I’ve been trying to reconcile the “No Kings” march with what came afterwards: the construction of Alligator Alcatraz, the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, and the Supreme Court’s decision okaying rapid deportation to third world countries.

  In other words, six million taking to the streets to protest the fascist takeover of America not only failed to stop it, it actually accelerated it by allowing the fascists to crow: “Is that all you got?” (Well, there was a sense that what we were doing might be the start of what would be needed to take our country back.)

The fig leaf that these detention centers and third world concentration camps  are only for the most dangerous immigrant criminals is belied by the fact that we already have more than enough prisons to house them.

  “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” That was Orwell writing for today back in the 40’s. Believing that expressing our peaceful opposition to this regime has any meaning or chance of success is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance. That gang is laughing all the way to the next set of cages in the Everglades Gulag.

  Because here is what else Orwell  wrote in 1984:

  “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

  We’re not getting past this. The coup has happened and it’s been overwhelmingly successful. The fig leaf that these detention centers and third world concentration camps  are only for the most dangerous immigrant criminals is belied by the fact that we already have more than enough prisons to house them. Then why tout these with such vigor, pride and triumph?

  “After Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor on January 30 1933, the National Socialists used an array of terror measures to establish a dictatorship in the German Reich. The persecution and elimination of all political opposition plays a pivotal role. Concentration camps are opened across the Reich to facilitate the mass imprisonment of political opponents. The Dachau concentration camp is one of these early sites. On March 22 1933, the first prisoner transports arrive at the camp set up on the grounds of a disused gunpowder and munitions factory.” (Source: KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau)

   So, no, I did not participate in the Fourth of July’s show of “patriotism” and flagwaving. I couldn’t balance the cognitive dissonance of it, knowing the regime will embrace the pageantry as its own. I could not be part of this America’s version of a Nuremberg Rally.