Photograph Source: Russian Presidential Executive Office – CC BY 4.0
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
—Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher.
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government, and which yet, governments have always been fond to invade. These are the rights of thinking and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
In less than two months, Donald Trump and his troglodytes have demonstrated their goals regarding a frontal attack on the federal government: slashing the government itself; ending regulations and threatening to close departments and agencies, particularly in the financial and environmental sectors; privatizing services; and censoring U.S. media for the first time in our history. Trump is pursuing his perceived enemies, and threatening democratic governance. At his rate of success, the U.S. style of governing will soon resemble the Soviet and Russian style that has given Russia the weak civil society that currently exists.
Trump has done great damage to the First Amendment of the Constitution that protects free speech and free press. In last month’s mugging of Volodymyr Zelensky, an Associated Press reporter was barred from the Oval Office, and was replaced by a correspondent from Russian state media. Brendan Carr, Trump’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has started or threatened investigations of ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank listed many of these attacks on the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”) in his column on March 9th.
There is a global dimension to Trump’s rampage as well in view of the support and encouragement of the damage that has been done by nationalist and authoritarian leaders of India, Turkey, Argentina, Hungary, and Slovakia. J.D. Vance has reached out to right-wing parties in East and West Europe, including the Nazi-style Alternative for Germany, which is pro-Russian and opposes immigration to Germany. Elon Musk has been even more active on the right-wing dais, traveling globally to Europe and the Middle East with 20 armed bodyguards. And then there is Steve Bannon, whose call for the “destruction of the administrative state” is meeting with the kind of “success” that erodes the credibility and influence of the United States.
A classic Soviet technique to hide its weakness was to stop publishing demographic and economic data in the period of the Cold War. Well, the Trump administration is conducting a similar policy, particularly with regard to important data from the CDC and other health institutions. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, a leading toady in the administration, is threatening a similar policy with regard to economic data that reveals weakness in the economy. Last week, Lutnick told Fox News that he planned to change the way the administration reports data on gross domestic product in order to remove the impact of government spending. There is an old Russian saying that captures such activity—“Don’t carry garbage outside of the hut.”
Trump’s Sovietization is abetted by American individuals and institutions that are following the Soviet and Russian playbook of being unwilling to challenge the malfeasance and illegalities in their own society over the years. There is another old Russian saying—“it’s the tallest grain that is the first to get cut down by the wind”—that captures America’s cowardly behavior today.
The front page of the New York Times on March 9 documented the craven attitudes that are now commonplace among corporation CEOs, university presidents, congressional representatives, and media titans. A classic example is the University of Virginia’s Board of Governors vote last week to dissolve UVA’s office of diversity, equity and inclusion, thus supporting Trump and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s efforts to remove DEI initiatives in the state and beyond. Universities should be leading the charge against Trump and Musk. Instead, they are caving in to protect federal grants. Corporate leaders are doing the same to avoid adverse rulings from the White House.
My wife Lyn Ekedahl, a former deputy inspector general at the Central Intelligence Agency, captured America’s societal retreat in a poem called “Stop the Kneel”:
When braced by a bully, th’advice is quite clear. Push back, never run, don’t succumb to your fear. Well, we now face a bully and what do we see?
Our societal “leaders” are bending their knees!
GOP leaders have made it quite clear
Their bully’s in charge. From his rule they won’t veer!
The billionaire tech bros moved fast—what the heck?
Flying to Florida for a quick genuflect!
A beloved institution, the Washington Post,
Seems in for the kneeling in spite of its boast
To protect our democracy by shining its light.
Now it’s slithering into the dark of the night.
No endorsement for President—for the Post, that’s a first!
Then fire the cartoonist for anti-Trump bursts.
Other media outlets are caving as well,
Settle suits with the Don, soften stories they tell.
Our great universities, home of free speech,
Are retreating in haste from the ethics they preach.
Our huge corporations now ditch D. E. I.
Who needs diversity? Now the Donald’s their guy!
As the big institutions are brought to Don’s heel,
As they bend, one by one, in a sickening kneel,
It’s up to the people, as it’s been in the past,
To stand up to the tyrant, to ensure he won’t last!
The post Trump’s Sovietization of the United States appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.