And Then the World Blew Up - by Mr. Fish

The billionaires, Christian fascists, grifters, psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants who have seized control of Congress, the White House and the courts, are cannibalizing the machinery of state. These self-inflicted wounds, characteristic of all late empires, will cripple and destroy the tentacles of power. And then, like a house of cards, the empire will collapse.

Blinded by hubris, unable to fathom the empire’s diminishing power, the mandarins in the Trump administration have retreated into a fantasy world where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. They sputter incoherent absurdities while they usurp the Constitution and replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with threats and loyalty oaths. Agencies and departments, created and funded by acts of Congress, are going up in smoke.

They are removing government reports and data on climate change and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement,. They are pulling out of the World Health Organization. They are sanctioning officials who work at the International Criminal Court — which issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes in Gaza. They suggested Canada become the 51st state. They have formed a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.” They call for the annexation of Greenland and the seizure of the Panama Canal. They propose the construction of luxury resorts on the coast of a depopulated Gaza under U.S. control which, if it takes place, would bring down the Arab regimes propped up by the U.S.

The rulers of all late empires, including the Roman emperors Caligula and Nero or Charles I, the last Habsburg monarch, are as incoherent as the Mad Hatter, uttering nonsensical remarks, posing unanswerable riddles and reciting word salads of inanities. They, like Donald Trump, are a reflection of the moral, intellectual and physical rot that plague a diseased society.

I spent two years researching and writing about the warped ideologues of those who have now seized power in my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” Read it while you still can. Seriously.

These Christian fascists, who define the core ideology of the Trump administration, are unapologetic about their hatred for pluralistic, secular democracies. They seek, as they exhaustively detail in numerous “Christian” books and documents such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, to deform the judiciary and legislative branches of government, along with the media and academia, into appendages to a “Christianized” state led by a divinely anointed leader. They openly admire Nazi apologists such as Rousas John Rushdoony, a supporter of eugenics who argues that education and social welfare should be handed over to the churches and Biblical law must replace the secular legal code, and Nazi party theorists such as Carl Schmitt. They are avowed racists, misogynists and homophobes. They embrace bizarre conspiracy theories from the white replacement theory to a shadowy monster they call “the woke.” Suffice it to say, they are not grounded in a reality based universe.

Christian fascists come out of a theocratic sect called Dominionism. This sect teaches that American Christians have been mandated to make America a Christian state and an agent of God. Political and intellectual opponents of this militant Biblicalism are condemned as agents of Satan.

“Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the 10 Commandments form the basis of our legal system, creationism and ‘Christian values’ form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all,” I noted in my book. “Labor unions, civil-rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship. Aside from its proselytizing mandate, the federal government will be reduced to the protection of property rights and ‘homeland’ security.”

The Christian fascists and their billionaire funders, I noted, “speak in terms and phrases that are familiar and comforting to most Americans, but they no longer use words to mean what they meant in the past.” They commit logocide, killing old definitions and replacing them with new ones. Words — including truth, wisdom, death, liberty, life and lo...