Now imagine that Trump and Fox News experience a serious falling-out after Trump tries to take over a lucrative, influential network of Murdoch-owned private schools. Imagine everyone who works for Murdoch is part of a strange, highly-secretive, quasi-Christian religious sect.
Imagine that the legitimate political opposition has been all but wiped out. By now, Trump controls the judiciary and he's put the generals in jail on phony coup-plotting charges--as the whole country cheers, including the left-wing media, which never liked the generals. Fox
eagerly pushed the phony coup-plot narrative, serving up forged documents that purport to detail the heinous coup plot--evidence that actually makes no sense at all if you look at it. But it works: the top brass is either in jail or too cowed to speak out.
The global media applauds like manic penguins. At last, Trump has ended the era of American militarism! He's finally destroyed the military-industrial complex! American citizens who's actually *read* these documents--and they are few--think the world's gone mad.
But most people never read them that closely. They trust Tucker Carlson when he says the documents show that the Deep State was planning a heinous coup. With all the political opposition either in jail or terrified, there's only one independent power center left--Murdoch's.
His media, schools, and other businesses are the only thing no longer under Trump's control. But the country's not big enough for the two of them. Trump grows suspicious. The bad blood grows. Trump and Murdoch, allies who were formerly thick-as-thieves, begin dropping hints...
It ends with a *real* coup attempt, a bloody one. Hundreds of Americans are killed. Americans are outraged: It's a trauma on the scale of 9/11. But Trump triumphs, using his genius for social media to outsmart the coup-plotters. Americans take to the street to fight the coup..
The coup fails. But after that, it's Trump-Murdoch war. Trump begins locking up everyone who's ever had any connection to Murdoch--with our blessing: Those assholes bombed Congress, for God's sake! Down with the Murdoch Terrorist Organization!
Fox is shut down. So's Sinclair, and a bunch of other newspapers, who cares at this point. Tucker Carlson manages to escape to Sweden, where he's hailed as a brave dissident and an example of the threat to journalists under Trump.
He regularly commanders the foreign media's editorial pages. He's at the forefront, the world thinks, of the United States' battle to restore democracy and press freedom. Everyone in America who remembers the role Carlson played in Trump's rise finds this obscene,
but whenever they try to explain to foreigners that Carlson *isn't* the hero of this story, they're called conspiracy-theorists, or told, "Well, so what--he's for press freedom now, right?" Trump's appointed his own guy at the Central Bank, his son-in-law has taken over--
well, a lot of stuff. Everyone in the US knows the son-in-law is completely disreputable, but when he meets foreign dignitaries, they take him seriously. They have no idea who he is. We go from one financial and currency crisis to the next. We declare war on Mexico--
so that we can send all our migrants back to a "safe zone."
Journalists and people who disagree with Trump about these policies live in fear, but for most people, life goes on. Trump made America great. He stuck it to the elites.
Journalists and people who disagree with Trump about these policies live in fear, but for most people, life goes on. Trump made America great. He stuck it to the elites.
(They're still saying this even after they've been the only elites in town for a decade, but the people still lap it up.)
Now you understand about Gülen. And if all of this sounds far fetched, I promise you it's no more far-fetched than the report in the @nytimes today.
Now you understand about Gülen. And if all of this sounds far fetched, I promise you it's no more far-fetched than the report in the @nytimes today.
Once you start down the authoritarian demagogue banana-republic path, it's damned difficult to get back off.
Alas.
Oh, and the world will say we were always like this. What else do you expect from Christians?
Alas.
Oh, and the world will say we were always like this. What else do you expect from Christians?
