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Dear Progressive Reader,

Last Saturday, as this newsletter went to press, U.S. President Donald Trump had just launched a unilateral, illegal ([link removed]) , and unauthorized ([link removed]) invasion of Venezuela to abduct that country’s president and his wife on hastily crafted ([link removed]) criminal charges. By mid-week, Trump was threatening possible seizure ([link removed]) of the Danish territory ([link removed]) of Greenland. And, by week’s end, armed (but minimally trained ([link removed]) ) ICE agents shot and killed
([link removed]) a nonviolent thirty-seven-year-old mother, Renée Nicole Macklin Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and wounded ([link removed]) two Venezuela immigrants in Portland, Oregon. In both cities, the victims were shot while in their cars. And, in another precedent setting ([link removed]) move, the U.S. Mint recently posted on its website ([link removed]) designs for a new Trump dollar coin to be produced in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence later this year.

The common thread in all of these separate events seems to be a growing sense in the Trump Administration of unfettered executive power. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller told ([link removed]) CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday, “We live in a world . . . that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” By Thursday, Trump had confirmed this idea in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times. When asked if anything could stop him, Trump replied ([link removed]) “my own morality, my own mind. That’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good.” Well, it is not very good, and it throws out eight decades ([link removed]) of an international, rules-based order—not to mention more
than 200 years of a system of checks and balances ([link removed]) written into the U.S. Constitution!

In the 1967 classic book The Strategy of Civilian Defence (published in the United Kingdom and later reissued as Civilian Resistance as a National Defence: Non-violent Action Against Aggression ([link removed]) ), an essay by Ernest K. Bramsted discusses the “Aspects of Totalitarian Systems.” Bramsted posits six characteristics, stating that if all are present, the system can assuredly be called “fully totalitarian.” These traits are “an ideology, a single-party typically led by one man, a terroristic police, a communications monopoly, a weapons monopoly, and a centrally directed economy.” We are not there yet, clearly, but to quote folksinger Pete Seeger in his song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” (which was once censored in 1967 by CBS executives before it could air on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour): “[E]very time I read the papers / That old feeling comes on; / We're—waist deep in the Big Muddy / And
the big fool says to push on.”

This week on on our website, Stephen Zunes writes about ([link removed]) the real motivations for Trump’s attack on Venezuela; Nourdine Shnino tells the story ([link removed]) from Gaza of a family’s displacement; and Ed Rampell reviews ([link removed]) the new film All That’s Left of You, which chronicles the intergenerational story of a Palestinian family. Also, Carol Burris looks at ([link removed]) the desperate need to rewrite the rules for charter schools; and Sylvia Ghazarian pens an op-ed ([link removed]) on the dangers to vulnerable populations of alternative intelligence (AI) systems.

Finally, yesterday marked the 117th anniversary of the publication ([link removed]) of the first issue of La Follette’s Weekly (now called The Progressive). Created as a voice for a rising progressive movement, which was born in response to the Gilded Age excesses ([link removed]) of corporations and wealthy kleptocrats in the late-nineteenth century, this new publication, as founder Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette wrote ([link removed]) in the opening essay to launch this project, “recognizes as its chief task that of aiding in winning back for the people the complete power over government—national, state, and municipal—which has been lost to them by party machines [and] corporate and unincorporated monopolies.” Today, more than a century later, The Progressive carries on—committed to its founding mission of speaking truth to power and giving voice to
the grassroots movements and activists working for a more just, democratic, and peaceful society. Thank you for accompanying us on this journey, as La Follette noted ([link removed]) after the first year of publication, “The path we have chosen is not strewn with roses. No magazine or newspaper that sets out to speak fearlessly and truthfully about the wrongs committed in the name of Big Business and Big Politics finds the way smooth and the profits certain.” But we remain committed to you, our readers, and to be ([link removed]) “A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good.” Please stick with us, we truly believe The Progressive is needed now more than ever.

Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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