because the individuals seizing power have no right to it. Elon Musk was elected to no office and there is no office that would give him the authority to do what he is doing. It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights.” So says Timothy Snyder, esteemed author of On Tyranny and Freedom.

Snyder has spent his life studying how freedom is won and lost. Dismiss him at your peril.

Read more on Substack: Timothy Snyder

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Be a Prepper

No, I don’t mean one of those who make a hobby of preparing for the collapse of civilization by digging a bunker and learning to make fire by rubbing sticks together. The next four years will be chaotic, and we expect the excesses of the GOP to be exceeded only by the excesses of the extreme right that terrorizes them.

There are some actions to take to protect yourself socially, psychologically, and politically. I’ve mentioned On Tyranny. Marguerite has shared the link to his series of videos which present his wisdom in his own voice. She also offers a link that has advice for remaining grounded in the face of actions intended to put us off balance.

Here’s the link for a video series created by Timothy Snyder about On Tyranny: 

Here’s the link for an article in Convergence Magazine on how to prepare ourselves for what’s coming:

10 Ways To Be Prepared and Grounded Now That Trump Has Won
The key to taking effective action in a Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.

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Flood the Zone

Since the election, I have greatly reduced the time I spend on the media. I rationalize my indifference to political news in various ways, but the effect is to disengage. Advertising-funded media are cowering at the threat of losing subscribers or ratings. They pull their punches or give too much airtime to political theater. I have retreated to reading a few blogs that I have found to be credible: Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, and Talking Points Memo (TPM).

But I know that I am succumbing to Steve Bannon’s “Flood the Zone With Shit” strategy. If you don’t know what that is and how it affects you, read on. What follows is a ChatGPT generated briefing. Feel free to share it widely.

Briefing on “Flood the Zone with Shit”Download

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Lest We Forget

America has produced some great leaders, people who called forth the greatness of our aspirations even when circumstances were grim. So it was in 1863.

Who will rise to speak great words of resolve and hope today?

On Blood-Soaked Ground, a ‘Prayer for the Future’ of a Divided Land
Two weeks after the election, a gathering in Gettysburg commemorated Lincoln’s address, 272 words that have come to epitomize what it means to be presidential.

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Divisive Acts Shield Trump

Matt Gaetz as Attorney General? Bypass congressional checks and balances with recess appointments?

Even the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal is shocked, but Trump’s base sees their leader as striking out with bold actions against the establishment elites they despise. It’s the showmanship of his professional wrestling interest. Please the crowd, keep them inside the bubble of illusion, appeal to base instincts, and distract them from thinking critically.

This tactic may be intuitive for Trump, but it achieves some important strategic objectives for him:

  1. Keeps the base impressed because it enrages the establishment leadership.
  2. Keeps the country polarized. (Trump loses if America unifies around shared values. That can’t happen if we are too angry to listen to each other.)
  3. Distracts attention from reality, and from his mendacity and incompetence.
  4. It gobbles up time in the news cycle, providing cover for less sensational adverse acts and obscuring rational analysis.

Dominating the news, triggering primal fears and other lizard-brain-level emotions, is a manipulative tactic that his adversaries are loath to use. Encumbered by scruples and unwilling to sacrifice integrity, the resistance fights an asymmetric war.

But Trump’s base is bonded by a web of lies and misinformation. Reality eventually crushes misperception. Therein lies a major vulnerability.

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Freedom!

We love our democracy because we believe it is the best way to govern and secure for ourselves and our kids the blessings of freedom, the common good, and security.

Timothy Snyder is a scholar who has devoted much of his life to understanding both tyranny and freedom. He has lived in eastern European countries long enough to learn the languages and know the people. He has drawn on the experiences of people who were long denied freedom to better understand what exactly the word means. He also has come to recognize that most Americans don’t have a clear understanding of it. We take our freedom for granted. Like the air we breath, we don’t think about it until we are deprived of it. Here is an introduction to Snyder’s insights.

I’m reading On Freedom because I want to see what he sees. I think understanding freedom is central to defending against the tyranny threat of the Trump administration.

You probably know of Snyder’s book On Tyranny in which he identifies important lessons of 20th Century history. This little pocket-size book is a guide to how people who wish to be free should think and act. If you are wondering what you as an individual can do, take inspiration from Timothy Snyder.

Here are some links to interviews:

If you have not read On Tyranny watch this:

Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny from the Twentieth Century
Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. From across the fearful twentieth century, here are twenty lessons about what it takes to oppose tyranny, adapted to the circumstances of today.