The Lincoln Logue | Trump, Khomeini, & the Authoritarian Playbook

A special edition on our past, present, and future.

The walls feel like they are closing in. For every cop on staff in Minneapolis, there are five ICE agents. The agents are armed to the teeth, poorly trained, entitled, and violently angry. By some accounts, they’re going door-to-door looking for non-white people. They’re tearing through the streets, tossing people out of vans, and otherwise wreaking havoc.

Some schools are quickly building virtual curriculum to make sure their students aren’t kidnapped from their classrooms.

But while this is an inflection point, all roads have led to this moment. The Trump regime and its enablers have been telling us that this day would come. They published reports, gave speeches, and ranted and raved on a million podcasts.

They told us what they were going to do. Too many of us didn’t listen or, at least, didn’t believe them.

Here’s the thing: we’re not the first society to cover our ears when an autocrat explains his plans. The streets of Tehran (and Shiraz, and Mashhad, and Isfahan, etc) are full of the children and grandchildren of people who didn’t listen, didn’t believe, or chose to go along with the deranged rantings of a man who sought absolute power at all costs.

The massacre currently taking place in Iran is a window into America, 50 years in the future.

Don’t believe me?

For this special edition of The Lincoln Logue, I’m inter-splicing quotes from a 1980 speech given by Khomeini with quotes from the Americans who are currently running our country.