History shows that police states aren't declared: they're assembled piece by piece, until one day ordinary people realize the freedoms they once took for granted have quietly disappeared…
The USA is a very long and complicated nervous system. It take time for pain to be felt. We are insulated by the fat we are living off. For instance: Exxon, Chevron, the IEA said two weeks ago, that there was four weeks left before we hit tank bottom of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Last I checked it was 319million barrels, of which 287 million our are national defense reserve, for jet fuel, military diesel and gas, and not civilian use. We consumer 20 million a day, the petro cabal exports 4 million per day,(spot price, internationally, is $120 a barrel or more, and we produce 13 million barrels per day.
I pay attention and in March bought a hybrid.
And Trump demanded that the oil companies, keep their gas prices artificially low.
You can only keep the wolf from the door for so long, you can only deny reality for so long.
Almost everything we buy at the supermarket has gone up $.50 to $1.00. The COLA goes up 4% and your ISP jacks your subscription $10, everyone jacks up their price, cumulative what ever COLA we receive is eaten up, and then some.. nay, then a lot, we are worse off than before the COLA.
Yet we pay, and truck on. Content that our slice of heaven hasn’t really been effected,after all we still have our cars, vacations and toys, we still eat out, got to Booger King and Mackie D’s., have our smart phone and subscriptions to streaming. Log on to substack, reddit, Instagram and express our opinions and cluck our tongues as ICE shoots, kills, harasses and arrests another innocent.
When the obese person realizes that they can no longer metabolize food and have lost too much weight, it is too late. And there we are mired up to our neck in fascism
The weight and inertia of the propaganda require speaking out on a dally basis. I was in the cult of Scientology for 46 years. It has all the operational elements of a police state. What finally started to shrink it was continuing exposure of its many crimes and fraud. Thom is absolutely correct to relentlessly expose the criminals now running this country. On a national level we can alll do our part by supporting Thom and others like him and create our own forms of broad communication.
We have to be relentless or as THOM has shown, this police state will destroy our democracy. I speak from experience. We cannot afford to be complacent.
We are already in the beginning throes of the police state, and because we seem to have little higher court legal support to stop it, the abuses and degradations will only get worse. This is what Trump promised us (but not in so many words,) and the MAGA thinks it's okay since it applies mostly to people not like them.
Thanks Geoff,is it to late?.It seems that a very large swath of the US popultion is has decided to do nothing. No rallies,No calls to our reps,just carry on as if nothing has changed.
People are complacent, they have their smart phones, they can drive toMackie D's. make posts on substack.
I am quite sure that all of my electronic communications are sniffed by the National Data Center (NDS) screened by AI and stored for future use, if I become a serious problem.. Not justmine, but allofus.
Thanks Geoff, spot on. The police state is already here, The National Data Center at Bluffdale, UT, Palantir, ICE, FBI, SCOTUS. The Noose is around our necks, the hand is on the trigger, waiting for the floor to drop out.
We can't afford an EV or hybrid, but we bought an electric bicycle with a large basket to carry groceries. We remember the gas crisis of the 1970s. Almost impossible to buy gas for a while, and we couldn't get heating oil.
Smart move Gloria, there are all kinds of cheap alternative means of transportation. Even used ones. The big problem I have is that there is no electrical charging station where I live, and it would cost thousands to rig one at my home, that is if I can get an electrician to come out, and after i get the permit.
There is a serious shortage of qualified labor where I live, PNW, I recently had a hot tub wired, and was fortunate enough to get an electrician what worked for one of the only two companies, and he works, off the books, on Sundays.
I'm forwarding this absolutely chilling piece shared by Christopher Armitage (not that Thom's piece isn't already enough). The piece addresses also the recent call for Trump's impeachment by an active duty officer Air Force Major Jason Watson. So, hope maybe? if more follow.
We have allowed this cancer to thrive and metastasize throughout our government. Should the victim survive, will we have the skill and courage and fortitude to fully excise it and prevent its return? We’re going to need a team of aggressive, energetic, creative, and dedicated surgeons. Cautious, entrenched old-school pols focused on “kitchen table issues” will only accelerate our decent.
We are so on the cusp of a police state that it is very hard to ignore. Those of us living in fascist Texas and Florida see our useless sheriffs eagerly linking up with ICE to justify their paychecks. As ICE has grown into the Federal Police - Blackshirts, they have quietly been creating a national network of concentration camps from coast to coast.
These prisons are supposed to hold illegal aliens until deported. Sure, we need 35 times the capacity of federal holding cells like Alligator Alcatraz when we are shipping immigrants out to horrible countries like lawless Haiti at almost the pace that ICE is collecting them.
Once the illegals are all gone, those concentration camps will be used to house people the administration whimsically designates as domestic terrorist Antifa members. Funny, I would have thought opposing fascism would be patriotic. It sure was during WWII. Of course, I cannot sign up to join Antifa because there is no such organization. In contrast, there are the Proud Boys, the KKK, the Aryan Brotherhood, Oath Keepers, Light Foot Militia, 3 Percenters, etc. etc...
It is what Hannah Aren't called "the banality of evil". The incursions into our freedoms and rights start quietly and then build over time, just beyond the edges of our peripheral vision. And then, when it is too late, we realize we've been had and stupidly gave away our country to miscreants.
Brilliant and so chilling. I write, I call, I show up at protests, and most days it feels futile. But I keep it up for all the reasons you describe. It may be futile. It may be the answer. November will tell. Hopefully, your powerful description of events in Germany in the '30s will heighten readers' sensitivity to the increments, because what you describe is exactly where this regime is going. Brrrrr.
I read "In the Garden of Beasts," a 2011 nonfiction narrative by Erik Larson, which tells the story of William E. Dodd, the first American ambassador to Nazi Germany, and his family as they witness Hitler’s rise to power in 1933–34.
It was a lot.
One thing the brown-shirts [Adolf's street thugs] did that stood out to me was that if you failed to do an "Elon salute," i.e., the Hitlergruß (“Hitler Greeting”), they would administer an instantaneous, extrajudicial beatdown, then and there. This taught you, and the crowd of witnesses, a lesson.
Police state? Are we there yet? . . . You have to ask?!! . . . Does water run downhill?
This is the death of 1,000 programmed [by Putin, USSC, and Vought] imperceptible, sequential cuts. And democracy's only just begun to bleed out. Dripping and dropping like an IV bag full of Russian arsenic, to deliberately mix metaphors.
#VOTE for the Sane
#DRAIN Jared's, All of the Trumps', Witkoff's, and Ludnick's ill-obtained bank
Our security freaks have never much cared for dissent, going back to the 1960's, when people started openly questioning war, race, and drug policies, as citizens will. The CIA would undermine democratically elected governments for not being open to American exploitation and bribery. The FBI would infiltrate political organizations just for being left-leaning. The current paranoid Right are restoring all this to prominence. Being a police state goes hand-in-hand (or nightstick in hand) with running an empire.
Excellent piece,scary and maybe it will get Americans to wake up and do something. 75 million voted for Harris in2024 and with all the rallies,protests,a mere 8 million have show up. Of the 8 millon,not all were Dems,there were some independents,some Republicans.Where are the Dems who voted for Harris who have done nothing? More resistance,not less is needed,how do we get these apathetic,lazy DEMS out there.
Cheeto and Nazi Republicans Are Traitors To America
In essence a traitor is a person(s) who commits actions which involves attempting to overthrow one's own government(Project 2025. election interference, and SCOTUS with explicit intent to turn our democratic republic of WE the People into a dictatorship), aiding an enemy(Russia), or leaking vital state secrets(Supplemental Act of the NDAA{National Defense Authorization Act} would share state secrets with Israel).
For example, in U.S. law, treason is explicitly defined in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution as levying war against the United States(inciting a domestic civil war to turn the country into a dictatorship), or adhering to its enemies(Russia). Cheeto and his Nazi Republicans are working to destroy the democratic republic and align with our long established enemy. Calling it out as it is.
So WE ask the question, “Why would one vote for a group of people who are traitors to the country that WE the People have established?” The next two election cycles WE the People can either support traitors or those who will uphold the moral principles and ideals of our country. The choice is in our hands.
Agree Since Reagan the Nazis have gradually becomes less concerned about governing due to their autocratic needs leading to be concerned more about holding onto power.
Women definitely know we live in a surveillance and police state with restrictions and bans on our reproductive healthcare, the tracking of movement between state lines, and attacks on our free speech about all of it.
Margaret Atwood has famously stated that in a rising totalitarian state, the first things to go are women's rights and bodily autonomy.
Hitler is the best-known example of someone who rose within a democratic system and then destroyed free elections. In this respect he represents the risk of Trump. My fear is that as it becomes clear that Trump has lost the Iran war he will escalate his effects to turn us into a police state. See "Trump's Three Cs fo Iran: Coerce, Continue, or Concede Failure? A fourth "C" is missing: Compromise. Successful strategies usually include a negotiated endgame. Is a president who sees compromise as personal defeat psychologically capable of pursuing one?" >> https://halbrown.substack.com/p/trumps-three-cs-fo-iran-coerce-continue
Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il Sung did not abolish competitive elections because they never inherited political systems that had them; they established or inherited one-party states from the outset and presided over police states.
Putin's elections are a shame. Elections do not provide a fully open, competitive mechanism for changing the government.
Oh hell we know it ... we just cannot admit that it could happen here ... we are in a collective state of DENIAL. Next comes ANGER then BARGAINING followed by DEPRESSION which is eventually followed by ACCEPTANCE. Many of us need to quickly move from DENIAL thru ANGER and before the midterms reach ACCEPTANCE if we want to begin to change the direction of Trumpamerica.
Whoa! That is an incredible, scary analysis and reporting!
It all seems to have sneaked up on us when we thought we were on top of what was going on.
I knew it was heading there but did not know it was so far advanced.
Who and what could have stopped it? Congress presumably? The Courts?
Now it’s up to the voters - and they must be inspired and encouraged and assisted to vote.
Presumably, mail-in voting is best because there will certainly be intimidation leading up to the vote and at the polls. Problem is that Trump Admin control the Postmaster. But that seems like a controllable situation.
I've been saying this for quite some time.
The USA is a very long and complicated nervous system. It take time for pain to be felt. We are insulated by the fat we are living off. For instance: Exxon, Chevron, the IEA said two weeks ago, that there was four weeks left before we hit tank bottom of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Last I checked it was 319million barrels, of which 287 million our are national defense reserve, for jet fuel, military diesel and gas, and not civilian use. We consumer 20 million a day, the petro cabal exports 4 million per day,(spot price, internationally, is $120 a barrel or more, and we produce 13 million barrels per day.
I pay attention and in March bought a hybrid.
And Trump demanded that the oil companies, keep their gas prices artificially low.
You can only keep the wolf from the door for so long, you can only deny reality for so long.
Almost everything we buy at the supermarket has gone up $.50 to $1.00. The COLA goes up 4% and your ISP jacks your subscription $10, everyone jacks up their price, cumulative what ever COLA we receive is eaten up, and then some.. nay, then a lot, we are worse off than before the COLA.
Yet we pay, and truck on. Content that our slice of heaven hasn’t really been effected,after all we still have our cars, vacations and toys, we still eat out, got to Booger King and Mackie D’s., have our smart phone and subscriptions to streaming. Log on to substack, reddit, Instagram and express our opinions and cluck our tongues as ICE shoots, kills, harasses and arrests another innocent.
When the obese person realizes that they can no longer metabolize food and have lost too much weight, it is too late. And there we are mired up to our neck in fascism
The weight and inertia of the propaganda require speaking out on a dally basis. I was in the cult of Scientology for 46 years. It has all the operational elements of a police state. What finally started to shrink it was continuing exposure of its many crimes and fraud. Thom is absolutely correct to relentlessly expose the criminals now running this country. On a national level we can alll do our part by supporting Thom and others like him and create our own forms of broad communication.
We have to be relentless or as THOM has shown, this police state will destroy our democracy. I speak from experience. We cannot afford to be complacent.
We are already in the beginning throes of the police state, and because we seem to have little higher court legal support to stop it, the abuses and degradations will only get worse. This is what Trump promised us (but not in so many words,) and the MAGA thinks it's okay since it applies mostly to people not like them.
Thanks Geoff,is it to late?.It seems that a very large swath of the US popultion is has decided to do nothing. No rallies,No calls to our reps,just carry on as if nothing has changed.
People are complacent, they have their smart phones, they can drive toMackie D's. make posts on substack.
I am quite sure that all of my electronic communications are sniffed by the National Data Center (NDS) screened by AI and stored for future use, if I become a serious problem.. Not justmine, but allofus.
Thanks Geoff, spot on. The police state is already here, The National Data Center at Bluffdale, UT, Palantir, ICE, FBI, SCOTUS. The Noose is around our necks, the hand is on the trigger, waiting for the floor to drop out.
We can't afford an EV or hybrid, but we bought an electric bicycle with a large basket to carry groceries. We remember the gas crisis of the 1970s. Almost impossible to buy gas for a while, and we couldn't get heating oil.
Smart move Gloria, there are all kinds of cheap alternative means of transportation. Even used ones. The big problem I have is that there is no electrical charging station where I live, and it would cost thousands to rig one at my home, that is if I can get an electrician to come out, and after i get the permit.
There is a serious shortage of qualified labor where I live, PNW, I recently had a hot tub wired, and was fortunate enough to get an electrician what worked for one of the only two companies, and he works, off the books, on Sundays.
I'm forwarding this absolutely chilling piece shared by Christopher Armitage (not that Thom's piece isn't already enough). The piece addresses also the recent call for Trump's impeachment by an active duty officer Air Force Major Jason Watson. So, hope maybe? if more follow.
https://wendy664.substack.com/p/every-revolution-sends-warnings-first?r=2g7cs&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
Watson is a brave soul, a martyr, he WILL pay the price. Hegseth and Trump will see to it.
Excellent comment!
This must. Be stopped .. somehow .. when the day comes, I would hope that we fully prosecute them all, including miller just as WW2 criminals were..
We have allowed this cancer to thrive and metastasize throughout our government. Should the victim survive, will we have the skill and courage and fortitude to fully excise it and prevent its return? We’re going to need a team of aggressive, energetic, creative, and dedicated surgeons. Cautious, entrenched old-school pols focused on “kitchen table issues” will only accelerate our decent.
We are so on the cusp of a police state that it is very hard to ignore. Those of us living in fascist Texas and Florida see our useless sheriffs eagerly linking up with ICE to justify their paychecks. As ICE has grown into the Federal Police - Blackshirts, they have quietly been creating a national network of concentration camps from coast to coast.
These prisons are supposed to hold illegal aliens until deported. Sure, we need 35 times the capacity of federal holding cells like Alligator Alcatraz when we are shipping immigrants out to horrible countries like lawless Haiti at almost the pace that ICE is collecting them.
Once the illegals are all gone, those concentration camps will be used to house people the administration whimsically designates as domestic terrorist Antifa members. Funny, I would have thought opposing fascism would be patriotic. It sure was during WWII. Of course, I cannot sign up to join Antifa because there is no such organization. In contrast, there are the Proud Boys, the KKK, the Aryan Brotherhood, Oath Keepers, Light Foot Militia, 3 Percenters, etc. etc...
It is what Hannah Aren't called "the banality of evil". The incursions into our freedoms and rights start quietly and then build over time, just beyond the edges of our peripheral vision. And then, when it is too late, we realize we've been had and stupidly gave away our country to miscreants.
Brilliant and so chilling. I write, I call, I show up at protests, and most days it feels futile. But I keep it up for all the reasons you describe. It may be futile. It may be the answer. November will tell. Hopefully, your powerful description of events in Germany in the '30s will heighten readers' sensitivity to the increments, because what you describe is exactly where this regime is going. Brrrrr.
I read "In the Garden of Beasts," a 2011 nonfiction narrative by Erik Larson, which tells the story of William E. Dodd, the first American ambassador to Nazi Germany, and his family as they witness Hitler’s rise to power in 1933–34.
It was a lot.
One thing the brown-shirts [Adolf's street thugs] did that stood out to me was that if you failed to do an "Elon salute," i.e., the Hitlergruß (“Hitler Greeting”), they would administer an instantaneous, extrajudicial beatdown, then and there. This taught you, and the crowd of witnesses, a lesson.
Police state? Are we there yet? . . . You have to ask?!! . . . Does water run downhill?
This is the death of 1,000 programmed [by Putin, USSC, and Vought] imperceptible, sequential cuts. And democracy's only just begun to bleed out. Dripping and dropping like an IV bag full of Russian arsenic, to deliberately mix metaphors.
#VOTE for the Sane
#DRAIN Jared's, All of the Trumps', Witkoff's, and Ludnick's ill-obtained bank
n.b., bank is slang for wealth
If one were executing Putin's PSA [Police States of America] plan, would one play a shell game with Mitch's corpse as the pea?
Weekend at Mitchie's is in full flower.
Lift the veil !!!
Show us M.M. Show us Turtleman!!!
Our security freaks have never much cared for dissent, going back to the 1960's, when people started openly questioning war, race, and drug policies, as citizens will. The CIA would undermine democratically elected governments for not being open to American exploitation and bribery. The FBI would infiltrate political organizations just for being left-leaning. The current paranoid Right are restoring all this to prominence. Being a police state goes hand-in-hand (or nightstick in hand) with running an empire.
Excellent piece,scary and maybe it will get Americans to wake up and do something. 75 million voted for Harris in2024 and with all the rallies,protests,a mere 8 million have show up. Of the 8 millon,not all were Dems,there were some independents,some Republicans.Where are the Dems who voted for Harris who have done nothing? More resistance,not less is needed,how do we get these apathetic,lazy DEMS out there.
Cheeto and Nazi Republicans Are Traitors To America
In essence a traitor is a person(s) who commits actions which involves attempting to overthrow one's own government(Project 2025. election interference, and SCOTUS with explicit intent to turn our democratic republic of WE the People into a dictatorship), aiding an enemy(Russia), or leaking vital state secrets(Supplemental Act of the NDAA{National Defense Authorization Act} would share state secrets with Israel).
For example, in U.S. law, treason is explicitly defined in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution as levying war against the United States(inciting a domestic civil war to turn the country into a dictatorship), or adhering to its enemies(Russia). Cheeto and his Nazi Republicans are working to destroy the democratic republic and align with our long established enemy. Calling it out as it is.
So WE ask the question, “Why would one vote for a group of people who are traitors to the country that WE the People have established?” The next two election cycles WE the People can either support traitors or those who will uphold the moral principles and ideals of our country. The choice is in our hands.
Yes! The voters are key - as they should be, since they are the basis for it all.
Hopefully they will not be frightened out of voting - either in advance of the election or during it.
It is obvious that destroying the election is top of mind for Trump. He’s made it clear that he has no interest in policy.
Agree Since Reagan the Nazis have gradually becomes less concerned about governing due to their autocratic needs leading to be concerned more about holding onto power.
Women definitely know we live in a surveillance and police state with restrictions and bans on our reproductive healthcare, the tracking of movement between state lines, and attacks on our free speech about all of it.
Margaret Atwood has famously stated that in a rising totalitarian state, the first things to go are women's rights and bodily autonomy.
If this article doesn’t raise the hairs on the back of your neck you are either MAGA or in a coma.
Yes! The hair in the back of my neck is behaving appropriately.
Hitler is the best-known example of someone who rose within a democratic system and then destroyed free elections. In this respect he represents the risk of Trump. My fear is that as it becomes clear that Trump has lost the Iran war he will escalate his effects to turn us into a police state. See "Trump's Three Cs fo Iran: Coerce, Continue, or Concede Failure? A fourth "C" is missing: Compromise. Successful strategies usually include a negotiated endgame. Is a president who sees compromise as personal defeat psychologically capable of pursuing one?" >> https://halbrown.substack.com/p/trumps-three-cs-fo-iran-coerce-continue
Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il Sung did not abolish competitive elections because they never inherited political systems that had them; they established or inherited one-party states from the outset and presided over police states.
Putin's elections are a shame. Elections do not provide a fully open, competitive mechanism for changing the government.
Oh hell we know it ... we just cannot admit that it could happen here ... we are in a collective state of DENIAL. Next comes ANGER then BARGAINING followed by DEPRESSION which is eventually followed by ACCEPTANCE. Many of us need to quickly move from DENIAL thru ANGER and before the midterms reach ACCEPTANCE if we want to begin to change the direction of Trumpamerica.
https://protectthemidterms2026.substack.com/p/the-cancer-within-the-system-starts?r=45gg
Whoa! That is an incredible, scary analysis and reporting!
It all seems to have sneaked up on us when we thought we were on top of what was going on.
I knew it was heading there but did not know it was so far advanced.
Who and what could have stopped it? Congress presumably? The Courts?
Now it’s up to the voters - and they must be inspired and encouraged and assisted to vote.
Presumably, mail-in voting is best because there will certainly be intimidation leading up to the vote and at the polls. Problem is that Trump Admin control the Postmaster. But that seems like a controllable situation.