Fear is the accepted standard for the T-Rump:
Literally the only Republican in Congress who is not afraid to say this. Even despite the threat here from Trump’s campaign manager. They can’t get votes on the merits, so they always resort to threats. Trump rules his party with fear, and they are all terrified- except Massie.
— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) 2025-03-10T23:47:29.469Z
Looks like only the single survives.
And it’s getting scary tight — from The New York Times last week: ‘People on both sides of the aisle who would normally be part of the public dialogue about the big issues of the day say they are intimidated by the prospect of online attacks from Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, concerned about harm to their companies and frightened for the safety of their families. Politicians fear banishment by a party remade in Mr. Trump’s image and the prospect of primary opponents financed by Mr. Musk, the president’s all-powerful partner and the world’s richest man.‘
And up until today — an explanation:
New, from me: you were told that the threats to free speech came from wokeness. Some compared it to Maoist China.Now we are witnessing government power being used to silence dissent and censor ideas. Now we know what real society-wide chilling effects look like. ?open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni…
— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) 2025-03-09T17:39:08.618Z
Go read Moynihan’s entire engrossing post on his Substack (great h/t LGM) for a sobering, frightful look at America’s current surreal predicament — soon we’ll be a whole-other country, so shitty different than the one we all grew up with and has a 250-plus-year history.
After presenting a long, detailed list of the T-Rump’s chaotic, horrific shenanigans carried out via a shitload of his nefarious, ass-kissing assholes, creating that ‘whole-other country,’ and outlining some scary shit, Moynihan brings it togteher: ‘Normally, we treat each bullet point as a separate story. But they are all connected. We are witnessing an extraordinarily broad chilling effect in American society. It is not just what you want to say, but what you are allowed to ask. It is about both formal government actions and informal threats, with threats of professional ruin or even violence from the President’s supporters. It is about both censorship and self-censorship. It is about a sense of collective fear … The America you thought you knew is gone, its undoing germinating for years, and culminating in a matter of weeks.‘
Although scary as dog shit, worth reading in whole.
Closer to this fiction in real-living time:
Headed back to the Iron Curtain, or not, yet here we are once again …
(Image out front by illustrator and portrait painter, Tim O’Brien, and can be found here.)