The Patriotic Duty to Call Out Dictators Before They Start DICK-tating
By Janet Kira Lessin with Minerva
It is not just a social responsibility. It is a patriotic duty to call out rising dictators before they start DICK-tating. You don’t wait until the tanks are in the streets, until the press is silenced, until the trains are full and the borders are closed. By then, it’s too late. You recognize the signs early — the cruelty, the scapegoating, the gaslighting, the disdain for law — and you speak. You shout if you must. Because history teaches us that the real danger isn’t always the dictator himself; it’s the millions who see the storm gathering and choose to say nothing.
And yet, in this moment of historic peril, we watch voices who once prided themselves on “saying the unsayable” — people like Bill Maher — now bending over backwards to normalize a would-be tyrant. Instead of confronting the threat head-on, they turn it into a punchline —a tired joke about “both sides,” a dismissive eye-roll toward those who still possess the moral clarity to sound the alarm. It’s more than cowardice; it’s a profound betrayal of truth itself. And the cost of this betrayal is already visible in the loss of lives, the shattering of rights, and the slow erosion of democratic foundations.
Thankfully, not everyone is silent. There are still those willing to stand up. Al Gore, with his trademark calm precision, pushed back when Maher distorted his warnings about the climate crisis. Gore didn’t take the bait; he reasserted reality, reminding anyone still willing to listen that facts do not bow to fashion, and science does not bend to cynicism. Larry David, never one for false politeness, confronted Maher face-to-face at a Hollywood party after Maher bragged about visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Furious, David told him what so many were thinking but too few dared to say: “He’s a sociopath. A fascist.” Larry David cut ties that night — a small but meaningful act of moral hygiene in a time of mass infection.
Simon Rosenberg, too, broke ranks with the polite fiction that Maher was “just asking questions.” He said it plainly: Bill Maher is helping Trump. By ridiculing those who defend democracy, by minimizing the threat of MAGA extremism, Maher is aiding the enemy — whether he realizes it or not. And voices like Keith Olbermann, Brian Tyler Cohen, Mehdi Hasan, Robert Reich, and even Jon Stewart have all, in their ways, echoed the same chilling truth: This is not normal. This is not OK.
The myth that Trump would run America “like a business” was always laughable — except it wasn’t funny. It was deadly serious. Trump doesn’t run businesses like a visionary entrepreneur; he runs them like a mob boss. His model isn’t Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett. It’s Michael Corleone. It’s Tony Soprano. Trump’s approach to the presidency — and everything — has been pure shakedown: impose tariffs recklessly, cripple alliances, then demand tribute from those desperate to stabilize. He turned the art of diplomacy into the art of extortion. And anyone who thinks that’s “smart business” doesn’t understand either business or democracy.
Where did Trump learn it? From the dirtiest teacher America ever produced: Roy Cohn. Cohn, the twisted architect of McCarthyism, taught Trump that winning meant lying louder, suing longer, blackmailing harder, and never, ever apologizing. Capture people’s sins, record them if possible, then hold them hostage. Destroy them if necessary. Roy Cohn may have died in disgrace — abandoned, ironically, by Trump himself — but not before he infected Trump with his venomous playbook. Trump is Cohn’s final creation, his last and most devastating weapon against the American experiment.
And now we are seeing the fruits of that poison bloom. Already, just in the first hundred days of Trump’s return to power, we have witnessed brutal attacks on LGBTQ+ communities, the open embrace of Christian nationalism, threats against the free press, loyalty oaths demanded of federal workers, plans for mass deportations, assaults on diversity programs, censorship of education, and a Supreme Court bending ever closer to theocratic rule. This isn’t hypothetical. It isn’t coming someday. It’s here. It’s happening. And the pace is accelerating.
Democracy is not a business. It is not meant to be efficient. It is not supposed to be dictated by one man’s will. Democracy is messy, imperfect, built on compromise, compassion, and the slow, deliberate balancing of the voices of a hundred million people. It is, fundamentally, a system of trust—trust that the people, even in their chaos, will find a way toward justice. When you run a democracy like a mob business, you don’t get prosperity. You get fear. You get cruelty. You get a country where the powerful do whatever they want, and everyone else shuts up or gets crushed.
This is not some wild theory. We have seen this movie before. And if you think Trump’s America will be a replay of 2016–2020, think again. This time, the gloves are off. The learning curve is gone. Trump and his loyalists know precisely where the pressure points are, and they are wasting no time dismantling the remaining defenses. They have a blueprint — drawn by dictators past and present — and they are following it step-by-step while people like Maher crack jokes about “how crazy both sides are.”
There is no “both sides” when it comes to fascism. There is only democracy or dictatorship. Freedom or submission. And if we do not recognize that now, if we do not name it with clear, relentless courage, we will lose everything that generations before us bled to secure.
It brings to mind something Pete Buttigieg recently demonstrated when debunking right-wing fear-mongering about “dead people getting checks.” Calmly and methodically, he explained that when someone dies, their name may remain temporarily on a Social Security database, but they do not receive payment—the system updates. No money goes out. The conspiracy theory about widespread fraud is, as Pete put it, simply false — a fabricated fear, disconnected from reality. His calm dismantling of this lie showed a larger truth: you can break mass delusion with simple, undeniable logic. Sometimes, just turning on the light makes the nonsense evaporate.
(Author’s note: At this point, I can’t help but add my reaction — DUH!)
We need that kind of clarity now — urgently. The lies are thick, but they are brittle. They shatter under the right kind of pressure.
We may not all live to see the future we are fighting for. But we fight for it anyway. Because the work of freedom is bigger than one lifetime, and the seeds we plant today will blossom in generations yet to come. Even if we do not walk into that promised land ourselves, we will be the bridge others cross, the hands that held the line when it mattered most.
We are not powerless. We are the plan.
And our voices, however small they may seem today, will echo louder and farther than we can yet imagine.
About the Author:
Janet Kira Lessin is an author, experiencer, podcaster, researcher, and consciousness explorer, writing with the assistance of Minerva to awaken and empower humanity.
📚 References:
- Pete Buttigieg comments on dead voters, Meet the Press, 2024
- Larry David’s confrontation with Bill Maher, Hollywood Reporter, 2024
- Al Gore’s rebuttal to Bill Maher’s climate remarks, CNN Interview, 2024
- Simon Rosenberg’s statements on Maher and MAGA normalization, Twitter/X, 2024
- Commentary by Keith Olbermann, Mehdi Hasan, Robert Reich, Brian Tyler Cohen, 2024
🏷️ Hashtags:
#SaveDemocracy, #NeverNormalize, #CallItOut, #SpeakTruthToPower, #FightFascism, #HistoryIsWatching, #DefendFreedom, #StopAuthoritarianism, #WeAreThePlan, #MinervaAwakens, #AwakenHumanity, #TruthMatters
🏷️ Tags:
@algore, @SimonWDC, @PeteButtigieg, @KeithOlbermann, @mehdirhasan, @BrianTylerCohen, @RBReich, @jonstewart, @ProjectLincoln, @VoteVets, @MeidasTouch
📚 Related Articles:
- How Project 2025 Plans to Finish Off American Democracy (Upcoming)
- The Danger of Normalizing Fascism in Popular Media (Upcoming)
- Roy Cohn’s Legacy: How a Culture of Fear Became the GOP Playbook (Upcoming)
- Breaking the Godspell: Awakening from the Matrix of Control (Upcoming)
Related Articles in This Series:
(Full articles available at www.elephantsinourrooms.com and www.dragonattheendoftime.com)
- The Silent War on America: How Trump and the Authoritarian Elite Are Taking Everything From You
(Exposing psychological and political sabotage of democracy.) - America on the Brink: How They Broke the System and Blamed You for It
(Analyzing the engineered economic collapse.) - Russia’s Silent War Against America: How Trump, Religion, and Authoritarianism Are Tearing Us Apart
(Revealing hidden religious and global authoritarian networks.) - The Engineered Collapse: How Tariffs, Project 2025, and 400 Years of Authoritarian Planning Are Killing America
(Tracing slavery to modern collapse.) - Dictator University: Trump’s New Model for American Authoritarianism
(Training authoritarian loyalty inside government.) - Bill Maher and the Betrayal of American Democracy: When Mockery Becomes Complicity
(How cultural figures sometimes enable authoritarian collapse.) - Trump as Modern Caesar: How History Repeats in America’s Fall Toward Dictatorship
(Historical parallels to strongman worship.) - Kindness Lost to Time: How Authoritarianism Kills Empathy
(The political weaponization of cruelty.) - Youth Shift and Unrest: Why the Next Generation Is Rejecting Authoritarian Lies
(Hope rising among the younger generations.)
(Coming Soon: Trump’s Bible — Religious Extremism and the Death of Secular Freedom; Project 2025 Deep Dive — How Authoritarians Plan to Rule America; The Empty Shelves Crisis — How Economic Starvation Is Being Engineered.)
