So now the “r-word” cannot be spelled out - even in a quote?
Now? Try a decade or two, at least.
You left out one essential highlight.
The 40-minute remarks also accused the employees he was speaking to of becoming a “sock puppet” of the industries they regulate, seemingly because of CIA mind control. “The CIA’s Project MKUltra — a notorious human experimentation program from the 1960s — and the Milgram experiment, a well-known study meant to test people’s willingness to obey authority even if it meant inflicting pain on others.”
the Milgram experiment, a well-known study meant to test people’s willingness to obey authority even if it meant inflicting pain on others.
Wow, RFK Jr unwittingly almost managed to sum up the whole basis of the Trump administration. Except that inflicting pain on others is not an obstacle in the Trump cult, it’s part of the fun.
Not to put ideas in his head, but I wonder where Bobby, Jr., stands on lobotomies. 
After all, his Grandpa Joe ordered one for his aunt Rosemary Kennedy, because
As a child, she [Rosemary] reportedly exhibited developmental delays. In her young adult years, [Rosemary] Kennedy was “becoming increasingly irritable and difficult.”[1] In response to these issues, her father [Joe] arranged a lobotomy on her in 1941, when she was 23 years of age. The procedure left her permanently incapacitated and rendered her unable to speak intelligibly.
And I’ll bet Rosemary never gave the family a lick of trouble after that.
BTW,
“The truth about her situation and whereabouts was kept secret for decades.”
No kidding. 
Curious: is this a new piece of information to anyone here?
Not to me. I first heard about it when I leaned who founded the Special Olympics: Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Rosemary’s sister.
Yeah, that was my reading too.
On the other hand, who in the Trump administration has studied psychology… or even heard of the Milgram experiment? I know about it because I am curious. Trump, and his people, are not.
They are no doubt blissfully unaware of the Stanford prison experiment, even as they repeat it.
What western adult hasn’t heard of some version of Milgram / Stanford experience? While not able to identify the finer details, doesn’t everybody know about them? (i.e - willingness to follow orders under cover of “authority”?)
I present to you, Mr Donald J. Trump, the least curious person who has ever existed.
I thought Duh-bya was incurious!
Bush is known to have read a book, at least, unlike Trump, and on one occasion it seemed to have spurred him to try to do some good:
George W. Bush in 2005: ‘If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare’
A book about the 1918 flu pandemic spurred the government to action.
In the summer of 2005, President George W. Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he began flipping through an advance reading copy of a new book about the 1918 flu pandemic. He couldn’t put it down.
When he returned to Washington, he called his top homeland security adviser into the Oval Office and gave her the galley of historian John M. Barry’s “The Great Influenza,” which told the chilling tale of the mysterious plague that “would kill more people than the outbreak of any other disease in human history.”
“You’ve got to read this,” Fran Townsend remembers the president telling her. “He said, ‘Look, this happens every 100 years. We need a national strategy.’”
Thus was born the nation’s most comprehensive pandemic plan – a playbook that included diagrams for a global early warning system, funding to develop new, rapid vaccine technology, and a robust national stockpile of critical supplies, such as face masks and ventilators, Townsend said.
The effort was intense over the ensuing three years, including exercises where cabinet officials gamed out their responses, but it was not sustained. Large swaths of the ambitious plan were either not fully realized or entirely shelved as other priorities and crises took hold.
A good summary of the whole situation at the domestic level:
It’s the root of most of the “lock various grating personalities together in a room/jungle/castle and watch them grate on each other” TV shows that proliferate these days.
I am wondering how long this will take to filter down to the hoi polloi.
You’d be surprised (or maybe not) at the huge number of people who have never heard of things that some of us consider “common knowledge.”
It’s an interesting question.
We haven’t seen Gestapo-type tactics employed against those whose citizenship is unambigous yet, which 20th-century autocrats would have already done. Instead, they are being used against people who are generally considered outside of the American mainstream and less subject to the protections of the Bill of Rights - visa or green card holders or the like.
Can we expect a full-scale Gestapo being employed against the broader American public? I’m going to say no, at least not anytime soon.
The reason I’m saying no is because the modern right isn’t interested in creating a 20th-century style autocracy. A massive internal security apparatus is expensive, unproductive, and unneccesary. Their model is Hungary - a state where there are elections, and internal dissent, but the organs of the state have been so captured by the party that the opposition, try as it might, has no chance of regaining the power necessary to truly reform the system. Judging by the first three months, they are going to use the state’s power of the purse to break up independent centers of power so that the opposition is deprived of the wherewithal to organize itself against the regime. This would be in keeping with a “competitive authoritarian” regime they have been consciously modelling themselves after:
Anything more is going to take a lot more - and gradual - turning up of the heat in order to boil the frog of the American public. It could be a really long term goal, but I don’t see it happening too soon. Frankly, the short term stuff is terrifying enough as it is.
Terrifying indeed.
Thank you for this excellent summary.
This makes total sense.
I was not aware of the sub categorization of authoritarianism but I am trying to keep up with way too much information these days.
Dunning-Kruger, meet Milgram / Stanford.
It’s not just about right vs. wrong or truth vs.lies.
It’s different, it’s more insidious. It’s about destroying the baseline, ther constants we use as a measure. It’s about assailing the unassailable.
Did Trump fire federal workers or are they coming back? If I’m a federal worker, will I have a job tomorrow? Who knows? If I’ve been placed on leave, will I be reinstated? I might get an answer on that today, but no one knows if the answer will be the same tomorrow.
Is my business facing increased tariffs or not? No one knows. I might be subject to tariffs today, so should I wait until tomorrow to place that order? They tariffs might be gone tomorrow. The tariffs might be double…..or triple tomorrow. No one knows.
If I’m a legal immigrant, here with a green card or here under a student visa, is my presence still legal today? Who knows? I might get up and go to class as usual, or I might be renditioned to a third world prison? No one knows.
It’s about making sure there are no constants anymore, no normal processes apply anymore.
I think the best example of this was what happened to the financial markets this week. There is an orthodoxy to the markets, one that is akin to the laws of physics. If something happens to factor A, factor B will react in a predictable way……much like how if you drop an object you know gravity will pull it down.
But something happened to factor A, and factor B didn’t react the way it should’ve, the markets dropped a glass and watched it float up to the ceiling.
In another thread, I described this moment as the cartoon moment when half of us have been walked off the cliff and we are hanging in that weightless motionless state because gravity hasn’t caught up with us….yet.
But the other half walked off that cliff willingly, and are flapping their arms because they think maybe they can fly…..in part because their cult leader told them they could, but in part because “Who knows?” Gravity worked yesterday, but does it still work? No one knows?
Even some of the people who were pushed off the cliff might be thinking “Who knows?” Maybe gravity isn’t the rule today?”
There is a book I read on Putin’s Russia called “Nothing is True and Everything is Possible” that describes this dynamic, and I think the title says it all.
The uncertainty is the point.
Thanks for that well stated post. No, your post does not really make anything BETTER. But it does well state the confusing nature of what is going on - in so many areas. We may not have thought we could predict what would happen, but at least we had SOME idea of the broadest parameters within which choices were made.
Now, in so many areas of life and thought, I just feel I cannot even express an intelligent opinion, because nothing I think I know will necessarily affect whatever sweeping changes might be abruptly implemented tomorrow.