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Wednesday, February 12, 2020

The dictatorship is here

Under cover of the New Hampshire primary, on February 11, 2020, the illegitimate Trump regime's Attorney General, William Barr, put an exclamation point on the corruption of the Justice Department by throwing out the DOJ's sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone less than 24 hours after it had been filed. Meanwhile, Trump himself says out loud that there should be further retribution against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for testifying before the House impeachment inquiry and today claimed in a tweet that former Special Counsel Robert Mueller lied to Congress.

It was already clear this was happening when the Southern District of New York (the once "Sovereign District of New York") did not indict Rudy Giuliani despite all the evidence of his connections to the indicted Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and an endless stream of leaks and speculation that his indictment was days away. Now it's crystal clear: Trump associates will have their crimes minimized and eventually erased, and the DOJ will harass Trump's many perceived enemies.

It's hard for me to say something coherent about all this. Since the 2016 election, politics for me has been alternately paralyzingly depressing and rage-inducing. Yesterday, fear was added to that equation. When I graduated from college almost 42 years ago, I envisioned our country becoming a better place to live 40 years hence, fairer and more democratic than ever. Instead, as I say in my tagline, things have gotten worse for the middle class over the entire time period, and I certainly never expected that democracy would be collapsing in this and so many other countries around the world. Only the 2018 blue wave gives me any hope.

But make no mistake about it. The rule of law has ceased to exist in the United States, and we are by no means guaranteed that we will have free and fair elections in November. Trump has already been impeached for his efforts to cheat in the election, and those efforts continue because Republican politicians have sold their souls to the devil. Or Putin. Thus, we face a very concentrated 9-month fight.

In an oddly appropriate line from Harry Potter, Sir Cadogan tells the trio, "Be of stout heart, the worst is yet to come!" There is no doubt in my mind that this is true for us today. There is no time for paralysis in the next nine months. We have to remember, with Greta Thunberg, "No one is too small to make a difference." My voice alone is small, but I still have to raise it. Everyone else, with voices small and large, must raise theirs, too. We don't know the extent of the dirty tricks coming, but we will have to fight them. Democracy is a precondition to improving the lives of everyday people, and we've got to fight for it now.