Clair here💕🏳️⚧️Thank you for the brief “ book report “
The Author is absolutely right on… I hope others will take your/ her advice and share their knowledge with others.. before it’s too late, OR perhaps it’s already too late..
Thanks.. as a transgender woman.. sometimes it “ isn’t easy being green”…and with the Facsist coming to power it’s become more difficult.. ML Clair 🏳️⚧️
When Aliya Rahman, the disabled US CITIZEN who was drug from her vehicle in Minneapolis, testified, she stated that the ICE agents kept using the words "body"/"bodies". Like the people they were detaining are not even human and/or are "dead". That struck a chord with me during her testimony and has stayed with me since.
After reading this piece, I now realize why it has had such an impact on my psyche.
This is already a humanitarian crisis, and with the warehouses 'they' are purchasing, it is only going to get worse...
I am all for speaking up, speaking out, protesting, being present, etc., against this tyranny. But, Congress has to act YESTERDAY before this erupts further and American people do their jobs for them!
I learned today that in 2025 amazon had 240 million prime subscribers worldwide, 180 million of those in the US. At 139$ a year that is a grip even before any purchases. People won't even cancel prime, it apparently matters more to them than democracy. This is who we are, these are our values. Trump is the symptom. Until we recognize that we have a structural problem that trump did not invent, this trajectory goes in one direction.
Along with Tim Snyder’s terrific work on this research area, this is yet another reminder of how easily nations can collapse into dystopian crime scenes. Thank you.
LD, That was a good and succinct summary you provided of Arendt’s thesis. There are a few things that I might add.
— The process of atomization is not necessarily large and visible—the making of the invisible, the de-humanized, the isolated and finally disappeared. Often it begins with very small fractures and breaches, a process of chipping away at some ideological foundation, rather than a big chunks severed from the body of legitimacy. For example, the fracturing of our democratic processes doesn’t begin in the last few decades with the rise of the right-wing Destructionists and their myriad targets. It had always been there, since our founding (even before, in the inconclusiveness of the Enlightenment), but only begins atomizing our democracy with a small, invisible breach in 1886, a headnote of no legal standing in a minor tax case. That was the chip that started the process of dividing our republic into two subsets, the We the People one, and the Corporate ‘fictional person’ one. From that small crack in the protective wall of our Constitution, it took 150 years for corporations to chip away and capture all but one of the Constitutional rights for themselves. Combined with immortality and unlimited wealth, which ordinary We the People do not have, they managed to take control the processes of atomization and division to serve their own ambitions at the expense of our republic.
— There is also a biological basis for atomization which must be reckoned with. Neuroscience has recently confirmed that the reactive and contemplative parts of our brains are in separate and independent regions. The reactive part is in the more primitive hind-brain, and is the command and control center for all incoming signals. It is the component that decides if the input presents any threat to the organism. If it does, the thinking, contemplative part doesn’t even get to know about it. The reactive brain handles everything itself, quickly and automatically. In the beginning, it handled immediate threats, saving time thinking about them, and saving us as well. Over time, what constituted a threat became more abstract and remote. That design of evolution, so useful in the beginning, becomes the granddaddy of atomization and division over time. It helps to account for why it is so difficult to convince a Destructionist that the nonsense they cling to is also self-destructive. They are not thinking, they are simply reacting.
—We use the rise of the Third Reich and Hitler as a parallel and exemplar of some of the processes we are undergoing now. But, as Arendt and others point out, the analog is not quite exact, the trajectories and how they were bent differ in important ways. I’ve found the history of Cesar Augustus much more instructive in understanding the mechanics of autocracy. His manipulations of information, self-adulation, atomizing the Republic, titling himself as the one who would make Rome great, expand its territories, be officially recognized as the ‘Protector of the Public Morals’, establish himself as a divine ruler, and finally declare his despotic regime ‘Pax Augustus’ holds much closer to what we’ve witnessed in the progress of our own autocracy. & oh yes, he also had a coin minted with his face on it. Augustus, like our own Commander in Tweets, also awarded himself his own “Peace Prize” to hide the real brutality of his regime.
As with Trump, that atomization of the Roman Empire began long before culminating in the Murder of Julius Cesar, rather than some “peaceful transfer of power” from a despot to his grand nephew. The Roman Empire was atomized into four separate spheres (one of them ruled for awhile by Marc Antony), which then fell, one by one to the conquests and machinations of Octavia Augustus. What had been before Augustus, a long slow grope towards a democratic Republic since the 6th c. BCE, ends with Augustus and its descent into dynasties ruled by despots. Although ‘Pax Augustus’ is historically recognized to end about 180 AD, the reign of Augustus marked the beginning of that end.
Wow, it seems that I could really learn a lot from you. I truly appreciate all the information that you gave me just in the previous few paragraphs. Thank you so much. You are truly a valued part of this community.
be forewarned, I can also be boring, redundant, screedish, prolix and completely off the wall as well. it's a trait I learned from the Balinese, "Why should we do anything simply when we're so good at doing it complicated?"
Your historical perspective is quite good. I’ve taken to calling 457 Caligula 2.0 but perhaps Augustus 2.0 is more accurate. There will never be Pax Trump, I pray. 😉
Thnx, yes I agree, Caligula was one of more notable gangster dynasties Augustus spawned. The other four of that period weren't too pretty either. Caligula's genius seems to be that he was the one who wrote the playbook Epstein followed. Both victims of homicide, likely replicated in the case of Epstein's fall from from grace (if we ever get a real look a how that inconvenient truth got disappeared. ) Ironically, the faux 'Pax Augustus' was gaslighted into the Pax Romana which historians still refer to today. I think Cicero was the one responsible for that hoax. 2000 years is not a bad lifespan to squeeze out of a piece of deliberate misinformation. I think Trump's Stephen Miller is Augustus' Cicero, yes?
ps. no historian here. Just barely smart enough to know when I'm seeing replays of old dramas.
You have an historian’s soul and focus. You write well. I’m a retired professor, I’ve had many writers who could not hold a candle to you. Write a book? I’d read it. I have an affinity for the Greco-Roman period and Italian ancestry to go with it. Pleasure to meet you—kindred spirits, I think. Keep at it. I look forward to seeing more of your posts.
oh yes, i'm inclined to say praying is like sitting next to a broom and a dustpan and thinking God's going clean up the mess. I've got a few years, but never seen that happen. Have you?
I wrote two article articles about that this week! They are building a detention facility near you and this is all for private profiteering off of our tax dollars! Here’s my last article but go check out the other one too. They are both quick reads but super informative and you can see if one is being built by you that you should go protest because protests are helping to shut these damn concentration camps down.!!💪🏽💪💪🏻🙏🏻https://open.substack.com/pub/catherineannbower/p/coming-for-the-homegrowns-ice-is?r=1k19lr&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
You lot have allowed these prisons for many years now. You have permitted slave labour from your prisons. You have permitted gross abuses to increase in your for profit evildoer businesses. Now they really are locking up innocent civilians of all ages. Soon it actually will be you as well. They think they do not need all these people anymore. Perhaps talky talky talky is not sufficient to stop this. Perhaps some sacrifices are necessary. Every body dies; choose how you will go.
Harsh AF, but you are not wrong. I’ve lost my whole entire family to “Trump think” they literally have let me and my children go homeless while they say we deserve it because I am “liberal”—The reality is that they owe me collectively $800,000 and will use any excuse to feel superior to other people. It is the most disgusting aspect of human nature I’ve ever seen and I study this in psychology.
The brainwashing has worked. They believe that their own family members are “the other”. Are we surprised that they shot people in the face? No, I think my own family would shoot my children who are Minor children in the fucking face… they’ve lost their frigging minds
Thank you for your very raw analysis. It is appreciated and I wish more people -clearly not from America- would have spoken out – I can just tell by your language you’re from Europe— at least not from the United States.
I appreciate you my friend. We need to fight for democracy, all of us who are in a democracy- because this is truly Putin‘s dream to destroy the western world
I'm reading this on my tablet this morning, with awareness, and grateful for the information. And; with the other awareness that the new masters of all the machinery of The Web have very successfully turned all this hoped-for- wonder of the time before the Arab Spring, into a machinery of corner, and capture, and crush by means of their algorithms turned on us. Turned us into just numbers. And;
I was eager to see the book and gadget and travel notions daily 'fed' to my handy viewscreen. To be the 'informed consumer'. To be the 'master of my consumer existence'.
Winston Churchill observed, with a good deal of personal knowledge, that "Alcohol is an interesting companion, but a terrible master". The parallels to the addictive power of this present techbro-feudalist- controlled internet machinery have been laid before us by many knowledgeable people, inside and out of the system. Of The Machine. And;
In proper hands, my dad's 90-year-old Remington 12 gauge is effective in the field for pheasant and duck. Ill-handled, it's a danger to its bearer and everyone else. The present owners of the machinery of the Web are goading us into incautious handling. They are incautious themselves. They have turned us into numbers. They have filed down the trigger sears and the safety catches and handed us loaded 12-gauge shotguns with the knowledge that they can pick up the pieces and pocket our wallets and game bags when the inevitable happens.
We of true heart now need to engage, to pick up this mantle, these old game-baggers and stand this gang, this financialist mafia, off at our boundaries, and refuse its attempt to enclose not just our fields and fens, but our very imaginations and hearts. And;
I've un-subscribed from all of the Machine's offerings, and pick this all up very, very carefully, very intentionally; including what's to be gained from this community here.
I've been thinking about this since the government is snatching up warehouses across the country. The lists they've been keeping?
calling Dems terrorists, shooting citizens in the street...They start with the immigrants but soon, it will be us. the commentors, the marchers, the Dems in general. they have software that they're using against us everyday in our ring doorbells, our phones.
I hope I'm wrong wrong WRONG but it's food for thought...
Thank u Erik, for this thoughtful post. I grew up with the history of the holocaust in my family- so I saw it coming since Trump descended his escalator. Those of us who study history, were taught history in school, unlike more recently where
Education has been replaced by electronic devices, empty online celebrities, Republican political propaganda, Republican cutbacks to
Thankfully it is all starting to break apart now due to both DT’s incompetence in remembering and addressing what it was he had people vote for (reduce inflation) and his physical deterioration. People are starting to see that the Emperor has no clothes.
You've said everything in my head, out loud.
I can't believe that I have had to say any of these things
Clair here💕🏳️⚧️Thank you for the brief “ book report “
The Author is absolutely right on… I hope others will take your/ her advice and share their knowledge with others.. before it’s too late, OR perhaps it’s already too late..
Again thank for the prompt
Ml Clair 🏳️⚧️
🏳️⚧️💕
Thanks.. as a transgender woman.. sometimes it “ isn’t easy being green”…and with the Facsist coming to power it’s become more difficult.. ML Clair 🏳️⚧️
You will always have a voice here.
Thank you Clair. I appreciate you.
"Bodies"
When Aliya Rahman, the disabled US CITIZEN who was drug from her vehicle in Minneapolis, testified, she stated that the ICE agents kept using the words "body"/"bodies". Like the people they were detaining are not even human and/or are "dead". That struck a chord with me during her testimony and has stayed with me since.
After reading this piece, I now realize why it has had such an impact on my psyche.
This is already a humanitarian crisis, and with the warehouses 'they' are purchasing, it is only going to get worse...
I am all for speaking up, speaking out, protesting, being present, etc., against this tyranny. But, Congress has to act YESTERDAY before this erupts further and American people do their jobs for them!
Absolutely, when I heard Aliyah say that, it really stuck with me too.
Excellent piece. A good wake up call and all should read stuff like this
Thank you!
I learned today that in 2025 amazon had 240 million prime subscribers worldwide, 180 million of those in the US. At 139$ a year that is a grip even before any purchases. People won't even cancel prime, it apparently matters more to them than democracy. This is who we are, these are our values. Trump is the symptom. Until we recognize that we have a structural problem that trump did not invent, this trajectory goes in one direction.
Ty Liberaldad for keeping this horror in the forefront. We need to be posting the shit out of this.!!
We do! And we have to make sure if there are indications of new facilities, its time to protest the hell out of them
Along with Tim Snyder’s terrific work on this research area, this is yet another reminder of how easily nations can collapse into dystopian crime scenes. Thank you.
Absolutely, Tim Snyder is brilliant. He is also on substack
That’s right. I’ve seen him and always appreciate his insights.
LD, That was a good and succinct summary you provided of Arendt’s thesis. There are a few things that I might add.
— The process of atomization is not necessarily large and visible—the making of the invisible, the de-humanized, the isolated and finally disappeared. Often it begins with very small fractures and breaches, a process of chipping away at some ideological foundation, rather than a big chunks severed from the body of legitimacy. For example, the fracturing of our democratic processes doesn’t begin in the last few decades with the rise of the right-wing Destructionists and their myriad targets. It had always been there, since our founding (even before, in the inconclusiveness of the Enlightenment), but only begins atomizing our democracy with a small, invisible breach in 1886, a headnote of no legal standing in a minor tax case. That was the chip that started the process of dividing our republic into two subsets, the We the People one, and the Corporate ‘fictional person’ one. From that small crack in the protective wall of our Constitution, it took 150 years for corporations to chip away and capture all but one of the Constitutional rights for themselves. Combined with immortality and unlimited wealth, which ordinary We the People do not have, they managed to take control the processes of atomization and division to serve their own ambitions at the expense of our republic.
— There is also a biological basis for atomization which must be reckoned with. Neuroscience has recently confirmed that the reactive and contemplative parts of our brains are in separate and independent regions. The reactive part is in the more primitive hind-brain, and is the command and control center for all incoming signals. It is the component that decides if the input presents any threat to the organism. If it does, the thinking, contemplative part doesn’t even get to know about it. The reactive brain handles everything itself, quickly and automatically. In the beginning, it handled immediate threats, saving time thinking about them, and saving us as well. Over time, what constituted a threat became more abstract and remote. That design of evolution, so useful in the beginning, becomes the granddaddy of atomization and division over time. It helps to account for why it is so difficult to convince a Destructionist that the nonsense they cling to is also self-destructive. They are not thinking, they are simply reacting.
—We use the rise of the Third Reich and Hitler as a parallel and exemplar of some of the processes we are undergoing now. But, as Arendt and others point out, the analog is not quite exact, the trajectories and how they were bent differ in important ways. I’ve found the history of Cesar Augustus much more instructive in understanding the mechanics of autocracy. His manipulations of information, self-adulation, atomizing the Republic, titling himself as the one who would make Rome great, expand its territories, be officially recognized as the ‘Protector of the Public Morals’, establish himself as a divine ruler, and finally declare his despotic regime ‘Pax Augustus’ holds much closer to what we’ve witnessed in the progress of our own autocracy. & oh yes, he also had a coin minted with his face on it. Augustus, like our own Commander in Tweets, also awarded himself his own “Peace Prize” to hide the real brutality of his regime.
As with Trump, that atomization of the Roman Empire began long before culminating in the Murder of Julius Cesar, rather than some “peaceful transfer of power” from a despot to his grand nephew. The Roman Empire was atomized into four separate spheres (one of them ruled for awhile by Marc Antony), which then fell, one by one to the conquests and machinations of Octavia Augustus. What had been before Augustus, a long slow grope towards a democratic Republic since the 6th c. BCE, ends with Augustus and its descent into dynasties ruled by despots. Although ‘Pax Augustus’ is historically recognized to end about 180 AD, the reign of Augustus marked the beginning of that end.
Wow, it seems that I could really learn a lot from you. I truly appreciate all the information that you gave me just in the previous few paragraphs. Thank you so much. You are truly a valued part of this community.
be forewarned, I can also be boring, redundant, screedish, prolix and completely off the wall as well. it's a trait I learned from the Balinese, "Why should we do anything simply when we're so good at doing it complicated?"
Lol I'll stay on my toes.
Your historical perspective is quite good. I’ve taken to calling 457 Caligula 2.0 but perhaps Augustus 2.0 is more accurate. There will never be Pax Trump, I pray. 😉
Thnx, yes I agree, Caligula was one of more notable gangster dynasties Augustus spawned. The other four of that period weren't too pretty either. Caligula's genius seems to be that he was the one who wrote the playbook Epstein followed. Both victims of homicide, likely replicated in the case of Epstein's fall from from grace (if we ever get a real look a how that inconvenient truth got disappeared. ) Ironically, the faux 'Pax Augustus' was gaslighted into the Pax Romana which historians still refer to today. I think Cicero was the one responsible for that hoax. 2000 years is not a bad lifespan to squeeze out of a piece of deliberate misinformation. I think Trump's Stephen Miller is Augustus' Cicero, yes?
ps. no historian here. Just barely smart enough to know when I'm seeing replays of old dramas.
You have an historian’s soul and focus. You write well. I’m a retired professor, I’ve had many writers who could not hold a candle to you. Write a book? I’d read it. I have an affinity for the Greco-Roman period and Italian ancestry to go with it. Pleasure to meet you—kindred spirits, I think. Keep at it. I look forward to seeing more of your posts.
oh yes, i'm inclined to say praying is like sitting next to a broom and a dustpan and thinking God's going clean up the mess. I've got a few years, but never seen that happen. Have you?
I wrote two article articles about that this week! They are building a detention facility near you and this is all for private profiteering off of our tax dollars! Here’s my last article but go check out the other one too. They are both quick reads but super informative and you can see if one is being built by you that you should go protest because protests are helping to shut these damn concentration camps down.!!💪🏽💪💪🏻🙏🏻https://open.substack.com/pub/catherineannbower/p/coming-for-the-homegrowns-ice-is?r=1k19lr&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
I will take a look
There's that.
You lot have allowed these prisons for many years now. You have permitted slave labour from your prisons. You have permitted gross abuses to increase in your for profit evildoer businesses. Now they really are locking up innocent civilians of all ages. Soon it actually will be you as well. They think they do not need all these people anymore. Perhaps talky talky talky is not sufficient to stop this. Perhaps some sacrifices are necessary. Every body dies; choose how you will go.
Legit
Harsh AF, but you are not wrong. I’ve lost my whole entire family to “Trump think” they literally have let me and my children go homeless while they say we deserve it because I am “liberal”—The reality is that they owe me collectively $800,000 and will use any excuse to feel superior to other people. It is the most disgusting aspect of human nature I’ve ever seen and I study this in psychology.
The brainwashing has worked. They believe that their own family members are “the other”. Are we surprised that they shot people in the face? No, I think my own family would shoot my children who are Minor children in the fucking face… they’ve lost their frigging minds
Thank you for your very raw analysis. It is appreciated and I wish more people -clearly not from America- would have spoken out – I can just tell by your language you’re from Europe— at least not from the United States.
I appreciate you my friend. We need to fight for democracy, all of us who are in a democracy- because this is truly Putin‘s dream to destroy the western world
You couldn’t have said it better. Ty.
History tells the story. It's not pretty. Our government is on the wrong side. We must vote in or out those who support the current administration.
I'm reading this on my tablet this morning, with awareness, and grateful for the information. And; with the other awareness that the new masters of all the machinery of The Web have very successfully turned all this hoped-for- wonder of the time before the Arab Spring, into a machinery of corner, and capture, and crush by means of their algorithms turned on us. Turned us into just numbers. And;
I was eager to see the book and gadget and travel notions daily 'fed' to my handy viewscreen. To be the 'informed consumer'. To be the 'master of my consumer existence'.
Winston Churchill observed, with a good deal of personal knowledge, that "Alcohol is an interesting companion, but a terrible master". The parallels to the addictive power of this present techbro-feudalist- controlled internet machinery have been laid before us by many knowledgeable people, inside and out of the system. Of The Machine. And;
In proper hands, my dad's 90-year-old Remington 12 gauge is effective in the field for pheasant and duck. Ill-handled, it's a danger to its bearer and everyone else. The present owners of the machinery of the Web are goading us into incautious handling. They are incautious themselves. They have turned us into numbers. They have filed down the trigger sears and the safety catches and handed us loaded 12-gauge shotguns with the knowledge that they can pick up the pieces and pocket our wallets and game bags when the inevitable happens.
We of true heart now need to engage, to pick up this mantle, these old game-baggers and stand this gang, this financialist mafia, off at our boundaries, and refuse its attempt to enclose not just our fields and fens, but our very imaginations and hearts. And;
I've un-subscribed from all of the Machine's offerings, and pick this all up very, very carefully, very intentionally; including what's to be gained from this community here.
Thanks for this today, Eric. Be well.
Tim Long, Just Up the Hill from Lock 15
Thank you Tim. Glad to hear from you again
I've been thinking about this since the government is snatching up warehouses across the country. The lists they've been keeping?
calling Dems terrorists, shooting citizens in the street...They start with the immigrants but soon, it will be us. the commentors, the marchers, the Dems in general. they have software that they're using against us everyday in our ring doorbells, our phones.
I hope I'm wrong wrong WRONG but it's food for thought...
I truly hope you are wrong as well but I understand
Thank u Erik, for this thoughtful post. I grew up with the history of the holocaust in my family- so I saw it coming since Trump descended his escalator. Those of us who study history, were taught history in school, unlike more recently where
Education has been replaced by electronic devices, empty online celebrities, Republican political propaganda, Republican cutbacks to
Education, understand Trump is a Fascist.
Absolutely
Thankfully it is all starting to break apart now due to both DT’s incompetence in remembering and addressing what it was he had people vote for (reduce inflation) and his physical deterioration. People are starting to see that the Emperor has no clothes.