#mafiastate

I’m praying for them, you know. All of them. Not between gritted teeth but with a grace I’ve learned from spiritual allies. I pause to grace, close my eyes and send healing thoughts into the universe, praying those perpetrating crimes against humanity are relieved of their spiritual maladies. The RNC was hacked and the files are holding pols hostage. At some point, they’ll have to do what’s right. I pray it’s soon.

In the meantime, I’ve been studying how a dictator comes to power, and I’ve mapped it out in Five Easy Steps so we can all recognize the signs:

1. “LYING IS THE MESSAGE”: While reading David Frum’s brilliant and prescient essay in The Atlantic from January 30, 2017, in which he predicts what America will look like in 2021 in stunning detail if we do not resist, he quotes a Russian journalist named Masha Gessen. Gessen notes that “lying is the message,” and by that she means when a dictator lies with the ease of breathing it’s to “assert power over truth.” The first lesson I learned in 2016 from a member of the Resistance who grew up in Romania: “It starts with the silencing of truth.” Today, as each Network gave “Trumputin” facetime, we witnessed the blather of nothing. As Gessen told Deutsche Welle regarding Putin, “the former spy has remained in the Kremlin despite a declining economy, diplomatic isolation and nearly continuous allegations of corruption and human rights abuses because of his ability to ‘have words mean nothing. He just keeps talking… it’s meant to create the impression that he knows what he’s talking about. But it’s also meant to drown you in meaningless stuff.’” Hmm.

Read the David Frum “Atlantic” article here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/

2. DISINFORMATION HIGHWAY: Now that we’ve established those with authoritarian leanings have no trouble lying about everything, the next step is to ensure the lies are amplified by the Disinformation Highway. A dictator utilizes multiple fronts to amplify lies: botnets, State News agencies, paid flacks and political loyalists/opportunists/consultants. There’s a lot of money in lies: as cognitive thinkers spend hours researching and refuting the lies, those on the corruption payola keep up the “theatre craft,” the tornado that creates the fog and the fury so beautifully described by Mike Mariani in Vanity Fair. Lying is a soulless gig. The truth always prevails eventually, but havoc is wreaked in the meantime.

To learn how the Kremlin creates chaos and to see if you can spot some right here at home, check out Mike Mariani’s Vanity Fair essay:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/is-trumps-chaos-a-move-from-the-kremlins-playbook

3. POWER GRAB: As the lies, subterfuge and the hacks on State News chip away at truth, bite by bite, and the Disinformation Highway piles up with bumper-car bots, riding roughshod over facts, what is really taking place is the consolidation of power. While cognitive thinkers cry foul, unqualified, but extremely loyal henchman are being installed into power at the highest levels. Dictators rush to replace talent and integrity with toadies and sycophants, who share in common a history of shade but offer their leaders the assurance they’ll do their bidding at any cost. When one’s moral compass is already blinky, what’s another three, four acts of corruption. Pockets will be lined, and thus, the corrupted are banking on a soft landing. That is until, the dictators turn on them and then it’s flee or plea.

4. MAFIA STATE: When a government is comprised of members of organized crime that’s what’s known as “a mafia state.” In America, we haven’t been immune to corruption, but it’s always been countered by the fact that, ultimately, we are a country of law and order. But when a leader is cultivated, financed and backed by the mob, it gets sticky. As we watch Special Counsel Mueller and his team of prosecutors navigate their way carefully, indictment by indictment, guilty plea by guilty plea, to take down a global crime syndicate, we see how naïve America has been in thinking it couldn’t happen here. We are watching our allies being alienated and dictators being praised. This is what a mafia state looks like. When a leader casts shade on our top intelligence agencies, that’s the markings of a dictator, shaping a mafia state.

For more on how it’s done, read this Deutsche Welle explainer: https://www.dw.com/en/vladimir-putin-how-a-spy-rose-to-power-and-held-on-to-it/a-43030900

5. VOTER TAMPERING: Dictators need to control all outcomes and this includes the voting systems. A dictator ensures victory at the ballot box in myriad ways: intimidation, stuffing the ballot box, voter suppression, hacking voter rolls, redistricting, hacking electronic voting databases, hacking the machines, and using bot networks to blast voters with so much false information that they will either stay home or vote for the dictator who paid hackers to advertise directly to a voter’s preconceived biases. Cognitive thinkers know about the data breaches, but we still are at the early stages of understanding just how much this digital arms race, to quote digital activist Professor David Carroll, is harming Democracy everywhere. Stay vigilant, read the latest indictment from Team Mueller and know that if we show up in gigantic numbers at the polls, we may yet have a chance to salvage Democracy. 

Ohm.

***

Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an investigative producer, mother and activist. Her short film, “Rigged,” debuted at the 2017 Orcas Island Film Festival: http://www.orcasfilmfest.com/rigged