Six months and a Lifetime Ago

Soon after my first essay of February 14, 2025 (a very short one about how nice I find it https://outofunitedstates.com/p/home-in-the-himalayas in Dharamsala, India), I began posting more and more “essays,” some of which were simple cut’n’pastes, with the following themes. As I posted on Feburary 26, 2025:

February 25, 2025: Conservative attorney George Conway…opined that Republicans "just want to burn it all down. I don't see any rationality in what they're doing other than that it is a performative attack on the government, and it is an attempt to destroy what they perceive to be as the enemy, which is the very government that they are charged with administering. That's the only way to explain almost everything this administration has done." Conway asserted that the "burn it all down" ideology is what led Trump to appoint Robert F. Kennedy as Health and Human Services secretary, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as attorney general (who was replaced by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi)…and assailed centibillionaire Elon Musk's firing of federal workers—particularly those in charge of managing nuclear weapons—who he eventually had to hire back. "Basically, Donald Trump wants to have revenge on the United States of America. You cannot figure out who should stay or go unless you know what the hell's going on with the government, and these guys don't care." https://www.rawstory.com/george-conway-2671219411/

As I posted on March 2:

In 1986, Frank Zappa said, presciently, “The biggest threat to America today is not communism, it's moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that's happened during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pipe.”

Cut to now: “Project 2025: A Christo-Fascist Manifesto Designing a Theocracy” https://thefulcrum.us/democracy/project-2025-christian-nationalism by Andra Watkins, who was raised by “parents who joined a Christian Nationalist church in rural South Carolina [in the 1970s]…During my formative years, I was indoctrinated in the Christian Nationalist belief system that underpins today’s Republican Party. Christo-fascist Republicans do not acknowledge any law that conflicts with their interpretation of the Bible. They don’t care about an issue’s popularity with voters; they don’t pay attention to polls. They will install loyalists who will carry out Christian Nationalist directives and will ignore the will of the American people…From abortion bans to restrictions on transgender rights to book bans and more, gerrymandered red states are forcing their citizens to live in the country Project 2025 envisions…According to the nonpartisan research firm PRRI, Christian Nationalism has solid support in all 50 states…”

Here’s a brief decoding of Project 2025’s Four Promises: the President should 1. sanction only heterosexual monogamous marriages; 2. dismantle the administrative state to force every American to live by a Christian Nationalist interpretation of the Bible; 3. reject and deport as many immigrants as possible, and 4. “Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty’,” which is code for “what God commands in the Bible.”

The new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has very specific Christian Nationalist tattoos; has fired staff who aren’t Trump loyalists/Christian Nationalists. As someone wrote, “When the time comes, he want military lawyers who’ll ok the use of American troops against American civilians on American soil…he also wants a pliant military that won’t object to using overwhelming force to keep the regime in power.” He has, more recently, ordered the US Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia; and has advocated for parents to “pursue homeschooling, classical education, or Christian schools” for their children, as part of his theology of Reformed Reconstructionism, which advocates for a Christian theocracy, where secular government is subservient to biblical law.” https://www.interfaithalliance.org/post/pete-hegseth-s-christian-nationalist-crusade-is-a-threat-to-religious-freedom

and

In 1987, the Reagan administration repealed the Fairness Doctrine that mandated broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. Instantly, there was an explosion of highly biased talk radio programs. Reagan also cut the Department of Education’s budget in half by the end of his term.

In June 1988, James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified to the US Senate Energy committee, warning that the world was moving toward a “new climate frontier” that would threaten all life on Earth. (In the 1970s, oil companies had published research that agreed with Hansen, then begun organizing widespread and systematic climate change denial campaigns to seed public disinformation, as the tobacco industry had done regarding the hazards of tobacco smoking).

In August 1988, Rush Limbaugh debuted a talk radio show that quickly became the highest rated radio show in the US. Of Limbaugh's controversial statements and allegations they have investigated, Politifact has rated 84% as ranging from "Mostly False" to "Pants On Fire,” with 5% of Limbaugh's contested statements rising to the level of "Mostly True" and 0% rated "True."

In November 1988, lifelong Cold Warrior and former CIA director George HW Bush was elected president. In 1990-91, US-backed counterrevolutions overthrew the Eastern Bloc. Bush helped oversee brutal neoliberal capitalist reforms that were referred to as “shock therapy” that led to millions of unnecessary deaths in the former Soviet Union. Under Bush’s leadership, the US pressured these former socialist governments to engage in mass privatizations, selling off state-owned industries and assets for pennies on the dollar. This US-backed neoliberal shock therapy established the network of capitalist oligarchs who still control Eastern Europe.

In the 1990s, conservative think tanks mobilized to challenge the legitimacy of global warming as a social problem. They challenged the scientific evidence, arguing that global warming would have benefits, and warned that proposed solutions would do more harm than good.

As I posted on March 9,

The Super Rich Know We’re Doomed, because 90% of them (I guess) cannot or will not use their power to change the trajectory that we, as a global civilization, are on.

Following are excerpts from essays I’ve written, assembled and/or copied & pasted:

Trump uses the classic techniques honed by totalitarian leaders in the mid-20c, analyzed & explained by writers like George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, and TW Adorno. He has been enabled by major media like NYT which sane wash his blather, circulate his lies and fail systematically to furnish corrections.

Trump has used a dizzying rhetorical tactic of shifting positions like quicksand, muddying his messages and contradicting himself, sometimes in the same day. The inconsistencies have presented the American public with dueling narratives at every turn, allowing people to pick and choose what they want to believe about the president’s intentions. He has long dealt in distortions and lies, including in his first term. But as he executes a much more aggressive agenda at home and abroad, his contradictions have become more brazen and more pronounced.... “The point isn’t to have a contradiction, the point is to have cover.”

"The reality of our modern information world is that you can pick & choose what you want to believe. He instinctively knows that.” Within hours of taking office, Mr. Trump pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted Capitol Police officers, a move that clashed with his professed support for law enforcement...

Details of Trump executive orders that resembles Hitler’s Enabling Act of the 1930s:

❧ All federal agencies, including independent regulatory commissions, are now subject to direct White House control.

❧ Regulations cannot be issued without presidential approval.

❧ The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) can now withhold funding from independent agencies if they don’t align with White House priorities.

❧ All federal employees must follow the President’s and Attorney General’s interpretation of the law, eliminating legal independence.

❧ A White House Liaison is to be installed in every independent regulatory agency to enforce direct presidential control.

This is the biggest executive power grab in US history. This formally ends the concept of an “independent” regulatory agency, dismantling one of the last barriers to absolute executive power. This order effectively erases the last major restraints on executive power.

Trump wants to annex Canada because the dramatic acceleration of climate change has caused extreme concern in the US alphabet agencies about water access and habitable living land.

“Climate change is expected to bring about major change in freshwater availability, the productive capacity of soils, and in patterns of human settlement…Predicting scenarios for how climate-related environmental change may influence human societies and political systems necessarily involves a high degree of uncertainty, but the direst predictions about the impacts of global warming warn about greatly increased risks of violent conflict over increasingly scarce resources such as freshwater and arable land.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096262980700087X*

Who can’t connect the dots at this point?

I wrote many more essays with this theme. Then, on April 8 (excerpt from https://outofunitedstates.com/p/the-inevitable-descent):

Berman’s insight that happiness requires escaping the American value system takes on new urgency. The US lacks the community, craftsmanship, and heart found in places like Mexico, where life isn’t solely about material gain. Americans, conditioned to see themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires,” are ill-equipped to resist the coming police state. Even the educated, as Berman’s anecdote about the medical school dean illustrates, shy away from structural critiques, their eyes glazing over at challenges to the status quo.

For those with means, staying is a gamble against overwhelming odds. By the end of 2025, the US risks becoming a banana republic where the social safety net is shredded, epidemics rage, and gulags await dissenters. Climate chaos will exacerbate food and water shortages, while global trade ruptures—potentially with the EU, China, and others—undermine the dollar’s stability. The broligarchs may survive in their enclaves, but the 99% face a managed die-off, deemed expendable in a world where AI replaces human labor.

Leaving now offers a chance to build a life in nations less tethered to hustling and more resilient to polycrisis. Countries with stronger social cohesion and sustainable practices—whether in Europe, Latin America, or elsewhere—provide a buffer against the chaos engulfing the US The window is narrow; December 2025 may be too late.

The US is not just declining—it is hurtling toward a police state driven by late-stage capitalism’s greed, resource scarcity’s desperation, and climate chaos’s devastation. Berman’s warning that “they eat each other” is no longer a metaphor but a prophecy unfolding in real time. The Powers-that-Be, from Trump to Musk, are not saving the nation but carving it up for themselves. Aware citizens should heed Berman’s call to escape the American value system—not just philosophically, but physically—before the gulags open and the fiefdoms rise. The time to leave is now, while the door is still ajar.

*****

So many of my essays since February have harped on the theme of polycrisis, especially related to climate change and the country being taken over by a neo-confederate, right-wing, accelerationist regime that aims to replace the United States with independent, fascist fiefdoms. Now it’s seven months later. I think I’ve covered most of the main points several times, from various angles, and hope to write essays with other themes, by and by.