1/ As the administration illegally targets Illinois and Chicago, note Kristi Noem's rhetoric from last Sunday (quotes from 10/5 Guardian).

Charles Tillman was already one of my all-time favorite Bears players, now even more so.

"Personally that didn’t sit right with me, that didn’t sit right with my conscience. You have the ability to refuse an order."

That's ethically and politically exemplary.

chicago.suntimes.com/bears/2025/0...

"We're taking our country back from these cockroaches."

Genocidal rhetoric is genocidal rhetoric.

bsky.app/profile/reev...

bsky.app/profile/atru...

1/ In totalitarian politics, policy is indistinguishable from propaganda. Much of this comes straight from the “movement.” When the “movement” becomes the government, propaganda talking points become compulsory fictions backed up by the power of the state.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

1/ Here is a random, incomplete list of people officially demonized, denied care or employment, and/or subjected to arbitrary arrest since January 20: Immigrants; Refugees; Persons Perceived as "Hispanic"; Persons Wearing Chicago Bulls Gear; Black People; Judges in Their Own Courtrooms...

While millions of Americans are thrown into poverty (or a lot closer to it), billions of dollars have been devoted to Ice, which will be hiring. A lot of people are going to be led into serious temptation.

www.inquirer.com/columnists/a...

At this rate, nobody will have full citizenship rights unless you can prove you're a direct descendant of Huck Finn's Pappy.

www.mobilize.us/nokings/even...

1/ The the first paragraphs of Executive Order 14190 are worth reading carefully. The first sentence: "Parents trust America's schools to provide their children with a rigorous education and to instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand."

Hannah Arendt: “Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held that every statement was a lie anyhow.”

www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Hannah Arendt calls common sense “our mental organ for perceiving, understanding, and dealing with reality and factuality.” She writes, “Totalitarian propaganda can outrageously insult common sense only where common sense has lost its validity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr: "All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."

So many appeals to "common sense."

Thomas Paine in Common Sense: "Men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large...