authoritarianism – Kevin Trent Boswell

An Imminent but Winnable War

If we Americans on the Left had any backbone, we’d all start talking to our neighbors today about forming armed “neighborhood watches.”

We would follow the brave and inspiring example of the good people of Lincoln Heights, Ohio.

Lincoln Heights, Ohio

The Black community has been in danger in the United States since before it was technically a nation. When Nazis demonstrated in Lincoln Heights, the people of that neighborhood knew that no one was coming to save them.

Unlike White Liberal Americans, who are clutching their pearls and waiting for the courts and corrupt politicians to save them, the Black community of Lincoln Heights immediately kicked into gear. They knew that if they did not stand up for themselves, then no one would stand for them.

Yeah, So?

But why would you bother to form an armed neighborhood watch in your community, when you (probably) haven’t had Nazi or KKK or Proud Boy demonstrations in your local area?

You should be doing so because actual Nazis have infiltrated your government at the highest levels.

This is not hyperbole. You have Keith Self, a Texas Congressman quoting Joseph Goebbels on the floor of the House.

You have Elon Musk giving not one but two Nazi salutes at the inauguration.

You have the president of the United States posting the Nazi pink triangle (used to distinguish LGBTQ people in the ghettos) on Truth Social.

And yes, it was fact-checked.

If this doesn’t inspire you to fight,
then there’s just no fight in you.

You have RFK suggesting the first stage of a Aktion T4 style eugenics program, a national autism registry.

You have ICE, the new Gestapo snatching people off the streets and sending them to super prisons in El Salvador, without proof of any crimes, or any due process.

Often, they arrest the wrong people, and in some cases, still deport them or put them in a death prison, all without proof of having committed any crimes.

I made this. Nazi lives don’t matter.
Those fuckers know where to find me.
Nobody is going to tell me that anyone
needs a job bad enough to be a Gestapo agent.
Fuck those guys. They betrayed their country.

If you’re still laboring under the delusion that you will just “vote them out” in the midterms and in 2028, then you have not been paying attention.

Nothing about the actions of the last hundred days says “respect for democratic principles.” The regime does not believe that you deserve DUE PROCESS. What in God’s name makes you think they intend to allow you fair elections?!

Have you asked yourself why any government officials would take such murderous and cruel actions against their citizens, if they had any intention of ever leaving office and living amongst those same citizens?

Unless we’re willing to live perpetually in an authoritarian dystopia very similar to North Korea, then we will have to fight, sooner or later.

The Supreme Court is never going to strongly rule against the king they so recently crowned.

Even if they did, who would they send?

The Department of Justice sends the US Marshals to enforce its orders. However, the president appoints the head of DoJ, and that brings Pam Bondi into the mix.

The situation is incredibly complicated, but suffice to say, I have not yet seen any compelling evidence that any court has the right to arrest the president, especially after that nightmare ruling by the Supreme Court.

The ultimate authority over the US Marshals belongs to the president, whether it is obvious or not. They’re technically under the authority of the Department of Justice.

But Republicans have been seeking out constitutional weaknesses for decades, and they have finally found enough of them to exploit them for their attempt to finally finish off democracy, once and for all.

As we’ve all seen, despite all the ranting by orange traitor about “weaponizing the DoJ,” it’s truly being weaponized now, going so far as to arrest judges and threaten law firms with criminal prosecution.

If the Supreme Court can’t enforce orders, then what makes us think that ultimately the lower courts will be able to enforce theirs?

Those Who Fought Before

If you would happily abandon the sacrifices of nearly a half-million service members during WWII, it would still stand to reason that self-interest would implore you to act now.

Even if you chose to ignore the millions of lives lost all across the globe because of Nazis, certainly you wouldn’t ignore it in your own backyard, would you?

Why haven’t you rebelled?!

The Founding Fathers didn’t have one-tenth of the causes for revolution that you do.

Surely, commonly decency impels us to defend our immigrant neighbors, the health and safety of the women who are your mothers, sisters, wives, cousins, coworkers, and friends?

If you will not fight for the LGBTQ community, then you still must recognize that the regime is breaking the economy over its knee, then taking a baseball bat to its skull.

Doesn’t your pocketbook at least compel you? Does NOTHING persuade you to fight?!

I do understand that the US military is the finest killing machine on Earth, and nobody is dumb enough to try to go head-to-head with them.

But the stench of fear coming off of you clouds your mind, and you fail to understand that the Founding Fathers openly discussed the same dangers.

They asked each other, “Gentlemen, do you realize that, by signing this document, we are signing our death warrants?”

This is why John Hancock famously stated that he was signing large enough to ensure King George could read his name.

But you tell yourself that our present situation is somehow different than theirs.

It is not.

The details are different, but the essential situation is very similar.

However, it is not even remotely comparable in one sense. That is to say, the Founding Fathers didn’t have one-fourth of the reasons to revolt that you do.

The Founders waged the Revolutionary War for reasons such as:

The Stamp Act
The Sugar Act
The Townsend Acts (essentially a series of tariffs)

And perhaps most importantly:

The Boston Port Act
The Massachusetts Government Act
The Administration of Justice Act
The Quartering Act
The Quebec Act

All of these things combined pale in comparison to The Crimes Committed, all of the insufferable horrors thrust upon the American people by the Republican Party within the first hundred days of this fascist regime.

Your belly-aching fear prevents you from asking questions of anyone who might understand the real situation.

But How?!

I could tell you that, yes, you could win, if you were willing to fight, if you were willing to take the same risks that the Founders took for liberty.

If you were willing to take the risks that you daily ask your police and military to take, then you could be free of the tyranny.

Any intelligence analyst, who is worth their salt, from the CIA, NSA, DoD, DHS, CSS, DIA, NGA, or the NRO could tell you the same thing:

Even a half-hearted, sustained guerrilla warfare campaign waged by the people would be devastating, even against the US military.

Let’s be honest, they wouldn’t tell you that.

It wouldn’t be in their best interests to reveal such a potentially volatile and dangerous reality. But if you were good friends with one of them, they might let the truth slip out.

Such an admission might perhaps occur after you plied them with a couple of beers and told a couple of particularly funny jokes.

How is that true that you could win a war against the most devastating military force on the planet?

How? When they have a million active duty troops and almost a million reservists? When they have automatic weapons, grenades, Blackhawk helicopters, drones, and tanks?

Simple.

Consider the following:

If the Blue states seceded, they would isolate the Red states from the oceans on the West Coast, as well as the ports of the North Atlantic
The United States has more guns than people, and far more Liberals own guns than you think

Here are a couple of YouTube videos that illustrate some of the basic concepts of how a new civil war might unfold, and how radically different it would be from the first one.

These videos are far from perfect.

There are plenty of unknowns in such a theoretical scenario.

Second Civil War

The next one was made well before Biden dropped out of the race, but the speculations are still relevant.

Who Will Win?

If you think a guerrilla warfare campaign can’t succeed, you need to talk to some veterans of Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, or any of the “secret wars” like Nicaragua or Ukraine.

Yes, we regularly send “operators,” ex-military intelligence operatives, into battle in non-official war zones. They know.

Of the one million active duty troops, they are:

Scattered across the entire country and the entire world, on foreign bases
Not entirely in support of the regime; even if 75% were rabid MAGA, and they completely ignore their oaths, that’s still a quarter million who would fight alongside YOU; I’m willing to bet that it would be many more than that
They’re not able to secure the terrain of every house, barn, garage, factory, warehouse, office building, or apartment complex in every town, city, or hamlet across a country as large and diverse as the United States
They cannot possibly patrol every national park, forest, lake, or valley; look at the complexities of patrolling just the Southern and Northern borders
The people of Canada and Mexico (and most of the world) are on OUR SIDE. They will happily assist us in smuggling supplies to us, to aid our fight; seeing the fascist regime fall is in their best interests

Insurgency Is a Bitch

If the military were suddenly forced to deal with the American population rising against them, all across the entire nation, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

If even a tenth of the population decided to fight, the fascist regime wouldn’t have a chance to resist.

While it’s true that the right wing is keen on military service, gun ownership, and being survivalists, they’re not automatically victorious because of these things.

The Left are the ones who have a deeper understanding of history, and therefore strategy, and what actually works in warfare.

While right-wingers are usually the ones on the battlefield, using weapons, left wingers are usually the ones designing those weapons.

The Left has the chemists, engineers, and thinkers.

The Left has many of the computer programmers and hackers. The doge douchebags have shown us that we don’t have all of them, but we still have more.

Pen & Sword

The pure brawn and brute force of a right wing soldier is imposing and impressive. But even Genghis Khan knew that this was only half the battle. Superior strategy regularly prevails over brute force, and sometimes over superior numbers.

And the Right, despite what they would have you believe, does NOT have the superior numbers.

Even with psycho riot cops, hired Blackwater militias, Proud Boys, Neo-Nazi groups, and the KKK, they do NOT have the numbers.

And frankly,

they don’t have

even half

the brain power.

The ambushes they’d walk into.

The internal power schisms within the military and the police forces would keep them in constant damage control mode and paranoia.

They would exhaust untold resources, trying in vain to locate the heads of “terrorist cells” (what the regime would label them.

There might not even be an official army to stand against them. It would not matter. They’d be doomed.

Consider the fallout of situations like the Red Brigades of Italy, the French Revolution, the French Resistance of WWII, the Troubles of Northern Ireland, the Battle of Algiers, or Che Guevara’s guerrilla war in Cuba.

The United States military is the most dangerous military machine on Earth. Still, the fact remains that counterinsurgency is a fool’s errand.

And you, my fellow Americans, are the insurgents. Or rather, you could be, if only you were willing to place a higher premium on liberty than you do on your precious stock market.

If only you cherished the freedoms and protections of your sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, as you do your freedom from prison or the threat of death.

Occam’s Razor basically posits the idea that we should look for answers that have the smallest set of elements.

In other words, “the simplest answer is usually the correct one.”

If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done…

You can choose to believe that you will vote the bad guys out in the future, but I don’t share your optimism.

You might choose to the traitors in Congress may suddenly grow a conscience and a a spine.

If they somehow did both, then perhaps they would impeach. However, most Americans are entirely ignorant of how difficult it is to remove a sitting president from power.

The Supreme Court, Congress, the oligarchs (with their Dark Enlightenment and End Times Fascism) who bankroll the fascists, the Heritage Foundation, and the rabid MAGA base who still support this madness, all of them are to blame.

You might think that peaceful protests are going to change their minds, but I don’t.

You might think that a national strike would make a difference. But I don’t personally believe that the oligarchs, who have more money than God, and who now want to play God with human lives, are unwilling to forfeit some monetary benefits in exchange for the raw power that fascism affords them. I think it’s foolish to expect to starve them out. They have the advantage, to say the least.

Even if you think there’s such a thing as “a bridge too far” for Supreme Court justices like Alito and Thomas, I don’t. Even if they believed that all Americans wanted impeachment or conviction, they are well past the point of return. They can’t afford to change course now.

The lower court rulings are being partially respected, yes. But the Republican regime is still fighting those battles, which tells you who they are.

And they’re allowing you to witness them “obey” the courts on small matters, so you will hopefully forget how they are completely ignoring the much larger, far more important issues, like the Supreme Court’s ruling that they must “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

I can’t even say the words, “Call or write your Representatives!” without throwing up in my mouth. They know what you want. They know what you need. The ones who would help you if they could cannot. The ones who could help you will not. Don’t be ridiculous.

What Then?

Back to Occam’s Razor, I have pondered this and pondered it, until I can’t ponder how I might ponder any more. For the life of me, I cannot see any way in which the American people escape this situation without a revolution. Not an economic boycott or strike, not another protest, not anything of the sort. An actual, old school revolution, just like the Founding Fathers.

Maybe you can see something that I don’t see. Let me know what I am missing here. Speak slowly and use small words.

Sincerely,

Kevin Trent Boswell

(aka John Muthafuckin Hancock)

Portland, OR

May 9th, 2025

A Mother Bear and Her Cubs

Put yourself in this hypothetical situation. Say your young child was walking down the street, and a pedophile tried to abduct them.

If a full-grown adult were standing there when it happened, would you accept anything less than their one hundred percent effort to stop the abduction?

I doubt it.

I’m willing to bet that if you saw the video played back and saw that adult beat the hell out of that would-be attacker, you would shower the defender with loving, thank-you praise and probably offers of money, food, friendship, etc.

You would tell the story of that brave defender for the rest of your life.

But if the video showed you that this person merely stood by and shouted at the abductor, I’m willing to bet that you would be furious.

You might even go so far as to physically attack that person yourself, screaming at them, “Why didn’t you do more to stop them?!”

Well, guess what.

This fascist regime IS abducting people off the streets of America, and you and I are merely standing by and watching, and consoling ourselves that we are doing enough… because we rage-posted about it online.

But I am asking you right now, in the name of whatever you might believe in, why are you not doing more to stop it?

Whether you believe in some deity, the Constitution, your country, basic decency, or just the love of your family, why are you not throwing yourself physically between the innocent and their attackers?

I say to you, no, you have not done enough. You have not done nearly enough. You have not even begun to think about doing enough.

Until you are willing to fight tooth and nail to defend your neighbors, you forfeit the right to complain about anything that this regime has taken from you.

You’re not doing enough until you are willing to show the fierceness of a mother bear defending her cubs.

You must be willing to extend a mother bear’s fierceness beyond your cubs and extend that circle of protection to your neighbor’s cubs.

It does not matter that your neighbor is an immigrant. It does not matter that you do not even know your neighbor’s name.

If you would call yourself an American, then you will get off of your delicate little ass and throw yourself in between that immigrant or his wife or his child and their would-be abductors.

You will not allow yourself the opportunity to hesitate and tell yourself, “Oh, but I could go to prison! I could get hurt or even killed!”

You will not coddle yourself with selfish thoughts such as, “But then who would take care of my children?”

We are either a tribe or we are a random bunch of strangers.

If you will not defend your neighbor or your neighbor’s family, then you forfeit the right to complain when others will not defend you or yours.

To hell with all your rage-posting. Screw your phone calls, emails, and letters to corrupt politicians who already know good and goddamn well what you want and need.

I don’t care how many protests you marched in. If you are not willing to risk life and limb, then I spit on your protest sign.

Fuck your stupid boycotts, unless you are willing to boycott AND throw yourself in harm’s way to defend another American from Nazis.

If you’re willing to do both, then we can be friends.

Get some skin in the game.

It Is Time

Chuck Schumer and other Democrats are foolishly laboring under the delusion that this is a presidential administration. Rather than being a run-of-the-mill administration, it is the textbook definition of a fascist regime.

Granted, they haven’t finished solidifying their position, but they are proceeding well within the necessary timeframe to finish the job.

Never in the history of the United States has a president or a political party held so many Americans in such daily fear. The orange stain and the Republican Party are nothing short of a terrorist organization.

The majority of Americans fear for their safety and the safety of their families and communities. As long as Republicans remain in power, there is no faith in the American dream.

Words like fairness, protection, law, and justice have lost all meaning. The Democratic Party is trying to play by rules that no longer exist.

It does not matter whether one is playing chess or checkers. Once your opponent knocks the board off the table, you are no longer engaged in chess or checkers.

The idea of turning the other cheek only applies when one person slaps you across the face. If you choose to overlook the offense, it might be noble or admirable.

However, when it is not just you, but an entire nation being assaulted, there’s nothing noble about overlooking the offense. When it is not merely a simple slap across the face, but rather attempted murder through systematic imprisonment and class warfare, there is nothing ethical about “playing the long game.”

For God’s sake, the time for war is not only here, it is now well behind us. Will none of you exert any true stewardship or courage?

Anyone within the Democratic Party who is still sane should stand up and take action.

The Founding Fathers are shaking their heads in disgust, scowling at you from beyond the grave.

It is time to talk about secession. But before you say, “That’s utterly ridiculous. That would raze this country to the ground,” ask yourself this:

Is there any part of American ideology that is not already under direct assault by the Republican Party?

Will you never wake up and realize that you are being mugged? Will it never dawn on you that your attacker has no intention of stopping?

A sane person, one not completely paralyzed by cowardice would choose to fight, rather than to surrender to an attacker who is already in the process of murdering them.

I am not speaking as the typical citizen who might mean well but has a poor grasp of history. Since grade school, I have studied the art of war and the rise and fall of empires. I didn’t do it for school credit; I learned about these things out of fascination.

When the Democrats began talking about Biden pulling out of the race, I scoured the history of American politics for any successful precedent of such a move. I found none.

Because I have no mouthpiece or political clout, I could not persuade anyone that it was a horrible idea. But it was, and I knew it. Still, Democrats are spoiled children, and they got what they asked for.

Even though we’ve never had a female President, and even though we already unsuccessfully attempted to run a woman against that disgusting orange stain the first time, we proceeded.

Harris would have made a fantastic President. Still, it was the most ridiculous decision that Democrats have ever made to switch candidates so late in the race. Wait. I take that back. It’s the second. The first is Schumer and other key Democrats supporting the budget resolution.

Because of the last few months, there is no longer the slightest inkling of doubt about the lengths to which Republicans are willing to go for complete authoritarian control.

I have been scrambling to find any historical precedent for removing a dictator from power without bloodshed or, at the very least, some serious behind-the-scenes coercion. I have found none.

The closest examples are:

Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. However, the military refused to fire on civilians, enabling them to prevail. I do not know whether Americans would be so lucky.
Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas. Yet, the exit came after the CIA supplied the Contra guerrillas for years. Even then, Ortega publicly stated that he intended to “rule from below” if possible.

South Korea was able to reverse its recent declaration of martial law only because the people of their congress were willing to scale the fences and face being shot by the military. I can’t even imagine our Congress officials doing anything like that.

One can find multiple “sources” that paint other regimes as ending peacefully, but they’re naive accounts. For example, I encountered an article that claimed Pinochet left power willingly. This retelling of events conveniently ignores such a staggering number of critical details that there is no time to get into it. Suffice it to say that these two I’ve mentioned are as close as it gets.

The Supreme Court is a toothless guard dog with no power to enforce its rulings. The US Marshals are under the control of the Executive Branch.

The Republicans hold the majority in both houses of Congress.

They pulled the Alien Enemies Act card within the first hundred days.

DOGE’s tampering with governmental software screams the setting up of fixing future elections. The bloodcurdling scream is loud enough for the people to hear it. So, why don’t you?

In 2020, the orange thing swore that the election would be fake unless we had all paper ballots and no mail-in ballots. Suddenly, in 2024, it was all excited about Elon Musk’s computer savvy and these “great new voting machines.”

Has no one in the Democratic Party ever played poker before? Are none of you familiar with the concept of a “tell?” The 2024 election was probably the first rigged election in American history. Yet it will not serve us to speak of this because we went to such great lengths to clarify that the 2020 election was secure.

We can’t discuss the likelihood of a stolen election; this would only bring scorn and mockery. It would achieve nothing without smoking gun evidence, evidence which I seriously doubt anyone possesses. Therefore, we must (as golfers say) “play the ball where it lies.” We must move forward from here.

Steve Bannon’s remark about “muzzle velocity” best summarizes the goal of all this chaos.

They are putting so much stress on the American people in such a short time that it’s clear what the goal is:

Incite riots in the streets and then invoke the Insurrection Act. The saber-rattling against China, Panama, Denmark, Greenland, Canada, and Mexico is an obvious sign of the intention to wage war solely to invoke martial law and suspend elections.

The Mueller Report and the January 6th Committee were correct. The orange stain technically forfeited the right to run again; the Constitution forbids it. Yet Democrats failed to enforce this.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is but one of many who have been illegally sent to what we all know are essentially death camps.

Robert King was arrested for no crime. He spoke the obvious truth, but no one is talking about him.

You have allowed them to destroy Medicaid and attack Medicare and Social Security. How many planes have they crashed? There is no time to list the roster of human rights violations and financial catastrophes; we’d be here all night.

The oligarchs are waging class warfare against us.

We, the American people, do not expect you, the Democrats, to do much of anything. It is evident to us that you all lack the fortitude, conviction, courage, and backbone to stand up and do the job that needs doing.

However, you can at least admit that we will never have peace with the ruthless mad dogs of the Republican Party.

Secede from the Union, for God’s sake.

At least you would be giving us a fighting chance. I can assure you of this: Many Americans will begin acting on their own volition in the spirit of our forefathers, who, unlike yourselves, absolutely refused to bow to a tyrant.

You are already at war; you cannot escape your incompetence long enough to accept that harsh reality.

I don’t expect you to recall that Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge was a mere 50 years ago and that it resulted in the death of more than one and a half million Cambodians.

Nor do I expect you to recollect that their targets were the same as the modern-day Republican Party those such as journalists, political enemies (such as yourselves), teachers, artists, those who spoke multiple languages, engineers, etc.

However, I do expect you to be able to understand that the rule of law is gone. You must know that no one in Washington, DC, is following the Constitution anymore. You would be incapable of having gotten yourselves elected in the first place if you didn’t at least grasp that much.

We, the people, require wartime consiglieres.

You owe us that much. Step aside and allow someone up to the task to do the job. We could literally roll the dice and do better than what the Democratic Party has given us.

We will begin to act on our own orders.

This inevitability is apparent from the murmuring of the streets. You would be wise to understand that you will do better if you are in control of the Resistance. It’s much more difficult to control the chaos of a military rebellion when you are not communicating with the generals because they are merely citizens acting out of their own capacity.

Do you want to orchestrate a second Civil War?

Or would you rather have a modern-day Weather Underground scenario to the power of ten?

There is no third choice.

I have one ear to the ground and one to the wind. It is clear to me that the people of this great nation will not much longer stomach your fearful inaction and bellyaching.

It’s time for secession. If you don’t proceed now, you will soon be unable to do anything. Our citizens will not even be able to flee the country safely.

Secede.

Do it NOW.

Sincerely,

Kevin Trent Boswell

Americans Don’t Play Chess

Americans don’t play enough chess
It’s the reason we’re in this political mess
The Right has carefully studied for years
Constitutional weaknesses, racist fears

They’ve put in long hours, learning the game
Motivating their base, pointing the blame
Spinning problems as the fault of their foes
Scuttling each bill that would end those woes

Like Morphy, Alekhine, Karpov, Nimzowitsch
Dangling carrots; a cheap bait-and-switch
A Fischer sacrifice; playing the long-game
The board no longer looks quite the same

Their rooks and bishops, now in key places
We watch with horror, mud on our faces
We slept through opening, developing play
Their knights are posted; it seems they’ll stay

Kiss of Death at the Opera, then it’s too late
Anastasia smiles, threatens Legal’s mate
A double-bishop pin, a dovetail, strategic
Is needed, or our king will be quadriplegic

Having good pawn structure is fundamental
And theirs is proving to be quite instrumental
Mate is possible with any piece on the board
Except the other king, who may be ignored

Unless, that is, he works his way up the file
Blocking the enemy king’s movement, while
The officers sweep in to deliver last blows
A game is often over before the loser knows

We’d better learn the game, or we’ll be through
It’s less checkmate, more authoritarian coup
A king can be smothered by his own pieces
It only takes a few with deceptive caprices

If the game may be saved, our wits must return
Or “How to lose everything” is all we will learn
We scoffed at haughty, four-dimensional claims
But, with distractions, they hit all their true aims

We’re playing an opponent who is happy to win
By legal means, if possible; they’ll nod and grin
Beaten fairly, he gives no handshake reward
But balls up his fists, and knocks over the board

The only way to beat a cheating, spoiled brat
Is to win fairly, but be ready to pick up a bat
For this one believes they must win at all cost
And will not admit or accept that they lost

The one sitting on the other side of this table
Is wily, unscrupulous; cheats when he’s able
Demanding to rewrite how the game is played
Promoting a pawn, says “A new king is made!”

Yes, win… but don’t be surprised if the liar
Pulls a gun or a knife, upon losing their desire
We all must fight hard to get out of this mess
We must become better at political chess

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