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Don’t worry, be happy

January 20, 2026 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

by John Schneeberger, Hamilton

Benjamin Franklin said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The balance of power, the rule of law and federalism worked to keep a malignant demagogue out of power for a while, but all good things must end sometime.

The Democrat response to all this is to focus on “affordability.” This would be like the opposition to Mussolini in 1922 focusing on making the trains run on time. What if Trump gets the prices down through imperialism? You know, bullying or taking over countries for their resources. When that happens, our opposition might have to pivot to another “kitchen table” issue. How about this one: Trump now has $30 billion to continue to build a private army (ICE) in order to subdue Blue States. But Montana’s not a Blue State so I guess this is not a Montana kitchen table issue. Item: Republican support for the attack on Venezuela two weeks ago was 43%, now it’s 74%, and even higher with self-described MAGA Republicans. This change was due to skeptical Republicans being shown conclusive proof of its legality and advisability, and I have a real estate deal for you too.

Republicans are now very good at seeing the truth according to Trump. I was at the anti-ICE demonstration this weekend and several of his supporters said that Ms. Good shouldn’t have tried to run over, or did run over, an ICE agent. The post-truth world is here when you can’t bother to watch more than one video and believe whatever Kristi Noem and her toadies in the MAGA media tell you. Or maybe you saw the videos showing conclusively that the poor woman was simply trying to slowly drive away when she was executed. But that’s your lying eyes again.

History does not exactly repeat itself, but patterns do. We now have a new spin on fascism. Let’s call it Atlantic City fascism. 

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