Originally published at: The Trump Admin’s ‘Free Speech’ Struggle Session - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender 
To some extent, every new excess by the Trump administration is unsurprising to us, the writers and editors of Talking Points Memo, and, I imagine, to you, our readers. These guys told us what they were going to do, after all. It sounded authoritarian. Trump’s own…
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Was up super late. Was at a concert last night woke up, turned on my iPad and for some reason.First!
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Where’s Puppy?
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Saturday’s Heather, Paul & two from Tim ((while they can still publish);
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Many criticize comparing various Trump actions and policies as akin to the Nazi era and Hitler’s reign of terror. I guess maybe Godwin’s Law looms in the back of their minds. But increasingly a great many prominent, learned people in various fields, observing our times and connecting the two eras, are saying they’re analogous. I could list a bunch of citations or paste several links, but they’re out there to find if you’re curious. Xenophobia, racism, the targeting of the arts, media and higher education. Economic crafted punishment for disfavored groups. Mass incarceration or deportation. Demonizing the powerless, scapegoating them. The careful crafting of a cult of personality centered around the leader.
The parallels are vast. Sure, Trump is bad enough on his own without dragging the Nazis and Hitler into it. And you get accused of being hyperbolic for doing it. Hitler was so heinous it is difficult for people to equate them. But Trump is going down that path, at an increasingly fast pace.
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Show of hands as to whether the term ‘crackdown’ is one of the most over-used terms in the current media.
They aren’t cracking down on anything, and what does it even mean anyway?
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Seems the relentless crackdown on empathy and compassion is progressing apace.
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But that’s not how they are using the term.
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I’d add that there’s a crackdown on any effort to interrupt the hagiography and apotheosis of the late Mr. Kirk by reminding the public of things he said.
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Thanks, I hadn’t known of Ms. Attiah’s role in the late Jamal Khashoggi’s hiring.
What a disaster Bezos has been of late.
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That’s an interesting tune you’re playing on your fascist banjo there Jim but peaceful is not quite how I’d describe it. And democratic? Well it sounds quite a bit south of that, positively Dixie in fact.
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They’re gonna need those reports to calculate next year’s COLAs for Social Security, wages, and more.
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Not going to be pretty.
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Yeah, Someone should monitor how much of the hateful bullshit he spewed is being sucked into the furnace by sites like Google, Bing, Wikipedia, etc.
"Winston dialled ‘back numbers’ on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes’ delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify.
As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.
What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs – to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance."
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“A clown on a throne is still a clown.”
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