The President Doesn’t Know What’s Coming

“Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes.” -Anne Frank

She wrote those words as a child hiding from the Nazis. She heard the boots in the street. She heard the knocks on the doors. She heard what happens when a government turns its people into prey and rewards neighbors for turning on one another.

We read her diary in school and promised ourselves we would have been the ones to stand up and stop it. We told each other we would be the brave ones who held the line before anyone was taken. We believed we would recognize the signs of an unhinged man who wants nothing but power and will use death and destruction to get it.

We thought her story belonged to another time, another country, another reality.

We sat in classrooms, guided by teachers who asked how we would hide Anne Frank and her family. Would we be brave enough to say, “Not here. Not again”?

Now we have our answer.

Because this week, families in Chicago woke up to fists pounding on their doors. Flashlights in their eyes. Children crying in confusion. Mothers begging for a minute to dress their babies. Parents zip-tied in the street. Little ones bound together, shivering on the cold pavement, while agents “verified” papers.

No warrants. No mercy. Just textbook cruelty.

Imagine being a parent, your children crying in the dark, their hands zip-tied, your front door splintered by men in body armor. You don’t know what’s happening or if your family will survive it. That’s what state-sponsored fear looks like. That’s what fascism feels like.

This isn’t history in a textbook. This is America, right now. And the echoes are deafening.

We were taught about this. We were taught about Nazis. We were taught about Hitler. We were taught about fascism so that we would recognize it when it came again because history always repeats itself. We were taught those lessons so we would never be the people who look away.

And yet here we are. Looking away.

But behind the polished press briefings and the flags on the podium, cracks are forming. Inside the system, even among those sworn to follow orders, some are beginning to see what’s coming.

General Bryan Fenton, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, just signed his departure letter and stepped down after more than three decades of service. His retirement became official this week, just days after the meeting led by Pete Hegseth that sent shockwaves through the ranks.

Although Fenton hasn’t said the meeting was the reason for his departure, the timing is hard to ignore. It may be coincidence. But it also may be the quiet signal of a man who no longer wants to serve under what our country is becoming.

His record shows a leader who warned of the growing threat of disinformation and the dangers of truth being buried beneath propaganda. Those warnings now feel less like military strategy and more like prophecy.

We can look beyond his silence and see what’s obvious. He didn’t want to stay. And he’s not the only one.

Because everything that defines authoritarianism is unfolding here, step by step.

The playbook has never changed, only the technology has.

When fascism rises, it always starts with the same pattern.
A leader who demands absolute loyalty.
A population taught to fear the “enemy within.”
A government that decides truth is dangerous.

We are watching every one of those pages turn.

Like Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, we are watching a cult of personality replace the rule of law. Loyalty no longer belongs to the Constitution. It belongs to one man. The rallies, the slogans, the flags with his name on them, the proposed coins with his face. These are not politics. They are worship.

Like Orbán’s Hungary and Erdoğan’s Turkey, we are watching the consolidation of power, the rewriting of rules, the quiet takeover of the judiciary and the press. The institutions that once protected us are still standing, but they are hollowing out. Elections still happen, but truth no longer decides them. Propaganda does.

Like the juntas and dictatorships across Latin America, we are watching fear turned into policy. Enemies are created out of thin air. Immigrants, journalists, teachers, scientists. Fear is the currency of control. It’s how fascism convinces ordinary people to look away while extraordinary cruelty unfolds.

And like every regime that came before it, this one has found its scapegoats. The immigrant. The protester. The reporter. The dissenter. The “enemy.”

It’s always the same.

It’s how fascism breathes, by convincing you that your neighbor is the threat and that violence is justified in the name of protection.

What’s happening now is not new. In Weimar Germany, Nazis would march into left-leaning neighborhoods, not to campaign but to provoke. They brought flags, drums, and fists. They picked fights in the streets and then told the press that only they could save Germany from the “violent Communists.” They created chaos and then promised to end it.

Replace “violent Communists” with “radical left,” and you have Donald Trump’s America. The same manufactured chaos, the same propaganda, the same false promise of “law and order.” He provokes division, fuels the violence, then claims only he can stop it. It’s the same story, just told in English this time.

In Weimar, they called it “order through terror.” They made violence look like civic duty, chaos look like patriotism, and repression look like safety. Within months of taking power, they had outlawed protests, censored the press, and turned neighbors into informants. The violence was never a failure of the state. It was its tool.

That’s exactly what we’re watching now.

ICE storms into Democratic cities in the middle of the night, dragging families into the streets, hoping for resistance they can film, chaos they can frame, fear they can use. Then the propaganda machine spins the story. “Lawless cities.” “Violent immigrants.” “Weak Democrats.”

And if you want proof that they’re not even pretending anymore, look no further than what Stephen Miller said this week.

Stephen Miller isn’t just another extremist on social media. He is Donald Trump’s closest adviser, the man behind the Muslim ban, family separations, and the weaponization of ICE. He has shaped nearly every policy rooted in cruelty and fear. He’s also one of the main architects of Project 2025, the authoritarian playbook designed to dismantle federal protections, purge civil servants, and turn the presidency into a tool of vengeance. Trump may not have written it, but he’s following it step by step. And Miller is the one handing him the map.

After a federal judge blocked Trump’s attempt to deploy the Oregon National Guard to Portland, Miller called it “legal insurrection.” He accused local law enforcement of refusing to aid ICE officers and claimed there was an “organized terrorist attack on the federal government.” He said deploying troops against American citizens was “an absolute necessity.”

That’s not national security. That’s not patriotism. That’s fascism in plain language.

Because this is how authoritarianism always sells itself as protection. They call dissent terrorism, label judges traitors, and paint their own violence as defense of the republic. That’s exactly how it starts.

It’s the same playbook. Create fear, then promise order. That’s how fascism sells itself as safety.

It’s not fascism knocking on the door anymore. It has walked right through it and made itself comfortable in our living rooms.

And while some of us are screaming, “The sky is falling,” others are shaking their heads, saying, “No, it can’t be true.” Because they’ve fallen for the modern-day Hitler. They’re applauding the modern-day Gestapo.

The parallels to Nazi Germany and today couldn’t be clearer unless the names were the same.

I think about that a lot, how easy it is for fear to masquerade as patriotism and how fast empathy can disappear when leaders teach you to hate your neighbor.

And while all of this is happening, while families are terrorized in the night and fear spreads through neighborhoods, the government is in a shutdown.

Military families are sitting at their kitchen tables tonight, running the numbers, wondering how long the groceries will last when the paychecks stop. They’re asking how they’ll afford gas, or pet food, or the other necessities their children will need. They’re wondering how to keep the lights on.

There’s a special kind of cruelty in watching people struggle while pretending not to see them. It’s the cruelty of luxury. Of indifference. Of knowing that while soldiers and families count dollars and cans of soup, their president is counting strokes on a golf course.

Yes, Donald Trump is golfing. The president’s motorcade reportedly left the White House this morning with a destination set for Trump National Golf Club in Virginia.

That’s how much he cares about our military. That’s how much he cares about us.

He’s not sitting behind his desk making calls to fix this. He’s not negotiating. He’s not leading. The self-proclaimed “Art of the Deal” master, the “world’s best” negotiator, is golfing.

He’s also posting AI propaganda videos, refusing to bring congressional leaders together to keep our government working, and pointing fingers at Democrats or “the liberal left,” or whatever label his machine needs to feed the outrage that keeps him in power. He’s trying to convince his followers that anyone who isn’t MAGA is their enemy. That compassion is weakness. That truth is treason.

But that isn’t who we are.

We are smarter than this. We are better than this. We are Americans.

Every generation faces its moment of truth. Ours isn’t a world war or a depression. It’s a war for reality itself. A war over what is true, what is decent, what kind of people we want to be. And right now, we’re losing not because we’re weak, but because too many are choosing comfort over courage.

We learned this history in school. We saw the photos. We read the books. We said, “Never again.” We were taught what fascism looks like so we would recognize it when it came. We were taught about Anne Frank so we would never let it happen to another child.

Here we are. History has opened our front door.

We can either look away, or we can remember who we are. We can choose compassion over cruelty. We can choose truth over propaganda. We can choose courage over comfort.

Because the lesson was never just “never again.” The lesson was never stop paying attention.

And yet we stopped. We got comfortable. We let the noise drown out the warning bells.

Now the very people we were taught to fear are speaking in public again, not from the shadows, not in code, but into microphones.

In old politics, leaders used to whisper the quiet parts. They’d hide corruption behind policy and disguise cruelty with patriotism. But that era is gone. Now they say the quiet parts out loud, and they don’t care who hears.

They know it doesn’t matter, because the truth no longer carries consequences, not for them.

Donald Trump once bragged that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and his supporters would still back him. He said he loves the uneducated, that smart people don’t like him. He said the system was rigged, but what he really meant was that it should be rigged for him.

He has trained his followers to see cruelty as honesty, hatred as strength, and ignorance as loyalty. And they love it. They love the permission to hate. They love the power to be mean on the internet. They love that their rage finally has a home.

They don’t care that democracy is dying because they don’t believe in democracy anymore. They believe in him.

And that’s exactly what Speaker Mike Johnson is counting on.

This week, Johnson told his followers that Democrats would impeach Trump if they take back the House. He meant it as a warning. But he’s absolutely right, and that’s why it matters so much.

He’s telling them to protect Trump at all costs. We’re saying we have to protect the country at all costs.

So yes, if Democrats win back the House, they should impeach him. They should hold him accountable. Because the rule of law still matters. Truth still matters. America still matters.

They’ve already shown us what they’re willing to do to destroy America. Now it’s on us to show them what we’re willing to do to save America.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather