Dictator 2.0: Be Fruitful, and Multiply
“Democracy itself is imperiled here at home and around the world. What we do now, what we do now, how we honor the memory of the fallen will determine whether or not democracy will long endure.” –Joe Biden, May 31, 2021
Brazil, India, Turkey, Poland, Hungary…what do these countries have in common? Each was once a ‘liberal democracy.’ Albeit, many of them were nascent and young, once the authoritarian playbook was executed, they moved rapidly into autocratic state. Aided by the movements/strategies of the former head of the Russian KGB, Vladimir Putin, these countries cracked quickly and their populations are now under the rulership of “strongmen” that have promised renewed nationalism and economic strength through one-party (often minority) rule. Each of these nationalist/populist movements have embraced religious fervor and ‘purity’ over the growing apostacy of the secular/demonic world.
Aside from Belarus, which has adopted Dictator 1.0 (military takeover), these dying democracies implemented a program of eliminating the checkpoints (fire the IG’s) and stacking the courts with party friendly legislators, working the refs…suppressing the vote, and then flooding the zone with misinformation/disinformation in a strategy that would make the German Nazi party blush with embarrassment.
“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.” ― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
When people go through trauma, a health emergency, an accident, a terrible loss…there usually is a “liminal” period. In that liminal space there is often a deeper connection to Spirit. “Why did I survive this accident, heart attack, cancer etc etc?” “Why did I live while they lost their lives?” This period of reflection usually leads to different choices as well as a strategy to take different paths. In the case of the 2020 election loss, there was zero liminal naval gazing. Instead, there has a been an all out assault on voting rights in the country to a degree never experienced in our country’s history.
Shadow Network
The fingers of authoritarianism are now wrapped tightly around the neck of the United States. At the heart of this homicide of democratic values is the Council For National Policy, the “CNP.” For over four decades now, the CNP has amassed a powerful group of ultra-rich US plutocrats with a mission of destroying the decaying secularism of liberal democracy and replacing it with a neo-Christian government known as “Dominionism.” The implementation of a Christian nation comes with a media campaign that trashes liberal democracy, channels media and religion and champions autocrats around the globe.
In their worldview, democracy is a failed experiment that has led to the decay of a ‘holy’ society…we have gay marriage, abortion, ‘other’ religions, transgenders, and all of this is the work of Satan himself. The only way for the country to survive is to establish a nation based on Biblical values….e.g., Dominionism. The media assault has, and does, include: Salem Media Group, Bott Radio Network, American Family Radio, Focus on the Family, the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Trinity Broadcasting Network and now includes state-run media like Fox News, OANN and NewsMax. Aiding them for decades has been a parade of clown-car TV evangelists from Pat Robertson to Jerry Falwell to the absolutely bat-shit crazy Kenneth Copeland.
This salvation movement is born of the “7 Mountain Politics and Theology” and embraces the language of “war” to reclaim the kingdom of God. Adherents to the theology of Dominionism are committed to waging war on the existing institutions of the country. The CNP has been behind the movement to take over the information war-space and prop up their puppets in the political sphere to fight their ‘holy war.’ The ‘war’ started in 1981, shortly after the election of Ronald Reagan, when conservative Christian and activist Paul Weyrich saw the opening in which he could build a movement based on the Southern Baptists and American Evangelicals and build an ‘army’ to destroy “secular humanism.”
Add a Dash of Crazy AF
In 2016, the CNP put all their chips behind Ted Cruz and Marco (tweeting biblical verses) Rubio to pursue their political agenda of Dominionism. After the surprise primary performance of the former guy…a man who was a serial philanderer, sexist, racist, vulgar and divisive personality and hardly the godly person needed to carry the message of a theocratic government…the CNP was left with no other option and thus threw all their weight behind the orange con-man. His version of populism (based on his deep knowledge of the speeches of Adolph Hitler) was resonating with the ‘base’ that the CNP needed to win an election. (The GOP has not won a national popular vote since 1988) Mobilize the masses via populism and dump huge amounts of cash on the venture in a Las Vegas style bet that promised a voter turnout for the Republican party that had not been seen since the 1980s.
In 2017, bring in “Q,” otherwise known as Ron Watkins. Watkins and his father are sociopaths and they re-booted an old Nazi cult/conspiracy based on the anti-Semitic The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and created an online conspiracy known as “QAnon.” The premise of Q; the secular humanists are actually run by a secret society of Satan worshipping elite that traffic babies and children and murder the children in order to drink their blood to achieve power and longevity based on the secret chemical compound known as “Adrenochrome.”
Once the COVID19 pandemic hit, and people were forced into isolation in their homes with only the ‘internet’ to connect them to the outside world, “Q” multiplied rapidly as both Facebook and Twitter were flooded with insane rantings of every new person sucked into the drama. See the HBO documentary: Into the Storm. Just as with Germany in the 1930s, the “Q” cult quickly consumed a large portion of the American culture and fit neatly with Evangelicals and the CNP and their view that secularism had destroyed society and that the only answer was a holy war to “save our country.”
In the new version of the dusty cult, the premise was the Orange God-King was hand selected by God himself to ‘bring down’ the society of Satan worshipping secular humanists, destroy the failed elements of liberal democracy, and herald a new era of theocratic, Dominionist, i.e., Biblical government. Note that even though “Q” has been removed by the dominant social media platforms, it thrives on Gab, Parler, Signal, Telegram etc and every day the QAnuts post that “any day now” the “Storm” is coming. For three years they have been telling themselves the same story. It’s coming….Any. Day. Now.
If I Lose it Was Fraud
Straight out of the autocratic playbook, the 2020 election was a predictable disaster in extreme right-wing violence and Strongman power. Months upon months of “the only way we lose is if we are cheated” filled the minds of the “Q’s” and self-prescribed warriors for America, groups like the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Bois, Three Percenters, Patriot Prayer and American Neo-Nazis and the Q’s gathered in the US Capitol in January to stop the counting of the Electoral College votes because, as one analyst put it, “T**** had run out of non-violent strategies.”
January 6th was nothing more than a wet dream for Vladimir Putin. To see the world’s oldest democracy crumble under the weight of authoritarian language, religious fervor and disinformation was the culmination of a thirty-year plot to destroy American Democracy and usher in an autocratic government like India, Brazil, Turkey, (home) et. al. If you want to understand how January 6th played into Putin’s playbook, read Peter Pomerantsev: Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia.
Since the “Insurrection” and failed coup of January 6th, there has been a false feeling that ‘democracy endured’ and America dodged a bullet. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As author Anne Nelson outlines in her book: Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, the CNP is far from defeated. The CNP is a massive organization with basically unlimited funding and has a single goal of reshaping America into a biblical theocracy. As long as Putin is in power and as long as the CNP remains the shadow group behind the current GOP, democracy is hanging by a very slender thread. To get a sense of just how deep the CNP roots are in the modern GOP, read this critical piece by Anne Nelson.
As Ben Rhodes writes in his latest: After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made, the entire planet is teetering on the edge of an existential moment. The war is not between the secular humanists and the theocratic movements, it is simply between liberal democracy and full-blown authoritarianism.
“It doesn’t matter how many people vote, only who counts them.” –Joseph Stalin
The GOP is now owned completely by the CNP. There are no more policy stances, there is no “party platform.” The singular reason for the party to exist now is for power, the power to remake the United States into a Christian nation founded solely on Biblical principles. Rather than build a party based, as it used to be, on intellectual policy and robust debate…the GOP has surrendered to the CNP and is implementing the strategies that have succeeded in India, Brazil, Turkey, and Hungary. The strategy is to remove the ability for the majority party to vote and, whether they vote or not, simply remove the ability of the votes to count. Democracy replaced by the ultimate autocratic playbook…It doesn’t matter who votes, only who COUNTS the votes.
If the GOP is the only one counting the votes, can you name one single thing they have done to help the nation in past few decades? One? I’ll Wait. The Heritage Foundation’s website says: “Free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense—these are the values that we fight for every single day.” Whatever the fuck any of that means. You mean, you got power, passed laws that gave the richest part of the country extreme profligate wealth while the middle class was destroyed? That is not exactly “policy.” Policy is typically infrastructure, health care, education, etc. We literally must go back to the Eisenhower era to remember any GOP policy that helped the population. That was the last time you heard a Republican say: “America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper.”
Stability Cannot Be Purchased at the Expense of Liberty
Where do we go from here? Do you remember when the “War in Iraq” was turning into a massive clusterfuck and the wheels were coming off the Bush presidency? The strategy then was to couch the war(s) into the message of “Spreading Democracy” in the Middle East. Bush gave a speech on “Global Democracy and Freedom” and said: “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”
There was non-stop, rah-rah, yee-haw on RW media about Iraq holding ‘democratic elections’ and the media was flush with images of Iraqis with purple fingers after casting their ‘democratic vote.’
Fast forward to 2021 and 48 states have introduced over 400 legislative bills to curb voting for the American population. All legislation stemming from Republican lawmakers. From purple fingers to fingers up our asses. Unless we suddenly have a movement to write an amendment to the Constitution that guarantees every American the right to vote, we are pretty much fucked.
Sure, there is HR1 (S1) that broadly proposes federal law that would protect the right to vote. Mitch McConnell has called HR1 “rotten to the core.” So, American voting is now ‘rotten.’ Mitch’s middle finger is purple, and he is flashing it in a big FUCK YOU to the American electorate.
Even if S1 and HR4 were passed, the recent spate of state bills removes the certification from the hands of secretaries of state and puts the final results in the hands of people who would have the ability to throw out the results of any election and decertify those results. Basically, that makes us Russia…where Putin gets 90% of the vote.
In 2020, we basically were three moral compasses away from a total fucking disaster where state reps would have overwritten the actual vote counts and tossed the election out. Since then, we have now discovered that the DOJ was being pressured to force states to throw out the voter results and make the Orange God-King dictator for life. Rather than just admit that thousands of people of color came out in droves to vote, the DOJ was sent proposals to void voters because Italy had used satellites to rewrite the vote choices!
Couple this with the bogus “Fraudit” being run in Arizona by the Cyber Ninjas, a company run by a QAnon conspirator where they have been screening voter ballots for secret ‘watermarks’ and ‘bamboo,’ because 40K votes were flown in from ‘Southeast Asia’ and dumped off in Maricopa County…and we all know the Asian ‘ballots’ have bamboo in them!
The plan now is to trash voting, trash representative democracy and simply classify the election according to your whim. For reference see India, Brazil, Turkey, and Hungary…the list goes on.
This is the slow, drip, drip, drip of destroying democracy…powered by the richest .01% of the country running a shadow network of Christian Nationalists who want to burn democracy to the ground and replace it with Theocratic Dominionism.
Sure, HR1 is bloated…and, yes, both parties like power and want to be in power…but taking away the franchise from the people is the stuff of banana republics, not the world’s oldest democracy. Both parties should be championing voting rights and then making policy to win those votes. That’s how this fucking system works. That is “Democracy.”
Take Bush’s earlier quote and simply replace ‘Middle East’ with America and you have the powder keg where one-third of the current GOP believes a global Satanic cabal is running the world, powered by baby’s blood, and 39% of them think that ‘political violence’ is necessary in order to ‘save our country.’ MAGA cult have been threatening the lives of election workers in every state in the country.
Think back to the 1960s, when voter rights were first enforced federally. During that tumultuous time, the GOP establishment spurned the crazy fuckers in the John Birch Society and sent them packing. Twenty years later, the CNP took over the party and, coupled with “Heritage,” they have been driving the bus…and that bus is now careening off a cliff.
If we are going “honor the memory of the fallen” then we need a bulwark against the lunatics. We need a strong center-right to step in and promote a federal voting rights infrastructure with the goal of ultimately amending the U.S. Constitution to make any effort to diminish voter rights illegal. We need more Liz Cheney’s and Adam Kinzinger’s and George Will’s to step up and denounce the fucking nut jobs threatening electoral workers’ lives. Or, as the former guy said of Putin, “Why would I repute (sic) the fact that he called me a genius?” Yeah, fucking Einstein right there. Fact, Putin never called the orange clown a genius.
We MUST refute the sore losers and create a national voter protection act.