The murder of Rene Good has exposed the true character of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. It is one of depraved indifference.
What, exactly, has Trump done for ordinary Americans, the middle class and working poor? He is obsessed with building ballrooms, redecorating the White House, plastering his name on once-respected institutions, and rebuilding golf courses in Washington and at military bases. He has spent a fortune of our taxpayer money on a reckless Venezuelan oil adventure that will benefit only wealthy oil barons. He has created a de-facto federal gestapo to terrorize immigrants and intimidate “blue” cities, shrinking the labor force, harming small businesses, and destabilizing communities. He has tarnished America’s international standing and driven investment elsewhere.
All the while, Trump is lining his own pockets through crypto schemes, real-estate deals, branding opportunities, and arrangements we likely don’t even know about yet, using the power of the presidency as leverage. The national debt keeps rising, but not because Americans are being helped. Not because housing is being built. Not because healthcare is being expanded. Not because jobs are being created. But because Trump is using public money to enrich himself and his allies.
And now Americans need something even more basic than housing, healthcare, or jobs: protection from their own government.
The most horrifying evidence of this moral rot is the killing of Rene Good, a 37-year-old mother, now leaving behind a six-year-old orphan. Instead of showing restraint, empathy, or a commitment to truth, Trump and his political henchmen have chosen to smear the victim, to rewrite her life and death to justify their abuse of power.
Has a single one of them stopped to think about what their lies will do to that six-year-old child? About the lifetime of trauma that comes from seeing your mother publicly maligned by the most powerful people in the country to excuse her killing? Have any of them tried to calm the situation, to de-escalate the anger and fear they themselves ignited?
No. They do the opposite. They pour gasoline on the fire. They double down. They distort. They intimidate. They expect us to accept their grotesque version of reality.
This immigration “crackdown” has become a tool of national intimidation meant to force obedience and silence dissent. Trump now claims that the entire leadership of Minnesota, including its police, is “crooked,” and uses that as an excuse to withhold the truth about what happened. The mayor of Minneapolis called that what it is: BS.
Heather Cox Richardson is right. By the government’s own historical definition, what we are seeing is fascism: the use of state power, propaganda, fear, and violence to suppress opposition, control the population, and protect a corrupt ruling clique.
Rene Good is not just a victim of a bullet. She is a victim of a system that no longer sees people as human beings, only as obstacles.
We must:
RESIST!!! & EDUCATE!!!
2
January 9, 2026
JAN 09, 2026
Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”
On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”
“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”
Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.
Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”
Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”
Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”
The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:
First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”
Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”
Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”
It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”
The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.
“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”
THE AMERICAN POSEIDON ADVENTURE 
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