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Saturday, March 7, 2020

Did I say "dictatorship"?

Did I say "dictatorship"? Don't believe it's true? Here is some more evidence for those with open eyes.

The New York Times reports that Erik Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has since 2016 been recruiting former spies in U.S. and U.K. intelligence to help spy on organizations that oppose the illegitimate Trump administration. If you remember my linked article, this counts as "rage-inducing." And color me not surprised. Trump's authoritarian tendencies have always been in evidence for anyone paying attention.

Apparently it's not enough, as I discussed last time, to turn the Department of Justice into an organization that absolves Trump's allies and persecutes his perceived enemies. Now it's time for conservatives (and probably Trump himself, though it has not been proven at this time) to send spies into Democratic political campaigns, unions, liberal organizations, etc., in order to discredit and harass them. This story is not new historically, of course. Government and/or powerful people with close ties to government spying on citizens is a hallmark of dictatorship.

One important vector for this spying is so-called Project Veritas (the Newspeak in the conservative movement has been visible to me since at least Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America"), the organization that first made its name by using highly deceptive (to put it mildly) film editing to destroy the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group long vilified by conservatives for having the audacity to register voters in large numbers. The idea behind using Project Veritas is to combine its already-willing spies with technical competence in espionage.

The Times reports that the Trump Foundation made a $20,000 grant to Project Veritas in 2015. The organization's most recent budget, for 2018, was $8.7 million. Its ties to the conservative movement are deep.

This is what we are up against. The combined might of the Department of Justice and systematic spying are being deployed to ensure another four years of the illegitimate Trump regime. If we are to restore democracy in our country, we have to win big in November, with margins that make the election impossible to steal.

By the way, I am a proud former ACORN organizer myself. "The people shall rule."