Pop Power Politics

END THE VIOLENCE

Let's stop pretending this is just an unconventional birthday party for a former president. When Donald Trump steps into a UFC arena on June 14 to celebrate himself amid a crowd watching a blood sport, he is making a deliberate, calculated statement. Political analysts are rightly warning that this spectacle comes at the absolute worst moment for our deeply fractured country.

There is a reason authoritarian movements throughout history have aggressively merged their political branding with hyper-masculine combat. It is entirely by design. By centering his campaign around a cage fight, Trump is conditioning his base to associate his movement with unchecked brutality. He is slowly replacing the democratic ideals of debate and the rule of law with the primal aesthetic of a gladiator arena.

This is exactly how a society becomes desensitized to political violence. First it is packaged as entertainment, then it becomes an acceptable political tool, and finally, it becomes a deadly reality. When a man who has already incited mob violence aligns his public brand with literal bloodletting, we cannot afford to look away. When a would-be dictator shows you he views politics as a blood sport, believe him.

The billionaire class bought themselves a president to protect their wealth, and now they are watching him crash the car into a ditch.

Michael Wolff spent months inside Trump's White House witnessing the day-to-day operations. His ultimate takeaway isn't that Trump is some calculating mastermind executing a grand conservative strategy. It is much more pathetic. The man is dangerously out of his depth.

While millions of Americans are picking up second jobs just to cover rent and groceries, the right-wing establishment is desperately trying to manage a frail, out-of-touch billionaire who has absolutely no idea how government actually works. He treats the Oval Office like a vanity project to stroke his own ego, ignoring the very real economic crises crushing working families.

This is a glaring indictment of a fundamentally broken political system. We live in a country that demands flawless perfection from a minimum wage worker, yet repeatedly hands the highest office in the land to a wealthy fraud who fails upward every single time. Trump's spectacular incompetence isn't just a personal flaw, it is the defining feature of the corporate elite. They do not care if the ship sinks, because they already bought all the lifeboats.

Since use of seashells is forbidden... 🤣

On this day in 1945, Adolf Hi**er shot himself in a concrete room 55 feet underground in Berlin, with Soviet soldiers close enough to hear through the walls.

Eighty-one years later, Donald Trump is building a bunker under the White House. Not a rumor — his words, to reporters, March 29: "𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮'𝙨 𝙗𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙭 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙢. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙢 𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙖 𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙙."

Every strongman builds his final room. They just never know that's what it is when they're building it.

Full piece at the link in comments

A rundown of the Trump administration’s scandals and crimes resembles, with shocking likeness, the grave, sweeping charges laid out in the Declaration of Independence against the last American king. https://trib.al/qY23Vz6

“He has excited domestic insurrections against us,” the Founding Fathers wrote about George III in 1776. Is there any better way of describing Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021?

He supported a violent mob aiming to overthrow the government; he maintains a similar disrespect for the institutions of American democracy to this day.

In early February, he threatened to “nationalize” American elections in a lawless and perhaps impossible bid to keep Democrats from retaking Congress.