repost from The Paul Street Report

Yesterday The New York Times ran a headline that really knocked me out: “The Shutdown is Over, When Will Things Get Back to Normal?”

(Check it out here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/us/shutdown-travel-snap-backpay.html)

“When will things get back to normal?” – really?

Back to normal? Seriously?

“Normal” – is that like when a President of the United States:

• Pardons more than 1500 putschists who tried to cancel an election and overthrow the US government at his behest?
• Commutes the long prison sentences handed down to the nation’s top two fascist paramilitary leaders for their role in the insurrection?
• Purports to abolish constitutional birthright citizenship with an executive order?
• Staffs his inner circle with deranged racists and fascists including the top White House political and policy director Stephen “We Are the Storm” Miller, a Hitler-channeling arch-nativist dedicated to noxious neo-Nazi white replacement theory?
• Threatens Canada and Greenland with imperialist annexation?
• Orders extrajudicial executions of Latin American seafarers, claiming without a hint of evidence that they are “enemy combatants” and “narco-traffickers” under the direction of the Venezuelan government?
• Regularly vilifies Latino immigrants, trans folks, and Black inner-city residents?
• Unleashes an army of heavily armed masked thugs to terrorize immigrant and Latino communities, carry out mass racially profiled arrests, kidnap and deport masses of decent, hard-working people because of their race and ethnicity?
• Recruits paramilitary fascists to join his 21^st Century Gestapo, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which he and his party are funding at a level than that of the militaries of every nation except China and the United States?
• Orders the drastically expanded construction of domestic detention facilities/concentration camps?
• Successfully commands “red” states to implement mid-decennial re-gerrymanders of their US House electoral district lines with the goal of helping the Republi-fascist Trump party keep control of Congress in 2027?
• Packs federal election oversight bodies with Trumpist election deniers and threatens to include the military occupation of Democratic Party-controlled cities in his toolbox for rigging the 2026 and 2028 elections?
• Tells the American people to their face that he will not accept future election losses?
• Continues to absurdly claim that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen”?
• Openly delights in and brags on the murders he has committed in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean?
• Concentrates imperial military assets off the coast of Venezuela as part of his threat to launch a regime change war on that nation?
• Hits Brazil with a 50% tariff to punish it for properly prosecuting his fellow eco-cidal fascist and good friend Jair Bolsonaro (“the Trump of the tropics”) for doing a Brazilian version of January 6 – a mass assault on federal buildings to reverse a presidential election loss – on January 8, 2023?
• Sends 20 billion US taxpayer dollars to Argentina to bolster the electoral prospects of his far-right ideological ally atop that nation’s government while slashing anti-poverty programs and distributing wealth further upward in the savagely unequal United States?
• Sends hundreds of Latino immigrants to a notorious torture prison in El Salvador and tells that nation’s dictator that he wants to send “homegrowns” (US citizens) there too?
• Turns the White House into an open vehicle for personal and family enrichment, in barefaced violation of the US Constitution’s emoluments clause?
• Militarily occupies American cities on thoroughly false pretenses while claiming that the judicial branch has nothing to say about his right to militarily invade any city or town he wishes to intimidate and punish?
• Threatens to jail the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago for the supposed crime of opposition his racist mass deportation and torture program?
• Averages at least ten truth-defying statements per day, very possibly spewing more lies and falsehoods than anyone in recorded history?
• Regularly and preposterously calls centrist, pro-capitalist and imperialist Democrats “radical left?”
• Calls the newly elected social-democratic mayor of New York a “communist,” having previously threatened to strip this mayor of his US citizenship and deport him?
• Claims that “I can do anything I want” because “I’m the president”?
• Brings 800+ generals and admirals to Virginia to tell them that America’s top adversary is now “the enemy within,” meaning majority nonwhite, Democratic Party-run cities and the “Radical Left,” and that the nation’s cities should become “training grounds” for the US military?
• Holds a giant military parade in honor of his birthday and repeatedly addresses US military personnel in politically partisan and propagandistic ways – this in shameless defiance of longstanding republican norms and soldiers’ oath of allegiance (to the US Constitution and not to any politician)?
• Appoints atop the Pentagon an absurdly unqualified and virulently racist Christian white nationalist (neofascist) and former FOX News personality because he can count on this sick toady (Pete Hegseth) to deploy the military against the American people?
• Renames US military bases after military leaders of the southern Confederate Slave power during the US Civil War?
• Menacingly tries to rename the US Department of Defense as the “Department of War”?
• Threatens to dangerously re-start explosive nuclear weapons tests?
• Sets up two rapid response military units (one for the eastern half of the US and the other for the western half) ready to crush protests in any US city within one hour?
• Threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell resistance to his deranged policies and conduct?
• Purges Black and female leaders from top military and other federal positions?
• Throws tens of thousands of federal employees out of their jobs with no just cause?
• Targets for elimination federal programs that he calls “Democrat programs,” meaning any program with a hint of progressive decency and sanity?
• Responds to the second day of massive national protests against his hideous and unpopular, indeed widely loathed presidency by posting an AI video showing him wearing a crown and flying a US bomber that drops liquid shit on “No Kings” protesters in US cities?Signs an executive order and a presidential “national security” memo calling the non-existent organization “Antifa” a “terrorist” organization and making Americans potentially subject to prosecution for daring to advance anti-fascist ideas (broadly understood to include opposition to capitalism, Christianity, and traditional gender and family roles)?
• Regularly defies federal judicial orders, showing open contempt for Article III of the US Constitution?
• Calls for the impeachment of judges whose rulings he doesn’t like and encourages attacks on supposedly “radical left” justices?
• Purges federal professionals previously assigned to official ionvestigations of his prior crimes?
• Repeatedly invokes fake emergencies to justify his authoritarian moves?
• Repeatedly indicates his interest in taking an unconstitutional third term in the White House?
• Brazenly tears down the East Wing of the White House, announcing plans to replace it with a giant gaudy ballroom funded by his corporate backers including Google, Meta, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin?
• Brazenly defies Article I of the Constitution by ordering absurd extreme tariffs that amount to taxes on US consumers and by refusing to spend Congressionally allocated funds on programs he doesn’t like?
• Uses the threat of forced mass hunger (SNAP cuts) and mass government firings to compel induce the Democrats to end their effort to keep intact federal health insurance subsidies required by tens of millions of Americans?
• Enlists the FBI in scrubbing his name from documents showing his close friendship with the notorious pedophile and sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein?
• Upgrades the federal prison status of a convicted pedophile and sex-trafficker and hints at pardoning her to reward her for staying silent on his own likely criminal abuse of underage females.
• Uses federal power to muzzle the media, control leading law firms, and to attack and control universities?
• Attacks climate science and dismantles government programs mean to address the climate crisis, arguably the biggest issue of our or any time – a crisis he is fervently dedicated to accelerating?
• Attacks basic public health and medical science, blowing up the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and appointing a deranged antivax lunatic atop the US Department of Health and Human Services?
• Acts to double the cost of health insurance for tens of millions of Americans who are already struggling with a rising cost of living driven partly by his authoritarian tariffs.
• Turns the Justice Department into a gross and open weapon of personal and right-wing retribution against his political enemies and critics?
• Holds sickening “Great Gatsby” parties that flaunt aristocratic wealth and consumption at his grotesque Mar a Lago palace while moving to cause mass hunger by cutting off food stamps for 42 million Americans?

“Back to normal?” Is that like when:

The US Congress (the federal legislative branch) becomes a willing partner in the suspension of its own proclivity to check and balance a deranged and debased fascist atop the federal executive branch?

Half of the nation’s states fall under racist, sexist, and xenophobic nationalist Republi-fascist control?

The US Supreme Court grants a fascist president forever immunity from criminal prosecution for any crime he committed, is committing, or will commit as long as the transgressions bear the imprimatur of “official presidential duties”?

The Congress won’t properly impeach, convict, and remove a deranged, debased, and monumentally corrupt president thanks in no small part to Republican US House Representatives and Senators’ fear of violence from the fascist leader’s armed supporters/enforcers?

Establishment media and political personnel retreat and hold back from calling a clearly fascist regime and president fascist?

The compliant, cowardly, cynical, and conciliatory Democratic Party enables and abets the fascism of the president and his cult party in numerous ways?

The New York Times and the rest of the so-called liberal media normalize a fascist president in numerous ways, including a habitual reference to him as “president Donald Trump” instead of something far more appropriate like “the deranged fascist ogre Donald ‘Poisoning Our Blood’ Trump, once described by Noam Chomsky as ‘the most dangerous criminal in human history’?