This is EXACTLY the 1850s... and this arc will end the same.

Turning the U.S. military into a domestic police force. It's just one of many Project 2025 nightmares-come-true that sound like Nazi Germany or the USSR, right?

Only let me tell you about a time when eerily similar things happened in this very same republic. And back then, it took real pain, sacrifice and courage -- true citizens standing up in their millions -- to restore what has been inarguably the one best -- and possibly last -- hope of humankind.

== Rhyming - creepily - with the past ==

Do you recall just a couple of years ago, when the Foxite incantation howled that 500 new IRS auditors -- hired under the 2021 Pelosi Miracle Bills* to check rich tax cheaters -- would be a 'wave of jack-booted thugs'? Riiight. A few hundred nerdy CPAs hunting billions hidden in Cayman accounts by hedge and inheritance brats... that was looming police state.

But sure, those oligarchs did have reason to fear justice. So justice had to go.

Now, after firing those auditors -- and then all the statistics-keepers and Inspectors General and honest FBI folks -- the Trumpians now cheer as many thousands of masked-tattooed ex-cons rampage across the country without ever showing warrants or ID... and now they are trying to turn the U.S. military into a branch of the insanity. (Ask retired, senior military officers what they think of this!)

What chafes me is that NO ONE is making parallels to the 1850s, when the Fugitive Slave Act and Supreme Court travesties unleashed raiding parties of masked, irregular southern cavalry to go storming across northern states, kidnapping and burning, protected by presidential-appointed marshals and armed troops.

Um, sound familiar? Read about that here! And even earlier parallels made by Robert Heinlein.

The net result of those ravaging, masked gangs, enforcing an evil 'law'? Northerners grew angered and radicalized. Enough to revive their dormant state militias, eventually providing troops needed to save the Union. Oh, and radicalized enough to elect Abraham Lincoln.

You want parallels? Our present mess is almost exactly the same! Except that this time the confederacy has its long-desired foreign backers. And they assume (as they always do, in every phase of this 250 year culture war) that smartypants modernists won't fight.

Sure. As Sam Houston warned his fellow Texans, Blue Americans are cooler of temperament and slower to wrath. But 'when they move it will be with ponderous, unstoppable momentum.'

Today's MAGA/Foxite/Putinist confederacy focuses its core spite not based on race or gender, but against all fact-using professions, from scientists to statisticians to journalists, to the FBI and the U.S. military officer corps. And sure, those cool-blooded fact professionals etc. -- and the tens of millions of folks who believe in them and in things called facts -- are slow to anger.

But we are also the ones who know cyber, nano, bio, nuclear and the rest...

...and MAGA/confederate/KGB-puppets will NOT like us when we get mad.

But you go ahead. Enumerate for yourself the many parallels with the 1850s, including a Supreme Court Chief Justice who will be damned by all future generations as our era's Roger Taney.

And know that you may be asked to step up, at some point. Be undaunted. You are not made of lesser stuff than the heroes of Vicksburg and Gettysburg.

== If Obama had done this ==

Giggling MAGAs also delight in humiliating our allies. As in this case, summoning them NOT to a conference table, as equals, but to a desk meeting like flunkies before the Big Boss. 

Like 'apprentices' flattering the makeup-slathered 'star' of the show, to hold off his next pyrotechnic fit, for a little while.

Robert Heinlein - back in the 50s - predicted this coup by the always-simmering religio-fanatic, racist, anti-furriner, anti-science, anti-intellect and anti-fact wing of American life.

Mention to the Foxites that we NEED allies in this world, and they chortle! As they do when we say that we need facts. Mention that ALL of these allies stepped up to our aid, after the 9/11 attacks? They'll just shrug.

Above all, they smell the blood they have wanted since 1865, only this round the confederacy conquered Washington and has its long-sought foreign backers. But Putin and his "ex" commissars are in a hurry. At current trajectories, NATO will be able to stand on its own in just two years. The KGB's stooges here must finish their work or go down with him. And the Union - as in 1863 - is finding its competent leaders.

== Go, Gavin! ==

Oh how it galls them that California's governor is proving adept at getting under old Two-Scoops's skin! 

Look, he ain't perfect. But he's good at this. And Californians admire how he's led a progressive state to stability and the world's 4th economy, the most creative, scientific, un-corrupt and well-run commonwealth on Earth. And while he is no Bernie Sanders, Bernie loves Gavin!  And read-up on the 2021 Pelosi miracle bills (see below)* before you rant to us about 'moderate sellouts.'

Newsom's response to Texas super-gerrymandering is something that he - (and I and millions) - regret as necessary. I was proud that California, WA, OR, CO and NM led the nation in banning that foul cheat... and we will again! After the master cheaters back off. 

Over the longer run, I have offered methods to get around the current Supreme Court's outrageous support for gerrymandering. One concept, that would bypass all politicians, got approving attention from a senior U.S. Court of Appeals judge, who told me it ought to work! 

My collection of such potential maneuvers - many of them non- or even anti-partisan - can be found in Polemical Judo. 

Meanwhile, my main crit of Newsom is that there are SO many more zinger memes that his people - or even the Lincoln Project - have never considered. And I have troves of them. A Mother Lode.

Troves.

====================================================

PS: While Newsom is doing great at getting under their skins... I still can't believe no one is pushing the video and lyrics... and lesson... of John Fogerty's song Vanz Can't Dance... about the eponymous thieving pig who stole Fogerty's fortune. Play it. Spread it. We need to be ready for when it is the turn of the next monster to assail our great experiment in sapient civilization.

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PPS: A genuine, real-but-not-blackmailed hyper right winger, even Bolton had enough when he realized he was working for an idiot who worked for the slightly relabeled and revived USSR, helping the "ex" commissars wage 5th column war against the USA and the West. I am way further down than Bolton on the revenge list of ol Two Scoops. But he'll get to me before most of you. And I am easier to take out, on the street. Still, I am willing to die on this hill. With the grim irony of knowing we need the widest coalition, and that John Bolton now wears blue.

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* Any of you who are tempted to rail against "DNC moderates" or "lukewarm semi-liberals" should try to actually know what you are talking about! Aided vigorously by the pragmatic left, like Bernie, Liz, AOC, Stacey, Pete etc. the despised Nancy Pelosi wrought miracles!  A set of bills that moved important things forward. And look at the last three DNC chairs before you snarl about "DNC establishment sellouts."

And YOU need to slap - hard! - any splitters who yowl that 'the party establishments are the same!' Or only a sharp turn to the left will lure back the millions of Blacks and Hispanics whose departure left Trump the presidency. The parties aren't the same at any level. And splitters only help the forces of darkness. 

Know about those Miracle Bills, before you try any of that crap. Or STFU and let us rebuild a broad coalition.