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Politics as Religion

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Ted Rall
The first quarter of this century in the United States saw the rise and triumph of “team politics,” in which voters view the Democratic and Republican parties less as representatives of an ideology or set of policies than as opposing teams defined by culture, style and aesthetics. Democrats follow TikTok or Threads, shop at Trader Joe’s, drive Volvos, support their children when they come out as gay and live in big cities; they vote Democratic whether the candidate is a pro-Gaza progressive like AOC or a Zionist corporatist like Josh Shapiro. Republicans display American flags, wear heavy eyeliner, shop at Wal-Mart, follow X and stay up late worrying about transwomen in sports; they vote Republican whether the candidate is a libertarian like Rand Paul or an interventionist like Lindsey Graham. Voters increasingly view members of the opposing party not just as people with different ideas, but as a direct threat to the country. Reduced engagement across the party divide makes…
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America Is Fascist

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Ted Rall
It happened here. The United States is officially a fascist nation. Leftists, in the 1960s and 1970s, loved to throw around the F word. Johnson was fascist, Nixon was fascist, Amerikkka was fascist, the cops were fascist. As a history student and the son of a woman who lost her childhood to the objectively fascist collaborationist government of Nazi-occupied France, I could not ignore the chasm between the systemic racism and authoritarian tendencies of the police in this country and the goose-stepping militaristic mania of Fascist Italy and Hitler’s Germany. As I passed into adulthood and middle age, however, the United States kept moving Right—under presidencies of both political parties. As power increasingly concentrated in the clutches of the executive branch, the Pentagon launched ever more wars of choice with fewer attempts at justification and the most extreme dystopian nightmares morphed into banal reality, liberalism and leftism became distant memories. Right-wing extremism became normalized in culture, then in the press,…
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What If Trump Cancels the Elections?

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Ted Rall
I could be wrong. I hope I am. When it comes to political predictions, my pattern recognition skills usually win. I predicted America’s defeat in Afghanistan, its failure to find WMDs in Iraq, how Trump would drive Americans crazy, and both of Trump’s wins, all long before anyone else. There was, however, my mistaken belief that Bernie would be the 2016 Democratic nominee. (I foolishly failed to account for DNC cheating.) Here’s a prediction: If he’s still alive and in power, Trump will try to cancel the 2028 presidential election, and also the 2026 midterms. (I’m less certain about the midterms.) My thinking goes like this. Trump has nearly three dozen felony convictions hanging over his head. Although he may never be sentenced and imprisoned for the Stormy Daniels hush-money charges, the reason that he hasn’t been held to legal account for other crimes past and present is that he is a sitting president. New charges could theoretically involve bribery,…
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A Funny Thing Happened to John Kiriakou

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Ted Rall
John Kiriakou wasn’t exactly down and out. But he was struggling. Not only was John broke, he was drowning in legal fees he owed to the lawyers who’d defended him when the federal government came after him. Despite an impressive resume, whose entries included Arabic fluency, a storied CIA career and authoring bestselling books, he couldn’t find a decent job. He wound up on food stamps. Whether the hitch was his age (61) or being blacklisted by U.S. government, who could say? About those last three items: under different circumstances, in a fairer country during a better time, John would have been considered a hero. To those who knew the truth, that’s exactly what he was. John Kiriakou was the whistleblower who exposed the CIA’s Bush-era torture program, infamous for waterboarding and other atrocities. Rather than the medal and a ticker-tape parade he deserved, the government sent him to federal prison for nearly two years—for the crime of telling a…
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A Message from President Trump to the People of France, June 6, 1944

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Ted Rall
Hello, Occupied France, from your Favorite Country, America! Happy 1944 or, as the late, great Hannibal Lecter put it, Steak au Poivre! It’s me, YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT, DONALD TRUMP! Good news, Frog People. No one ever thought anything like this could ever be thought of, much less done except by me, your favorite President, so I’m doing it: I’m bringing MY ARMY to come LIBERATE YOU from the worst, evil people, Germany (except for my father’s family)! Not that you’re grateful for everything America did for the radical Left lunatic Lafayette during your “French Revolution,” am I right? One of our great generals, Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower—some people say he’s better than Caesar AND Cicero—will soon be arriving in Normandy, which we have renamed after the great city of Omaha in Nebraska because who can spell “Normandy,” with thousands of soldiers and big strong ships and the HUGEST BIGGEST GUNS EVER. You’re welcome!!! MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN! And welcome us…
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Voter ID: Political Suicide for Republicans

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Ted Rall
It’s common sense, Republicans say. You have to show ID to buy a beer, board a plane, or land a job as a snow shoveler. Why not require proof of identity from those who seek to exercise our most sacred civic right, casting a vote? According to the polls, the GOP has won the argument. Most Americans favor a Voter ID law. What Republicans are currently pressing for, the SAVE Act, however, is not a Voter ID law, a requirement that registered voters prove who they are when they go to the polls. SAVE is a Prove You’re a Citizen law. Why is the GOP pushing SAVE? Republican voters will be hit hardest. Clearly, neither President Trump nor the Republican Party knows what’s good for them. A Voter ID law—something most states, especially red ones currently have—passes the common-sense test for most Americans because it requires a form of identity nine out of ten people have, or can obtain fairly…
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Trump Has Good Reasons to Cancel the Midterms

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Ted Rall
Will there be another election? Americans have asked that question before, and when they did, the reassuring answer has always landed on a variant of “why wouldn’t there be?” Even in 1864, in the throes of the Civil War, Lincoln submitted to a challenge from a long-forgotten Democrat, General George McClellan, albeit in a deeply flawed campaign in a rump Union where troops faced pressure to vote Republican. There have been hiccups in the electoral road since then—worries about Islamist terror attacks in 2004 after 9/11, logistical concerns during the pandemic, New York’s 2001 mayoral primary in which a delay denied a Democrat a likely victory—but fear of a canceled election is at a fever pitch not seen in living memory. 60% of respondents to the Feb. 9-12 Yahoo/YouGov poll believe President Trump is “not likely to accept” a scenario in which Democrats “win enough seats in November to take control of the U.S. House or U.S. Senate.” How far might…
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How To Save Newspapers

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Ted Rall
Ten years ago, the shuttering of The Tampa Tribune shocked Media World. Last month, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette disappeared, turning western Pennsylvania into a news desert. Now The Washington Post is entering a death spiral. Hell, D.C. never got over the Washington Star. We remember what we lost recently, not what we lost in total. When Jeff Bezos bought the Post in 2013 (with promises not to do what I’m about to describe), his newsroom employed 2,500 people. Last week, there were 800. Thanks to Bezos, they’re down to 500. The print newspaper model that drives American journalism has been in crisis all my life. I was born in 1963, the year that daily newspaper circulation peaked. It’s been all decline ever since—first due to television, then corporatization, and competition from the now-defunct alternative weeklies, bean counters’ obsession with short-term profits over long-term investment, and now the Internet. This is a problem, partly because “democracy dies in darkness,” and also because…
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“Mad Max” Anarchy Is Safer Than Trump’s Terror State

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Ted Rall
Many people assume that Germany instantly transitioned from representative democracy to totalitarianism following the ascension of Adolf Hitler to chancellor on January 30, 1933. Actually, the Weimar Republic had already been reeling from the global Great Depression, unpopular austerity measures and overreliance on emergency decrees that restricted civil rights. Throughout the 1930s until the invasion of Poland formally marked the start of World War II, the Nazi leadership had to tolerate—less so as time passed and they consolidated power—the German deep state: conservative economists, a military general staff dominated by Prussian aristocrats whom the former Austrian corporal couldn’t stand yet couldn’t do without, the civil service lifers who kept the bureaucracy functioning, and the legacy German judiciary and its overlapping state and national courts presided over by judges beholden mostly to laws passed before the fascist seizure of power. The 1934 Enabling Act turned the Reichstag into a rubber-stamp parliamentary validation for anything the Führer State proposed. Even so, during…
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Never Mind the Democrats. Get Organized.

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Ted Rall
As a leftist, I’m heartened by the reactions of the citizens of Minneapolis and its neighboring municipalities to ICE’s assault against their non-citizen neighbors. The killing of Renee Good makes the risk of confronting illiterate armed paramilitaries hopped up on aggression-fueling steroids brutally clear. Plus, this is Minnesota in January. Mixing it up with government goons in the tundra isn’t a weekend walk in the park, or a performative, city-licensed, thrice-yearly “No Kings” stroll down Fifth Avenue. I was similarly pleased by previous spasms of protest: Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, March for Our Lives, Ferguson, Women’s Marches, the Battle of Seattle. America has leftists. Leftists get angry. Leftists show up. This is not, at least totally, a conservative country. You wouldn’t know that from our news media. I’m still waiting to see an on-air discussion about a foreign policy crisis in which a guest suggests it’s not our business and that we shouldn’t get involved. Peaceful protests and…
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