How an Angry Extremist Minority Rules with an Iron Hand

How an Angry Extremist Minority Rules with an Iron Hand

And How a Complacent Deer-in-the-Headlights Majority Lets Them

In 2025, implementing the Project 2025 playbook (half done), autocratic rule, has never been easier. We have the usual “demonization” (WWII Germany had Jews, MAGA has Latino immigrants), special forces with extraordinary powers to arrest (WWII Germany had the Gestapo, MAGA has ICE), prosecuting political opponents under questionable pretexts (WWII Germany just rounded them up and killed them; MAGA arrests them and pushes them through a legal system that is increasing controlled by MAGA judges), media is threatened or shut down (WWII Germany had totally controlled press and radio; MAGA has the FCC and a vindictive President litigating and intimidating the “enemy of the people” media), universities are purged of professors and students with views opposing the government (free speech is limited to “correct thinking”) and the state gaslights the nation with fabricated “alternative facts” (in both German and MAGA-controlled America).

But the technological world has also narrowed the gatekeepers to what have become essential and popular tools (think Google) and legitimized and spread and substituted toxic labels as widespread cultural assumptions and purported “solutions” to complex issues. With stumbling educational performance and opportunities – university purges and high costs push younger citizens out of the educational system – as an increasing number of Americans deal with complexity by outsourcing their opinions to extremist politicians with intensive personal agendas, the political mess is compounded… and plays so well into an autocrat’s hands.

Look the charts above, presented by Todd Beeton in the September 25th TheBigPicture.com. The almost totally red map above is used by Donald Trump to pretend that the entire nation is on his side and only a few radical leftists oppose him. That is result of a political system, created in 1787, in a country that was over 90% rural. The infamous Virgina Compromise vs the New Jersey Compromise created two branches of the legislature: a powerful Senate where land mass alone determined who could be elected – two Senators per state, such that California with 39 million people and Wyoming with 600,000, are equal – and the House of Representatives where state determined districts, today comprising about 600,000 people per district. But the second map, based on people, skews a little more blue. Gerrymandering is most welcome!

Massive consolidation of powerful corporate monoliths, no longer well-contained in the absence of the enforcement of our antitrust laws, a tad dated anyway, make presidential intimidation easy. A few billionaires and mega-corporations, concentrating power in the hands of a few, are easier to threaten, coerce and even bribe with government approvals and handouts, than the hundreds, make that thousands, of media companies (newspapers) of the 1890s when our basic antitrust laws were passed. These laws were focused on overt financial manipulation (price-fixing and allowing barring competitors) and mergers among and between competitors. Bigness alone did not matter, which is the focus of Europe’s antitrust laws. In any industry of significance today, there are often fewer than a half dozen players who control the marketplace, and often one is so dominant that it literally controls the space (think “search” and Google). Big corporate donors and billionaires tend to get approval for some of the most anticompetitive combinations. Hmmmm?

Combine that with use of labels (“radical left-wing extremists” or calling Democrat’s presentations as “hate speech” which can be regulated, while rightwing expression is protected “freedom of speech”), and society begins to fall in line. Skepticism is gone, unfavorable statistics no longer tracked, and anecdotes are enough to convince the public even when statistics overwhelming prove otherwise. Todd Beeton explains how this manipulation of truth, application of labels, is a major autocratic tool that Trump uses to justify his “popularity”:

“When asked by a reporter about his administration’s threats to revoke licenses from media networks that don’t give him the fawning coverage he believes he deserves, Trump replied: ‘When you have networks that, where I won an election in counties -- I guess it’s 2,600 to 525, that’s called a landslide times two -- when you have that level of popularity or voter support, as I did in the last election, and yet 97%, 94%, 96% of the newscasts are against me...I think that’s really illegal.’

“Yes, the data behind Republicans’ emotional support [red] map has become Trump’s latest talking point—clearly written out by his team in his notes for him to cite—as evidence for his ‘landslide times two’ level of popularity, all to justify cracking down on media outlets that criticize him…. It is quite a flex. And quite the tell, too, that Trump felt the need to prop up this new ‘evidence’ of his ‘landslide’ victory in order to claim critical media coverage is somehow ‘illegal.’”

With a rubber stamp GOP-dominated Congress neutered and a stacked GOP-controlled Supreme Court ready to rubber stamp Trump’s questionable unconstitutional actions with the profound and unprecedented misuse of “temporary,” emergency/shadow docket rulings - which without an examination of the merits and lacking a written opinion, often dispose of an issue permanently. For example, the Court allowed Trump to cancel Congress’ foreign aid bill, but by the time the Court has a merit-based ruling, that money will be gone… forever.

But the unpopularity of Trump and his policies when accurately reflected (see the other chart above) is precisely why he is doing everything he can to rig the midterms, with a heavy focus on manipulative demands for redistricting. Democrats, after years of internal squabbling, are failing to recognize that new media is where most, particularly younger, American voters get their news. With X and Truth Social, Republicans own the major political social media platforms… while the Dems are struggling with learning how to use social media. Charlie Kirk, RIP, got it. There is no Democratic equivalent. With only 30% of America being diehard MAGA voters, there is absolutely no reason for them to control the entire nation!!! Oh, the rest of America doesn’t even see that.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if the Dems cannot gain control of at least one legislative branch from the midterms… American democracy, RIP.