We are clearly living right now under something fairly close to a post-democratic reactionary dictatorship.

I have no problem with Trump going after woke derangement, DEI and trans gender insanity, but the DOGE stuff is scary and some of the new terms seem outrageous, like Trump’s calling Zelensky a dictator, lying about his having started the Ukraine war and insisting upon mineral rights as a basis for a U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Dissenters and anti-Trumpers are out there, obviously, but we’re in the thick of a semblance of fascist rule all the same. No strong opposition…everyone falling into line. Heads are spinning. Many Democrats still appear to be woozy, in shock. Not a developing situation, but one that’s happening right now and right here.

Earlier today Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman openly wondered if a scary, authoritarian, non-democratic government could actually happen here:

“I’ve rarely experienced such a bone-chilling reaction as the one I had watching Walter Salles‘ I’m Still Here. The movie itself, especially the first hour, is powerful. But that’s not what it was; I’ve seen plenty of powerful political films.

“What felt new to me — and intensely disquieting — was taking in a saga of repression like this one and wondering if it now had the potential to happen in America. I felt as if it was a question I’d never had to ask myself before.

“It’s not as if there hasn’t been staggering oppression within the confines of the United States. When you watch a movie drama about racism, from To Kill a Mockingbird to Malcolm X to Fruitvale Station, you’re seeing the scalding reality of systemized injustice.

“But I’m talking about something different: the specter of dictatorship.

“In 249 years, that has never defined America. And as we all struggle to wrap our heads around the question of what the second Trump term will mean, how far it will go, how much the rule of law is threatened, and how much freedom will be lost — the question of whether, in fact, it can happen here — it’s clear to me now more than ever that the movies have been teaching us about all this for decades.

We are not in the world of Costa-Gavras‘s Missing (’82), which I regard as the most chilling drama about a South Anerican fascist dictatorship and the secret murdering of leftist dissenters. American progressives are not being “disappeared,” of course, but this kind of oppression is closer than some of us might realize.