The only positive thing about this time in history to me is I finally understand how Hitler was able to do what he did. I never could comprehend how the people didn’t stop him. It made no sense. Now I do.
People are treating evil as if it’s something that will go away rather than expand. They’ve turned into sitting ducks.
If we repeat history, we will be even worse than ignorers of evil. We will be ignorers of history plus evil. And that was some story we are inviting back. Our ancestors will find our letting this happen deplorable.
I applaud you for this piece.
The taboo on Hitler comparisons is over. I welcome them to inspire action.
You put your finger on the most unnerving realization of all: this is how it happens. Not in one thunderclap, but in a thousand shrugged shoulders and polite silences. The belief that something so grotesque must surely burn itself out is one of history’s most reliable lies. When people confuse restraint with virtue and denial with wisdom, they become accomplices without ever lifting a hand. The taboo on comparison has done more to protect power than memory. Thank you for refusing that comfort.
I think the first job at hand is exploding the taboo. If you’ve studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs it explains that most people dwell in the middle of his pyramid structure, kind of limited by social needs.
Those of us who self actualize can look at a taboo and realize we’re in a new place. We have a second Hitler. We must do something. Whereas most people feel constrained. What will people think of me if I talk like that? Social = what others think of you.
My understanding of human nature is what makes me obsessed with the fact teachers like me were replaced with puppets for evil administrators. Children need to expand and self actualize to the extent it’s in them. That’s what I used to do with my students.
When that stopped, critical thinking declined. Processing when to lift a taboo takes critical, not social thinking.
I will never stop telling people to read my book that reveals what they did to our schools- A Graver Danger - because schools that fail to develop people properly result in social thinking, which opens the door for evil.
A citizen is to a country like a parent is to a child—responsible. We don’t have enough citizens. We have social climbers oblivious to the fact their climbing will be more like digging out soon.
Getting people on board with me and getting them to grasp their not listening to teacher whistleblowers screaming about evil in our schools since 2002 is how Trump happened is nearly impossible. Perhaps this taboo will connect the dots to why we slipped away from democracy. Democracy requires critical thinking that even our leaders don’t have. If they did they’d never ignore teacher whistleblowers.
We’re led by social not critical minds. The proof is most can hardly say “Hitler” when what has Trump missed doing that Hitler did? Oh, I think Hitler painted.
Are they waiting for millions dead that may be Jews, but don’t have to be Jews this time? What will it take?
That taboo was created so democracy, which is using words to solve differences, would remain civil. It’s like the taboo you don’t eat with your hands. Would the eating taboo go away if you were starving with no silverware? In fact, cannibalism took place after a plane crash to survive. Guess what? We’re in critical thinking territory without critical thinking minds because of our schools and my book sells a little here and there.
When people wake up and force a leader to look into our schools everything will turn around because it takes a hero, something we haven’t had in ages, to think critically.
We don’t just need to recognize that we’re beyond a taboo. We need to recognize how we became such a society that stopped thinking and solving our problems so we can change course.
I live all the way away in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and my Grandfather a life long Communist in a very conservative country gathered his family together after reading the Powell Memorandum in the mid 70’s (Yes it took a few years to be seen all the way across the Pacific) and told us to learn how to grow food, to be vigilant about extremes in every part of government and to understand that another World War was only a matter of time because money is seductive but power is the ultimate vice. My grandfather is now long gone, but living in a country that looks to the US it has been apparent for a very long time that my grandfather was right to warn us that the greedy and power hungry were busy creating their space to act. I just didn’t believe that so many could be so complicit in the process.
Your grandfather had the kind of foresight that rarely gets thanked in its own time. He didn’t talk in slogans. He talked about food, vigilance, and power, which is to say survival. He understood that the most dangerous movements don’t arrive overnight; they wait patiently while people tell themselves it can’t really be happening.
What’s heartbreaking is not that the greedy and power-hungry prepared. It’s how many people helped by doing nothing at all. From half a world away, you saw the pattern clearly. History has a way of proving that the so-called alarmists were simply paying attention.
Glenn, thank you. And I love that you didn’t stop at “I’m moved” and call it a day. You asked the only question that matters: will we react, and how.
Because “react” can’t just mean doomscrolling with feelings. It has to mean showing up. Calling. Voting. Donating. Organizing. Getting loud in the unglamorous places: school boards, city councils, union halls, courtrooms, county offices. The places where democracy either has a spine or it doesn’t.
And honestly, at this point, we all need to become Minnesotans. Not geographically, but spiritually. Stubborn. Clear-eyed. Community-minded. The kind of people who hold the line when the weather is terrible and the stakes are worse. Minnesota energy: polite voice, steel-toed boots.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for demanding the next step.
I love that image “Minnesota energy: polite voice.”
We can’t ignore what is happening right here, right now. It’s getting worse by the minute. But how do we, citizens of USA, develop at strategy that has a chance of stopping what MAGA and the Project 2025 folks are pushing harder every day?
So many of the people I talk with stop me when I mention anything about what our government is doing. They seem to think if they can ignore it, it will simply go away. That’s exactly what happened in 1930s Germany as you so well pointed out in last night’s post. We all now know how that worked out. This time it’s happening in America. Land of the free? Sure if you’re a white Christian nationalist.
All the politicians are using this for fundraising. Money is not the answer. A single thread message that captures exactly what is at stake and what needs to be done.
Glenn, yes. That “Minnesota energy: polite voice” line is the whole instruction manual right now: show up, shovel, casserole, repeat. No performative resistance. No waiting for a celebrity tweet to drop the plan like Moses with a blue check.
And you’re dead right about the national allergy to reality. Too many Americans are either complacent, exhausted into inaction, or actively cheering the demolition. And that “too many” is enough to endanger everyone.
Also: amen to your point about fundraising. Every crisis has become a tip jar. Money can help, but it cannot substitute for neighbors behaving like neighbors. We don’t need a savior. We need a thousand small, stubborn committees that do not ask permission. In other words: we all become Minnesotans.
I do. Beyond marches and protests and rage posting and praying that November comes without a declaration of canceled elections, I feel powerless. But I see it, and I have seen it, and I keep trying to shine a light in every way possible.
I hear the bone-tired honesty in this. March, shout, post, pray, repeat. It starts to feel like civic CrossFit with no visible gains. And yet. The quiet truth is that attention is an act. Refusing to look away is an act. Saying “this is not normal” out loud, again and again, is an act. Power doesn’t always look like control. Sometimes it looks like stubborn illumination. You’re doing more than you think, even on the days it feels like shouting into the void.
I know. Fear is loud, but this sadness is quieter and heavier. It’s the sorrow of recognizing something you loved and assumed was sturdy, and realizing how fragile it always was. That kind of knowing changes you.
But seeing clearly still matters. It’s not nothing to refuse denial, to keep naming what hurts, to stay tender instead of numb. If nothing else, it means the sadness hasn’t hollowed you out. It means you still care.
I’ve also had that dread…that continuous unfolding of disappointment and disbelief since that clown was elected the first time. Having lived in Manhattan during his bankruptcies and knowing he was not taken seriously all those years, I was dumbfounded when he “won” against Hillary, hopeful with Biden and convinced he was not legitimate this time. To any and all who would listen I’ve told the stories of his cheating and cravenness. And That not for one millisecond do he or his rich cronies care what happens to the rest of us. I thought the scales would come off folks eyes sooner…I thought, hoped, prayed people would connect the dots after his first term. I’ll make my calls and donate…my 84 y.o. self will spread the word as best I can. The dread is often nausea now…AND………I can looks for moments of joy…every single day. Thank you for your excellent and clear headed writing.
You’re describing the whiplash of knowing someone exactly as they are, long before the rest of the country decided to treat him as a myth instead of a menace. New York saw the bankruptcies, the cheating, the smallness up close. The shock wasn’t that he was who he was. It was that so many people refused to believe what was in plain sight.
That long wait for the scales to fall is its own kind of grief. And yet, the fact that you’re still calling, donating, naming it, and insisting on joy anyway is the quiet rebuttal to all of it. Clarity endures longer than con men ever do.
Yes, I saw it about 2014. I live in a red state and the immediate avalanche of backlash on what they saw as an escalation of the extreme left was the trans dictate that they be in bathrooms and sports. It was a step too far. Every one was talking about it. Trump 1.0 was backlash to trans. No amount of saying he’s a crook, a womanizer, no leader, … nothing could be heard above the moderate&extreme right’s din.
Biden/Garland not prosecuting Jan 6th created the chance for the propaganda machine and election rigging to work and put Trump 2.0 in place. History will also record the incompetence of the Democrats.
When I ordered a copy and read Project 2025 it still had on the cover “written at the Request of President Trump.” History will also record the incompetence of the US electorate. The plan was right in front of them.
There is an ugly underbelly in the US dormant, or at least a minority, since the Civil War. History will also record that winning the Civil War was never finished by the North. The glory of the Confederacy and its commemorations with te-enactments of battles, etc., kept it alive and taught each generation that it still lived… Well, white supremists, Fundamental “Christian” misogynists/patriarchicalists, “plantation owner” oligarchs joined the propaganda machine and here we are.
Sure the signs were there, but, like the Heritage Foundation knew, Americans are too comfortable in their cushy lives to care or to protest a fascist coup.
Lynn, yes. This is the part people keep trying to sand down into a “both sides” bedtime story, and you’re refusing to cooperate with the lie.
You clocked the timeline. You clocked the red-state pressure cooker. You clocked how the right grabbed a cultural wedge, blew it up with bullhorns, and made it the only frequency anyone could hear, no matter how many alarm bells were ringing about the man himself.
And then we did the most exquisitely American thing: we treated Jan. 6 like an “incident” instead of a warning label. Garland moved like the country was a law seminar and not a house with smoke under the door. Mueller wrote a report like a man afraid of verbs. Between “let’s not look political” and “let’s wait until the moment is perfect,” they gave the propaganda machine the time it needed, and here we are watching the sequel with fewer guardrails and a bigger budget.
Also: your point about Project 2025 being right there in plain sight, practically gift-wrapped, is the sickest indictment of all. The plan wasn’t hidden. The country just kept scrolling.
Truly horrifying as usual. What I think about the most is how we all took for granted that we could go about our day, almost not caring about American politics when Biden was president. We were just - safe. Our attention was on Ukraine, and Gaza, and other international atrocities. Crazy how a year can bleed the color out of your country.
Mrs. Horton-Young, you nailed the most unsettling part: we became used to the luxury of not having to watch our own country like a live wire. We could look outward, grieve what was happening abroad, and still assume the floorboards here would hold.
And then, in a single year, the paint peels. The lights flicker. The “of course we’re safe” turns into “check the locks.” It’s brutal how fast that happens.
I love you. And I’m grateful we’re wide awake together. 🩷
You are right! Biden gave us a reprieve… one of my brothers…oops a text just came from him ha! ( voted for tStein) a best friend did not vote at all. Apathy and Ignorance! Thank you for your Team Support !!
Everything thing you wrote about the warnings of the past & our country now - is frighteningly true. Right now , in front of all of us -are people in this 47th Regime that moving the chess pieces of Fascism.
And a as a side note:
Your Article could be a semesters work UC Berkeley! !
Time has past for a warning flare. It’s a checklist we’re methodically crossing off. Courts rule and get ignored. Career civil servants are purged. Elections remain, but the field is tilted and the referees wear jerseys. Protest is relabeled “insurrection.” Journalists are enemies. Minorities become convenient targets. Corruption stops being scandal and becomes infrastructure.
What’s happening in America I sn’t drift or chaos, it’s consolidation. The Greenland chest-thumping, the AI imperial cosplay, the naming-and-shaming of governors and citizens, the denial of visible reality, the market panic, the scapegoating of immigrants and dissenters… these are not future steps. They are the steps already taken.
Authoritarianism doesn’t arrive with a marching band. It arrives via shrug, repetition, and the steady normalization of lawlessness from the top down. We are not approaching the line. We are living inside it.
I try to wake people up in small ways, but of course it's not enough. We need a strong leader to speak out and counter what is going on, but it is so risky. This mob are killers.
Francis/Clare, I hear the exhaustion and the fear braided together there. Small awakenings matter more than they get credit for. History loves to pretend everything turns on a single speech by a single brave soul, but it’s usually a thousand people tapping shoulders, slipping notes under doors, refusing to fully go back to sleep.
You’re right about the risk. The mob thrives on intimidation; that’s part of the design. Which is why waiting for one heroic leader can become another form of paralysis. Strong leadership doesn’t always look like a podium and a microphone. Sometimes it looks like networks, redundancy, people speaking in chorus instead of solo, so no one stands alone in the crosshairs.
What you’re doing isn’t nothing. It’s how the ground gets softened before anything larger can take root. And yes, it’s scary. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
I appreciate your optimism, Gloria. We can't give up, and a truly charismatic leader is a rare thing, but if we had one I would fear for them. Obama could have been that person if he chose to, but he didn't. Honestly, when I read Truscott's description of Dump's speech at Davos, I just thought they need to get together and get rid of him now, even if it takes a silver stake. Why should the whole world be beholden to this sick monster?
An important essay that deserves wider circulation. I have felt the same about the lax attitude of the press and Democratic leaders since around 1982, when Reagan started to be recognized as “the Great Communicator.” It became even clearer with the Gingrich revolution, and clearer still with the Tea Party. Around that time I started to draw analogies between GOP operatives and brown shirts. Friends thought me hysterical. But I was just paying attention.
You’re right, and what’s chilling is how familiar that arc now feels. Once politics became performance and outrage a governing strategy, the press mistook spectacle for substance and Democrats mistook restraint for responsibility. Each escalation was waved off as tone, not threat. Being called hysterical has always been the penalty for pattern recognition. History tends to vindicate the people who were “just paying attention,” long after the applause for the Great Communicators fades.
This is a brilliant piece Gloria.It is exactly a case of history repeating itself. It is frightening to read it,to see the start of it happening and to witness all that is happening on a daily basis.I become a little more scared every day of where it will end.
I know you believed nothing truly bad could happen in America. A lot of people did. We wrapped ourselves in the idea that we were somehow exempt from history, that our institutions were fireproof, that warning signs were just media hysteria or partisan noise.
What actually happened wasn’t ignorance. It was willful normalization. We watched cruelty get rebranded as toughness, lies as “style,” and open power grabs as harmless bluster. We told ourselves the rules would save us, right up until they were bent, then ignored, then mocked. While people debated civility, the machinery of control was being assembled in plain sight.
This isn’t exaggeration. It’s pattern recognition. History doesn’t need jackboots to announce itself. It arrives through shrugs, excuses, and the comforting belief that “it can’t happen here.” That belief is what made it happen. America isn’t uniquely evil. But it was never uniquely immune either.
At 82 I realize the thick of this is just beginning awareness ,the blatant insolence is not new, people have been warned. I’ve never seen so many excuses redefined as if it’s said in a different wording it isn’t the same but different day, or walked back, or denied, or or or.
Yes I’ve warned, since 2015. It walked like a duck. It raised flags I’ve honed from the gift of intuitiveness demanding sharpened and honored. And I’ve read , listened, researched.
I didn’t vote for him, I listened to the vetting ..such a show .
Now again ,at a World Forum…”rupture”. Such contempt. Any podium he grabs wreaks of bully , it’s pathetic. Our streets have become war zones.
Q: When will it hit hardest…?
A:When it’s too late.
An authoritarian regime is here, its army grows, they’re the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 2nd amendment Clubs, and MAGA base.
Patricia, yes. This is the part that makes me feel both furious and weirdly… unsurprised: the constant excuse-laundering. Same action, new euphemism. Same shove, different press release.
And your Q/A?!?
When will it hit hardest? When it’s too late. That’s the entire American brand right now, isn’t it. We are the nation of “I didn’t think it would happen to me” until it is happening to us.
Also: “It walked like a duck” is the perfect phrase for a country that keeps insisting the duck is actually a tasteful swan with “some concerns.” Thank you for reading, for naming the bully behavior for what it is, and for refusing to let contempt get normalized into background music.
This was a haunting read. I read this the day you posted it. I was getting ready to leave a comment, but I just stopped. It hit me in a powerful way. The shadow of the past slid right up along side current events. The eerie similarities seemed to be mocking my resolve. I stepped away. I needed time to digest. I'm ready for another round now. The warnings were there then, and this century too. Thanks for revisiting the ghosts we ignored.
The only positive thing about this time in history to me is I finally understand how Hitler was able to do what he did. I never could comprehend how the people didn’t stop him. It made no sense. Now I do.
People are treating evil as if it’s something that will go away rather than expand. They’ve turned into sitting ducks.
If we repeat history, we will be even worse than ignorers of evil. We will be ignorers of history plus evil. And that was some story we are inviting back. Our ancestors will find our letting this happen deplorable.
I applaud you for this piece.
The taboo on Hitler comparisons is over. I welcome them to inspire action.
You put your finger on the most unnerving realization of all: this is how it happens. Not in one thunderclap, but in a thousand shrugged shoulders and polite silences. The belief that something so grotesque must surely burn itself out is one of history’s most reliable lies. When people confuse restraint with virtue and denial with wisdom, they become accomplices without ever lifting a hand. The taboo on comparison has done more to protect power than memory. Thank you for refusing that comfort.
Please share wherever you can.
I think the first job at hand is exploding the taboo. If you’ve studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs it explains that most people dwell in the middle of his pyramid structure, kind of limited by social needs.
Those of us who self actualize can look at a taboo and realize we’re in a new place. We have a second Hitler. We must do something. Whereas most people feel constrained. What will people think of me if I talk like that? Social = what others think of you.
My understanding of human nature is what makes me obsessed with the fact teachers like me were replaced with puppets for evil administrators. Children need to expand and self actualize to the extent it’s in them. That’s what I used to do with my students.
When that stopped, critical thinking declined. Processing when to lift a taboo takes critical, not social thinking.
I will never stop telling people to read my book that reveals what they did to our schools- A Graver Danger - because schools that fail to develop people properly result in social thinking, which opens the door for evil.
A citizen is to a country like a parent is to a child—responsible. We don’t have enough citizens. We have social climbers oblivious to the fact their climbing will be more like digging out soon.
Getting people on board with me and getting them to grasp their not listening to teacher whistleblowers screaming about evil in our schools since 2002 is how Trump happened is nearly impossible. Perhaps this taboo will connect the dots to why we slipped away from democracy. Democracy requires critical thinking that even our leaders don’t have. If they did they’d never ignore teacher whistleblowers.
We’re led by social not critical minds. The proof is most can hardly say “Hitler” when what has Trump missed doing that Hitler did? Oh, I think Hitler painted.
Are they waiting for millions dead that may be Jews, but don’t have to be Jews this time? What will it take?
That taboo was created so democracy, which is using words to solve differences, would remain civil. It’s like the taboo you don’t eat with your hands. Would the eating taboo go away if you were starving with no silverware? In fact, cannibalism took place after a plane crash to survive. Guess what? We’re in critical thinking territory without critical thinking minds because of our schools and my book sells a little here and there.
When people wake up and force a leader to look into our schools everything will turn around because it takes a hero, something we haven’t had in ages, to think critically.
We don’t just need to recognize that we’re beyond a taboo. We need to recognize how we became such a society that stopped thinking and solving our problems so we can change course.
I live all the way away in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and my Grandfather a life long Communist in a very conservative country gathered his family together after reading the Powell Memorandum in the mid 70’s (Yes it took a few years to be seen all the way across the Pacific) and told us to learn how to grow food, to be vigilant about extremes in every part of government and to understand that another World War was only a matter of time because money is seductive but power is the ultimate vice. My grandfather is now long gone, but living in a country that looks to the US it has been apparent for a very long time that my grandfather was right to warn us that the greedy and power hungry were busy creating their space to act. I just didn’t believe that so many could be so complicit in the process.
Your grandfather had the kind of foresight that rarely gets thanked in its own time. He didn’t talk in slogans. He talked about food, vigilance, and power, which is to say survival. He understood that the most dangerous movements don’t arrive overnight; they wait patiently while people tell themselves it can’t really be happening.
What’s heartbreaking is not that the greedy and power-hungry prepared. It’s how many people helped by doing nothing at all. From half a world away, you saw the pattern clearly. History has a way of proving that the so-called alarmists were simply paying attention.
Please share wherever you can.
Gloria, your writing, as always, is brilliant, insightful, and moving.
Will I react?
Will others react?
If we value our country and our freedom we have no choice but to react.
The only question is how do we react.
Thank you for writing and sharing
Glenn, thank you. And I love that you didn’t stop at “I’m moved” and call it a day. You asked the only question that matters: will we react, and how.
Because “react” can’t just mean doomscrolling with feelings. It has to mean showing up. Calling. Voting. Donating. Organizing. Getting loud in the unglamorous places: school boards, city councils, union halls, courtrooms, county offices. The places where democracy either has a spine or it doesn’t.
And honestly, at this point, we all need to become Minnesotans. Not geographically, but spiritually. Stubborn. Clear-eyed. Community-minded. The kind of people who hold the line when the weather is terrible and the stakes are worse. Minnesota energy: polite voice, steel-toed boots.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for demanding the next step.
Please share wherever you can.
I love that image “Minnesota energy: polite voice.”
We can’t ignore what is happening right here, right now. It’s getting worse by the minute. But how do we, citizens of USA, develop at strategy that has a chance of stopping what MAGA and the Project 2025 folks are pushing harder every day?
So many of the people I talk with stop me when I mention anything about what our government is doing. They seem to think if they can ignore it, it will simply go away. That’s exactly what happened in 1930s Germany as you so well pointed out in last night’s post. We all now know how that worked out. This time it’s happening in America. Land of the free? Sure if you’re a white Christian nationalist.
All the politicians are using this for fundraising. Money is not the answer. A single thread message that captures exactly what is at stake and what needs to be done.
Maybe it’s “Minnesota energy: polite voice.”
Glenn, yes. That “Minnesota energy: polite voice” line is the whole instruction manual right now: show up, shovel, casserole, repeat. No performative resistance. No waiting for a celebrity tweet to drop the plan like Moses with a blue check.
And you’re dead right about the national allergy to reality. Too many Americans are either complacent, exhausted into inaction, or actively cheering the demolition. And that “too many” is enough to endanger everyone.
Also: amen to your point about fundraising. Every crisis has become a tip jar. Money can help, but it cannot substitute for neighbors behaving like neighbors. We don’t need a savior. We need a thousand small, stubborn committees that do not ask permission. In other words: we all become Minnesotans.
I do. Beyond marches and protests and rage posting and praying that November comes without a declaration of canceled elections, I feel powerless. But I see it, and I have seen it, and I keep trying to shine a light in every way possible.
I hear the bone-tired honesty in this. March, shout, post, pray, repeat. It starts to feel like civic CrossFit with no visible gains. And yet. The quiet truth is that attention is an act. Refusing to look away is an act. Saying “this is not normal” out loud, again and again, is an act. Power doesn’t always look like control. Sometimes it looks like stubborn illumination. You’re doing more than you think, even on the days it feels like shouting into the void.
Please share wherever we can.
I see what you see and it not only scares me but it saddens me beyond anything I’ve ever felt.
I know. Fear is loud, but this sadness is quieter and heavier. It’s the sorrow of recognizing something you loved and assumed was sturdy, and realizing how fragile it always was. That kind of knowing changes you.
But seeing clearly still matters. It’s not nothing to refuse denial, to keep naming what hurts, to stay tender instead of numb. If nothing else, it means the sadness hasn’t hollowed you out. It means you still care.
Please share wherever you can.
I’ve also had that dread…that continuous unfolding of disappointment and disbelief since that clown was elected the first time. Having lived in Manhattan during his bankruptcies and knowing he was not taken seriously all those years, I was dumbfounded when he “won” against Hillary, hopeful with Biden and convinced he was not legitimate this time. To any and all who would listen I’ve told the stories of his cheating and cravenness. And That not for one millisecond do he or his rich cronies care what happens to the rest of us. I thought the scales would come off folks eyes sooner…I thought, hoped, prayed people would connect the dots after his first term. I’ll make my calls and donate…my 84 y.o. self will spread the word as best I can. The dread is often nausea now…AND………I can looks for moments of joy…every single day. Thank you for your excellent and clear headed writing.
You’re describing the whiplash of knowing someone exactly as they are, long before the rest of the country decided to treat him as a myth instead of a menace. New York saw the bankruptcies, the cheating, the smallness up close. The shock wasn’t that he was who he was. It was that so many people refused to believe what was in plain sight.
That long wait for the scales to fall is its own kind of grief. And yet, the fact that you’re still calling, donating, naming it, and insisting on joy anyway is the quiet rebuttal to all of it. Clarity endures longer than con men ever do.
Please share wherever you can.
Yes, I saw it about 2014. I live in a red state and the immediate avalanche of backlash on what they saw as an escalation of the extreme left was the trans dictate that they be in bathrooms and sports. It was a step too far. Every one was talking about it. Trump 1.0 was backlash to trans. No amount of saying he’s a crook, a womanizer, no leader, … nothing could be heard above the moderate&extreme right’s din.
Biden/Garland not prosecuting Jan 6th created the chance for the propaganda machine and election rigging to work and put Trump 2.0 in place. History will also record the incompetence of the Democrats.
When I ordered a copy and read Project 2025 it still had on the cover “written at the Request of President Trump.” History will also record the incompetence of the US electorate. The plan was right in front of them.
There is an ugly underbelly in the US dormant, or at least a minority, since the Civil War. History will also record that winning the Civil War was never finished by the North. The glory of the Confederacy and its commemorations with te-enactments of battles, etc., kept it alive and taught each generation that it still lived… Well, white supremists, Fundamental “Christian” misogynists/patriarchicalists, “plantation owner” oligarchs joined the propaganda machine and here we are.
Sure the signs were there, but, like the Heritage Foundation knew, Americans are too comfortable in their cushy lives to care or to protest a fascist coup.
Lynn, yes. This is the part people keep trying to sand down into a “both sides” bedtime story, and you’re refusing to cooperate with the lie.
You clocked the timeline. You clocked the red-state pressure cooker. You clocked how the right grabbed a cultural wedge, blew it up with bullhorns, and made it the only frequency anyone could hear, no matter how many alarm bells were ringing about the man himself.
And then we did the most exquisitely American thing: we treated Jan. 6 like an “incident” instead of a warning label. Garland moved like the country was a law seminar and not a house with smoke under the door. Mueller wrote a report like a man afraid of verbs. Between “let’s not look political” and “let’s wait until the moment is perfect,” they gave the propaganda machine the time it needed, and here we are watching the sequel with fewer guardrails and a bigger budget.
Also: your point about Project 2025 being right there in plain sight, practically gift-wrapped, is the sickest indictment of all. The plan wasn’t hidden. The country just kept scrolling.
I just don’t want my kids or grandkids to be right back here and saying how incompetent their parents or g’parents were… Time to step up,
Then make sure they are extensively educated historically. They need to learn from the past to negotiate their futures.
Oh, I do! (Corrected the don’t typo!!) But everyone needs to…
Truly horrifying as usual. What I think about the most is how we all took for granted that we could go about our day, almost not caring about American politics when Biden was president. We were just - safe. Our attention was on Ukraine, and Gaza, and other international atrocities. Crazy how a year can bleed the color out of your country.
Mrs. Horton-Young, you nailed the most unsettling part: we became used to the luxury of not having to watch our own country like a live wire. We could look outward, grieve what was happening abroad, and still assume the floorboards here would hold.
And then, in a single year, the paint peels. The lights flicker. The “of course we’re safe” turns into “check the locks.” It’s brutal how fast that happens.
I love you. And I’m grateful we’re wide awake together. 🩷
Please share wherever you can.
You are right! Biden gave us a reprieve… one of my brothers…oops a text just came from him ha! ( voted for tStein) a best friend did not vote at all. Apathy and Ignorance! Thank you for your Team Support !!
Everything thing you wrote about the warnings of the past & our country now - is frighteningly true. Right now , in front of all of us -are people in this 47th Regime that moving the chess pieces of Fascism.
And a as a side note:
Your Article could be a semesters work UC Berkeley! !
Lillian, I’ve researched and worked on this article for the past year. Thank you for reading and your compliment brings a huge grin to my face!
This. Is. Us.
Has been for a long, long time.
Stop looking away.
Stop waiting for help.
Step up.
It's already too late.
Time has past for a warning flare. It’s a checklist we’re methodically crossing off. Courts rule and get ignored. Career civil servants are purged. Elections remain, but the field is tilted and the referees wear jerseys. Protest is relabeled “insurrection.” Journalists are enemies. Minorities become convenient targets. Corruption stops being scandal and becomes infrastructure.
What’s happening in America I sn’t drift or chaos, it’s consolidation. The Greenland chest-thumping, the AI imperial cosplay, the naming-and-shaming of governors and citizens, the denial of visible reality, the market panic, the scapegoating of immigrants and dissenters… these are not future steps. They are the steps already taken.
Authoritarianism doesn’t arrive with a marching band. It arrives via shrug, repetition, and the steady normalization of lawlessness from the top down. We are not approaching the line. We are living inside it.
I try to wake people up in small ways, but of course it's not enough. We need a strong leader to speak out and counter what is going on, but it is so risky. This mob are killers.
Francis/Clare, I hear the exhaustion and the fear braided together there. Small awakenings matter more than they get credit for. History loves to pretend everything turns on a single speech by a single brave soul, but it’s usually a thousand people tapping shoulders, slipping notes under doors, refusing to fully go back to sleep.
You’re right about the risk. The mob thrives on intimidation; that’s part of the design. Which is why waiting for one heroic leader can become another form of paralysis. Strong leadership doesn’t always look like a podium and a microphone. Sometimes it looks like networks, redundancy, people speaking in chorus instead of solo, so no one stands alone in the crosshairs.
What you’re doing isn’t nothing. It’s how the ground gets softened before anything larger can take root. And yes, it’s scary. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
I appreciate your optimism, Gloria. We can't give up, and a truly charismatic leader is a rare thing, but if we had one I would fear for them. Obama could have been that person if he chose to, but he didn't. Honestly, when I read Truscott's description of Dump's speech at Davos, I just thought they need to get together and get rid of him now, even if it takes a silver stake. Why should the whole world be beholden to this sick monster?
Important read, thank you.
Thank you. I wrote this to be read, not filed away. If it mattered to you, restack it, share it anywhere you can.
An important essay that deserves wider circulation. I have felt the same about the lax attitude of the press and Democratic leaders since around 1982, when Reagan started to be recognized as “the Great Communicator.” It became even clearer with the Gingrich revolution, and clearer still with the Tea Party. Around that time I started to draw analogies between GOP operatives and brown shirts. Friends thought me hysterical. But I was just paying attention.
You’re right, and what’s chilling is how familiar that arc now feels. Once politics became performance and outrage a governing strategy, the press mistook spectacle for substance and Democrats mistook restraint for responsibility. Each escalation was waved off as tone, not threat. Being called hysterical has always been the penalty for pattern recognition. History tends to vindicate the people who were “just paying attention,” long after the applause for the Great Communicators fades.
Please share wherever you can.
Yes, I see it. I want to help stop this madness. Resist.
Thank you. Please share wherever you can. 🩷
This is a brilliant piece Gloria.It is exactly a case of history repeating itself. It is frightening to read it,to see the start of it happening and to witness all that is happening on a daily basis.I become a little more scared every day of where it will end.
I know you believed nothing truly bad could happen in America. A lot of people did. We wrapped ourselves in the idea that we were somehow exempt from history, that our institutions were fireproof, that warning signs were just media hysteria or partisan noise.
What actually happened wasn’t ignorance. It was willful normalization. We watched cruelty get rebranded as toughness, lies as “style,” and open power grabs as harmless bluster. We told ourselves the rules would save us, right up until they were bent, then ignored, then mocked. While people debated civility, the machinery of control was being assembled in plain sight.
This isn’t exaggeration. It’s pattern recognition. History doesn’t need jackboots to announce itself. It arrives through shrugs, excuses, and the comforting belief that “it can’t happen here.” That belief is what made it happen. America isn’t uniquely evil. But it was never uniquely immune either.
Please pass along wherever you can.
At 82 I realize the thick of this is just beginning awareness ,the blatant insolence is not new, people have been warned. I’ve never seen so many excuses redefined as if it’s said in a different wording it isn’t the same but different day, or walked back, or denied, or or or.
Yes I’ve warned, since 2015. It walked like a duck. It raised flags I’ve honed from the gift of intuitiveness demanding sharpened and honored. And I’ve read , listened, researched.
I didn’t vote for him, I listened to the vetting ..such a show .
Now again ,at a World Forum…”rupture”. Such contempt. Any podium he grabs wreaks of bully , it’s pathetic. Our streets have become war zones.
Q: When will it hit hardest…?
A:When it’s too late.
An authoritarian regime is here, its army grows, they’re the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 2nd amendment Clubs, and MAGA base.
The inch given is miles ahead and festers fast.
Excellent piece, thank you.
Patricia, yes. This is the part that makes me feel both furious and weirdly… unsurprised: the constant excuse-laundering. Same action, new euphemism. Same shove, different press release.
And your Q/A?!?
When will it hit hardest? When it’s too late. That’s the entire American brand right now, isn’t it. We are the nation of “I didn’t think it would happen to me” until it is happening to us.
Also: “It walked like a duck” is the perfect phrase for a country that keeps insisting the duck is actually a tasteful swan with “some concerns.” Thank you for reading, for naming the bully behavior for what it is, and for refusing to let contempt get normalized into background music.
This was a haunting read. I read this the day you posted it. I was getting ready to leave a comment, but I just stopped. It hit me in a powerful way. The shadow of the past slid right up along side current events. The eerie similarities seemed to be mocking my resolve. I stepped away. I needed time to digest. I'm ready for another round now. The warnings were there then, and this century too. Thanks for revisiting the ghosts we ignored.