Not hyperbole. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (actual name) is not only the biggest single-point upward transfer of wealth upward in US history. It won’t only plunge millions more people into abject misery (a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid alone). It marks a decisive fracture in any remaining check on Trump’s ability to rule by fiat, with a massively expanded network of ultra-loyal uniformed thugs and concentration camps. The Democrats are waiting for the mid-terms, because they are too fucking stupid to realize that by then mere elections will no longer deliver any check whatsoever on Trump’s consolidated executive power. There are no checks and balances left. None. The courts won’t challenge him. He’s taken control of Congress, the Republican members of which are cowardly amoral marionettes, who drink down Trump’s Caligula-like indignities like yummy drafts of shit (is that sagging, sweaty, wrinkled, white ass tasty, Republicans?).
I was holding out hope that at least a big enough handful of Republican elected officials would buck when faced with (a) the budget-busting cost of Trump’s Reich (you assholes never meant a word you said about small government) and (b) the utter contempt he has shown for the US Constitution (you never meant what you said about that either). Not the case. Five Republicans voted against. The rest are either chickenshit motherfuckers or they’re fully on board with the cruelty and authoritarianism of the Sack-of-Shit-in-Chief. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Most of Congress gave a standing ovation to a man who was committing genocide in front of the world. It’s a government ripe for takeover, the government of a society that’s rotted from the head.
$150 billion in domestic police state outlays. He’s building a Gestapo, led by his loyalists, with the budget of the fucking Marine Corps. His domestic detention camps have a budget bigger than that of all Federal Prisons combined. 10,000 new ICE agents, hired from a ready population of cut-throat, Trump-loyal sadists and bullies (who will get job security, good pay, and health care for brutalizing others). Don’t be surprised when the Field Offices are run by pardoned January 6th rioters.
A US Senator being roughed up by uniformed thugs at Botox ICE Barbie Kristy Noem’s presser was a canary in the mine. Nationalize the California National Guard. No fucking consequences. Violate Posse Comitatus by sending active duty military to occupy a US city. No fucking consequences. (I think Jeffries and Schumer sent a strongly worded letter.) Broadcast your cruelty and disdain for due process by calling a fetid new detention camp “Alligator Alcatraz,” which will operate at a cost of $450 million a year. No fucking consequences. He’s already made clear that he has no intention of limiting himself to the undocumented. He’s gone after pro-Palestinian protesters. He’s threatened to arrest and deport the incoming Mayor of New York City. In Los Angeles, ICE was snatching citizens who just happened to be brown. No fucking consequences. No Democratic pushback (n fact, they’ve cheerled more draconian immigration actions). No blockage from the courts . . . and now the Supreme Court has strengthened his dictatorial power by saying lower courts cannot rule against Trump on his clearly unconstitutional executive order to end birthright citizenship.
He’s already purged the entire security establishment and manned it with his people, whose self-serving venality, like his, is matched only by their sadism.
Now he has the money to integrate all federal agencies for the sole purpose of citizen surveillance. The $170.7 billion added to “immigration enforcement” will be used against anyone who “interferes” with or refuses to cooperate with ICE thuggery (including churches and municipal cops). Anyone who believes that he’s drawn a boundary around the undocumented is not paying attention. He’s going as far as he possibly can as fast as he can . . . and right now no one is standing in his way.
There is now no organized opposition that knows how to do anything except stage hit-and-run demonstrations. When he tightens the screws, and suddenly people are seeing their neighbors dragged off by tattooed knuckledraggers, the first people to push back psychically will be adventurist fools like the Black Block, which will give him all the excuse he needs to declare serial states of emergency, and then we become the United Stats of Exception. Mark my words.
What can sober and serious people do?
My last word. First and foremost, get off social media to organize. If there’s to be a resistance that means anything, it will be lo-tech/no-tech. Talk with other sober and serious people, face to face. Not narrow ideological cohorts! Not adventurists! Task-oriented popular fronts only. Learn non-technical tradecraft (and research it through VPNs and Tor browsers). You may someday have to rescue your neighbors and family members. That’s all I have to say about that, except I am not proposing any violent or illegal action. I’m saying practical conversations needed to begin yesterday.
