Reading Matt Taibbi's summary how the Democrats weaponized the government against Donald Trump, starting before the election of 2016 and proceeding right up to the present moment, I am reminded once again that the issue is not democracy but "Our Democracy™."

That is, the Democrats and their deep-state allies in the media and the myriad bureaucracies that actually run the country believe that democracy means "rule by Democrats."  As Taibbi puts it, "To 'protect democracy,' democracy is already being canceled. We just haven't admitted the implications of this to ourselves yet."

This is true. Hence the plethora of handwringing articles warning that Donald Trump is a "dictator"-in-waiting, a new Hitler, a refurbished Mussolini who, should he be reelected, will mobilize the military to impose his will on a hapless American populace. Taibbi quotes from a December 2023 "strategy memo" in which Biden's puppeteers describe Trump as "an existential threat to democracy."

It sounds absurd.  It is absurd.  But, as I and many others have pointed out, that is the story we are being asked to swallow. This is the logic:

Trump is a "threat to democracy."

Ergo, we must use "any means necessary" to keep him off the ballot.

Otherwise, people might vote for him, and that would be "bad for democracy."

The arrogance of this gambit is breathtaking. It assumes, with Liz Cheneyesque smugness, that ordinary people cannot be entrusted with so important a task as electing their leaders. Only anointed saviors like Liz Cheney can do that. But alongside the arrogance of the we-have-to-destroy-democracy-in-order-to-save-it mindset is the chilling revelation of the extremes to which the people in power are willing to go in order to preserve their prerogatives. They will, for example, censor any opinion they do not like as "malinformation," i.e., an opinion that might be true but is not consistent with The Narrative. It all adds up to what I have called "the Sovietization of America."