February Dispatch: Words and ACTION

   This WAVE installment originated on Presidents’ Day. We’re thinking about the massive clampdown and self-clampdown of free speech in the press that’s going on—Bezos’s Washington Post caving even in advance of the election, the new Administration’s plan to eliminate NPR and PBS, its vilification of independent journalists, and so forth—and thought we should define some words.

A democratic presidency is one governed by a president. A president presides, according to law: he or she works with the legislature--elected people who make laws—, and an impartial justice system whose courts and judges decide which actions are lawful and which are not.

A dictatorship has a leader who issues edicts, bypassing/overruling legislators and judges, who bullies the people into doing what he says--his dictates.

A plutocracy is a government by the rich. The current Administration is populated by billionaires, and run by the richest and most unelected person in the world. Their goal is to maintain obscene tax advantages for the very rich and to profit from their time running the country.

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology. A fascist state is characterized by a dictator, racist belief in a natural social hierarchy, and forcible suppression of opposition.

A kleptocracy is rule by thieves. Our current kleptocracy has two people in charge, the dictator and the world’s richest and most unelected person. The dictator considers the world his private real estate market—his eye is currently on Gaza, Canada, Greenland, Panama, and the mineral wealth of Ukraine. The world’s richest and most unelected person has already gained access to the US Treasury’s trillions and everyone’s most sensitive financial data. He has also fired thousands of federal workers. The incalculable loss of their expertise and experience will certainly not lead to “government efficiency,” but will protect the richest person’s businesses from legal investigation and from paying taxes.

What is the word for a nation ruled by lies? A mendocracy. It would take many pages to list the lies uttered by the dictator. The dictator campaigned saying he’d lower the price of eggs--how’s that going? We must completely ignore the existential crisis of climate change in favor of manufactured crises.   The dictator also invented scapegoats the voters fell for. Queer and trans Americans are sent by the Devil to corrupt our youth. The deadly plane crash outside Washington, D.C. was caused by DEI. Immigrants are the biggest source of the nation’s troubles--eating the cats and dogs, bringing all the drugs in, being dangerous gang members--and they must be deported.

   The media now curb their own right to free speech and journalists’ duty to report truth. The dictator aims to eliminate all sources of truth, including the Centers for Disease Control, the Justice Department, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and ultimately, all nonstate news media.

   Trump is a strongman making our country weak—a mendacious, plutocratic, kleptocratic dictator.

   We must speak truth loudly while we still can, before our nation falls under total tyranny to the horror and disbelief of the rest of the civilized world. 

   We must keep our voices loud. An important part of the battle may be fought in the courts, but remember, the dictator doesn’t care about the courts, knowing he has them and a servile Congress in the palm of his hand.

  No one is coming to save us but us. We must be out in the streets for as long as it takes. This is our opportunity to create true democracy.