THE AMERICAN POSEIDON ADVENTURE

The Authoritarian Playbook

• Rewrite history
• Collapse truth into propaganda
• Replace facts with emotionally satisfying myths so followers will accept crimes as necessary

These are the defining features of a totalitarian system, according to Hannah Arendt, the political philosopher who fled Nazi Germany in 1933. Timothy Snyder, former Yale historian and author of On Tyranny, distilled the same danger into a single warning:

“Post-truth is pre-fascism. “Once truth collapses, tyranny follows.

If I didn’t know better, I would think Donald Trump, certainly Stephen Miller, studied this literature as a manual. Because Trump’s behavior follows it with eerie precision.

It began long ago:

1. The Central Park Five, when Trump whipped up public rage against five innocent Black teenagers.
2. Birtherism, claiming President Obama was not American.
3. The “rigged election” lies.
4. The false claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
5. COVID disinformation.
6. Constant lies about immigrants and crime.
7. Claims that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating people’s pets.
8. And now an endless firehose of fabricated threats.

The lies never stop, because destabilization is the goal as Trump and cronies fill their pockets now and tee up their future.

We can no longer trust the federal government under Trump. The killing of Renee Good by a federal officer is only the latest proof. No one argues that immigration law should not be enforced. But enforcement does not require brutality, racial targeting, or the destruction of due process.

Depravity and dishonesty breeds violence and Trump’s immigration regime is depravity in policy form. Renee Good – citizen – had a whistle. Jonathan Ross – federal agent –  had a gun. The outcome was not an accident. It was predictable.

ICE’s militarized tactics, combined with poorly prepared personnel and Trump’s racist propaganda, create conditions where violence is inevitable. The agents on the ground become expendable; the fall guys for a political machine that thrives on chaos.

Minneapolis is a Case Study in Authoritarianism. What happened there reveals the larger plan.

1. ICE flooded Minneapolis, a city still traumatized by George Floyd’s murder and by the recent killing of a state legislator and her husband by a man impersonating police. Any responsible government would have recognized how volatile that environment was.
2. Trump had already demonized Somali immigrants, falsely portraying them as dangerous. Minnesotans knew it was a lie. They did not need a federal invasion to solve imaginary problems.
3. Federal authorities went in anyway, knowingly stepping onto raw and unstable ground.
4. Local residents responded to protect their neighbors. People they live with, worship with, and raise children with. They knew these were not violent criminals.
5. They also knew real criminals should be arrested. But this was not law enforcement. It was propaganda theater.

People were being carted away not for what they had done, but for who they appear to be. (I saw this myself: a bagel-shop owner who had worked in the community for twenty years, played Santa at Christmas, and raised a family, swept away).

This is not public safety. This is a pogrom

If Trump wanted to remove criminals, he would use intelligence-driven, lawful policing.

If he wanted to fix immigration, he would hire more judges, to opine after more caseworkers assessed, and enforce the law humanely.

Instead, we get raids, fear, racial profiling, and chaos. Workers vanish. Small businesses suffer. Prices rise. Communities fracture. There is only one reason: To sustain the myth Trump created.

A myth that requires:

• rewriting history
• inventing enemies
• justifying force
• undermining courts
• destroying trust in elections

That is Arendt’s warning.
That is Snyder’s pre-fascism.
This is Trump’s America.

Renee Good paid the price of Trump’s dystopian America. Her death was not random. It was the cost of governing by lies and fear. Unless Congress stops Trump’s assault on democratic institutions, more Americans will die, not because of crime, but because of Trump’s propaganda turned into action.

November 3, 2026, is now a line between democracy and something far darker.

RESIST!!! & EDUCATE!!!