Wonder how Trump is able to ignore his promises to reduce the cost of living and subvert Social Security? It has to do with ending the form of democracy we have had. What's the big deal about democracy? Who cares? What seems strange to me is that there are those who would prefer an autocracy, dictatorship, rule by a strong man, king, or fascist to democracy. I would never have thought in my lifetime I would ever have to defend democracy and the rule of law to my fellow Americans. Then Trump came along. 38% of Americans under age 30 support these nondemocratic alternatives, compared with 29% of those ages 50 to 64 and 26% of those 65 and older. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes-authoritarianism-and-how-do-they-want-to-change-their-government/
Why care about democracy? What is so bad about ending the practice of the form of democracy we have had and replacing it with one headed by an autocrat (dictator, fascist, king, etc). There are some serious downsides. This is a warning for ordinary people who do not think democracy works for them and seek a government headed by a "strong leader" instead, from young adults to adults who should know better, fawning over a dictator in Hungary. There are others who would not mind a dictator, just so it was "their dictator" who channeled their desires. They have no idea how much worse it could be for them.
So what's so bad about implementing a new form of government where a few rules constrain abuses and so much power is placed in a president's hands without checks and balances? It means that America is no longer being ruled by and for the people, which is basic to democracy's meaning. Trump is able to implement a power-grabbing plan on steroids because he has few checks left to stop his abuse of power, is immune from prosecution, and is a lame duck who will not face voters again. You see it happening before your very eyes in the first 3 months of Trump's second presidency. That is what the Trump administration is attempting to implement without rewriting the Constitution itself, by re-interpreting, redefining it, rewording implementing legislation, and appointing loyalists to Trump himself to administer it. The Trump administration aims to turn the executive branch into one big, all-powerful, unitary government led by its head, President Trump, with the powers of a strong man, a dictator, a king, a fascist, or similar. The other two branches of government, the judiciary and Congress, are expected to act as support groups for this executive branch.
The downsides of a dictatorship," strong man" president, autocracy, king, fascism, in a nutshell:
1) The people's voice and needs can be easily ignored. With so much money and power in a few hands and few checks left to curb power, a few in charge can pursue their obsessions, which may not be yours or the ones the strong man promised when he was preparing to assume the reins of power.
2) It is unfair to favor those with power and money and subvert or ignore laws that all once had to abide by. It is unfair. It is not fair to all, but it benefits only one side, the winners and those who hold the reins of power and money.
3) Fear permeates words and actions throughout society, government, and business.. The repercussions, however, are on the people who are made to fear what happens if they are not loyal to the ruling group or who dare to challenge them. It drives speech and action instead of caring what is helpful to the public good or constituents..Fear of loss of income or political position drives private and public policy leaders to repeat the leader's talking points, whether or not they agree, bow to the president's demands, or keep quiet. Placing federal law enforcement in the president's total control, the Department of Justice is the enforcer.
From a March 5 posting on this site: I have recently noted a greater sensitivity to what I am posting on the internet, fear that somehow jobs will be affected if commenters are seen as too liberal or as contradicting Trump, or could be accused of disagreeing. That kind of fear was more like what I experienced in dictatorships. In short, fear is causing a lot of self-editing to make sure what I write is mine or at least comes from some publicly published source that has credibility. Some have even changed their Facebook names because they fear facing repercussions, which is scary to have to feel that way. This already is no longer a free country. It is feeling like we are already in a country run by dictator who uses fear, threats, and revenge to control what people used to freely express. I will not be cowed or bowed, but I will be more careful to make sure I do not quote those who do not want to be quoted or who are living in that fear so long as I have access to a public platform. https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2025/03/are-we-already-living-with-fascism.html
The Trump regime is already acting as if democracy is dead and Trump is attempting to govern by executive orders that defy law and the Constitution, while losing case after case in the courts. Fear of repercussions of defying Trump himself, bent on revenge and retribution, and using his political capital with fear and favor, is already evident. GOP House members have been cowed into obedience, fearing being primaried or called out in tweets and by Trump-friendly media, and influenced by promises of campaign contributions conditional on good behavior. He took control of the press pool, which could question and cover him, assuring that there would be no questions whose answers would be embarrassing or challenging, encouraging softball questions, allowing Trump to pitch his views..White House takes control of press pool that covers Trump. Much of the press is self-censoring or toning down opposition. The only effective pushback left is the courts, demonstrations in the streets, and the next two elections, the Congressional elections in 2026 and the presidential ones in 2028.
The Trump regime is trying to control the election process in ways to suppress votes of those who may vote for the "other side"...by banning mail in ballots (Colorado is nearly 100 percent mail in) and in requiring proof of citizenship which older voters and and rural and minority voters would have to go to an enormous effort to get.'Near-limitless authority': Trump reportedly moves to make sure GOP can't lose elections The issue is not discrimination so much as it is that the federal government does not have the right to dictate to states such stuff. The Court case to follow is: Lawsuit challenges Trump's new rules for national elections The 5th Circuit is referred to in the article: for background, The 5th Circuit’s terrible Supreme Court term | The Texas Tribune
More about the downsides of an autocracy, dictatorship, fascist form of government that is actually happening before our very eyes now.
People do not rule: oligarchs and Trump do
People do not rule or set priorities. Trump does. The voice and the needs of the people can be ignored. People no longer rule to set public policy; a small group makes decisions and sets priorities and agendas, mostly to benefit the ruling group, without observing rules and laws and without having to experience repercussions. The essence of democracy is rule by the people themselves through their representatives. The people are no longer in charge of shaping how they are governed because the rulers control the levers of power in dictatorships (called more politely" autocracies"...rule by one man). The voice of the people is no longer in control of setting priorities to benefit them.
We have had three months to get a taste of what an autocracy, ruled by a strong man, a dictator, is like. Trump does not care about reducing the cost of living of ordinary Americans as a priority. He has other priorities that are his own. His priorities to date have been consolidating power, getting revenge on those who got in his way earlier and now, tariffs, and dealing away Ukraine to buddy Putin. He can ignore his own voters on that issue since he is now so powerful, and he has other matters on his agenda, has immunity from prosecution, and is a lame duck who will not meet voter approval again. MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Buyers beware: con men and billionaires at work updated through 3/22/2025
(Update 4 29 2025) Trump's response to sinking polls are a case in point. Immediately he confirmed he was not breaking off tariffs, and that someday it all would be better. How can he get away with this? He got elected, and he does plan to face voters again. It's thanks for your vote and tooodledooo. That is what it is so instructive. It is how. and why the government of , for , and by the people can be destroyed by a wannabe fascist who thinks he is already in control of the country.)
So far Trump has gotten away with engineering a trade war and a negative impact on consumers and the economy. How has he done it? He has already assumed he is a dictator and is acting like one. The real reason Trump is destroying the economy
Not only that, Trump has taken Project 2025 a step further in remaking and increasing the executive branch's power. Instead of changing civil servants' classification from a merit system to political appointees as proposed by Project 2025, Trump has taken a shortcut: Musk and DOGE. They have tried or actually eliminated by some executive order or an email entire departments or have crippled the agency or department's ability to execute laws authorized and funded by Congress. The advantage that such companies as Musk have is that by firing everyone, they can, while using the savings of no longer having to provide services, they can offset tax reductions to the very rich and themselves and pick up more government contracts as those services are privatized after their intentional kneecapping of them. The courts have already begun to fight back with rulings that such actions were against the law and/or the Constitution. How that plays out will likely determine the future of democracy in America because the majority in the other branch of government, Congress, has subjugated itself to Trump's will.
Except for Musk's DOGE chainsaw massacre of the federal bureaucracy, Trump is in the process of implementing the 2025 agenda. You were warned. Per warnings from progressives in October 2024, "Project 2025 unabashedly promotes the wholesale violation of norms and laws, consolidating enormous power in a president and trampling on Congress’ constitutional role—to take away Americans’ long-cherished freedoms and opportunities. Not only would this authoritarian playbook make it easier for a far-right executive branch to weaken the independence of public agencies, install political cronies the government, punish people it disagrees with, and control what news the media can report, but it would also allow the government to eliminate abortion access, health care choices, overtime pay, educational opportunities, and countless other programs that benefit communities and families." Project 2025 Would Destroy the U.S. System of Checks and Balances and Create an Imperial Presidency - Center for American Progress Such warnings were passed off as political oratory or hyperbolic fear-mongering by so many. Surprise.
Trump has not yet crowned himself emperor, but he is trying at least to be a tyrannical king and kill off democracy as we have known it for 250 years. He has whipped the GOP majority into a subservient support group in Congress using his primary weapons of fear and favor, particularly threatening to run his oligarch-funded candidates in GOP primaries who dare raise their voices against any of Trump's desires. He is now weaponizing his Department of Justice to harass, sue, and charge with crimes any judge who does not rule in his favor. He is aiming for a showdown with the Supreme Court on this issue, and his attorney general and others in his administration have said they do not have to abide by court decisions if they "disagree" with the findings. That takedown of the judicial branch is in the process now, as the courts are the only bodies still telling him "No, you can't" and braving threats of violence against them. Once the judiciary and Congress have been emasculated, he need not worry again about anyone standing in his way of carrying out his obsessions and permitting him to ignore any other considerations, including a populace trying to make ends meet in their daily lives.
What's so bad about that? There are those who supported Trump in 2024 because they wanted a "strong leader" to carry out the white nationalist agenda of Project 2025, attacking DEI, or a desire for someone to get rid of recent brown and black immigrants who had simply had "jumped the river" without documents, recently or many years before, and never had a criminal charge on their records. On those promises, Trump is making good.
Where he has failed is to lower gas and grocery prices or rents. Per exit polls, it was the main issue driving voters to give him a win in 2024. y..and the stand-in for high prices and inflation was the cost of eggs. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/exit-polls-2024-presidential-election/So far, not only has Trump ignored the issue, but his administration has warned consumers it will get worse, so it will somehow get better (for whom and how?) "You'll like the result". https://fortune.com/2025/03/04/target-fortune-500-ceo-trump-tariff-price-increase. During the first 6 weeks, Trump has been obsessed with tariffs, mass deportations, controlling Zelensky, and getting revenge on those who challenge him. His obsessions have not included lowering grocery prices or the cost of living. MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Why Trump voters are getting ignored. Taking stock of Trump's first six weeks He has just ignored the issue being consumed in other obsessions., getting revenge on those who ever did him wrong, punishing those who challenge his authority using the weaponized DOJ, starting a tariff war, talking about annexing Canada, Greenland, and Panama like an imperialist and his hero/role model Putin, and getting back at Zelendsky for not rolling over and accepting Russian dominance or eventual takeover. Above all, his obsession has been, if not in the title, becoming a king, a tyrannical one at that, as he takes advantage of the immunity granted him by his Supreme Court that he now claims to extend to more than just criminal acts. For Trump, laws are either to be ignored, worked around, or defied. The rule of law itself is the enemy. Whether he succeeds in defying the courts is a work still in progress.
Unfair
What Trump wants is not fair to all. Using fear and favor as his unchecked weapons also blows back on those 48% of the voters who did not vote for him. The rich and loyal are favored. Civil rights are no longer honored, as well, as DEI( diversity, equity, and inclusion) has become a dirty word and has disappeared from the Trump lexicon. Fairness is no longer a value, and the advantage goes to the donors and proven MAGA supporters.
Our traditional form of democracy is uniquely suited for a country with a diverse population. When these very important provisions of checks and balances and human rights are respected and observed in practice, we have our unique form of democracy, which works in a country with diverse interests and populations. Those on the right like to point to countries that seem to be successful with dictators, such as Hungary. Hungary differs from the US in its makeup..around .90% of the same ethnic and religious demographics. The US is a country of immigrants worldwide that works when all are treated fairly. That is the Constitution's structure: rules that rule and are applied equally to all regardless of ethnic, religious, racial, or gender status. Those are the goals and ideology, which if followed, will lead to a "more perfect union" that permits a person to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, in peace. The anti-DEI crusade, eliminating the ability to enforce and value diversity, purging all DEI administrators, and removing references to DEI throughout the entire federal government, is how these values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are being trashed to favor white nationalists' aspirations.
MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: When it comes to corruption, Trump is now the fox in the henhouse
The rule of law that provides the assurance of fairness is replaced by the rule of the few who determine which laws, how they are interpreted, and how they are enforced to benefit those who have the power and the money. There is no more level playing field. MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: What's the big deal about the rule of law? Who cares?
Fear
The Trump regime is already acting as if democracy is dead and Trump is attempting to govern by executive orders that defy law and the Constitution, while losing case after case in the courts. Fear of repercussions of defying Trump himself, bent on revenge and retribution, and using his political capital with fear and favor, is already evident. GOP House members have been cowed into obedience, fearing being primaried or called out in tweets and by Trump-friendly media, and influenced by promises of campaign contributions conditional on good behavior. Much of the press is self-censoring or toning down opposition. The only effective pushback left is the courts, demonstrations in the streets, and the next two elections, the Congressional elections in 2026 and the presidential ones in 2028.
The fear factor in Trump's power grab is already palpable, both in media self-censoring themselves and in individuals' pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Those who speak out or challenge Trump will have repercussions. They may be "delicensed", defined, demoted, destroyed with tweets, and subjected to unjustified legal processes. Judges have to up their family security due to threats from those unleashed by Trump, who openly personally insults any judge who rules against him. The press watches its words and reporting to avoid suits and or delicensing or being blocked from access to the White House or Air Force One. Students expressing their own anti-administration opinions and academic institutions are under attack, snatched from the street by ICE regardless of visa status, and federal money is denied until universities agree to Trump-imposed restrictions.
Up close and personal: my observations of what it is like for ordinary people in a dictatorship, or in the most recent term, a kingdom, or under fascism (the term that is considered too inflammatory because it evokes the Nazi party, when there are many variations and degrees of oppression). Here is what I recall from close and personal encounters with communist dictatorships and once-fascist ones. I didn't learn all of this from books; I lived it, visiting family in Yugoslavia, a communist dictatorship, over 15 years, and as a student in pre-wall Berlin in the late 1950s. The ideologies may be very different, but the methods of government are very similar. How are fascist dictators and communist dictators alike?. Both are dictatorships by strong men or small groups of them, ruling over people, but people have few rights or power to influence the application of laws or policies, and fear, oppression of dissent, and favor are tools of discipline.. In a communist dictatorship of communists, the alliance is based on Marxist ideology, the rule of one class, the proletariat, and in a fascist dictatorship, the alliance is between the strong man and big business interests (we call billionaires or oligarchs). By that definition, even Putin is a fascist, though he governs as if he were still a KGB agent in the Soviet Union.
Here is a brief description of my own up close and personal encounters with both fascism and communism in a reprint of an Oct.25 2024 blog post. This is why I am attacking Trump for planning and promising to become a fascist-like dictator and why I am so alarmed that so many do not care. It is personal to me. I have been there and done that. What became history to my children and grandchildren were current events to me. I was born in 1938 and have vivid memories of World War II . Even in my 6 and 7-year-old brain, I knew what enemies of America looked like and., and if we did not beat the Nazis, I experienced the fear my parents felt we would be governed by the evil fascists. We didn't know about Auschwitz yet.. As a 20-year-old, I spent my college junior year in rubble-emerging, war-devastated, pre-wall Berlin, and I had a first-row seat to how Communist dictators consolidated their power in the East Zone they controlled. It was in Berlin I met my husband-to-be of 52 years, who was planning to be a refugee from the communist dictatorship of Yugoslavia. He succeeded, even when threatened by foreign agents. I know how it works firsthand in both communist and fascist dictatorships; how individual liberties are destroyed, from the lost choices of a future profession., the fear of saying aloud what you really thought, the inability to break out of the restraints of mind-controlling propagandized media, the corruption such systems foster and how everyday life is controlled. To see America thinking about becoming a fascist dictatorship under the leadership of Donald Trump, one who tried to be one when he was president, and now is so open about becoming one in practice, is a bookend to my life that horrifies me. Those younger than me do not have a clue of the dangers and the loss of so many freedoms of what they wish. It is an irony of my life that I was born in the times of fascism and could die in the times of fascism and that I was so fortunate to live in American democracy in the years in between.
For those who object to Trump being tagged as a fascist, as those who knew him best call him "fascist to the core" and "he fits the definition", here are the definitions and reasons for not only my agreement but for raising the issue on this site for several years: Argue with me if you will. MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Gen.Milley and Gen.Kelly aren't kidding " Trump's a fascist updated 10/25/24
Anti-Semitism, as personified in George Soros's conspiracy theories, has a relationship to right-wing propaganda. Every time the right attacks demonstrations and citizen actions against them, they blame it on George Soros. He is either so all-powerful he is threatening them effectively singlehandedly, or he is a code word for lots of anti-Semitic conspiracies and tropes. For sure, it plays on traditional anti-semitism of some worldwide conspiracy of Jews. His activism has its roots in a personal revolt against fascism. It is a way the right tries to explain why people are pushing back against them: the people are not to blame; George Soros is. It is akin to the same motivating propaganda that gave rise to Hitler in the 1930s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros_conspiracy_theories
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-checkfalseclaims-about-george-soros-idUSKBN23P2X7/
. https://fortune.com/2025/03/04/target-fortune-500-ceo-trump-tariff-price-increase.
MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Why Trump voters are getting ignored. Taking stock of Trump's first six weeks
