The excuses are always the same:

• I didn’t take him seriously.

• I had no idea something like this would happen.

• He said he was fighting for me.

These are all catastrophic failures of critical thought. Ignorance is not an excuse – what is knowable is your responsibility to be aware of. Take it from Hitler’s personal secretary, Traudl Junge: youtu.be/-aVI3gvIS…

Right now, America is witnessing the systematic dismantling of the rule of law. It is not normal for a president to stand at the Department of Justice podium and publicly name political opponents he wants eliminated or investigated. That happened today.

It is not normal for a president to declare that two major news networks are now “illegal” in his view – and then promise to act on it. That happened today.

Historically, the DOJ has operated as a nonpartisan institution, a firewall against political corruption. But Trump doesn’t believe in that. He follows a deeply flawed “unitary executive” theory, where the president wields unchecked control over the federal government. This is not democracy – it’s the architecture of authoritarian rule.

You might not feel the impact yet. But it is happening.

And I’m sorry to say: you’re not safe either.

Politics is no longer functioning as normal. It has been consumed by one man’s unquenchable thirst for power. You might not see yourself as a target, but to him, you don’t exist. And if you get in his way, he will destroy you.

He doesn’t care about you. He is using you. He lets you keep things that don’t threaten him while he consolidates more power for himself.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

The window to stop this is closing fast.

–

Credit to @danielpunkass for his post, which inspired me to write this one up.

For some additional follow-up about what fascism is and how it works, I recently made a playlist to try to explain it all. It’s not an easy concept to understand.

Finally: The most important thing you can do right now is to get involved in protests. Show up. Speak out. Talk to friends, neighbors, and strangers about what is happening: Make sure nobody has an excuse to claim ignorance.