It is interesting to note that the first thing Vladimir Putin did when he gained power was to go after comics who lampooned him. He applied pressure to get state-run Gazprom Media to take over the network broadcasting the satirical program Kukly (translation: Puppets), and end the program in 2001. That was only the beginning of Putin's clamping down on free speech in Russia, a precarious, recent thing in post-Glaznost Russia. Also interesting is the fact that Volodymyr Zelenskyy began his career as a comic before running for president of Ukraine. Strongmen and comics do not get along. Maybe comparing Trump to Adolph Hitler, which is highly incendiary according to the Right, is outdated. Trump is much more like his good buddy Putin.
To Mr. Trump, all opponents are democrats and all democrats are communists, and therefore enemies of the state. He paints anyone with a differing viewpoint as unpatriotic, who should be looked at closely as possible criminals. If that's not hate speech, I don't know what is. But I don't see Trump singled out for suspension from his job over his exercise of free speech.
I know I can say these things in America, still, at the moment. I also know I am a small voice preaching to the choir. I may be too small to bother about, which is all the more reason to keep warning anyone who will listen that We The People have all but surrendered democracy to a spiteful buffoon dedicated to power and greed.
Let us be clear. The watershed moment was not Charlie Kirk's brutal murder. It was Jimmy Kimmel's suspension. Kimmel, and the dozens of people who worked to create his program, have been economically assassinated. Trump doesn't have to kill people to silence their voices. America has become Amerika. It is a dictatorship. Every member of Congress who remains compliant is complicit in our betrayal and is a traitor to the Constitution.
My only hope is that the severity of the response to the perceived threat of a couple of late night talk show hosts will backfire.
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