AS THE RUBBLE THREW UP DUST, TRUMP REFUSED FOOD AID TO AS MANY AS 40 MILLION AMERICANS ~ Louis Further ~ With the usual caveat that anarchists attach scant value to voting and elections, it’s of concern that last month the US Supreme Court significantly undermined Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; this contains measures to ensure that electoral districts in any one state are arranged in rough proportion to its racial demographics. The Court has ruled that Louisiana cannot make such adjustments. Black votes now count for less. Elsewhere Republican-voting states are redrawing their electoral maps to favour white voters so actively and speedily that some legal commentators and ‘SCOTUS-watchers’ fear that this ruling could effectively result in permanent electoral majorities for the Republican (which now means far right/fascist) Party. The president is also widening his moves to overwrite the past—in this case by pardoning both more of those who tried to overturn the 2020 election in his favour and many of those found guilty of associated crimes. As the Court heard concluding oral arguments in this landmark voting rights case, the country’s president was publicly expressing major concerns about the way in which Time magazine had represented his haircut. He was also paying for the partial demolition of the White House with funds from supporters of genocide and abduction of non-whites by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), whose actions become ever more ferocious and sadistic. As the rubble threw up dust, Trump proved what a good Christian he is by refusing—illegally—to use the (non-charitable) resources mandated to feed perhaps as many as 40 million residents going hungry because of his government shutdown. This was quickly blamed on immigrants and trans people. Trump did, though, find the money to refurbish a bathroom in what he now seems to regard as his permanent home. Other signs of the extent to which Trump/MAGA cult is out of control (despite the fact that there is still little public contextual recognition of what is happening) are the sacking of those who refer to his attempted Putsch on January 6 2021 in a way of which he disapproves. Similarly, those who publicly criticise US support for Israel’s genocide often lose their jobs. Fascist senators like Ted Cruz (Texas) have legislation further to criminalise dissent. The media, of course, is feebly—if at all—trying to fend off blows from Trump, as he widens his reach to silence critics abroad. Correspondingly few are any murmurs that—although Trump is immune from legal consequences as president—those who ‘carry out his orders’ are not. MAGA cult members know that they need to stay in office indefinitely to retain that immunity. Judges’ demands for ‘accountability’ from ICE as it abducts and traffics non-whites across the country are being ignored. The ‘No Kings’ demonstrations on 18 October were estimated to have attracted more protesters than their equivalent in June by nearly 50%… seven million—or over 2% of the total population of the United States. Some sources are beginning to talk about the ‘2.5% rule‘. It would also be nice if such varied demonstrations do more than induce feelings of solidarity amongst those attending. But criticism of MAGA/Trump remains too ‘soft’ and disparate to make much impact; and lacks awareness of either the historical or geopolitical import of this resurgence of fascism. Trump’s response was characteristically vulgar. RACISM Trump and the MAGA merchants (some of whom now openly display Nazi flags) have surprised few recently by delivering themselves of a swill of offensive opinions. That slavery is and was a good thing; that racism is OK too. Vance, US vice president, stood up for such racism as this in his party and said that nobody wants to live next door to someone whose first language isn’t English; and that foreign nationals who criticised Charlie Kirk should be deported. Other forms of official government sadism include diminishing the support offered by what remains of the Department of Education responsible for young people with special needs by sacking those workers. Prosecutions for those abusing animals are also falling. Hatred is ever-present among Trump’s loyalists and ‘partners’: holocaust denier and antisemite Nick Fuentes, for instance, was given supportive exposure by prominent far right commentator Tucker Carlson—an event quickly endorsed by The Heritage Foundation, which is responsible for Project 2025, the blueprint of this administration. HEALTH ‘Policy’ in those government agencies formerly responsible for public health is increasingly based on the assumption that only the fittest deserve to survive This time last month 1,300 employees at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) were sacked—by email, without warning, without reason. This is a trend demoralising and frightening career professionals for months. Everyone has gone from the team that uses data of outbreaks in reports and guidance for the public. So have ‘epidemic intelligence service officers’ who detected and tracked emerging threats so as to mitigate their effects. And so on and so on, despite the by now familiar uncertainties and chaos around Scotch mist re-instatements. An estimated third of all employees at the CDC have now lost their jobs—on top of an expected additional 50% cut in budgets next year. Some commentators see this as a cruel experiment in just how far the deliberate and frenzied withdrawal of vital public health services from a society can go before collapse ensues. This is almost certainly only the first ‘act’ though… several ‘directives’ in Project 2025, which at first sight appear to be advocating [pdf] greater ‘efficiency’ are actually destructive and sinister; they envisage the replacement of dismissed staff (who are almost all highly experienced experts) with toadies, whose key attribute is not medical but loyalty to the fascist dogma which holds MAGA together. The way that Trump and his cabinet, including RF Kennedy Junior (who appeared the ‘flee the scene’ of a recent medial emergency), are stuffing their team, and diluting science with right-leaning anti-health dogma is alarming in the extreme.   The post Notes from the US: The fascist bathroom appeared first on Freedom News.

THIS MONTH SOMETHING DIFFERENT: A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING WHY THE APPEAL OF SELFISHNESS GRIPS SO MANY PEOPLE SO FIERCELY ~ Louis Further ~ Right-wing beliefs are ultimately attempts to rationalise and justify selfishness. Fascism, ‘conservatism’, US Republicanism—call them what you will: the differences are essentially procedural. “My needs matter. Yours don’t”. But in order to explain much of what motivates those in the MAGA cult it’s necessary to understand the state which precedes selfishness. That is the primacy of the self devoid of empathy. Members of the MAGA cult thrive on the stark clarity of its identity and their adherence to it… badges, merchandise, flags, clothing. This applies less to other (far right) systems imposed on majorities in most other polities and other shades of élite, hierarchical, coercive political opinion—notably the Democrats in the US. But they too take what’s useful in selfishness. For that self (or selves) to be distinct first there have to be ‘others’, who are not the self. Secondly there has to be a qualitative comparison between the two entities. This drive to compare may originate in the psychology of their childhood wounds, in ongoing brainwashing, in fear, in ignorance, insecurity and so on. For cult members’ biographies (individual or collective) to make sense no two (or more) things can (co-)exist without being compared. Once the apparent ‘need’ to compare is admitted, it becomes inevitable and compelling. This adherence to the dogma of comparison for those in the MAGA cult often bypasses assertions of perceived ‘right’ vs ‘wrong’, ‘good’ vs ‘bad’. The very act of comparison (between races, sexes, classes, ideas of society etc) replaces rational analysis. Defining superiority-inferiority becomes an end in itself. This is much more than pragmatism: justifying selfishness and oppression becomes its own goal. Objectivity, tolerance, compassion, caring, empathising are all irrelevant and play no part in advancing such agendas as those which Trump/MAGA is now imposing on the US. The self (individual of collective) is the sole arbiter of such qualities as ‘strength’, ‘ruthlessness’, ‘bullying determination’; so they are more readily adopted when compared with such perceived opposites as ‘weakness’, being ‘soft on crime’ than for their innate qualities. If those in this camp subjected their perceived need to come out on top to logical or rational analysis, they would fail. So a spurious teleological element is (unconsciously) introduced: a wilful conviction that “history is on our side; we have the untrammelled right to impose”. This sense of historical inevitability both has its genesis in, and reinforces and encourages, the millenarian streak with which current US foreign ‘policy’ has been shot through at least since the élite upped its ‘war on terror’ a generation ago. It grew more harshly with the anti-Muslim fanaticism propagated by George W. Bush after the events of September 11 2001. It can still be found in establishment antisemitism and the Islamophobia of Trump and his fellow cultists. The need to capture, torture, and kill the ‘bomb-carrying Middle Easterner’ around every corner is readily satisfied by the élite’s assertion of white-male-American superiority over everyone else. Even when the hunts produce spurious results—or none—someone has to be punished. The same thing is happening now as ICE kidnaps and traffics many who fail to look ‘white’—in comparison with everyone else, especially the hunters. Such binary ‘decisions’ (“I belong. You don’t”) are endpoints. It’s easy to bask in the approbation which they receive—in propaganda outlets and legislative echo-chambers. After all, again, the ‘superior self’ is sole arbiter of what to subscribe to. CIRCULAR LOGIC Belief (as opposed to reason) also has its own circular justification. This is hardly surprising when you recall that fascism is a system which seeks to ‘solve’ a problem which it has itself created. Once the primacy—and so the perceived necessity—of binary comparisons has been accepted (as it is in fascist beliefs), then condemnation of the other is even more compelling and convincing to the likes of the MAGA/Trump cult: non-whites are undesirable because they are criminals (not even remotely true, of course). This means that they are criminals because they are non-white. Analogously “We whites are better than ‘illegal aliens’ because… we are not ‘illegal aliens’”. This horse-before-cart assertion of white superiority (currently, with ICE, towards all LatinX communities) uses such circular logic: “We kidnap them because they are immigrants. If they get kidnapped, they must deserve it because they are immigrants who have been kidnapped”. This is analogous to much back-and-forth, tit-for-tat threads on social media when attempts are made to denigrate all opinion which the right lumps together as ‘liberal’: “You are bad because you are socialist; but the reason why you hold socialist views is that you are ‘bad’; and—while we’re at it—you’re bad because you do not belong to or with us”. Then “‘Liberals’ (socialists) are bad and evil because they believe in taking away what we’ve striven so hard to accumulate; therefore believing in equality is bad because it’s what bad people like you socialists believe in”! But this is where it gets even more frightening: the immediacy of accepting and acting on selfishness also makes a nuisance of both facts and nuance. Who needs facts when what individuals say must always be right because it would be a breach of my freedom to stifle that. Once fascist dogma has (successfully) rendered decisions based on falsity and false ‘logic’ acceptable, popular even, the need to examine phenomena such as climate collapse and the efficacy of vaccines against verifiable facts is removed. The mere act of pronouncing on these issues is sufficient for what’s said to appear true to those who want it to be true. To hold a ‘position’ is itself a valid and worthy end. What’s more, fascist belief is both immature and simplistic. So it’s all too easy, for example, to justify climate denial by saying “Well, I can’t see evidence of the collapse that all of you keep saying is upon us; so it doesn’t exist.” Similarly, the White House issues reports almost daily about ‘necessary’ actions against immigrants and to combat crime, the rates of which are not rising. The unsophisticated fascist system accepts them at face value because to do otherwise would run counter to its anti-intellectual stances. Facts mean less than dogma. It seems likely that many cult members probably do know that much of what the cult stands for is based on sand. But shame and hero worship (the psychological aspect again) and the pressure to adhere are so far eclipsing any chance of their revising their views.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos: Los Angeles, June 2025 via Corazónegro Cerbatanero on Facebook The post Notes from the US: The MAGA war on empathy appeared first on Freedom News.

TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY IS STILL NOT WIDELY SEEN FOR THE FASCIST COUP THAT IT IS ~ Louis Further ~ Be honest and ignore your ‘scepticism’ about the ‘decency’ of politics in the United States: would you have believed it, had you been told ten years ago, that its president would be a twice impeached convicted felon, nevertheless elected with a healthy majority for a second term (and who is considering an illegal third term)? Would you have thought that a serial rapist, a failed businessperson notorious for not paying debts—a bankrupt even; an avowed white supremacist, misogynist, anti-Semite; a notorious liar; someone without a basic grasp of history and science—could become the most powerful person in the world?  Could a US president really build a fascist movement of such strength as to do what Trump/MAGA/Musk are doing: effectively (and illegally/unconstitutionally) dismantling multiple agencies of government, as this site chronicles; and potentially crashing the world economy because he has a fetish for half-understood tariffs? Education is a prime target of fascism. So perhaps—like climate denial—you foresaw universities being wrecked by defunding them (the latest huge withdrawals of funds (a total of US$1.8 million/£1.4 billion) from Northwestern and Cornell); their curricula steered to fall in line with far right dogma; and their accreditation procedures ‘interfered’ with. Incidentally, lawmakers in states like Oklahoma have a poor grasp of what constitutes good education: their latest exploit requires pupils to ‘learn’ that Trump unfailrly lost the 2020 election. Children in Maine will be worse off because some schools tolerate transgender pupils. In Florida teachers can now be sacked for respecting pupils’ identities. But were you ready to watch the removal of meteorological (for forecasting), geological and oceanic services—as well as of other scientific data? Would you ever have imagined that the staff and resources of authorities to ensure air traffic and airport safety would be depleted? Could you have seen a wholly unqualified anti-vaccine quack at the head of the equivalent of the NHS in the UK, Robert F Kennedy Jr Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services? Like all Trump’s appointments, he had the backing of a majority of Congresspeople. One of Kennedy’s first acts was to push Vitamin A as an effective and appropriate ‘solution’ to the growing measles epidemic in the US; it isn’t. This was endorsed by the once-venerable CDC (Centers of Disease Control), which last week became unable to help schools in Milwaukee deal with unsafe lead-levels on their sites… lack of resources due to DOGE’s cuts. Children are now being brought to A&E with liver failure caused by an excess of Vitamin A. Kennedy is also conniving in the closure and defunding of health authorities in—of all places—the very heart of that outbreak. Could you have expected thousands of staff sacked whose job is to oversee and promote public health—HIV prevention, the asthma and air quality team, environmental hazard response, gun violence prevention, worker safety, reproductive and disability health; TB prevention; blood disorder projects, national surveying of drug use and mental health; lead poisoning prevention and water safety; the tobacco control division?  All gone. In the US over a third of people say they are unable to meet their healthcare needs. Worldwide the number of children who will die because of cuts to foreign aid is estimated to be in the millions. Never mind, though: if you have $1,000 (£763), you can buy ‘supernatural blessings’ on the White House’s own website from Trump’s chief ‘faith adviser’. PROJECT 2025 You won’t be surprised by any of if you have read Project 2025, which made most of this clear well before the Trump/MAGA victory of November. This ‘tracker’ shows how quickly and comprehensively its objectives are being achieved. Less attention is so far being paid to what comes next after government agencies are destroyed.But it too was stated clearly and explicitly before the election; and by vice president Vance well before that: illegally dismissed staff in those agencies are to be replaced with MAGA loyalists. Amongst Project 2025’s most frightening plans is the crackdown on opponents of Trump; while anecdotal evidence has begun to appear of national book bans. INCOMPETENCE Professionals with hundreds of years of experience and expertise are being replaced with incompetent, dishonest and ignorant amateurs – for instance from a far right TV channel. Surprised? Maybe not: any government can be incompetent in carrying out its actions. The level of incompetence in this one, though is staggering. For instance, Pete Hegseth from Fox runs the ‘Defense’ Department—an arm of the élite fanatically praised and supported—not to mention disproportionately overfunded – by those who delight in maiming and slaughtering non-whites. But the error which has inevitably come to be called ‘Signalgate’ (but dismissed by Trump/MAGA/Musk) when members of the administration used semi-public and hackable systems on their phones to discuss the first of several illegal terrorist attacks on Yemen last month and invited a journalist antipathetic to MAGA in on their plotting. Other examples of this are legion. Many of the aforementioned Kennedy’s actions with healthcare show gross incompetence. As do many of the precipitate actions with deportations; in both these—and other—cases dismissed staff have had to be rehired; but no-one bothered to keep a record of their whereabouts, which is making that impossible. It took other cult members to point out to Trump the negative impacts on bonds (needed to keep the government financed) for him to reverse most of the tariffs imposed a few days earlier. It was the rather bilious Peter Navaro—another convict and long-time economic advisor to Trump—who ‘invented’ a source, the non-existent ‘Ron Vara’ (an anagram of his name), to advance the cause for economically unsound tariffs and push it Trump’s way – because the latter had long had a fetish for them. Even the fake ‘formula’ for how much to impose on other countries so that America could become ‘great again’—including on two islands inhabited only by penguins—was actually mathematical nonsense… two of the variables cancelled each other out. RACISM Supremacism continues to play a major part in the administration’s sadism. The process of removing references to non-Whites on public sites and in government communications continues; evidence of the role of Harriet Tubman in the Underground Railroad was removed from a page on the National Parks website. The world-renown Smithsonian Museum complex has been instructed to remove exhibits explaining racism and the very history of non-Whites in the United States. More disturbing, though, is the ‘rationale’ offered for this by Trump: what’s ‘wrong’ with those whose existence is being suppressed is their biological impurity. To underline ‘racial purity’ you must segregate: in the past companies could be targeted by Equal Opportunities agencies for discriminatory practices. In Trumpworld they are attacked because they are not discriminating. Covert until now, a recently-issued public memo from the General Services Administration (the body which sources and provides billions of dollars of products and services to and for the federal government – properties and equipment, for instance) specifically excludes any requirement in contracts and agreements with anyone providing such facilities to the government that they not segregate their own eating areas, waiting rooms, transportation and drinking fountains and so on. In other words it will no longer be illegal, say, for a firm renovating a federal property to bus its black and white workers to the site in separate vehicles and use segregated facilities while they work there.  Trump’s executive order ending racial toleration repeals a regulation dating from 1965 which sought to introduce equal opportunities. References to the Holocaust are to be removed from the Pentagon’s website; Trump attacked Senate minority leader Schumer along Jewish/gentile lines. Even the MAGA antisemitism gang seems confused. As long as what’s happening is still not seen for the fascist coup that it is, though, too many people will fail to see the hypocrisy and discrepancy of appearing to fight anti-semitism while at the same time Trump allies himself with, for instance, Charlie Kirk whose promotion on Fox ought to make Fox ‘News’ unwelcome in Trump/MAGA/Musk circles. Illegal deportations of non-whites continue (indeed, may be increasing in number) without the required due process – in contravention of judges’ orders and injunctions. Several of the kidnappings are obviously punishment for the views held by the deportees – despite the fact that they have committed no crime; unidentified government gangs are now snatching non-whites off the streets. And, of course, because of misidentifications – not so far put right. Also increasingly being punished are labour leaders while company after company is removing all traces of even the merest nods to equity from their annual reports and mission statements. LEGAL Many—though not all—now believe that the legal system represents the best, last and only block to the régime. But three things suggest that this is unlikely. In the first place rulings by the Supreme Court have begun to go Trump’s way (on deportations and re-instatement of illegally dismissed staff). Secondly, it seems likely that court rulings not in the MAGA/Trump/Musk cult’s favour will be ignored. Indeed, several already have—like this one on the retention of documents relating to the illegal ending of foreign aid; and this one on deportations. More and more law firms are giving way to Trump’s illegal extortion moves… “Drop cases which I disapprove of or I’ll slap you with an Executive Order”. Or arrest you. Lastly, legislation is passing through Congress which would make it easier for politicians to dismiss adverse judges and their rulings. What may have been the first use of physical violence happened this time last month when members of Musk’s so-called ‘department of government efficiency’ (DOGE) illegally forced their way into the US Institute of Peace (USIP, its website has been suppressed). This ought to please the discredited Erik Prince, who is back at the White House. ENVIRONMENT Frighteningly, Musk/Trump/MAGA has yet to turn its attention to large scale environmental destruction. But they have begun: general protections are going, water regulation is under attack (although you can now expect to use unlimited quantities of water when bathing because Mr Trump does) and coal-fired power stations are being encouraged. The man who is also in favour—when it suits him—of passing authority and decisions to the individual states recently issued an order preventing them from implementing measures to address the climate emergency. The post Notes from the US: Surprised? Maybe not appeared first on Freedom News.

THE ONSLAUGHT OF A RACIST, DESTRUCTIVE AND LETHAL GOVERNMENT IS NOW IN FULL TRAIN (PT.1) ~ Louis Further ~ A lot has happened since Trump was inaugurated last month, so much that we will have to present this month’s update in two parts. Indeed, the very speed at which the MAGA cult has caused so much damage—rather than waiting to test the waters once bedded in—is alarming; and relatively unusual for dictatorships. On several occasions, staff employed in federal agencies have been summarily removed—such as at the US Department of Agriculture and Coast Guard. Emblematic gestures are also rife: Trump appointed a fascist insurrectionist, one Ed Martin, who raised funds for the ‘Stop the Steal’ cult then participated in the riot, to serve as the interim government prosecutor for Washington, D.C. This, while sacking the person responsible for government ethics. An as yet unsubstantiated report holds that the NASA has been ordered to remove all mentions of women and minorities from its website. For all their performative value, such acts are dangerous. Perhaps the most outrageous developments came the sacking of staff working in air traffic control and for the National Transportation Safety Board just as the US experienced two air disasters. Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan was sacked—presumably because of the part which the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) played in handling Trump’s illegal retention of top secret documents in bathrooms at his country club in Florida. United States lawmakers are also increasingly being denied access from government offices as they try to investigate the crimes being committed by Trump. Security for Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has been withdrawn because of his role in advocating measures to save tens of thousands of lives during the Covid pandemic. On the very evening of the inauguration a supremacist march by one of the newly-invigorated fascist militia groups took place. ‘Stop the steal’ cultist and January 6 organiser, Andy Biggs, is now a candidate for governor of Arizona. After Congressperson Andy Ogles (Tennessee) advanced a proposal that would enable Trump to remain president after the legal two-term limit, federal charges against Ogles appeared to be dropped. Recent reports suggest that Trump has ordered the removal/deletion by the Department of Justice (DOJ) of a database relating to the crimes and criminals responsible for the attempted Putsch on January 6 2021. Those responsible for the attempt to overturn the 2020 election on January 6 2021 were immediately all pardoned or had their sentences commuted; they are now free to murder and commit political violence, as long as it is in furtherance of the MAGA cult. Several have already re-offended. The DOJ is to drop charges against anti-abortion activists who illegally threatened health clinics. In the state of New York there appear to be official attempts to set up ‘citizen militias’ along the lines of Brownshirts in Nazi Germany. THE COURTS Central to the coup, of course, is unelected troll and hatchet person Elon Musk. He illegally gained access to the data and financial systems and databases of several US agencies—including ones scrutinising his businesses—and he is working his way through them for his own profit and gain. Amongst those illegally employed to ‘manage’ these highly sensitive systems were school leavers and avowed racists such as one Marko Elez, who bruited his pride at being “…racist before it was cool… You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity”. When he offered to resign, Musk rushed to re-instate him. Another 19-year-old ’employee’, Edward Coristine, ran an image-sharing site linking to paedophile sites and the KKK. Most of the Executive Orders which Trump has issued (sackings, threats to sack, ‘buy-out promises‘ and so on) are illegal and unconstitutional. Legal specialists began referring to a ‘Domesday scenario’ in which Trump ignores or flatly refuses to acknowledge and comply with, say, Federal judges’ injunctions halting the data breaches carried out by Musk. Indeed, the administration last week hinted that it is minded to ignore such rulings. This is now actually happening: a judge from Rhode Island has had to be asked to issue a ‘Motion to enforce’ just such an order to stop Trump’s administration from illegally accessing funds, which only Congress is legally entitled to control. Appeals processes will certainly take matters to the US Supreme Court, which has been heavily stacked in Trump’s favour and now has the additional weight of the so-called ‘tenth justice‘, the senior litigator(s) at the Department of Justice, which is all too likely—but not certain—to rule in MAGA’s favour. But even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump, it’s hard to imagine a MAGA-saturated Department of Justice and the marshals in its employ taking action against the US president—especially with armed militias on the loose. Well before trump took office, surrounded by a who’s who of far right and fascist leaders, and some of the most powerful technology and communication chiefs, the cult made clear it would replace career professionals in many government agencies with their own loyalists and flaunt the Courts in the process. Remember the interview which Vice President JD Vance gave in 2021? He said, “…fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people… When the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it’.”. In other words: call the judiciary’s bluff. So Trump knows that he can get away with whatever he wants. Although some of the sillier things he is proposing—the effective (invasion and?) annexation of Gaza, Canada and Greenland—should be considered as balloons flown to gauge reaction, Trump’s baby side is by itself ominous. INHUMANE TO THE CORE A good indication of how far the MAGA/Trump disease has spread came in the days after the inauguration when MAGA cultists took to the press and social media to excoriate the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, for criticising “…our great president…” and suggest that she should be deported; she is a US citizen. The highly influential Sean Hannity had harsher words. Budde’s sin? Urging Trump to turn to the Christian values which he claims to follow and show mercy to (members of) the communities which he plans to oppress, some of whom are in fear for their lives: “… the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals, they pay taxes, and are good neighbours, they are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwaras and temples…”, Budde said. It is in the dogma, novelty and very perversion of, say, the ongoing massive cuts in the funding of medical research, withdrawal from the World Health Organisation and Paris climate agreement and such backward moves on such issues as the overuse of plastic that Trump/MAGA’s appeal lies. Not in reason or the common good. Inhumane, racist, sadistic, punitive and retributive actions are at the core of the administrations new policies, with the common attributes of malice, revenge, anti-intellectualism, “ready-shoot-aim” incompetence, lawlessness and lethality. Analyses of the political right in past Notes from the US columns have drawn attention to the continuum of views: from ‘old style’ Republicans (who might find performances like this too ‘unpresidential’) to armed fascist militias. It’s impossible to apportion the quantities in each because MAGA cultists command and control virtually all of them. Fascism originates in selfishness, fear and ignorance. Without much sophisticated insight into the dangers of such forces, a large majority of the electorate believe that they stand to gain from a disease like MAGA. Trump and his MAGA cult leaders know this—even if unconsciously. That’s why incidents like Elon Musk’s recent Nazi salute find uncaring acceptance. Hence, too, the general indifference on the right to almost all, of Trump’s illegal executive orders—like that to end birthright citizenship, which is part of the US constitution. When pressed, most cultists answer that the supremacist end justifies the extra-judicial means. One alarming possibility is so far receiving little coverage in the media: the MAGA cult does not seem troubled that this may all become so unpopular as to have a negative effect at the polls in 2026. It is almost as if they now think that elections are things of the past. To be continued… The post Notes from the US: Spreading the disease appeared first on Freedom News.