Ed The Fascism Checklist, Trump 2025

Oh dear, I'm sure there's a special order to suppress that kind of subversion! The very thought of such deep dishonesty makes our dear fearless leader throw his bowl of low cal gluten free groats to the floor!
 
A couple years back after I had lost a bunch of weight, I had to renew my license. There was no scale at the DMV but the guy taking my picture said "Yeah, you look great" and decided I weighed 210 lbs, which is what he put on my license.

I weighed 179 lbs.
 
Definitions don't matter as much as the core issue, which in Spain we call "la verdad única", or "absolute truth".

Once there is an unquestionable dogma or leader placed above all criticism, you get different flavors of absolutism, in this case not the old divine right of kings, but "absolute truthism", in the line of, say, Pence's many statements that he believes in "absolute truth", as opposed, supposedly, to moral relativism or situational ethics (aka, deliberate reasoning). Absolute truths lurk everywhere:
  • Hard Left: historical inevitability
  • Hard Left: dictatorship of the proletariat
  • Hard Right/Religion: divine will (Islam, Christianity, Judaism being particularly heinous)
  • Hard Right: strongman virtue
  • Left-Center-Right: will of the people
The last one is Aristotle's pure democracy, which Republicans used to denounce saying, "The US is a republic", but to many of the deluded meaning "Republican", sigh. Pure democracy is lynch mob territory, the passions or idiocies of the moment outweighing all law and precedent. This is what Trumpians like to repeat about the last election, Trump especially: "Landslide mandate!" Representative democracy in a republic ostensibly offsets the danger by having a constitution which defines the field of play which even elected officials and judicial appointees must abide by, taking the form of an elected body of statesmen who consider the matters of the day and channel public will into lawful policies.

This last is what is utterly corrupt in the USA, and which led to Brexit in the UK, predictably hard on the heels of financial reform in the EU. In the US, elected representatives are store-bought stooges because campaign finance is allowed by law to be utterly imbalanced and beholden to special interests, especially under recent SCOTUS betrayals of the spirit and letter of the Constitution. Add unlimited foreign influence (AIPAC), and representative democracy is cooked.

The entire US is a company town, even now transforming residential real estate into part of the package of today's form of indentured slavery: no ownership, rent and cost of living exceeding income, leading to debtor prison. Welcome to the red pill real world, where fact-based reasoning and freedom of the press are the enemy (see Israel, Poland, Hungary, Russia, China, Islamic rule... and Trumpism).
 
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Pursuant to the above, we can now tie the "sovereignty" argument of nationalists to both tribal myth as truth, and especially to an alternate form of "the will of the people", wherein no treaty or agreement may constrain today's whim.

Related to that, we have the most insidious meme of all: free markets. This ideal is held to be sacrosanct to the point of overriding law and deliberative democracy ("regulations are the root of all evil"). See: Poland, Hungary, Brexit....

It goes deeper. The supply and demand curves from which pricing is derived in a given goods or service market are chalkboard abstractions which, properly at one level, use abstraction to remove extraneous data to the point at hand; namely that demand and supply meet at a given output level and price point. The elimination of all other considerations reduces buyer behavior to abstract "consumer utility". This is called "ceteris paribus", aka, "all else being equal".

Now, observe how the descriptive model of supply and demand slyly became a prescriptive model (aka, bad science). Any measure, any regulation that might alter consumer demand or equilibrium pricing is deemed a "market distortion". It is not. Since I've delved into this several times, I will leave it to the reader to consider: Is the choice by consumers to agree to taxation in order to finance a fire department a matter of distorting markets ("Oh, no, ruin is upon us"), or is it rather a real world, non-abstract choice that is actually a legitimate part of consumer preference?

"Free" markets and "free" trade have been used as bludgeons, purportedly representing "freedom" (let us barf), but in practice often constituting a veiled form of prescriptive nonsense in the service of national and/or corporate interest.
 
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Norman Alexander said:
Any wonder tourism in the USA is going down the toilet when it should be booming.
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I, with heavy heart, won't be back to the USA. We used to go to different places where we had friends living. I was back and forth to San Francisco for a while some years ago to record some bass, I met a lot of people through that.
We used to visit 4 or more times a year.
My age, my health and the cost of travel insurance have reduced the amount of travel I can do now ... but this, this, ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ madness has been decisive. I feel very sad for my good friends, we used to have some great times.
 
sinnikal said:
I, with heavy heart, won't be back to the USA. We used to go to different places where we had friends living. I was back and forth to San Francisco for a while some years ago to record some bass, I met a lot of people through that.
We used to visit 4 or more times a year.
My age, my health and the cost of travel insurance have reduced the amount of travel I can do now ... but this, this, ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ madness has been decisive. I feel very sad for my good friends, we used to have some great times.
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In Irish news overnight, you now have to disclose all your social media profiles for the last five years as part of the application for a J1 visa (others to follow). If you refuse, or if you forget one or if you have any anti-TACO postings, no visa for you forever.

www.thejournal.ie

Tánaiste to raise 'concerning' social media vetting for student visas with new US ambassador

The move is causing apprehension for young people travelling to the US, says Harris.
www.thejournal.ie www.thejournal.ie
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
In Irish news overnight, you now have to disclose all your social media profiles for the last five years as part of the application for a J1 visa (others to follow). If you refuse, or if you forget one or if you have any anti-TACO postings, no visa for you forever.

https://www.thejournal.ie/simon-harris-student-visas-us-social-media-6741789-Jun2025/
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I couldn't comply with as I don't know which sites I've joined in the last few years or under what username/email address etc. Yesterday I learnt I have already setup a Discord account (it was I think to get help with a game) the only reason I know that is that I went to join Discord yesterday to read some of the discussions about the Disney v Midjourney legal case and I was told I already had an account. I know I've had an Instagram account - unfortunately I can't access that any longer as to reset my password it uses 2FA and the phone number I had given is one I no longer have and the one-time codes it generated for me -that was probably 10 years ago - god only knows what landfill that print-out ended up in.
 
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Darat said:
I couldn't comply with as I don't know which sites I've joined in the last few years or under what username/email address etc. Yesterday I learnt I have already setup a Discord account (it was I think to get help with a game) the only reason I know that is that I went to join Discord yesterday to read some of the discussions about the Disney v Midjourney legal case and I was told I already had an account. I know I've had an Instagram account - unfortunately I can't access that any longer as to reset my password it uses 2FA and the phone number I had given is one I no longer have and the one-time codes it generated for me -that was probably 10 years ago - god only knows what landfill that print-out ended up in.
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I suspect that a failure to be able to provide all social media accounts won't necessarily be a barrier to having the visa issued but it will be a reason to remove the visa should the need arise.
 
The Don said:
I suspect that a failure to be able to provide all social media accounts won't necessarily be a barrier to having the visa issued but it will be a reason to remove the visa should the need arise.
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I think the point is moot as Darat's posts on this site are more than sufficient to prove him a satanic enemy of the Dear Leader (May he grift forever).
 
... and to think that in the distant past I had an indefinite/multi entry visa for the USA in my passport.
If they were to demand my internet history be disclosed, that's just another reason I won't be returning.
 
sinnikal said:
... and to think that in the distant past I had an indefinite/multi entry visa for the USA in my passport.
If they were to demand my internet history be disclosed, that's just another reason I won't be returning.
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It'll be interesting to see whether disclosure of social media accounts will become a prerequisite for ESTA application (followed by an AI investigation of those accounts).
 
Darat said:
I couldn't comply with as I don't know which sites I've joined in the last few years or under what username/email address etc. Yesterday I learnt I have already setup a Discord account (it was I think to get help with a game) the only reason I know that is that I went to join Discord yesterday to read some of the discussions about the Disney v Midjourney legal case and I was told I already had an account. I know I've had an Instagram account - unfortunately I can't access that any longer as to reset my password it uses 2FA and the phone number I had given is one I no longer have and the one-time codes it generated for me -that was probably 10 years ago - god only knows what landfill that print-out ended up in.
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It's actually worse than I originally posted. We've been discussing the matter at the office all morning, one of our jobs is doing up Police certs and issuing them as part of visa applications, and one thing I didn't mention is a requirement to make all your social media public. There are going to be multiple people, hundreds if not thousands, who have their social media open to only a very small group because of necessary safety and security issues (eg domestic violence, stalking, criminal elements looking for them). It's a total Orwellian nightmare, all because TACO is a whiny little bitch baby.
 
On the basis of social and traditional media posting content, my decades-long nefarious record includes opposing both Gulf Wars in the Opinion section of the venerable International Herald Tribune, a wide range of critical statements in the Comments sections of the NYT and Wapo (both of which banned me), my senior year high school paper for English class discussing how geographic isolation by two oceans makes the USA nigh unassailable... as well as guaranteeing it to be a world-class champion of cluelessness, and, of course, myriad posts on today's media.

I half expect the FBI to file extradition papers any moment now, and failing that, for some hired hitman hick to smuggle in a popgun and pansy up to the task of shooting me in the back, "mission accomplished".
 
I've been thinking that the USA will become a dictatorship. The Trump Regime could be the first, but even if it isn't, then the next Republican POTUS will be. Democrats may win the presidency, if there is a fair-free election, and they would reduce the powers of the executive (maybe). However, the next time a Republican wins the oval office, they will centralize all powers to the executive. I speculate this due to historical data that shows Republicans are always moving the USA towards authoritarianism.
 
I am not sure if the USA Geheimstaatspoliezei have noticed, but Marjorie Taylor Greene, yes THAT Marj, posted a public Xcretion disapproving of Trump’s actions in starting wars, or at least not stopping them as promised. I think she needs to be detained for further questioning prior to removal of citizenship then deportation to South Sudan or somewhere similar.
 
Norman Alexander said:
I am not sure if the USA Geheimstaatspoliezei have noticed, but Marjorie Taylor Greene, yes THAT Marj, posted a public Xcretion disapproving of Trump’s actions in starting wars, or at least not stopping them as promised. I think she needs to be detained for further questioning prior to removal of citizenship then deportation to South Sudan or somewhere similar.
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Joe Rogan is peeved, too.


Edit, says video not available, here is the url
 
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thaiboxerken said:
I've been thinking that the USA will become a dictatorship. The Trump Regime could be the first, but even if it isn't, then the next Republican POTUS will be. Democrats may win the presidency, if there is a fair-free election, and they would reduce the powers of the executive (maybe). However, the next time a Republican wins the oval office, they will centralize all powers to the executive. I speculate this due to historical data that shows Republicans are always moving the USA towards authoritarianism.
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Pretty obvious that I agree. There is a sliver of a chance that all is not lost, but what we yet perceive as political freedom in the USA might turn out to be the powerless merely going through the motions.

The problem is not solely an American one. The internet and technology have created a situation in which it is almost as if there is only one water hole, and only few have access, accumulating vast wealth as the rest pay a high toll. When we see the chummy relations between oligarchs of all callings, from those born of tech to those who pump oil to dictators and wannabes, it is hard not to "call it a plan". Virtually all great wealth and all political power are now in few hands.

The remaining "hope" is war among them, and that they mutually self-destruct. Otherwise, everything needed to survive climate change will be under lock and key, guarded by goons, as many more die than would be the case if distribution were more equitable. This is the game of the 21st century.
 
They've started building the concentration camps.

Florida to detain migrants in new Everglades facility dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

Florida this week started construction on a migrant detention facility the state is billing as “efficient” and “low-cost” – because Mother Nature will provide much of the security.

“Alligator Alcatraz,” as Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier calls it, is being erected on a little-used airstrip in the Everglades, the vast expanse of marshes and swamps that covers much of southern Florida and hosts a dizzying array of wildlife, from hundreds of bird species to bobcats, panthers, crocodiles and alligators.

“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons,” Uthmeier said in an announcement video that casts the facility as “the one-stop shop to carry out President Trump’s mass deportation agenda” and features slow-motion footage of snapping alligators.
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Pixel42 said:
You guys have your weight on your driving licence? What on earth for?
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Probably for the same reason my license proclaims my sex, height, and eye color.

And I would guess that reason is to have a physical description on file to assist with the manhunt that will commence when they discover the weight shown on my driver's license is not my current weight, but my weight circa 2014.

But officer, the Department of Motor Vehicles didn't even ask about my weight. Not so's I recall. They must have copied that weight from my previous license at every renewal and whenever I moved to a new state.​
​
Tell it to the judge.​
The forum software thinks I misspelled "color", and (in a different post) misspelled "center", though it didn't complain about my spelling of "license". Do I need to worry about the fascists who will arrest me for not using British spellings?
 
W.D.Clinger said:
Probably for the same reason my license proclaims my sex, height, and eye color.

And I would guess that reason is to have a physical description on file to assist with the manhunt that will commence when they discover the weight shown on my driver's license is not my current weight, but my weight circa 2014.

But officer, the Department of Motor Vehicles didn't even ask about my weight. Not so's I recall. They must have copied that weight from my previous license at every renewal and whenever I moved to a new state.​
​
Tell it to the judge.​
The forum software thinks I misspelled "color", and (in a different post) misspelled "center", though it didn't complain about my spelling of "license". Do I need to worry about the fascists who will arrest me for not using British spellings?
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Fun DMV facts (yes, that's a contradiction in terms but ignore that):

-When you renew your license (every four years around here), you have to certify the information is still correct, or change it. Not indicating a weight change can be interpreted as deliberately falsifying your official ID.

-When I got my first DL as a teen, I wasn't sure what color to put for my eyes. They are kind of a pale slate color, so is that blue, green or gray on the DMV color wheel? The worker there, who was apparently more oblivious to color names than me, said the color was called hazel. For like 30 years, my license said I had hazel eyes, till I changed it to blue. Interestingly, they had no issue with how I managed to change my eye color, which I changed online
 
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P.J. Denyer said:
Soon they'll have a 'wrong sort' of White too.
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Don't forget all those LGBTQ+ people. Plenty potential for cruelty there, too. How long until we see Poland-style 'LGBTQ-free cities'?

Edit: Gotta go after the disabled, too, they're already laying the groundwork by cutting MediCare and other critical benefits and saying their recipients should go work in the fields.
 
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