[Note: This series will focus entirely on combatting fascism in America and around the world with my only weapon, words. (I’m not an NRA member!) It’s not antifa per se; it’s pro democracy. If you recognize words blasting your political preferences here, you’re part of the problem! To the rest of you, don’t worry about me. The fascist plutocracy of the 0.1% doesn’t do their own dirty work; and their toadies who do, don’t read very much, like their lord and savior, Donald J. Trump. So I doubt these essays will even hurt my book sales, mostly because that same plutocracy has already determined they will be low!]

By unfairly blocking Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS), Mitch McConnell aka Moscow Mitch aka Merkle the Turtle aka The Grim Reaper began turning US courts into fascist servants of the plutocracy. Wannabe fuehrer Trump eventually named three hard-right fascists, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, to SCOTUS, tilting the court far to the right and endangering American democracy for many years to come.

Those three fascist judges were just frosting on the cake, though. McConnell also succeeded in stacking lower federal courts with these orcs. The whole federal judiciary now has a fascist tilt that makes courts the places where progressive policies go to die. This has always been a wet dream of the American plutocrats. Elected officials are transitory; federal judges are there for life, or until they retire or are so ill they can’t put on those spiffy black robes. The plutocracy knew this flaw existed in US government, and. like the Senate and the Electoral College, they knew how to exploit it. They just needed willing lackeys like Moscow Mitch and Il Duce (Trump) to do their dirty work for them, the first to approve them in the fascist Senate and the second to nominate them.

Along with the Senate and the Electoral college, SCOTUS and that autocratic tilt now provides three solid legs to support fascism in America. No matter what Biden, Schumer, or Pelosi do, the fascist plutocracy can continue to demolish American democracy. But they’ll do so at their own peril! Their devious machinations can’t go on forever. Some are beginning to realize that.

Why not? Remember the crowds dancing in the street in glee when Trump lost big time and Biden won? I was in the hospital at the time. Cheers filled the rooms, wards, and corridors too. Outside there were cheers and car parades with horns blaring You see, the fascist plutocracy is a minority—that 0.1% out to dominate American democracy represents very few fascists. And their toadies who implement their cruel and insidious plans find that a fascist plutocracy in America appeals to fewer and fewer Americans. Plutocrats and fascists are an endangered species, and history is against their ilk. Demographics will vanquish them in the end, one way or the other.

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Keeping with this Monday’s weather theme, let me discuss some consequences of global warming I’ve been worried about for a while, ever since I pounded stakes and did other menial and brain-numbing chores for a civil engineer in the San Joaquin Valley in California. Arriving home to tank up on water and take salt pills, my thoughts would start this way: It wouldn’t take much drought to turn my agricultural home turf into a barren no-man’s land.

While we tend to focus on extreme weather events as indicators of climate change and global warming, another related enemy for human civilization is water shortages. We’re finally seeing them mentioned more in relation to apocalyptic news about wildfires and forest fires—drought caused by global warming makes those fires all the more deadly because it’s hard to combat them with diminishing levels in lakes and reservoirs.

Burns, denuded hillsides, and water shortages play important roles in Book One of “The Last Humans” series. Because the primary “villain” in this first novel is a bio-engineered virus that travels around the world on prevailing winds even though the attack was aimed at the US West Coast, I don’t think the book, or the series, for that matter, has had as many readers as it might have had. Who wants to read about a fictional worldwide pandemic when we’re trying to survive a real one?!

Yet this novel represents much more than the tale about the survivors of a pandemic’s aftermath. This post-apocalyptic story (the second book is more a standard thriller) is more focused on global warming and water shortages, not the viral pandemic. The burn scars and dry conditions in Penny Castro’s apocalyptic landscape exist even before that virus turns Penny into a lonely survivor. And steps also have already been taken to alleviate the water shortage before the biowarfare attack: In the novel, offshore desalination platforms once pumped fresh water to thirsty Californians and crops. This technology is well-known today and constantly improved upon (see the notes at the end of the novel). More will be needed in the future.

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You have to wonder why Rupert Murdoch wants his own Fox weather channel. The only reason I can think of is that he’d like to promote the fascist view of climate change using anti-global warming rants masquerading as weather news. Or maybe they’ll be talking about a hurricane and blame Biden and the Dems?

One thing I long ago learned about the Murdoch family: You can’t trust them! They’re dishonest about the news, far beyond a bias (they even managed to piss off Trump—go figure!). Their commentators are scurrilous fascist mouthpieces who cater to the plutocracy (Murdoch is one, of course, who plagues both the UK and the US) and take 1984‘s double-speak and Goebbels’s propaganda lessons to an insidious level. I wonder who’ll be the Sean Hannity of their new weather channel.

Lies about global warming and climate change abound. We don’t need more of them. Fox, Fox Business News, etc. will now be joined by a weather channel of lies, yet another Murdoch media outlet I’ll need to avoid, except for the occasional dip now and then into that cesspool of fascist reporting to make me laugh at its absurdity and wonder if it’ll kill me. I don’t watch Fox now, and I won’t watch their damn weather channel.

If you watch Fox anything any more than that, and especially if you watch nothing else, you’re part of the problem. You’re at least a sucker for fascist propaganda, conspiracy theories, and nasty anti-democratic pundits’ rants, all feeding on moronic viewers like you (with Trump as the lead moron). Democracy can’t function without intelligent participants, but you’re obviously okay with turning ours into a brain-dead fascist state at the service of plutocrats.

Of course, Murdoch is one of the 0.1% that has more wealth than the 90% of the rest of us. He’s a visible plutocrat; most aren’t, making them all the more dangerous. (Some even hide behind a bit of philanthropy, like Koch for Lincoln Center and PBS.) Perhaps the invisible ones are more a danger to democracy? But there they are, smiling like evil, cunning Cheshire cats, contributing the dark money that hastens our descent into a fascist hell designed to their specs. Money and power corrupt, but they all see money as guaranteeing their power, so they want more power to make more money, no matter how they steal it from us.

They backed Trump. He’s such a malleable moron they could pull his puppet strings at will. But, as head lemming, they could keep their hands clean as he did their chore of leading the rest of the marching morons right over the cliff for the plutocrats. You can bet that Murdoch, his familym, and the other plutocrats want Trump back in 2024 so they can finish destroying American democracy.

They say our country is divided. That’s a nice word for what’s going on! And that division line, that border between sanity and insanity, passes right through Fox Media. Or maybe it’s in the center of the insanity? There’s a minority of marching morons across the US who watch Fox, and there’s a majority that’s intelligent enough to boycott Fox. Needless to say, I’m in the last group, and I’ll be boycotting Murdoch’s weather channel. Does anyone sell a Fox filter? Or do the British still have Fox hounds?

***

Comments are welcome!

“Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” I put ex-USN Master-at-Arms Mary Jo through some tight situations in this trilogy, all because of the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). In Muddlin’ Through, she’s falsely convicted of killing her sister and brother-in-law, she escapes, and battles the secret US group that wants her to get the MECHs back from the Russians. In Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, she moves from the East Coast to the West to start a new life as security chief for a computer games company, only to have CIA and Russian agents hassle her for the MECHs’ location and a psycho stalk her. In Goin’ the Extra Mile, she has to go to Beijing because the Chinese kidnapped her family to force her to tell them where the MECHs are. All three novels should get readers’ hearts pounding. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[Note: This series will focus entirely on combatting fascism in America and around the world with my only weapon, words. (I’m not an NRA member!) It’s not antifa per se; it’s pro democracy. If you recognize words blasting your political preferences here, you’re part of the problem! To the rest of you, don’t worry about me. The fascist plutocracy of the 0.1% doesn’t do their own dirty work; and their toadies who do, don’t read very much, like their lord and savior, Donald J. Trump. So I doubt these essays will even hurt my book sales, mostly because that same plutocracy has already determined they will be low!]

Trump didn’t quite get to take over America…at least not yet. He was a wannabe plutocrat (his wealth represents chump change for most of the plutocratic 0.1% in America) who pretended to be against plutocracy in order to appeal to people he himself considered losers, and he now has a stranglehold on the Good Ole Piranhas, whether the plutocrats and his fanatical followers comprising the marching morons want it or not. Most Piranhas now think they must kiss the wannabe fuehrer’s butt if they are going to win reelection. (It’s refreshing to see, though, that true conservatives like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have reelection war chests that are larger than their fascist 2022 opponents.)

Trump came very close to being the new Hitler of the 21^st century, though. That January 6^th event at the US Capitol was an insurrection where that right-wing fascist mob was more than willing to stage a coup. Let’s call it Crystal Day in lieu of Kristallnacht, though, because Trump, the loser that he is, couldn’t quite rise to Hitler’s level—”the Nazis did some good things,” he said in 2018—but he didn’t pull off what Hitler did. Perhaps if he and his family celebrating that violence had marched ahead with their long guns (big-game guns in the case of Donald Jr.) and led that mob, the putsch would have succeeded. Perhaps if Pence hadn’t insisted on turning over the presidency to Biden, it would have succeeded. And perhaps if the Pentagon had been more inclined to participate in a coup, it would have succeeded.

The generals in the Pentagon were worried, though. Some Trump toadies (maybe even Trump himself put out the word?) delayed sending the National Guard in to quell the violence and back up the overwhelmed Capitol Police. But the generals were afraid the wannabe fuehrer would ask them to ensure the coup. You see, most coups fail if the military doesn’t support them. (In many countries, the military creates the coup.) Hitler had most of the German military behind him, for example, at least his military hierarchy dominated by ultra-right-wing types (Prussia was only one letter away from Russia, and the fascists took over in Russia even before, the only difference with the Nazis being that Lenin, Stalin, et al cloaked their fascism in a now debunked ideology—at first and for much of World War II, the European battles were  clashes between two fascists, Hitler and Stalin). With a bellicose and aristocratic tradition and sour grapes from losing WWI and suffering through the Great Depression, Germany’s military was bent on payback and conquest. European leaders up to that time often took on military trappings too—kings and emperors wore uniforms decorated with military medals and ribbons (that still occurs today, like in England).

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It’s always amusing when certain authors’ antics prove how weird members of our group can be. I suppose I shouldn’t find those antics strange; after all, we work at our craft alone. This solitary confinement could make anyone become a weird recluse, conspiracy theorist, or paranoid suffering from agoraphobia. I have to leave the house and observe human beings once and a while to recalibrate at times (something that was less likely at the height of the Covid pandemic, of course). But I’d be incorrect to judge typical human behavior by observing how authors behave! That’s often stranger than fiction, considering what occurs in reality.

My first example is a serious one: Did Andrew Cuomo abuse his position to land that juicy book contract? His critics claim that. If aides gathered data and information about Covid and its management to put in his book, shouldn’t they be considered coauthors? That might satisfy those attacking his book, but it’s unlikely. And I think his alleged sin is more akin to what any celeb does by “authoring” a book using a ghostwriter without giving that person credit. Happens all the time. But maybe being governor of the great state of New York makes those antics worse?

On a lighter (and sexier?) note, consider the antics of author E. L. James and her “Fifty Shades” brand. Wine, lingerie, floggers, vibrators, handcuffs, etc. are being sold by Ms. James with her “Fifty Shades’ trademark. And here I thought even selling T-shirts at a book event was tacky!

Another author who’s displayed some interesting antics is James Patterson. His writing isn’t  nearly as sexy as Ms. James’s (although one can argue that both are formulaic), but this astute businessperson invented the literary assembly line that churns out novels for all age groups. He went beyond the frontier of authors’ antics by augmenting his stable of exploited coauthors to include old Bill Clinton! It would have been more interesting if that sexiest of all ex-presidents (Hillary might disagree) had teamed up with Ms. James to add some reality to her presentation of the man’s view in her new trilogy. That way James could avoid any charges of cultural appropriation. Of course, Mr. Patterson would have then missed all those chats about Bill’s many affairs. (Did he take notes?)

To wind this up, please don’t ask what my antics are or my secret life is about. You really wouldn’t be interested. My antics don’t have the shock value of those above. The spice in my life is mostly obtained from reading…or from the occasional forage for Indian food; that’s what’s public (the private is none of your damn business). I just want to keep on being a reclusive author, writing my novels and laughing at the antics of some of my fellow authors. There’s plenty of the latter to help keep me entertained.

***

Comments are always welcome.

“The Last Humans”—a series about biowarfare and its consequences. In Book One, The Last Humans, Penny Castro, forensics diver for the LA County Sheriff’s Department, finds a body on a dive but a lethal pandemic when she surfaces. What follows is a struggle to survive, but she also finds love and hope. In Book Two, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, she and her new hubby are forcefully conscripted by a struggling US government to take revenge against the virus makers. The government wants the pair’s skills badly enough to kidnap their children. Both novels can be found wherever quality ebooks are sold. (But I don’t recommend Amazon, because they confused the two ebooks and won’t correct their error!)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

In other words, those fascist Good Ole Piranhas in certain states (fascist insurrectionists Cruz and Hawley and other fascists in Congress aren’t among them—they’ve already done their damage) are willing to destroy a 265-year-old democracy to morph it into an autocratic plutocracy, incorrectly proving Putin, Xi, and other demagogues correct, that democracy just doesn’t work. Their reasons should be clear: Il Duce (aka Trump), the plutocrat’s pawn and lemming-in-chief, led the GOP lemmings over the cliff and lost the House, Senate, and presidency in the 2020 election. What a loser!

The only way the current GOP can survive without resorting to fascist rule and destroying our democracy is to change their lazy, fascist ways and actually go out and convince voters they’re not completely incompetent asses and will implement policies that help the average American, not themselves or their uber-rich masters in America’s plutocracy. Demographics are against them, so they resort to voter suppression, an easy and ubiquitous fascist tool to employ because the Good Ole Piranhas now control far too many state legislatures and congressional districts (all those congressional districts are gerrymandered in their favor). In other words, their motto is: We’re winning the game, so let’s cheat some more on behalf of our plutocratic masters!

Making it easier to vote should be a bipartisan goal; that’s a sign of a healthy democracy. Voter suppression means our democracy is sick and spiraling down into the cesspool of fascism. As a recent Doonesbury cartoon strip recently suggested, the Good Ole Piranhas used to get by with claiming their suppression activities are to protect against voter fraud; many still claim this. When the majority of Americans concluded that was only sour grapes and bullshit, these fascists started using a bigger cover story: Trump’s Big Lie that he lost the 2020 election because it was rigged against him. Smellier bullshit! Of course, every change made in the voting laws is made more to keep Dems from voting than the members of the fascist party of America!

Smart citizens shouldn’t write this off as free speech in action. A country where anyone believes the Big Lie is no democracy at all. History has shown that autocrats are clever devils (in the US, these are the GOP’s autocratic masters—the GOP leaders are morons, with Trump having the worst IQ). Autocrats will create scapegoats and false causes to support their greedy quests for power. In the US today, they’re succeeding.

They’re in the minority, these fanatical fascists, and they hide under many invisibility cloaks—religion, conspiracies, grievances, and populism. They are a clear and present danger to American democracy and must be stopped…at all cost!

***

Comments are always welcome.

“The Last Humans”—a series about biowarfare and its consequences. In Book One, The Last Humans, Penny Castro, forensics diver for the LA County Sheriff’s Department, finds a body on a dive but a lethal pandemic when she surfaces. What follows is a struggle to survive, but she also finds love and hope. In Book Two, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, she and her new hubby are forcefully conscripted by a struggling US government to take revenge against the virus makers. The government wants the pair’s skills badly enough to kidnap their children. Both novels can be found wherever quality ebooks are sold. (But I don’t recommend Amazon, because they confused the two ebooks and won’t correct their error!)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[Note: This series will focus entirely on combatting fascism in America and around the world with my only weapon, words. (I’m not an NRA member!) It’s not antifa per se; it’s pro democracy. If you recognize words blasting your political preferences here, you’re part of the problem! To the rest of you, don’t worry about me. The fascist plutocracy of the 0.1% doesn’t do their own dirty work; and their toadies who do, don’t read very much, like their lord and savior, Donald J. Trump. So I doubt these essays will even hurt my book sales, mostly because that same plutocracy has already determined they will be low!]

We’re all familiar with the Senate’s support of the fascist 0.1%. Merkle the Turtle aka Moscow Mitch aka The Grim Reaper aka #LeaderMcConnell set out to halt most everything President Obama wanted to do for average Americans, and mostly succeeded. Remember the ACA barely squeaked through because Dems controlled Congress during the first two years, and Moscow Mitch has been attacking it ever since. Next, the Turtle had to live with the bad taste and heartburn from the rotten fish Il Duce aka Trump the Chump gave everyone except for the marching morons, those 40% of fanatical Trump voters from white right-wing bigots and racists to the white Christian crusaders (those two groups aren’t all that distinct, of course). In spite of the irrational and idiotic Il Duce, McConnell managed to further the agenda of America’s fascist plutocrats (probably because he thought of himself as one?). Now he’s returned to the do-nothing practice used during the Obama administration to make sure the majority of Americans have their hopes for relief dashed yet again.

In all this, the Turtle is more motivated to do the bidding of that fascist 0.1% than to attack any particular president. It’s the fascist plutocracy’s agenda, and he, along with many others in the Senate, are its willing accomplices. The fascists at the top pat their attack dogs on the head for being good Rottweilers; “Good boys! Here are some bones for being so faithful…and stupid.” With all this, the fascist plutocracy has made good use of the Senate, that congressional institution created by the Founding Fathers from day one to protect those aristocratic plutocrats of the day, many of them fascists before the term even existed, slavers who knew “all men are created equal” is empty hyperbole (like the pigs in Animal Farm, the rich and powerful have always considered themselves “more equal” than others). (James Madison, “the father of the Constitution,” worried a lot about this in later life.)

But the US House has been an anti-democratic institution too, belying that colonial intention of providing a balance against the US Senate being the plutocracy’s lap dog. Led by scurrilous speakers and other nefarious members throughout its history, with many coming from districts gerrymandered into fascist strongholds, Congress’s double whammy is a powerful tool of the fascist plutocracy to use on the majority of Americans.

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Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a famous British mathematician known for creating the “Turing machine” concept and using it to prove the “halting problem” for these machines was undecidable, the Gödel’s theorem of computer science. Because of a fairly recent movie, he justifiably is now considered a national and world hero for breaking the Enigma code by extending the deciphering capabilities of the “Polish bombe,” a mechanical technique used against the Nazi U-boats’ damaging offense launched against freighters crossing the Atlantic during World War II. Like Oscar Wilde and many others, he was treated terribly by the British, basically forced to commit suicide. (The Brits didn’t decriminalize homosexuality until 2008 when what is now known as “Turing’s law” was passed.)

Ever since Turing, and maybe even before, coding has always been good employment for mathematicians or other people with mathematical skills. Of course, here I mean coding to be encryption and decryption of messages, not designing iPhone and Android apps! The goal is always to create unbreakable codes, and these techniques are used by many people, not just spies and the military. There are simple codes your kids can use (for parents reading this post, I’ve taken pity on you and won’t mention specifics), and more complex ones that need large primes. Most of the latter could be broken by a quantum computers.

Turing is also considered the father of artificial intelligence (the machine algorithm that bears his name is considered a test for that). Sci-fi stories seem to care more about AI systems, especially those used to guide starships and give robots more human characteristics. (Asimov, however, was too early to consider either one!) Few authors care about quantum encryption/decryption, and “quantum computers” have almost become a cliche like “FTL drives,” with few worrying about the nuts and bolts involved.

Consequently, the real purpose of this post is to emphasized that my new Esther Brookstone novel, Leonardo and the Quantum Code, is only partially about quantum encryption/decryption and certainly not sci-fi. It’s a mystery/thriller novel, like the pervious novels in the series, where coding algorithms are inspired by Da Vinci’s work in an unknown notebook of his. (It’s estimated that there are 50+ such novels.) An old mathematician friend of Esther’s, Donald Townes, is working on these algorithms, and someone wants to steal his results. There’s a trio of villains, in fact: Russian spies, American spies, and a strange man named Vladimir Kalinin, a Russian ex-pat.

Turing is briefly mentioned in the book; he’s also mentioned in Death on the Danube for his gayness and the Brits’ crime. He’s a tragic character, but Townes is too, for his wife has just been murdered. He begins to turn his life around by the end of the book, though, unlike Turing. While I wanted to show scientists are human beings and can exhibit the whole spectrum of human behavior, I rewrote the novel so that he doesn’t suffer as much as Turing.

In fact, the novel is a bit light-hearted at times, in keeping with the title. Saucy Esther, of course, helps keep it from taking itself too seriously, unlike Palettes, Patriots, and Prats, which is mostly serious. The theme of cyber security, is deadly serious, which is enough.

I’ve tried to strike a good balance between Moliere and Le Carre. The coppers aren’t quite “Keystone Cops”; and the spy-vs-spy antics aren’t as tongue-in-cheek as Mad Magazine’s or as noir as Le Carre’s Little Drummer Girl. The mystery-novel aspects aren’t as fluffy as a cozy’s or serious as a psychological thriller either.

I’m proud of this novel. It just might be my best so far. Above all, I think I managed to write another entertaining and educational book in the series. You’ll have to read it to see if you agree.

***

Comments are always welcome.

“Esther Brookstone Art Detective.” Esther takes you around merry olde England, Europe, the Middle East, and South America in her five-book series. Esther’s main characteristic is becoming obsessed with righting wrongs, from searching for a missing Rembrandt in the first book to risking her life to help a friend in the last. And this saucy ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard inspector acts on those obsessions! Her novels can be found wherever quality ebooks are sold. (The last two are not on Amazon, though.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

How stupid can people be? Obviously, from all that’s going on, damn stupid! Stupid enough that they prefer to commit suicide and take others with them rather than use a thoroughly tested and tried solution to a public health emergency, one that is extremely lethal. We hear and read about the rationalizations for this stupid behavior akin to lemmings intent on suicide, following their brethren over the cliff. The lemmings are actually smarter; they’re driven by instinct. The anti-vaxers are just marching morons who swallow political and social misinformation. Let’s analyze some of their rationalizations.

The vaccines don’t yet have FDA approval. The FDA made a huge mistake with that new Alzheimer’s drug, so that approval might not mean that much in the grand scheme of things. But there is approval for all three vaccines available in the US as an urgent response to a deadly pandemic. In other words, while the lack of full approval might sound like a good rationalization, it’s not! Why is it so hard to understand that we are in a public health emergency in this country and around the world? You only need to consider how many people in the US and worldwide have died from Covid-19 to realize how dire the situation is…unless you have the IQ of pond scum!

Sure, we have many distractions, but those should blow past intelligent people who are smart enough to stay focused on this public health emergency. For example, there’s “Ayn” Rand Paul, who seems to be competing for the “biggest ass in Congress” award (he has a lot of competition!). He basically called Dr. Fauci a liar and communist and accused him of collaborating with the Chinese government’s lab in Wuhan. Even if true—that is, the unproven theory that the virus escaped from that lab—someone needs to put a gag on this idiot! This SOB isn’t an epidemiologist; he’s a moronic and radical libertarian who’s just trying to make political points, just another example of how the pandemic has become politicized.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. is yet another example, but at least he’s pretending to offer advice about taking the vaccine, not trying to make political points amongst Trump’s fanatic followers. (Or is he?) He’s against every vaccine! If he’d had his way, this stupid ass would have continued the smallpox and polio epidemics. (Of course, he might have been stinking up diapers back then, instead of stinking up public health now.)  Unfortunately, stupid people commiserate and follow his moronic advice.

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[Note: This series will focus entirely on combatting fascism in America and around the world with my only weapon, words. (I’m not an NRA member.) It’s not anti-fa in the sense of that extreme left group; it’s pro democracy. If you consider that my words don’t agree with your political preferences here, you’re part of the problem! To the rest of you, don’t worry about me. The fascist plutocracy of the 0.1% doesn’t do their own dirty work; and their toadies who do, don’t read very much, like their lord and savior, Donald J. Trump. So I doubt these essays will even hurt my book sales, mostly because that same plutocracy has already determined they will be low!]

First, what is this word? Most definitions are too restrictive. Here’s part of Wikipedia’s: “Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultra-nationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy….” Why is this too restrictive? Because fascism in America isn’t yet completely authoritarian or completely ultra-nationalistic; the American plutocracy practices all the rest, just like the German one did before Hitler came to power. Hitler was the German plutocrats’ tool; Trump was the American plutocrats’; and there will be more, if not Il Duce himself.

Restriction of voting rights—that’s fascism. Doing everything to perpetuate white privilege—that’s fascism. Ignoring 90% of Americans, their complaints and wishes, to give the 0.1% in the fascist plutocracy the lion’s share of the wealth—that’s fascism. Trampling on people’s rights to adequate health care, control of their own bodies, worshipping as they wish, and freedom from gun violence, or any violence—that’s fascism.

As a writer, I spent a lot of time in every story I’ve written looking for the precise words. I know something about that, just by experience, so I know “fascism” is the precise word to describe what’s happening in America right now. It doesn’t matter that the emperor thinks he wears the clothes of democracy—this goes for Biden as well as Trump—because he (and invariably the toady is male, which might be part of the problem) is either doing the fascist plutocracy’s bidding (Trump), or he’s stymied by their control of other institutions (Biden), thus moving along that agenda of that fascist 0.1%: Not allowing anything to be done to help the 90% and ensuring the wealth gap between them and that 90% keeps increasing. Remember Hitler and Putin were both initially elected. Trump just completed that infamous trio of toadies working in behalf of America’s 0.1% fascists.

The US is now controlled by an evil mafia-like organization just like Russia; that fascist plutocracy, and these fascists, like the Nazis before them, use autocratic toadies like today’s Good Ole Piranhas as their battering ram to break down the walls of democracy. Like that forty-year-old condo in Florida, those walls suffered from shoddy construction practices from the very beginning: Those “Founding Fathers,” steeped in aristocratic privilege, kept slavery alive and created fascist institutions like the Senate and Electoral College to protect their privileged existence. Today those venerable chains of authoritarian thought mean that no matter who’s president, the fascist 0.1% always wins.

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