We read with interest Jonathan Rauch’s Yes, It’s Fascism January 25, 2026 article in the Atlantic Monthly.

We like so many of our fellow countryfolk—both real-ish and mostly-imagined characters—feel like the nation is in free fall and we should do something but

well,

what’s exactly going on and what exactly should we do and can’t we just move to Europe or Canada or back to the 1990s or whenever it was that we were young and cuddled within an infinite democracy that was on the march and spreading far and wide, and yes, there was still much injustice and much work to be done, but we had the tools to do it—a government that was ultimately responsible to the people and a people that were ultimately responsible to their conscience and to the shared faith that we are all in this together and can use our representative democracy and free conversation to together move towards the better and away from the worse

??

Of course we all now that a government is many things, but one thing it is is a weapon, charged both with exacting selective violence within its borders (example: fairly and nonpolitically stopping people from harming each other, with force if necessary) and with being ready to use violence to defend itself and its inhabitants from foreign aggression.

And who can really run away from such a big weapon in this shrinking world? And if democracy falls here, then thuggery has most of the military might in the world.

You can be cynical and say the US was always just a thug, but that’s an oversimplification. The US has always been imperfect and, as wealth and might make a nation’s reach wider and more impactful, great power tends to amplify both the good and bad qualities of a nation. This moment now of exploding information makes it harder for a free people to remain ignorant of errors carried out under their flag and in their name. Or does it? We can cocoon in entertainment, in media bubbles, in having to work too much and spend the rest of our time trying to hold our lives and families together. Or we can let people with money dominate the conversation and call it “freedom of speech”. Or we can let a totalitarian state’s state media dictate the conversation and call it “the freedom to share the truth” (or be escorted to a dark place for to disappear).

You can be cynical and say the US was always just might makes right, but that’s not fair. Might makes Right is Hitler’s Germany, Putin’s Russia, places where the citizens are punished for saying the truth and doing the right thing. It’s not that such perversions of justice never happen in liberal democratic republics, but that they don’t win the game—mistakes eventually come to light and policies are eventually changed and actions reversed.

We won’t debate the last century of international activity; we suffice it to point out that cynicism is another half of triumphalism: If everything is either hopelessly evil or perfectly good, then there’s nothing to do but either pout or exalt. The alternation between pouting and exalting is a tool of demagogues. The truth is that those of us living in the USA in 2016 had a pretty good hand and it’s looking quite a bit worse; and the world is looking more dangerous and less safe for competence, honesty, and the rule of law.

You can be cynical; you can be exultant; you can be by turns cynical and exultant as it fits your needs for feeling the way you need to feel to justify what you’re doing in a given moment. Or you can relax and try to see things as they really are as best you can in a given moment and

Yes it is an ongoing effort that combines both your ever-evolving relationship with the ultimately intellectually and emotionally un-capturable Truth and your ever-evolving piecing-together-on-the-fly of this world of appearances, but what of it? What else is there? Only pouting and exulting over lies that you clutch like great gods.

Be that as it may.

We’ve long attempted to get some kind of foothold in this moment. Perhaps an overview of this longstanding political project is in order, but much of it is not even published anymore, so let’s set that overview aside and focused on the little mini project we’re here prologuing. Or we’ve meant to be prologuing. Not sure what all’s gone on up there.

To (we plead with our many whip-snaking strands) return:

We read Jonathan Rauch’s essay with interest and we thought

Maybe here is a sound foundation for a protest song, or at least a song of political contemplation.

How to get people to together focus on this moment and to together work through it? Art is a way to examine a moment without dogmatically demanding an interpretation; but this moment cannot be well thought-through without a careful examination of pertinent facts. And so we decided to write a footnoted ballad based on the essay.

However, our time is limited and this weekend will die before we complete (or perhaps before we even start) number three of the eighteen eight-line verses (or sets of two four-line verses) that we had envisioned (one for each of JR’s categories in his list of why, taken as a whole, the way Donald Trump and co are currently governing is best labeled “fascism”).

We’ll keep working on this, but we offer the project up as a fun game we can all play together. Write a verse! It’s fun! If you want to keep working in the same rhythm and rhyme scheme as we’ve been working: ABAB CDCD, with A and C being eight syllables of unstressed-stressed & B and D six syllables of unstressed-stressed.

Before we show you what we’ve got so far, perhaps we should discuss whether or not we think Donald Trump’s second presidency should be considered fascism.

Short answer is:

What you call Trump 2.0’s governing style isn’t as important as thinking about why it might be fairly described as “fascism” (totalitarian submission of the nation to the will of the leader), “patrimonialism” (the state is treated as personal property of the leaders), and/or “thuggism” (a patrimonialism with a particularly gangster vibe), while also considering why we prefer liberal (as in basic human rights are guaranteed to all regardless of who they are and who their friends are) representative democracy (as in people choose their representatives in regular fair elections) over those styles of government.

We think that liberal representative government is a spiritual good because it allows people to share power and meaning and to work together to keep their government safe for the universal values (aware, clear, honest, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, joyfully-sharing), which in turn gives people the ability to be publicly virtuous while still keeping themselves and their loved ones safe and sound. And we think that the current White House is undermining our existing imperfect-but-still-functional-and-thus-improvable liberal representative democracy, and that we should all work together to find a way to preserve, improve, and strengthen our liberal representative democracy. We’ve written a great deal on all this elsewhere; for now, let’s pass on to today’s project.

Below is what we have so far.
There’s still a refrain needed and fourteen more verses to write and we still have to finish reading some of the source materials for the already-existing footnotes.
Everything takes time!
And before you know it, you’re not forever-young anymore; no, not all …

Be that as it may.

First the verses themselves:

They poison the blood of our nation
with shithole country shit
A rapist, cat-eating inundation
I just call it like I see it

The great threat’s the one from within
Marx-Commie-vermin-all
Let’s lock them up so we may begin
to stand up proud strong and tall

A violent day gets the word out
In legs we can shoot them
Make it a filmed war shout
In boots and masks we refute them

Old waterboard’s a warmup game
like storming Capitol steps.
I’m Law; the King and Law’re the same!
Dissenters deserve death.

Then with headings taken from JR’s article and our footnotes (we clicked through all his links, but didn’t end up using all of them as footnotes, and also added in some sources that he’d not linked to):

Demolition of norms

They poison the blood of our nation 1
with shithole country shit 2
A rapist, cat-eating inundation 3 4
I just call it like I see it

The great threat’s the one from within 5
Marx-Commie-vermin-all 5
Let’s lock them up so we may begin 6
to stand up proud strong and tall 7

1
Trump praises autocrats, says immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’
BY Joseph Konig Nationwide
PUBLISHED 6:00 PM ET Dec. 17, 2023
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/us/snplus/politics/2023/12/17/trump-praises-autocrats–says-immigrants-are–poisoning-the-blood-of-our-country-

2
Trump’s Words Aren’t Just Insults—They’re Policy Signals
Sheila Miller
Dec 12, 2025
Branding immigrants as “garbage” and Somalia as “barely a country” is more than rhetoric. It’s a blueprint for dismantling decades of progress.
https://www.nilc.org/articles/trumps-words-arent-just-insults-theyre-policy-signals/

3
Mexican ‘rapists’ seems so mild compared to what Trump says about immigrants today | Opinion By the Miami Herald Editorial Board September 18, 2024 12:46 PM
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article292632624.html
4
WATCH: Trump amplifies false racist rumor about Ohio’s Haitian immigrants in debate
Politics Sept 11, 2024, PBS News Hour
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-amplifies-false-racist-rumor-about-ohios-haitian-immigrants-in-debate
5
“We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections … The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
November 11, 2023, during a Veterans Day speech
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-violent-rhetoric-timeline/680403/

6
Trump on Clinton: ‘Lock her up is right’
October 10, 2016 | 9:23 PM EST
When some in the crowd at a Donald Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., started chanting “Lock her up!” about Hillary Clinton on Oct. 10, the Republican presidential nominee replied: “Lock her up is right.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-on-clinton-lock-her-up-is-right/2016/10/10/fd56d59e-8f51-11e6-bc00-1a9756d4111b_video.html

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115239044548033727
Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” Then we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job. That’s why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard. He even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot. We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT
7
Remarks at a “Make America Great Again” Rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma June 20, 2020
The choice in 220 is very simple. Do you wanna bow before the left-wing mob, or do you wanna stand up tall and proud as Americans? True. [cheers and applause]
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-make-america-great-again-rally-tulsa-oklahoma

Glorification of Violence

A violent day gets the word out 1
In legs we can surely shoot them 2
Make it a movie, a war shout! 3
In boots and masks we refute them 4

A waterboard’s a warmup game 5
like our storm of Washington 6
I’m Law we’re One: the same 7
Say no, deserve death, done done 8

1
“If you had one really violent day … one rough hour—and I mean real rough—the word will get out, and it will end immediately.”
September 29, 2024, proposing a violent crackdown by police to deal with crime, during a rally in Pennsylvania
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-violent-rhetoric-timeline/680403/

2A. Shooting protestors in the legs
Former Pentagon chief Esper says Trump asked about shooting protesters
MAY 9, 20225:00 AM ET
HEARD ON ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
By Michel Martin, Tinbete Ermyas
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-defense-secretary

…
Former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said President Donald Trump inquired about shooting protesters amid the unrest that took place after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. He recounts that incident, and many others, in a wide-ranging interview with NPR’s Michel Martin on All Things Considered.
…
Esper said he and other top officials were caught off guard by Trump’s reaction to the unrest in the summer of 2020.
“The president was enraged,” Esper recalled. “He thought that the protests made the country look weak, made us look weak and ‘us’ meant him. And he wanted to do something about it.

“We reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly at [Joint Chiefs of Staff] Gen. [Mark] Milley and said, ‘Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?’ … It was a suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that moment as this issue just hung very heavily in the air.”

2B Shooting immigrants in the legs
US President Donald Trump suggested shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down, according to a new book. Oct 2, 2019, BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49901878

The book, by two New York Times journalists, says Mr Trump suggested extreme methods of deterring migrants from crossing the southern border.
They included building an electrified, spiked border wall and a snake or alligator-infested moat.
Calling the claims “fake news”, Mr Trump tweeted: “I may be tough on border security, but not that tough.”
…
The book – called Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration, by reporters Michael Shear and Julie Davis, and based on interviews with more than a dozen unnamed officials – was published by the New York Times.
…
It chronicles a week in March 2019 when Mr Trump reportedly tried to halt all southern migration to the US.
According to an excerpt, the president privately suggested to aides that soldiers shoot migrants in the legs, but he was told it would be illegal.
Previously, Mr Trump had made a public statement suggesting soldiers shoot migrants who throw rocks. [https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/02/us/officials-dismiss-shooting-rock-throwing-migrants-trump-invs]

3A
DHS leans into propaganda with militaristic action videos
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf 10/10/2025, CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/10/politics/ice-videos-dhs-noem-immigration-arrests-analysis

A few clips linked to in the article:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPZTrp0CXdc/
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPhHn7pibT6/
https://x.com/David_J_Bier/status/1976014467965304874

3B
‘It’s a war’ Inside ICE’s media machine
Messages reveal how the agency has raced to satisfy the White House by pumping out videos of confrontations and arrests.
Washington Post, 12/23/2025
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/ice-social-media-blitz/

4
The White House wanted an ICE spectacle. It backfired.
The shooting of Renée Good in Minneapolis may mark a turning point in public opinion.
Kate Andrews, Washington Post, 1/19/2026
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/01/19/ice-immigration-enforcement-minneapolis-protests/

5A
“They said to me, ‘What do you think of waterboarding?’ I said, ‘I think it’s great, but I don’t think we go far enough.’ It’s true, it’s true—right? We don’t go far enough. We don’t go far enough.”
February 22, 2016, at a rally in Las Vegas
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-violent-rhetoric-timeline/680403/
5B
What Does It Mean When the President Endorses Torture?
President Trump said he would reinstate techniques banned as torture if his advisors endorsed the move because “I think it works.”
Ken Dilanian, Jan 26, 2027, NBC News
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-does-it-mean-when-president-praises-torture-n712736

6A
When I think back to January 6th, after nearly a year and a half of investigation, I am frightened about the peril our democracy faced. Specifically, I think about what that mob was there to do: to block the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another based on a lie that theelection was rigged and tainted with widespread fraud.
I also think about why the rioters were there, besieging the legislativebranch of our government. The rioters were inside the halls of Congress because the head of the executive branch of our government, the then-President of the United States, told them to attack. Donald Trump summoned that mob to Washington, DC. Afterward, he sent them to the Capitol to try to prevent my colleagues and me from doing our Constitutional duty to certify the election. They put our very democracy to the test.
Trump’s mob came dangerously close to succeeding. Courageous law enforcement officers put their lives on the line for hours while Trump sat in the White House, refusing to tell the rioters to go home, while watching the assault on our republic unfold live on television.
When it was clear the insurrection would fail, Trump finally called off the mob, telling them, “We love you.” Afterward, Congress was able to return to this Capitol Building and finish the job of counting the Electoral College votes and certifying the election.
This is the key conclusion of the Select Committee, all nine of us, Republicans and Democrats alike.

From the Chairman’s Foreword to the Jan 6 Investigation.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf
6B
January 6, five years on: sustained effort by Trump to rewrite history
Sam Levine
President and Republican allies have tried to make sure the deadly attack on the Capitol has been erased from memory
Jan 6, 2026, for The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/06/january-6-trump-us-capitol-attack

6C
The current Whitehouse’s whitewashing job:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/j6/
If you buy this, I’ve got some lovely bridges I’d like to sell you, some tremendous bridges

7
Professor Hanson: Trump’s Patrimonial Rule Treats the State as Personal Property and Undermining Impartial Governance

Professor Hanson: Trump’s Patrimonial Rule Treats the State as Personal Property and Undermining Impartial Governance

Professor Hanson underscores that “the key features [of Trump’s governance] are that the ruler governs the entire state as if it were his personal possession, viewing the state as a kind of family business. He distributes parts of the state and its protection to loyalists, cronies, and even family members directly. At the same time, he attacks the impersonal and impartial administration of the state as an obstacle to his arbitrary power.” This, he argues, is a defining characteristic of patrimonialism, a governance style that many assumed had been relegated to history but is now re-emerging in modern democracies.
8
Trump Calls for Executing Democrats Over Message to Military
By Jacob Knutson, Matthew Kupfer
November 20, 2025

Trump Calls for Executing Democrats Over Message to Military

In a feverish flurry of social media posts and reposts Thursday morning, President Donald Trump expressed support for imprisoning and executing a group of Democratic lawmakers for what he termed “seditious behavior.”
The behavior in question? Urging U.S. military service members to defend the U.S. Constitution and disobey orders that violate the law.
…
In a post on his Truth Social page, Trump wrote that the lawmakers’ actions were “really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” the president wrote in a separate post.
He also reposted a message from an anonymous user that stated: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”
…
The six lawmakers — Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) — all formerly served in the military or intelligence community.
“Right now, the threats to the Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home,” they said in the video. “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders.”
Following Trump’s reaction online, the Democratic lawmakers put out a statement denouncing his comments, saying that “every American must unite and condemn the President’s calls for our murder and political violence.”
“What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law,” they said.
…
Trump’s social media posts also fit into a broader pattern in which administration officials publish menacing messages on social media — sometimes at the expense of their own goals.
As Democracy Docket reported in October, statements online by Trump and Justice Department officials could serve as evidence in court that charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) represent vindictive and selective prosecution.
…

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright of the original material: Andrew M. Watson