Many, many thanks to all of you who have contributed so far this year. I can’t tell you what it means to me, especially now when everything has been feeling a little bit bleak. It reminds me that none of us are alone in all this and gives me hope that we’ll be able to regroup and push back on what Trump and his henchmen have planned for us.

Everybody with a blog or a substack is quoting Professor Timothy Snyder these days, especially his admonition not to “obey in advance.” Sadly, we’re watching so many do exactly that right now. Media figures, government officials, world leaders and CEOs are making the pilgrimage down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring (even, in some cases, holding their hands over their hearts to strains of the January 6th choir singing the national anthem!) Democrats are starting to signal that Trump is someone they can work with. It’s enough to make you crazy. It feels as if they’ve all completely given in to his noxious authoritarianism before he’s even started to implement his plans.

Snyder’s advice not to obey in advance, as all these people are doing, was just one piece of advice from his pamphlet “On Tyranny” which was a best seller during Trump’s first term. Back in November of 2016, before he published it, as we were all still reeling from the shock, I published his list of 20 lessons in a post called Survival Advice For This New Reality when I saw it on his Facebook page. Sadly, it’s even more necessary today than it was then:

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today.

1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

2. Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don’t protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

3. Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.

4. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of “terrorism” and “extremism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “exception” and “emergency.” Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don’t fall for it.

6. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. (Don’t use the internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps “The Power of the Powerless” by Václav Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.

7. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

8. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

9. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Bookmark PropOrNot or other sites that investigate foreign propaganda pushes.

10. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

12. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

13. Hinder the one-party state. The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.

14. Give regularly to good causes, if you can. Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society helping others doing something good.

15. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.

16. Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

17. Watch out for the paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.

18. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no. (If you do not know what this means, contact the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and ask about training in professional ethics.)

19. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom. 

20. Be a patriot. The incoming president is not. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

I’m going to keep all of that in mind as we go forward and I hope that you do too. Here at Hullabaloo we’ll keep documenting the atrocities and trying our hardest to keep a clear head as we work our way through this next year. If you have the means and the inclination to help us keep doing that by throwing some change into the old holiday stocking I’d be most grateful.

Hang in there. Remember, Donald Trump is an imbecile. A dangerous imbecile but an imbecile nonetheless. That’s gotta count for something, right?

cheers,

digby

And Happy Hollandaise everyone. We’ll get through this!

*Keep scrolling for new stuff. 🙂

You can’t really blame them. Most voters made it pretty clear that they don’t give a damn about female equality or even autonomy. So why pretend? The GOP knows which way the wind is blowing and it’s not into a future where female leadership is considered important or, frankly, even acceptable.

We need to concentrate on coddling young men and reassuring white males that they still run the world. All this women stuff only hurts the ball team.

“Drones the size of cars”

Yes, that’s your next Commander in Chief. “And that’s how MAGAts started shooting down small private airplanes all over America,” a friend quips.

Forbes:

For weeks, citizens across New Jersey — as well as New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut — have reported seeing clusters of drone-like objects flying low in the sky at night, yet information remains scarce, even as state officials now say they’ve seen the drones firsthand, received mixed information from federal agencies and pushed the FBI for answers.

Citizens report seeing “drones the size of cars” overhead.

With those red and green lights, I suspect we’re simply seeing those giant flying cats The Weekly World News told us years ago were terrorizing New Jersey. The flying kitties are just showing off their Christmas spirit.

Donald Trump has none. And he hates pets. Especially oversized flying ones.

Guess what he’ll do there?

Election rigging has been Republican SOP at least since their REDMAP project in 2010. The gerrymandered districts they drew in 2011 continue to pay dividends a decade and a half later.

Republicans are now so brazen about their intentions to seek power above all else that they’ve said so into microphones in state after state. Thomas Mills of Politics NC that the latest comes from (you guessed it) North Carolina:

On Wednesday, the state house overrode Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of the bill that strips power from the in-coming Democrats elected to executive branch offices. Out-going Speaker and Congressman-elect Tim Moore told Steve Bannon, “This action item today is going to be critical to making sure North Carolina continues to be able to do what it can to deliver victories for Republicans up and down the ticket.”

Yes, you read that right. The bill was not about disaster relief. It was not about good government. It was not about the people of North Carolina. It was about consolidating power and rigging elections for Republicans.

Bolts reminds us that Moore is headed to Congress from the district he gerrymandered for himself. I’ll remind you that it was Moore who brought the independent state legislature theory, “probably the most intractable constitutional con in history,” before the U.S Supreme Court.

Mills again:

Republicans have rigged the state by subverting democracy. They used extreme gerrymandering to give themselves almost veto-proof majorities in both houses of the legislature. With a partisan and complicit state Supreme Court, they have few restraints on their power. Now, they are trying eliminate the checks and balances of the executive branch to further consolidate their power. As one friend wrote, “They’re now using all three branches to guarantee their hold on power.”

What do you think will be Job One for a guy like Tim Moore in his new Capitol Hill job?

Watch this guy closely. You’ll be hearing his name moore soon.

Bobo the cat! (And a spry almost 99 year old Dick VanDyke)

He was particularly worried about his cat. Luckily, he survived!

Dick Van Dyke’s Beloved Cat Bobo Has Been Found After He And His Wife Were Forced To Leave Him Behind Amid Malibu Wildfire Evacuations

Dick, 98, previously told concerned fans that Bobo the cat had escaped as he and his wife evacuated their Malibu home with their other pets on Tuesday evening.

Among these residents was legendary actor Dick Van Dyke, 98, and his wife, Arlene Silver, who reassured fans on Tuesday that they’d safely escaped the danger zone.

However, one beloved family member ended up being left behind: Dick and Arlene’s beloved cat, Bobo.

Posting to his official Facebook page, Dick explained that they’d managed to leave with most of their pets, but Bobo had sadly escaped at the last moment.

Commenting on the original Facebook post late on Wednesday evening, Dick confirmed that Bobo was dutifully waiting for his owners at home when they returned.

Bobo doesn’t look too thrilled about all the attention. But he’s an Orangy. Waddya gonna do?

“I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it.”

There are many, many stupid things to read today. But that has to be the dumbest.

Trump is promising not to automate America’s ports on behalf of the East Coast Longshoreman’s union. (The West Coast union already made a deal to accommodate it but I guess they don’t know what they’re doing.)

I posted about this yesterday but it’s worth doing it again in light of his bragging about his vast knowledge of how the supply chain works:

You know, the supply chain is still broken. It’s broken. You see it. You go out to the docks and you see all these containers. And I own property in California, in Palos Verdes. They’re very nice. And I passed the docks, and I’ve been doing it for 20 years. I’ve never seen anything like it. You know, for 17 years, I saw containers and, you know, they’d come off and they’d be taken away—big areas, you know, you know, in that area, you know, where they have the big, the big ships coming in—big, the port. And I’d see this for years as I was out there inspecting property and things, because they own a lot in California. And I look down and I see containers that are, that are 12, 13, 14 containers. You wouldn’t believe they can hold each other. It’s like crazy. No, the supply chain is is broken. I think a very bad thing is this, what they’re doing with the cars. I think they lost also because of cars. You know, there are a lot of reasons, but the car mandate is a disaster. The electric, the EV mandate.

Obviously it no longer matters if a president is even sentient. As long as he tells people what they want to hear they’re happy. And I suppose that they want to hear that the president is an expert on every single subject. He has said that he understands immunology and epidemiology better than anyone, for instance. That explains why he led the country through the pandemic so effectively. But then his uncle taught at MIT, which obviously makes him a genius, so it’s not surprising.

Still, it is newsworthy that he’s also an expert on automation and has such a thorough understanding of how the ports work simply from “passing the docks.” Who knew?

Tucker Carlson at Mar-a-Lago: “You’ll never meet a guy who whines less about himself that Donald Trump, ever.”

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T23:43:11.401Z

Who knew Carlson was such a comedian?

Monmouth poll:

Only 52% of the public would be bothered a lot by this? Is this a great country or what? But this is interesting:

Trump suggested during the presidential campaign that he could suspend some laws and constitutional provisions to go after political enemies in his second term. The public is divided on whether this is something he will seriously do (48%) or if it is more of an exaggeration (47%). Most Democrats take these statements seriously (77%) while most Republicans tend to see them as an exaggeration (71%). Republicans are somewhat less likely to takes these statements seriously now (21%) then they were six months ago (33% in June).

Republicans don’t take his threats seriously. I guess they really do believe it’s just a show. But the truth is that if this happens, Kash and Pam will just say they’re criminals and Republicans will swear that it has nothing to do with Trump taking his revenge.

The Wall St. Journal reports:

The Trump transition team has started to explore pathways to dramatically shrink, consolidate or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington. 

In recent interviews with potential nominees to lead bank regulatory agencies, Trump advisers and officials from his newfound Department of Government Efficiency have, for example, asked whether the president-elect could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., people familiar with the matter said. 

Advisers have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance could then be absorbed into the Treasury Department, some of the people said.

Any proposal to eliminate the FDIC or any agency would require congressional action. While past presidents have reorganized and rebranded departments, Washington has never shut down a major cabinet-level agency and rarely closed other agencies like the FDIC that are not.

Bank executives are optimistic President-elect Donald Trump will ease a host of regulations on capital cushions and consumer protections, as well as scrutiny of consolidation in the industry. But FDIC deposit insurance is considered near sacred. Any move that threatened to undermine even the perception of deposit insurance could quickly ripple through banks and in a crisis might compound customer fears.

This is so crazy I can’t imagine even these freaks would actually do it. But consider that this is the kind of thing that’s never necessary until we have a financial crisis so people may not realize how important it is until it’s too late. Luckily we haven’t had one in … checks notes … 16 years. So, not a problem.

I wish I had more faith that the Democrats would find a way to stop this and exploit it but instead I’m seeing nonsense like this from progressives:

I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to only cut the parts of government thast progressives want them to cut. No need to worry about all the rest of it.

Politico reports that the sucking up has just begun.

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to install Musk as the federal government’s cutter-in-chief, some ambitious Democrats are taking a warmer approach to the billionaire businessman than their party leaders have in the past as he has become one the most influential people on the planet.

“He’s had an undeniable impact on the Pennsylvania election, and I think the election overall,” Fetterman, the Democratic Pennsylvania senator, told POLITICO. “I’ve warned Democrats, if you’re just going to make fun of it or to dismiss it, you do it at our peril. And I think that’s very clear what happened.”

Musk is the world’s richest man, and his companies are helping determine the future of space exploration, electric vehicles, AI and social media. Democrats who are making friendly overtures to him said that they want to shape the thinking of someone who will have an outsize microphone regardless of what they do. They are also eager to encourage him to develop his businesses in their backyards.

Some of them are also eyeing presidential runs in 2028, and may want to avoid getting on his bad side for political reasons. Musk spent $280 million this year supporting Trump and other Republicans.

[…]

But increasingly, some Democrats are arguing that was the wrong approach and think Musk played an outsize role in helping elect Trump — the latest sign that the left is confronting the president-elect differently this time around. It’s an open question whether other Democrats will follow suit, and either benefit or suffer consequences.

Some Democrats remain deeply skeptical of Musk, who is one of several billionaires and tech leaders Trump has tapped to staff his administration. They see Musk as an oligarch, and are concerned about his plans to slash the federal government with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy as incoming co-leaders of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“I reserve the right to be surprised, but this looks to me like a coming kleptocracy, in which all these billionaires are running the government in order to rig the rules,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “So I’m pretty fucking skeptical that this is a legitimate effort.”

Yeah, I’m pretty fucking skeptical too. But progressives seem to be very open to working with him to cut the things they want cut. Please:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told POLITICO that “If Elon Musk wants to change government contracting to cut billions of dollars of waste out of the Pentagon budget, count me in.” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said that “I’m all in for cutting waste, making our government efficient and delivering for the people of Georgia” and “I’ll work with whomever I have to work with, if I can, to get that done.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) likewise posted on X, “Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions.”

Do these people really think Elon’s their guy? He’s totally red pilled, and he’s not going back. And he’s an oligarch fergawdsakes!

Populist Democrats lining up to work with the richest man in the world to cut government. My God.