We've failed the 'Don't Give the Wannabe Dictator a Secret Police' test

We're tilting toward dictatorship. It's undeniable.

But there's still so much we can do about it.

This is the new episode of NEXT COMES WHAT by Andrea Pitzer, and it is the most important thing I've ever worked on. In 24 minutes, she sums up how we got here and how we can try to get out. I need you to watch it (and if you appreciate it, consider supporting the work we're doing by subscribing to Degenerate Art).

You know that this July 4th may be the bleakest in America since the Civil War. And it's certainly a day that would make the Better Angels of American History, like you, writhe in a bit of agony at what we've given up—and to whom.

We've failed a test that looks ridiculously easy on paper:

Do you let the wannabe dictator get his own, unaccountable secret police driven by a lust for power to carry out eugenic grievances?

"Nope. No, sir. Nah," is the obvious answer.

But a Constitution built to preserve the power of enslavers, decades of right-wing propaganda fueled by strategic racism that has made the people relatively powerless compared to corporate interests, and the worst con man in human history have aligned to blur the obvious.

Why? Tell them, Lisa Murkowski.

And because for many, if not most, Republicans, a dictatorship makes far more sense than democracy.

Still, as Andrea notes in this episode:

"We still have so much power to act in public, and we still have the lower courts on the side of democracy, and it's not yet clear what role the army would be willing to take moving in any large way against American civilians. These things matter hugely, and they put us on a different path for the moment than Berlin in 1937."

She offers Russia in 2016 as a more relevant parallel. And that aches, too.

All the time I've spent calling out Donald Trump's allegiance and conspiracy against democracy with Vladimir Putin, and even producing a podcast series with Marcy Wheeler about how that attack on our country, Trump's welcoming of it, and cover-up of that all brought us to the brink of fascism, I insisted that the biggest Trump/Putin scandal was always this:

Trump wants to be our Putin.

Only this July 4th, he's closer than he's ever been, and most of us have ever imagined he could get. And as the monstrous spending to build a disappearing machine in the budget passed Thursday rolls out, he will get closer every day.

Over the past five months, the people and the lower courts have been the only slivers of America that have taken this attack on our freedom with any of the seriousness it deserves. And we all now have a sense of how German society crumbled in the 1930s: Not with a bang but a whimper.

However, we have more going for us in America in 2025 than either the Russians ten years ago or the Germans 90 years ago could have even imagined. And we have more going for us than we did five months ago, including a movement 5-6 million strong and a sense that we, the Americans cursed with the foresight of what horrors await us, are the time travelers sent to this moment to save us. And we have also lived into the reality that no one else is coming to save us.

So, on this July 4th, with a firm reliance on the protection of a divine Universe, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor, to do our best to make America live up to the often empty promise of Freedom that created this experiment that dared to say, "No kings."

Not now. Not in 1776. Not ever.