A Trial with no Witnesses

We are moving in that direction. Plenty of ink will be used on this. However, I am going to take this through a place most people will not. We are living on the edge of an open dictatorship. The arguments made by the president’s counsel, especially Allan Dershowitz, are openly fascist. Or if you prefer, a Dictablanda.

Let me explain. Most Americans think of the fascist period in Europe as the natural outcome. Most far-right governments in Europe do practice a form of this even today. Hungary comes to mind. Yet, there is another method to control a population and keep an iron-fisted control over the levers of power. It is just as hard to dislodge as a traditional system, and the US already has many of the necessary elements.

This is the Dictablanda of my youth in Mexico City. They are known as soft dictatorships. It was first described in the United States in Democracy Incorporated. And when I read that book I had chills run down my back. The trial is the last step in many ways towards that system. In particular, because the fig of accountability will be gone.

So what are the elements:

A controlled media: In Mexico Televisa was for all intents a form of state media. While in theory there was freedom of the press, people knew the rails within which they could speak about the government. They had very clear limits.

To this day Televisa is called by many Mexicans Telerisa because none takes their reporting that seriously. They are seen as stenographers that will gladly take dictation. In the United States, we have this channel…