The Draco II political waterboarding – flooding the zone as Steve Bannon calls it – is almost overwhelming.  It was all planned.  How much can Draco II, Musk and his DOGE hack-lackies, and the current billionaire class of federal administration officials mess things up?  Let me count the ways….

Actually, I can’t do that because I would need the whole newspaper.  Obfuscation, you say?  Well, the 950+ pages of Project 2025 wouldn’t fit in the newspaper; it would take several thousand pages to list the ramifications of all Project 2025’s details, so no, there is not enough room.  Suffice it to say, Draco II and minions are exercising the penultimate in takeover creativity, the cat’s meow of democratic destruction, conducting a master class in the art of bullying.  They degrade empathy to a human weakness (Musk’s famous words), and they want to return to feudalism where the rich own almost everything and the rest of us become slaves and serfs in their contorted economic ways and means.  They are exponentially expanding the book of American retribution, which already had great chapters like the racist Confederacy, the Jim Crow era, the internment of minorities, and the promulgating laws against immigrants written by men who were either immigrants or descendants of immigrants.  They are elevating double standards to new heights of hypocrisy and putridness.  And, like all authoritarian take-overs, they are re-writing (American) history in numerous ways, like banning books they don’t want you to read so the truth becomes only what they say it is.  They are going after freedom-practicing institutions of higher learning to squelch academic dissent of their methods.  Not least is their disdain of the rule of law and their blatant use of the justice system to promote the MEGA agenda (making elites great again:  not Americans, elites), making what they accused the Justice Department under Democratic administrations of doing seem like child’s play.  This includes the sick open retribution, vindictiveness, and vengeance against minorities and immigrants, and the attempted shutdown (like all authoritarian regimes eventually do) of the absolutely necessary 4^th branch of American Constitutional checks and balances that is a free press.  Of course, just dismissing climate change as a hoax because you want more of the Artic Sea ice to melt and more of the Greenland landmass to be ice free so they both can be economically exploited is capitalism at its sickest.

Good conservative Republicans – the pre-MEGA bunch – bought all the lies and propaganda hook, line, and sinker.  I miss the good ‘ole loyal opposition, but those folks are now afraid of Draco II and want to protect what they got by keeping their mouths shut; ditto fraidy-cat corporations.  Haven’t heard of any of this?  I’m not surprised.

It is obvious that the Republicans have been planning Project 2025 for a very long time, and finally, with the entry of conman supreme Draco II to the brainwashing and propaganda scheme, Draco II et al were able to put all the parts in place to attempt an authoritarian takeover of American democracy (Draco II did not know enough during his first term to bully his way to the present crisis, but he learned from that first attempt).  Of course, things had to change:  neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to work with each other to get things done, and so little of nothing got done in the last 40 years in Washington, D.C. to improve the lot of American lives (there were a few exceptions like the ACA); all the while, the rich got much, much richer while the middle class and poor folks lost major economic ground.  So, yes, this all has to come to a head, and when this boil is lanced, we get to see what the fallout will be:  a continued democratic republic or the foulness of a new American authoritarianism; a continuation of the imperfect experiment in American democracy or the switch to the plutocracy of MEGA; hopefully the rule of law equally applied to everyone or permanent separate rules for those with money or power.  Really, Draco II does not care about democracy or the rule of law; he just wants to be a dictator with power of the likes of Putin, Xi, Orban, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Bibi Netanyahu and numerous African dictators willing to permanently disfigure their citizens as a constant reminder of power.  This attempt to establish a fascist MEGA authoritarianism in America is disgusting and is turning deadly:  like the viewpoint of Southern Confederates during Civil War era, MEGA believes that some people are better than others and have a right to rule over and enslave everyone else.  Last, but not least, is the white Christian evangelical and fundamentalist push to run America as a one religion country, in spite of the 1^st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Everyone who believes in MEGA is acquiescing to bullies and evil and should be given a free one-way ticket to any one of those countries whose leaders I just mentioned above; the rest of us will stay and fight for our representative democracy and against totalitarianism, even if it kills us.  As a vet, I am loyal to the U.S. Constitution, to continually improve the experiment that is American representative democracy, not any person or plan or religion.

Bob Bates

Tullahoma