I had been thinking along these lines for awhile. That we’ll end up in a system that permits elections, but outcomes will be known in advance. Something akin to Russia under Putin. We’ll know what it’s like to “just shut up, go along, don’t criticize the leader, and you’ll stay relatively safe”. Trump only admires strength, only admires Strongmen. And he wants that to be the way things are run in the United States. He won’t stop short of what Putin has in Russia. Not saying that’s our future, I can’t predict, and there are lots of pieces to this quandary our democracy finds itself in. But it clearly is what Trump wants. It’s his goal. So, with that possibility in mind, the Facebook postings by this guy make for an interesting read, for anyone interested in where we may be heading, should Trump continue to accumulate power.
Trump is “Putinism, draped in red, white, and blue”.
This is a must read for every American.
From Oliver Kornetzke
I’m not a historian. I’m not a Kremlinologist or a credentialed scholar on authoritarian regimes. I’m not a behavioral psychologist, and I don’t hold a PhD in fascism or kleptocracy—though frankly, given the state of the world, I’m starting to wonder if we all should. But I’ve lived in Russia for some time. I’ve spent time in Eastern Europe. I’ve read obsessively, listened carefully, and paid attention like my life depended on it—because, in a very real sense, it does. And while I’ll leave academic dissection to the ivory tower, what I can tell you from the ground is this:
What’s happening in this country isn’t just cruel—it’s methodical, strategic, and deeply familiar to anyone who’s studied or survived under regimes built on repression and rot.
We’re watching a script play out—one that was written in the blood and bureaucracy of Putin’s Russia, refined in the dungeons of Chechnya, perfected through decades of oligarchic decay, secret police intimidation, and mafia-state theatrics. And now it’s being re-staged here in America, rebranded with flags and lapel pins and the tired language of “law and order.”
The Trump regime—this carnival of third-rate strongmen, grifters, sycophants, and sadists—isn’t innovating anything. It’s copying. It’s importing the authoritarian model wholesale. They’ve read the Putin playbook, dog-eared the best parts, and now they’re running it in real time. And the cruelty? That’s not a flaw in the system. That is the system.
Because cruelty serves a dual purpose: it distracts and it paralyzes. It shocks the conscience just long enough to make you forget about the theft happening in broad daylight. It freezes resistance by making you wonder who’s next. It’s not just about dehumanizing the target—it’s about disarming the observer. You see a 52-year-old seamstress abducted by masked agents in broad daylight, and your mind stops. That’s the point. While you’re frozen, they’re looting the vault.
Putin’s critics—brave dissidents like Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Kara-Murza, and Alexei Navalny—laid it out plainly: behind the thuggish repression, there’s no grand ideology. There’s only theft. Power is just a means to steal more, protect the stolen, and destroy anyone who threatens the racket. Navalny made that crystal clear. Putin’s state isn’t built on belief—it’s built on plunder. And everything else—beatings, censorship, propaganda, disappearances—is just set dressing for the heist.
Trump, a failed businessman and serial conman, didn’t stumble into power because he had a vision. He stumbled into it like a raccoon into a jewelry store: overwhelmed, opportunistic, and desperate to grab everything shiny before the lights come on. He brought with him a gang of similarly hollow, self-serving goons—parasites in flag pins—who recognized that brute force and spectacle could serve as a perfect cover for mass-scale corruption. All they needed was enough boots, enough masks, and enough Americans too scared or too exhausted to resist.
That’s what ICE is now—a terror squad designed not just to punish the “other,” but to frighten the rest into submission. They don’t need to knock on your door. They just need you to see what happens when they knock on hers. They want you disoriented, enraged, heartbroken, and above all—silent.
It’s not about immigration. It’s about domination.
But here’s the part they never count on: you can only keep people paralyzed for so long. Fear calcifies. Shock fades. And eventually, rage focuses.
So let’s speak plainly: this is not normal, it’s not American, and it’s not sustainable. It’s a kleptocratic death cult wearing the face of democracy. It’s an authoritarian racket hiding behind courtrooms and uniforms. And it will fall—just like every regime before it that mistook violence for invincibility and corruption for competence.
What can we do? First, resist the paralysis. Rage, yes—but don’t retreat. Pay attention. Speak out. If something feels wrong, say it’s wrong. Refuse to play along with their language, their framing, their euphemisms. They are not “removing undocumented immigrants.” They are disappearing people. They are not “restoring law and order.” They are weaponizing the state.
And just as importantly: take care of yourself. Joy, community, love, rest—these are not luxuries in a time of repression. They are acts of defiance. They are the fuel for the long fight ahead. Because this will be a long fight. There will be distractions, casualties, betrayals. But there will also be courage. And solidarity. And moments that remind us exactly why we fight.
Because we don’t do it for the flag. We don’t do it for politicians. We do it for every seamstress dragged from her car. Every family torn apart. Every dissident silenced. Every protestor jailed. We do it to honor the civil rights marchers, the freedom riders, the Stonewall rebels, the water protectors, the labor organizers—the defiant, the bold, the brave.
And we do it for the Americans who laid down their lives to crush fascism in Europe. For the soldiers who stormed beaches to fight against tyranny, not wave it in through the front door. For those who fought in the jungles and the deserts and the streets—not for conquest, but for freedom. For those who knew that authoritarianism doesn’t need to speak a foreign language to be a threat.
And we do it because we must. Because history is watching. And this time, it’s our names on the line.
Let’s make sure they’re remembered for the right reasons.
From a second Kornetzke post:
I came across a comment on a share of my post about Moscow ’91, the Soviet collapse, and the rise of Putin—and I thought I’d offer a deeper analysis, as someone who reads Russian history and politics not just with interest, but with a growing sense of dread at how relevant it’s all become.
After the failed 1991 coup, the Soviet Union quickly disintegrated. What followed wasn’t democracy—it was chaos. Under Yeltsin, a rushed, Western-advised economic “shock therapy” program led to the mass privatization of state assets. Overnight, a handful of connected insiders—many with deep ties to both organized crime and the former KGB—became oligarchs, while the rest of the population plunged into poverty. Inflation soared, life expectancy dropped, pensions evaporated, and trust in anything resembling democratic governance collapsed. By 1996, Yeltsin’s approval ratings hovered around 6%. Russians weren’t just disillusioned—they were betrayed.
It was into this power vacuum that Putin emerged. Not through popular uprising, but through appointment and manipulation—first as head of the FSB, then as acting president following Yeltsin’s resignation. He rose with the full backing of the oligarchs and security state, cloaking himself in nationalist rhetoric, promising order, strength, and a return to greatness. He sold the idea that if Russians gave up civil liberties, he’d restore dignity and economic stability. For a brief time, he did—on the backs of high oil prices and ruthless suppression of dissent. The “social contract” was set: stay silent, and your life might get better. But in the long run, the cost was totalitarianism, censorship, political assassinations, and a state that now operates as a mafia with nukes.
And he played it brilliantly. Wrap autocracy in nationalism. Offer economic stability in exchange for political silence. Identify enemies, internal and external. Normalize surveillance, repression, and the erasure of dissent. By the time anyone realized what had happened, Russia was no longer a fragile democracy—it was a managed state, run by a security apparatus fused with organized crime, and cloaked in the language of patriotism and greatness.
Now look at the United States. Since the 2008 financial crash, wealth inequality has skyrocketed. Wages stagnated. Whole towns were gutted by globalization and automation while Wall Street and Silicon Valley raked in billions. The institutions—Congress, the courts, the media—failed to deliver anything resembling justice or accountability. The populist rage that gave Trump his power didn’t come out of nowhere. Like Putin, he positioned himself as the “strongman outsider” who would break the system and punish the elites. And like Putin, he’s surrounded himself with sycophants, oligarchs, criminals, and loyal enforcers willing to dismantle democracy piece by piece in exchange for power.
January 6 was our warning shot—just as the Second Chechen War was Putin’s. Just as Putin used terror to consolidate power, Trump used a manufactured crisis of a ‘rigged election’ to rally a violent cult. Just like Putin, he’s purging dissent, co-opting the courts, and building a political machine immune to consequences.
And now we see the result—judicial capture, voter suppression, cult-like loyalty, attacks on the free press, the slow death of accountability, and a base conditioned to see democracy itself as the enemy. It’s Putinism draped in red, white, and blue.
The warning here isn’t theoretical—it’s already happened. And if we don’t address the root causes—corrupt elites, collapsing public trust, obscene inequality—people will continue to turn to authoritarians who promise vengeance and order. Nationalist populism is a symptom of a failed system, and once embraced, it’s nearly impossible to uproot without massive social and political cost.
The deeper warning isn’t that this might happen—it’s that it already is. Authoritarianism doesn’t arrive all at once with tanks in the streets. It comes incrementally, cloaked in slogans, normalized by fatigue, and justified by fear. The U.S. is not immune. If anything, we’re proving how fragile our institutions truly are.
We are now entering the post-collapse stage of our own republic. The only question now is whether we allow our own version of Putin to finish the job.
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