Trumpian Vision: Personal Patronage System –> Enserfment, Gulag, Sovietization

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Enserfment refers to the virtual enslavement of workers to select business owners and industrialists beneath the umbrella of a vast system of patronage headed by a leader invested with absolute power in relation to all persons and property–one to whom there should be no difference between the two in their treatment–within his domain.

Free men would never stand for it; easily led and subjugated men would–and will.

With America boarded, commanded by a wealthy criminal, disarmed from the top, and prepared for plundering, Americans may have only their agitating protest for power, a not insignificant power but perhaps a power the same criminal mentality in high office may choose to ignore with impunity and thereby dismiss as merely a bothersome noise.

To produce enserfment: break the country’s economy as well as confidence in it; reduce the middle class; shrink government support for basic standards of living as well as modern healthcare. Who among the patronized wealthy should care about those impoverished and without means for even their own basic dignity and independence? And who among those reduced in means as well as access to education and defense against illness–or aid with established conditions–will have the capability, cognizance, desire, and energy to defend the democracy that had in fact become The Great Society, i.e., a national culture and government strong and stable and methodically given to improvements beneath the remit of the nation’s secular democratic republic?

Donald Trump’s reactionary clique would do away with basic defenses against the potential ravishing of the nation’s human and natural complement by private interests. For example, both Jeff Bezos (e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/business/economy/amazon-labor-nlrb.html) and Elon Musk (e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/business/spacex-elon-musk-nlrb-workers.html) have sought to neutralize the venerable National Labor Relations Board defending workers from each titan’s own unconscionable greed and venality.

For an example of the same illness in a different dimension, here’s coverage of the Trump Administration’s assault on the natural beauty and environmental health of the nation: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/01/trump-air-climate-pollution-regulation-100-days.

Donald’s Gulag

A second Trump administration threatens to accelerate mass incarceration, further dehumanize people in our criminal legal system, engage in a death penalty “killing spree,” and reverse many reforms gained over the last two decades.

Trump’s proposals are dangerous on two levels. First, with respect to the federal system, Trump will seek to double down on the failed policies of the past: encouraging brutal policing practices, pursuing extreme sentences, and expanding the use of the death penalty. Second, Trump’s racist and extremist rhetoric may embolden states that have previously embraced reform to return to failed crime policies, fueling mass incarceration and widening racial inequality – https://www.aclu.org/trump-on-the-criminal-legal-system.

Before reporters entered the room, Trump even suggested to Bukele he should build more prisons because the mega-prison isn’t “big enough” to hold “the homegrowns” he wants to send from the U.S.

“We’re studying the laws right now,” Trump said, after earlier saying they “always have to obey the law.”

He made a similar comment about sending Americans to foreign prisons in February, saying back then as well that the laws would be need to be checked – https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-send-us-citizens-foreign-prisons-legal-experts/story?id=120834167.

With President Trump, an American felon has arrived in power as a political force. We may keep in mind that he faces at least three additional felony-level trials should he ever lose power: election interference in relation to January 6, 2021; classified documents abuse for the haul he tried to hide at Mar-A-Lago; attempted election fixing for his “perfect phone call” begging for a fraudulent win in Georgia. As an American President who perhaps has his position confused with that of a mafia don, he’s bound to have some enemies he believes deserve prison for disliking him vocally. Why should he differ from any other fascist contemporary in power or personality to be dredged out of the more repugnant patches of history?

As it stands, anyone Donald Trump says is a criminal may be treated as one given his own arrogant, ignorant, and impudent lawlessness.

Sovietization

The boot in the face, the knock on the door, the secret police — the tropes of dystopian literature have arrived in corrosive small displays.

The “fake news” proves real and Trump-approved news as delusional as its judge; the Republican Party (for cowards, criminals, sycophants, and traitors) has shown the nation the independence of the rubber-stamping Soviet Duma; the agencies most devoted to fighting crime and securing the homeland have been handed over to clowns unqualified for public service by their defects in character, education, and experience. Bottom line: the longer Trump remains in power, the greater his opportunities for exploiting the capabilities of the Federal government for his own financial and political gain. Add in “emotional gain”, i.e., “Narcissistic Supply” and the illusion — to be sustained by himself for himself — of unlimited public adoration and validation. After all, he’s making America great again and information contrary to that must be diminished. The tools of the Soviet to be embraced by Trump-Putin:

  • Agitprop, Disinformation, Mass Perceptual Control
  • Dictatorship (Confined-Exclusive Political Control)
  • Enserfment and Mass Incarceration
  • Neutralized Critical Press
  • Political Mafia
  • Political Repression
  • Psychiatric Abuse; Punitive Psychiatry
  • Punitive Surveillance State
  • Secret Political Police
  • Totalitarianism

The “leadership” of the worst of all political worlds must convince or force its population to believe it lives in the best of all possible worlds. There are ways for “power” to do that, and they are all on display in America, China, Hungary, North Korea, and Russia, i.e., the states in which the leading thug and related associates strive to control the image of the “great leader” and “greatest state” by controlling the elements in government and in media that contribute to it.

Donald Trump appears to be laying the groundwork for a deeply authoritarian and criminal American government by abusing his power to engage in the kind of nepotism that encourages loyalty unto himself and related blind and unconscionable sycophancy. While he’s finding the American Federal Government’s defensive capabilities present, he’s only in his first year of leading American democracy to ruin.

Realpolitik

In the process of faking American leadership, Donald Trump has — as suggested above — run into real American official and popular resistance. Trump’s tariff drive and trade war against all balanced, open, and stable markets has not been smooth while efforts in other dimensions lurch around like pinballs against administrative and judicial bumpers. Trump, as he has promised with elections, prefers rigged machines.

Against Trump’s chaotic know-nothing recklessness, the American system stands but unsteadily with its confused institutions, their powers in Trumpian antibodies, and Trump’s own driven narcissistic delusions and related stupidity.

Related Online

In addition to the potential look-ups given and inline URLs, the following articles may have application as regards the American economy and its criminal leadership. Some entries have been added following publication.

Broadwater, Luke. “Trump officials intensify attacks on judges as court losses mount.” The New York Times, May 29, 2025.

Ito, Aka. “Offices are about to get very, very grouchy.” Business Insider, May 5, 2025.

Newman, Andy. “Trump nominates a former far-right podcast host to head a federal ethics watchdog.” The New York Times, May 29, 2025.

Romm, Tony and Ana Swanson. “Trump’s tariff defeat injects more uncertainty into U.S. trade policy.” The New York Times, May 29, 2025.

Samuels, Brett. “Trump White House steps up attacks on courts after tariff ruling.” The Hill, May 31, 2025.

Smith, David. “Why Trump is really going after Harvard.” The Guardian, June 1, 2025.

Whitehurst, Lindsay and Josh Boak. “Federal court blocks Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs under emergency powers law.” AP News, May 29, 2025.

Related on X

#MuskTrumpPutin #RussiaRussiaRussia

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America Under Assault by Musk, Trump, Putin

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Russia, Russia, Russia!

From Cold War to Cold Takeover–The Big Picture Background

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/11/08/well-have-it-fixed-so-good-said-donald-trump/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2025/02/18/trump-piracy-board-disarm-and-plunder-the-united-states-of-america/; https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/.

Donald Trump’s ambition may be to establish his own vast system of patronage in place of the governments of the United States of America, transforming himself into a king and producing a three-tiered state of royalty, financially productive associates, laboring serfs, and dispossessed and disposable slaves. Big crayon? Yes–but he’s dumb and in his hands, power has turned out one big plug ugly crayon for ruling the land by fraud, force, and coercion. That’s the guidance of the world he knows and the world fit to his own malign narcissism. First: bankrupt the state; second: transfer state assets into private hands in the Soviet post-Soviet manner; third: marry criminal methods with state power and produce the American Mafia State to mirror the Russian one.

The two “families” represented by Moscow’s Tsar and Washington’s King will be finally at peace with one another–and the American and Russian people will hate both but have no choice as regards their displacement.


Americans vs. Trump’s Criminal Foreign Infection

Americans in yet unknown numbers will be on the streets of the nation’s capitals today and millions more will be watching through media how protest works where politically criminal power could care less about listening and much less about empathy and reason before their own aggrandizement and greed. Moreover, so I believe, Trump has set out deliberately to debase Americans and bankrupt the nation in a manner that fits his own embattled, isolated, and persecuted image of himself, an image in fact expressive of his own paranoid-delusional malignant narcissism. Whatever the character in numbers and tone the popular protest, state security elements sworn on oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America needs must set their own stance as regards their conscience and honor as well as their purpose in light of the damaged, traitorous, and treacherous usurping power in the White House.


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Criminal Mentality: Pete Hegseth Stop Lying

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In a stunning exercise of will over reality, it looks like Trump appointed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is going to attempt to invalidate Jeffrey Goldberg’s story in The Atlantic in its entirety as “fake news”, thereby eliminating any expectations Americans may have in relation to knowing the truth about anything–their government will tell them what they know, and the government will lie.

When asked about Goldberg’s access to the chat, Hegseth told reporters Monday, “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”

Who you gonna believe–through his proxy the dictator wannabe and malignant narcissist crying about “fake news”, the mainstream media, the world being against him, and so on, or the long experienced and responsible editor of The Atlantic?

Criminals and very sick people cover their tracks, deny their worst deeds, and paint through public display and words images of themselves as the best of souls. Some cover their tracks; some get caught and go to jail; some lie their way through life and have jobs in the Trump White House.


Cited Reference

Goldberg, Jeffrey. “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.” The Atlantic, March 24, 2025.

Suter, Tara. “Atlantic journalist pushes back on Hegseth comments: ‘He was texting war plans’.” The Hill, March 24, 2025.

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America with Criminal Minds in Power

Tags

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/11/08/well-have-it-fixed-so-good-said-donald-trump/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2025/02/18/trump-piracy-board-disarm-and-plunder-the-united-states-of-america/; https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/.


AI Presents The Malignant


I once joked that Donald Trump never met an enterprise he couldn’t ruin and run into bankruptcy. That wry observation appears to be coming true with the United States of America. At issue and perhaps at the bottom of it all is the mentality of the leader, that delusional and paranoid malignant narcissism so sensitive to the possibility of further humiliation and shame that it needs its insularity in a theater all its own enabled by the crass and shielded by sycophancy. We Americans have been spoiled in the main by responsible and responsive governments that play by the rules, more or less, and if committing crimes get caught by internal investigators, FBI, and whistleblowers. Not this time, my fellow Americans. The darker side of the nation has taken the wheel–and it’s taking us on a joy ride into an archaic, criminal, and feudal-medieval hell.

I have left out some notables on this pass but have worked up a short list with “criminality” in mind–not crimes, per se, but just the mentality that would go along with an incompetent mafia-style leader. Were they students, their folder notes might suggest laziness about homework and wild imaginations drifting off into the most improbable and surreal of private fantasy. Of course, today, they are our “leaders” –>

J. D. Vance: “Publicly, he called the Republican businessman an “idiot” and said he was “reprehensible.” Privately, he compared him to Adolf Hitler.”

Kash Patel: “As a co-host of a talk show for The Epoch Times, a media company known for spreading baseless conspiracy theories, a review by NBC found Patel shared unfounded claims about supposed conspiracies aimed at undermining Trump perpetrated by government officials, the FBI, social media platforms, the media and others”– https://www.npr.org/2024/12/09/nx-s1-5213692/kash-patel-conspiracy-theories-fbi.

Linda McMahon: “The suit alleges McMahon, her husband, the WWE and TKO Group Holdings, the league’s parent company, knowingly allowed employee Melvin Phillips Jr. to use his position as ringside announcer to sexually exploit children. / The filing alleges Phillips would recruit children to work as “Ring Boys,” helping him set up and take down wrestling rings at WWE events. However, the job was a guise for sexually exploiting the children, which Phillips would do even in front of wrestlers and executives in the locker area, the lawsuit alleges. He also would often film his sexual abuse, according to the filing” — https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/21/business/linda-mcmahon-abuse-wwe-trump-education/index.html.

Pete Hegseth: “The woman, referred to throughout the report as Jane Doe, said Mr. Hegseth took her phone, blocked his hotel room door when she tried to leave, and sexually assaulted her, ejaculating on her stomach. She said that her memory was hazy, and that she had drunk far more alcohol than usual throughout the day” — https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/us/politics/police-report-sexual-assault-claim-hegseth.html#.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “At midlife, Mr. Kennedy won public acclaim as a crusading environmental lawyer who sued corporate polluters, cleaned up rivers and lobbied to protect New York’s drinking water. But he was also a serial philanderer who kept a journal chronicling his encounters and assigned numerical scores to women, even as he berated himself for his inability to control his actions” — https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/kennedy-rfk-profile-trump.html.

Russell Vought: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a video revealed by ProPublica and the research group Documented in October. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma” — https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/10/who-is-russell-vought-trump-office-of-management-and-budget.

Tulsi Gabbard: “Most notoriously, she was perhaps the most prominent US politician to show solidarity with al-Assad after his brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests escalated into a catastrophic civil war, one marked by allegations of crimes against humanity committed by his regime with the backing of Russian forces. / Gabbard repeatedly voiced doubts about well-documented evidence of these crimes. In one infamous incident on a congressional visit to Syria in 2015, she suggested to victims of an airstrike that it may not have been launched by the Syrian military but by the so-called Islamic State group, which has never had an air force” — https://www.euronews.com/2025/01/29/who-is-trumps-intelligence-nominee-tulsi-gabbard-and-why-is-she-so-controversial.


By now, most Americans have caught on to the notion that “Trump-Putin” (on X, ) is a real thing and the American President not much more than a traitor in fact and in spirit to the United States of America. As an usurper of power obtained through Trumpian lies–start with the whopper that was “Stop The Steal” when he had prepared fraudulent Electoral College ballots for Mike Pence to put in place of authentic ones on January 6, 2021–the unfaithful president has proceeded with the help of his fellow weaklings to degrade America’s Federal Government in the most barbaric and crude fashion. By Trump’s will, Federal agencies and departments from Education to Veterans Affairs have come under the most thoughtless and unstudied attacks on their very existence.

Don’t expect impact studies.

The Trumpian Coup–call it what it is, for Trump infamously lied his way back into power–has turned out a criminal enterprise certain to collapse America’s economy, impoverish millions of Americans (for most locales hosting Federal offices, the Federal dollar is a primary dollar, i.e., a dollar imported from the Federal Government to be spent and spent again locally until partially recaptured in taxes). The Trump Administration appears to care not at all about what it is stealing from America’s cities, states, and regions in relation to massive Federal contraction.

What might Putin want?

For starters, I would suggest an “American Mafia State” mirroring the “Russian Mafia State” with its “Vertical of Power” leader, its corruption, and its oligarchy made so by the favor of Putin–for Americans, by the favor of Trump.

Whatever follows Trump’s degradation, desperation will be a part of it–and an American government deeply downsized and in disarray will not be able to help ordinary Americans just starting to burn through their savings. Perhaps states will rise the occasion. Perhaps not. It’s certain that no one will have solid answers as the bills mount for basic family support, housing, and transportation. Crime will follow as may an American Gulag — an extensive and vacuous prison system for Americans stressed beyond limits. That’s a vision, of course but one fit to a know-nothing president who has had a debt to repay to Moscow and the related state and mafia power that saved his ass after American banks had learned the hard way to refuse his business.

Probably, for a literal show stopper, Putin would be happy with an insolvent America. Musk and Trump appear to be doing everything in their power to make that happen. Between now and that: desperation; enserfment (enslavement for a buck–no dignity, no freedom, no pride — and if not free to choose one’s chains, then prison where choice may not exist).

Related Online

https://www.afge.org/article/afge-warns-americans-will-suffer-from-trumps-mass-layoffs-of-federal-workers-who-provide-services/

https://apnews.com/article/epa-budget-staffing-cuts-doge-9260514fd1be2397d39a80dc054d19df

https://apnews.com/article/veterans-affairs-cuts-doge-musk-trump-f587a6bc3db6a460e9c357592e165712

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx24gze60yzo

https://www.businessinsider.com/justice-alito-stunned-supreme-court-ruled-against-trump-usaid-funding-2025-3

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opm-memo-mass-federal-firings/?intcid=CNR-01-0623

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-fires-over-400-dhs-employees/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/21/business/linda-mcmahon-abuse-wwe-trump-education/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/06/politics/trump-education-department-shut-down-order/index.html

https://www.euronews.com/2025/01/29/who-is-trumps-intelligence-nominee-tulsi-gabbard-and-why-is-she-so-controversial

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/09/nx-s1-5213692/kash-patel-conspiracy-theories-fbi

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/us/politics/police-report-sexual-assault-claim-hegseth.html#

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/kennedy-rfk-profile-trump.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jd-vance-once-compared-trump-hitler-now-they-are-running-mates-2024-07-15/

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jd-vance-once-compared-trump-hitler-now-they-are-running-mates-2024-07-15/

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/consumer-watchdog-payouts-limbo-agency-defanged-by-trump-administration-2025-03-03/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/10/who-is-russell-vought-trump-office-of-management-and-budget

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/06/doge-is-driving-social-security-cuts-will-make-mistakes-acting-head-says-privately/

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Trump Piracy: Board, Disarm, and Plunder the United States of America

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Background: Russia Russia Russia!

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/11/08/well-have-it-fixed-so-good-said-donald-trump/; https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/.

State of Affairs: National Emergency


“On day one, the new HHS secretary is gutting the agencies that would be necessary to make America healthy again,” said Reshma Ramachandran, a Yale health professor who chairs the FDA task force of the nonprofit Doctors for America. |

Democratic lawmakers have blasted the firings as a threat to the government’s defense of public health, with Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) warning Friday that deep cuts at CDC “leaves Americans exposed to disease and devastates careers and livelihoods for the world’s most talented doctors and scientists.”

Cancryn, Adam, Megan Messerly, David Lim. “Mass firings continue across nation’s health agencies.” Politico, February 16, 2025.


Other American health institutions with functions degraded by the Trump Administration: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Emergency Preparedness Office; Food and Drug Administration; National Institutes of Health, for a start. Elon Musk’s process has been criminal, not responsible or thoughtful.

In relation to the stewardship of the nation’s beauty and natural resources, mass firings in the Forest Service and Park Service have degraded not only the defense of largely rural American public assets but also produced adverse community-wide financial impacts.


The fired National Park Service members are part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce, USA TODAY reported. At least 2,300 federal workers in the Department of Interior had their positions terminated, including 800 Bureau of Land Management employees and about 1,000 National Park Service workers.

Werner, Kyle. “‘I’m not sure what’s next’: National Park ranger in Iowa among thousands fired Friday.” Des Moines Register, February 17, 2025.


At Washington’s North Cascades National Park, visitors pumped more than $26 million into the local economy in 2023./It’s leading some to surmise the president isn’t seeing the forest for the trees in his attempt to save money. | Nationwide, America’s national parks brought a record $55.6 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023, supporting more than 415,000 jobs. | https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/national-politics/trump-fires-thousands-us-parks-and-forest-service-workers/281-ace07cac-38f9-4572-ba20-6d4af1892a4b


I had not wished to write more about Donald Trump, but his emotional issues and recklessness–and his powerlessness over himself and his assigns–makes him a foreign element within the United States. We are accustomed to democracy and freedom loving responsible politicians, not cons who appear to on a mission for Moscow. Regarding the massive and frankly stupid assault on our nation’s Federal workers and programs–as much amounts to an act of war from an untrustworthy American within. Try to read what’s happening before our eyes differently. I can’t.



Also Related Online

I know my readers have desktops too. Most, I believe, has also the question, “What can we do? What can I do? What will American defense and security services do in this developing confrontation with a deranged “leader” — on some of my X posts — who appears both contemptuous and ignorant of our American Constitution and related ethics, law, principles, procedures, and values? If we have another fair, free, and honest American election — we may not as Dumb King Trump (#DKT) has promised — the Republican Party may be made to pay for allowing the development of the Musk-Trump-(Putin) assault on the nation from within.

Slade, Shelby, Joey Garrison, Mike Snider. “Did Donald Trump fire FAA workers? See all the agencies hit by federal layoffs.” AZ Central, February 18, 2025.

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Delusional King Trump and Dark Medieval Musk

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Power absolute, capricious, corrupt, evil, unaccountable, lawless– and who or what is to stop him?

None should be surprised either by Donald Trump’s evisceration of the American Intelligence and American National Security Communities in their entirety or Elon Musk’s role in operationalizing a breathtaking and seemingly bloodless and invisible coup through the manipulating of the nation’s most critical and powerful cyber systems. Why not? Having been conceded the Presidency of the United States, Trump and his digital thug Elon Musk have the highest all-access rights to every asset not only in in the Federal Government but all assets subject to oversight by Federal law enforcement and security powers through every inch of their domain and now asserted sovereignty. If left alone, the announcement will come as scripted while the manner in governance will be monarchic beneath the cover of Presidential legitimacy tied to a hollowed-out American secular democratic republic.

Go with the premise.

As absolute in power–what military or police are there to oppose Trump? What armed population is there to oppose his officials or protectors? The greatest democracy on earth elected–or failed to contest the election of–an unqualified felon and mentally ill figure who has paid the ideals, laws, principles, and values of the Republic–and the Great Society it created–lip service at best.

Today, the Servants of the American State sworn to defend her Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic find themselves demonized for their integrity and honor as the incontrovertible truth will remain that Mafia Don really is a criminal with a long history of KGB/FSB interest and related revenues in real estate business involving Russian sources.

In their heads, Musk, Trump (and Putin and XI) are the good guys, and while they’ll mess with one another, even war, the structural character of their states will remain absolute, authoritarian, autocratic, totalitarian. Americans will no longer live with the dignity and freedom conferred on them through the principles, protections, and rights specified by the American Constitution. That will serve for show–and pretty images of happy (white) Americans in love with Donald Trump will serve for advertising the new “greatness” of a state monstrous in its reality. Who will be the new enemies of such a state left to establish itself: career military, police, intelligence, and security officials who won’t kiss Trump’s worn out old ass.

As regards the “peaceful transfer of power”, that will be easy: dynasty, chosen others or family, quietly determined by rigged elections and suited to the controls of an American Technocracy and the most unbridled, unprincipled, vulgar, and ruthless of America’s wealthiest families and political mafias.

Call the above last statement a possibility, something to think about if you’re old enough to think about duty, honor, nation, and oath.

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Trump Embarks on Dismantling American Authority and Democracy from the Top Down

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For the brave and curious, look up the names from the last time (repeated here from the previous post): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Vindman; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Coats; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Vindman; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Sondland; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._McMaster; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Maguire; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Yovanovitch; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_M._Gordon. Now as would befit a criminal mastermind, a Joker in the first degree, he has set his sites on the world’s foremost tried and true Federal investigators: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/31/fbi-considering-mass-purge-agents-involved-trump-investigations/. In the mix: David Sundberg, soon to be former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI, a position “overseeing nearly 1,600 employees and operations across Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia . . . .”

The purge–perhaps an opening curtain on persecutions to come–looks as bad as it appear without basis in reality, but when the nation accepts the election of a criminal, this is what it gets–>


Emil Bove, the acting No. 2 official at the department, offered no evidence those targeted had done anything improper, illegal or unethical. Instead he cited a legal technicality.

Those informed of their dismissals had been hired to investigate the Jan. 6 riot as the office struggled to manage what became the largest prosecution in the department’s history.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/politics/prosecutors-us-attorneys-office-trump-firings.html.


Two days earlier–>


The acting attorney general on Monday fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the two criminal investigations into Donald J. Trump for the special counsel Jack Smith, saying they could not be trusted to “faithfully implement” the president’s agenda, a Justice Department spokesman said. /

Justice Department veterans called the firings an egregious violation of well-established laws meant to preserve the integrity and professionalism of government agencies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/us/politics/justice-department-firings-trump-jack-smith.html


Where does it end?

It doesn’t.

The process of converting American Democracy into a politically absolute system of patronage, i.e., a dictatorship, has only just begun. However, it may be hampered and ended by cooperative resistance through the ranks of moderate Democrats and Republicans and all displaced or threatened with as much as if by a deeply criminal and traitorous king deserving little respect for his crimes and treason. Donald Trump may have won an American election but he has only outrun the law with the indictments processed against by our fellow Americans–election interference; classified documents abuse; attempted election fixing.

Related Online

Below: a glance at related news. By taking apart America’s Federal Government from the highest level down, Trump provides himself greater passage as a lawless and ruthless dictator. He’ll figure out the he cannot purchase an American conscience or repair the damage he will now bring to the careers and lives of the best and most experienced of American Federal servants, but having neither conscience nor empathy–or normal boundaries and limits–those disruptions and related suffering will not register with him. His cocked-up narrative: he’s the victim!

Davidson, Joe. “Trump’s revenge targets feds, expands his power and disrupts government.” The Washington Post, January 31, 2025.

Friedman, Drew. “Trump administration directs 70% cut to internal OPM staffing, programs.” Federal News Network, January 31, 2025.

Hsu, Andreas. “‘Not a buyout’: Attorneys and unions urge federal workers not to resign.” NPR, January 29, 2025.

Ismay, John. “Admiral Fagan is Fired As Coast Guard Commandant.” The New York Times, January 24, 2025.

Stone, Will, Selene Simmons-Duffin. “Trump administration purges websites across federal health agencies.” NPR, January 31, 2025.


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In Advance of Trumpian Power

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On his first day in office, President Trump not only revoked the security clearance of his former National Security Adviser John Bolton, but also his U.S. Secret Service protection.

This was not the first time Trump had stripped the advisor turned critic of the Secret Service detail. In September 2019, after Trump ousted Bolton from his position, he suspended the protection within hours. Bolton was subsequently granted security by former President Joe Biden.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2025/01/21/john-bolton-secret-service-protection-cancelled-trump/77857063007/ .

Mentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Vindman; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Coats; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Vindman; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Sondland; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._McMaster; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Maguire; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Yovanovitch; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_M._Gordon.

Add former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson for whom I had no notes until a few minutes ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/michael-atkinson-inspector-general-fired.html.


In addition to removing John Bolton’s modern day layer of armor–that’s what personal state-detailed security comes to–President Trump has moved to revoke the security clearances of 51 former intelligence officials. In more prudent Administrations less suspect of malfeasance or malicious intents, the same former officials may be tapped for their greater experience and expertise when necessary and with a minimum of reorientation.

The signatories of the letter wrote that they didn’t know whether the emails were authentic or not but that their emergence has “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

But Trump’s director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe — also his current pick to lead the CIA — contradicted that assessment by saying there was no intelligence to support the idea that Russia had anything to do with Hunter Biden’s laptop. The FBI, which was conducting its own criminal investigations into the younger Biden, seemed to back up Ratcliffe’s statement by telling Congress in a letter it had nothing to add to what he had said.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-moves-to-revoke-clearances-of-ex-intel-officials-who-signed-letter-on-hunter-biden-laptop.

Related Online: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/01/20/donald-trump-inauguration-day-news-updates-analysis/trumps-revenge-on-intel-officials-00199589;


Related Involving the Last Trump Administration

Donald Trump’s shake-up of America’s Intelligence and National Security Communities bodes ill for response to threats to American Democracy–but that would seem to be the point. He has been consistent in his passions, foremost the elimination of the American Election Process–for once, he appears to have said exactly what he meant. The retelling of “The Snake“–one might expect some MAGA to have known what he was when they voted for him . . . or colluded with his “Stop The Steal” big lie. The electric battery or shark question: those might be for the drug dealers whose money his operations haven’t been laundering. And the references to Hannibal the Cannibal from The Silence of the Lambs . . . . Think about that. He sells fear through fabrication — the 2020 election hadn’t been stolen, full stop — and xenophobia through exaggeration . . . perhaps telling more about himself than any true state of affairs.

Now as President Trump, he has targeted our most critical government services in law enforcement and justice and national security, especially the Intelligence Community (IC) though which American Military and State Department leaders may see both present situations and future real threats.


I’ve commented on Donald Trump’s earlier Great Replacement (in Government) behavior: “Maria Yovanovitich–The Kind of Person President Trump Fires From His Administration” (BackChannels, November 17, 2019).

Today, we know the kind of unqualified persons he’d rather have for their sycophancy.

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