I don’t know if this video I used Grok to make will work. Give it a try:
Frequently a few Substackers and others write about something that I wanted to write about, often better than I could, thus leaving me without much - or anything - to add. This was the case with Thom Hartmann this morning with a few things I wanted to say.
All I really could do was use Grok (for the first time, having previously used Perchance AI) to make my illustration. I got the idea from Hartmann’s AI illustration. In all modesty I think the image I used is more evocative than the one he used.
This is Thom Hartmann’s Substack:
I have one quibble with Thom’s introduction:
Trump and his people, with all their strut and swagger, want you to think he’s the most powerful man in America and will continue in power indefinitely. Don’t believe it.
The reason he’s rushing so hard and fast to spread his secret, masked police across American cities while mobilizing the military against civilians is precisely because he’s so extraordinarily weak.
Of course Trump, being mortal, won’t remain in power indefinitely. I’m 81 and nobody knows who will die first. However, one of us will and I hope it’s him. This doesn’t mean I will live to see him dethroned, or whatever term will describe his loss of power. It also doesn’t mean that an authoritarian America without Trump will suffer a defeat like the Nazis did following D-Day.
I agree with Thom that Trump is working as fast as possible to instill fear. I do not see him as extraordinarily weak. He has some weaknesses. Many of them are in his psychopathology. The primary non-psychological weakness is that just more than half the population is against his turning the country into an authoritarian oligarchy. Measured against that is the awesome strength that he has his with his command of the Federales, his Gestapo, his SS, who so far are willing to act as his enforcers.
Here’s more Hartmann:
Trump, in fact, is pretty much unique among both modern and historic figures who rode elective office to power and then turned their nations into dictatorships. Nonewere as weak as Trump is today when they succeeded in consolidating enough power to eliminate their challengers and lock down the populace. All had a massively larger base.
He goes on to give a brief history lesson about Putin, Orbán, Hitler, Mussolini, as well as Fujimori , who succeeded in destroying democracy in Peru, and Bukele who did the same in El Salvador.
I don’t know what Thom Hartmann is really feeling when he concludes as follows:
So, take heart. The No Kings marches proved both Trump’s widespread unpopularity and the fearlessness of an American public echoing over two centuries of our nation standing up to tinpot despots and wannabe dictators.
We Americans have never tolerated a king or a dictator, and we’re not about to start now.
Is he as pessimistic as I am but trying to keep our spirits up?
I don’t know. I plan to ask him when we see him in a second planned get-together in his Portland studio. This will be in the Spring. We have this opportunity thanks to a are donation we made to Free Speech TV.
Addendum:
Hartmann also had this published in the subscription RawStory+:
He concluded with another optimistic note which, I am sure, is meant to be inspitational.
Democracy is not defended by hashtags. It’s defended by hands, millions of them, building, voting, organizing, and refusing to quit when the cameras are gone.
The No Kings Day marches were righteous and inspiring. But history will not remember the crowd: it will remember what the crowd built.
If we want a nation of citizens and not subjects, we must do the slow, steady, unglamorous work of taking back our republic, one precinct, one institution, and one election at a time.
Volunteer for your local Democratic Party and become a precinct committeeperson. Join Indivisible. Run for local office and participate with local pro-democracy organizations. Show up.
That is the revolution worth marching for.
Portland Media:
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