Author Mary Wald, in her book Sowing Hate and Chaos, How Propaganda Is Used to Destroy Democracy, describes three phases of propaganda operations that are used to bring down a nation. These are

• Phase 1: Indoctrination and Recruitment
• Phase 2: The Propaganda of Agitation
• Phase 3: The Propaganda of Integration

The results of the 2024 election, as they currently stand, have pushed this country into Phase 3. And the picture this paints for anyone who can observe the obvious is bleak and dark. We have seen this phase before, more recently in Germany when the population was conned into electing a man who would in short order become their dictator.

Unless the calls by major media outlets are premature, history just repeated itself. America just elected its first dictator and gave him a rubber-stamp Senate—one that already enabled a Supreme Court to render him immune for any crimes he is prepared to commit.

So, what the hell do we do now? People all over the country are waking up to find themselves in the plot of a horror film. Trump has already telegraphed his intentions and plans. They are ugly.

Well-meaning people labored under the assumption that many more well-meaning people opposed these insane ideas and would vote in droves to oppose them. Did the idea of a Black woman occupying the Oval Office, a person of obvious and demonstrable humanity, so frighten an unseen army of bigots that they came out in massive numbers to vote her down? Or is something else afoot?

The memory of this day in 2016, when we woke up to the specter of Trump as a president-elect was bad. But today’s repeat performance is far, far worse since we already collectively know where this is going now. Maya Angelou’s famous quote, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” has been ignored, again.

So—to repeat my earlier unanswered question—what the hell do we do now? I wish I knew the answer. I began this piece with the reference to Phase 3 as described in Mary Wald’s book. Sometimes the solution to a situation is presented in how it came to be.

There is a reason the propaganda system exposed in Mary’s book has never failed to bring down a nation. For a while last night it looked like we were going to be the first country to dodge this bullet. That hope faded as the night ground on. The truth is that the materials in this book have been hidden from view for decades, relegated to obscure categories of “advanced psychotherapies” in a few university libraries. But they were well known in intelligence and psyops operations. It is their obscurity that gives these techniques part of their power. The fact of the matter is that once they become widely known they become ineffective.

The more people in our population and those of other countries know and understand these infernal operations, the more useless they will become. No, this is not just a pitch to sell a lot of books. People need to understand how we got here and where we are going. Because if the Propaganda of Integration comes to pass as these people intend, it will not be a pleasant experience.

Trump has already stated that he will be a dictator on “day one.” That of course means that he will lie while taking the Oath of Office of the President, again, and then immediately ignore his duty to the Constitution—as he was told us he will.

However impractical and insane his ideas of roundups and deportations are, we’ve already been warned. Revenge. Retribution. These have been his watchwords for some time. Many of us wonder what life inside the camps will be like.

The election is not actually fully over. It looks that way now and it looks bleak. But the House races are not done and the projections show at least a return to Democratic control for that body. Recounts, investigations and lawsuits are on the menu for the coming weeks and months.

If these events continue on the present trajectory, things will get ugly. One near certainty is that book banning will be something of a national pastime rather than just in a few far-right states. So get a copy of Mary’s book while you can at the link above. We don’t want what happened here to be lost to obscurity again.

Meanwhile we have to prepare and organize as a resistance again. Dictators must be opposed. Same goes with wackos like RFK Jr who will likely end up as head of HHS and Ketamine addict Musk who will be busy trying to drop us into another recession or worse. Malcom Nance also offers sage advice for this moment.