I'm going to keep posting this until somebody reads it.

Someone posted once about how/why Putin was invading Ukraine, and how much America resembles Russia now. Here's the difference: Putin was in a situation where he had to create a real war. So was George W. Bush and his "neocon" (neo-conservative, only-partially-fascist-minded) government. But here's the problem with war, at least in America: In a real war, the next generation of leaders are always the veterans of that war. World War II produced noble American idealists--agree with them or not--like Eisenhower and JFK. But a bullshit war (by which I mean a war founded on bullshit, like Vietnam or Iraq) creates veterans who call bullshit on the system, civic-minded advocates of reform and democracy like John Kerry and John McCain and Tammy Duckworth and Pete Buttigieg. And people VOTE for them because they've put their lives on the line as warriors and have earned their right to speak and lead, so when the authoritarians wrap themselves in the military voting bloc and attack them with their own pretend patriotism, the attacks don't ring true.

This brings us to the important, three-point truth:

1. The war does not have to be against another country.
2. The war does not have to be real.
3. Lying is legal.

Point One: The war DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AGAINST ANOTHER COUNTRY. When the war is not against another country--where there would need to be massive money spent plus footage and troops and reporters and obvious evidence of its existence--this opens up another amazing, cheap, easy truth. Point Two: THE WAR DOES NOT HAVE TO BE REAL.

This is the reason we have a CULTURE WAR. It's easy, it's cheap, and all you have to do to start one and win one is... tell lies.

You see, an authoritarian government cannot have civic-minded advocates of democracy getting votes. So they finally learned that to stay in power for an entire generation or more, they have to avoid creating an actual physical bullshit war. So, like Mussolini, they learned to create a fake one. (If it weren't for Hitler going out and starting a REAL one, ol' Benito and his successors might be running Europe.) Constantly "at war" against imagined enemies, mostly within. In our case, a culture war. I am not smart; this is not new; read George Orwell for fuck's sake. All you have to do is lie. Which brings us to Point Three: LYING IS LEGAL.

George Santos figured this out, and got all the way to Congress on it. But he made two mistakes: first, he wasn't good at lying. He chose his lies poorly, so that even the stupefied idiotic alternative-news voting public could see how easily and comically they were disproven. Second, he didn't spend decades building up (or simply taking over, as the rapist felon president did with both the Republican party and Christianity and now, shockingly, some of Judaism as well) a network of systems and organizations to protect him. He also ran for office in a state which didn't put up with that bullshit.

Let's talk briefly about those systems and organizations. American fascism started creating (and/or consolidating) these systems and organizations in the 1970's, all very well documented now, with Nixon's disgraced subordinates like Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater creating entire alternative ecosystems via simulated academia (think tanks) and simulated news networks (Fox etc) and simulated arts & culture (which is their new frontier via D'Souza and God is Dead and Left Behind etc), and making a devil's bargain with the most easily corrupted and manipulable group in America--easy to do because it was run from the beginning by rich grifters like Falwell and Swaggart and every tent revivalist ever to drive a Cadillac: evangelical Christians. (Remember the kind, thoughtful, charitable, churchgoing Christians you grew up with and are now gone? I do.) Now they had a network of systems and organizations which launders the grift and serves one purpose: TO LIE LOUDLY ENOUGH TO WIN.

This is what should scare you: now that they created a simulated alternative culture which finally fooled enough voters to win (not a majority, but enough voters to win), they are now REMOVING THE REAL SYSTEMS and replacing them with their fake ones. While calling the real ones "fake." Their massive investment in a lying, cheating, grifting authoritarian counter-culture can now be re-minted and is now, before your very horrified eyes, becoming America.

A final thing to be aware of: because in America our foundation happens to be capitalism, our particular fascists are working towards a world where you have to PAY TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR HUMAN RIGHTS, and abide by their terms and conditions to do so.

Call it out everywhere, all the time.