The Witnes Chronicles, 3/3/25

Step up, GOP, this is bad

Mar 03, 2025

a close up of a chain with a flag on it — Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

The Grow Some Project: All Elected Officials and Party Leaders Invited

All you need to do is push back against Trump and Co.

“Fellow Germans, my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking… I don’t have to worry about justice; my mission is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more! …”

~ Herman Goering on the eve of Hiter’s total takeover over of the German government, March 3, 1933

It’s time for all of us to grow some cojones. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, think a bit more. We are not talking about gardening here. We are talking about standing up to reckless and vicious bullies in the White House. And there has been far too little of it in the face of the drastic daily crimes against democracy since Trump took office.

Every week the criminal willingness to ignore court orders or prosecute those who ignore should be a cause for alarm and outrage, but it has been tepid at best.

The Gestapo tactics of rabid Trump followers include widespread death threats to the families and persons of anyone who speaks against him, especially Republicans, and many are cowering in fear, which is understandable. Retribution has become a blood sport and being faced with death threats is an effective way to shut down dissent.

As with everyday since the inauguration today, there is more bad news. We are hearing that Defense Secretary Hegseth has ended cyber intelligence survelliance of the Russians with zero justification, just one more example of their predilection for kissing Putin’s ass. These actions stink of planned treason.

Yet the silence or tacit approval of the Republicans in Congress for these actions is deafening. Trump has hobbled his own Party and they seem happy to accept it. Or, if not happy, simply scared.

A lot of this criticism can justifiably be aimed at the Democrats who have not shown the level of outrage these daily actions require. We are not dealing with ordinary nutty far right politics here, we are dealing with a planned attempt to install a dictatorship in the person of Donald Trump. And those taking these actions are merciless and appear to be enjoying the process.

The thuggish beat down of Vlodomir Zelenskyy by the President and Vice President on camera in the White House was some kind of peak, yet it appears even that horrifying show of disrespect for a loyal ally is being accepted by Trump’s party with barely a murmur, beyond weak justications for an unjustifiable and repulsive act.

When the fight for civil rights exploded in the sixties, those fighting the fight split into two camps, the peaceful protest under Martin Luther King Jr, and the more violent resistance of the Black Panthers under Malcom X. It should not be lost that both of those leaders were assassinated, including in X’s case, by one of his own, due to infighting.

I raise this parallel because we need a more activist resistance, though I do not advocate for violence. We need a more strident and charismatic leader to emerge from the left/moderate side, someone who can get angry and get others angry enough to finally take action.

The murder of Malcom X from within the Black Muslim movement illustrates exactly what those in the Republican Party fear, retribution from their own out of misguided or fantatical loyalty to Trump. When dictators build their autocracies, dissent in the ranks is crushed with even more viciousness than for those where dissent is expected. Though the efficient dictator eventually gets to them too.

I think the scary thing about writing about these things is they are not theoretical, they are the daily reality we face under these people, a reality that was almost impossible to imagine even as they told us repeatedly what they were planning.

Those paying attention right now are largely in a state of shock, which was part of the plan from the beginning, but we all need to shake that off and get pissed and vocal about it. Grow some, in other words. It will happen but we need to accelerate it because they count on us being too stunned to stop things before it’s too late.

I recently started rereading Wm Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and the parallels with Hitler’s rise to power are striking. Though circumstances are different (post WWI Germany was a mess with infighting between as many as ten political parties and factions), the playbook is the same: endless propaganda, lies, spreading fear of others, moving fast and violently…the list goes on.

Yes, I know reading that history probably sounds masochistic given what I write about every day, but history, especially recent history, tells us that one man can destroy a society he sees as insufficiently loyal and complacent, and it can happen fast. The right has historians and there are lessons learned in the Project 2025 Plan Trump is implementing.

One takeaway he is following, though I doubt he has read much of it, not being a reader, is that you can openly tell people what you are going to do and most will either not believe it or hear what they want. In his manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler laid out his vision of his dictatorship in detail and he proceeded to do all of it.

And tens of millions died in the process, something to be remembered as we watch Trump cozy up to murderous dictators, opening the way for wars of conquest. Wars which Putin and China are signaling opening, and in the case of Ukraine, are actually doing.

That’s why Trump and Vance’s actions on Friday are a glaring signal of intent that should not be ignored or justified by anyone on either side. In fact we need to shine a constant light on the extreme dangers of what we are witnessing. Wake up and grow some, you’ll respect yourself more in the future.

The Witness Chronicles, politics decoded

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