PILOT'S BRIEF, re: Whining MAGAs, the Coup, Heretics, Power games, Local warlords, Quotes for the intellect

MAGA people whining about their poor choices, and a growing willingness among non-MAGA to recognize the truth of the overthrow of the government by ne0-nazis, white supremacists, christo-fascists,...

Summary Letter

2/18/2025

Dear Friends and Resistance Allies:

The Drone Pilot briefed me on his discovery of extraordinary articles by experts and public intellectuals.

Today, the Pilot advised me of discoveries in regard to MAGA people whining about their poor choices, and a growing willingness among non-MAGA to recognize the truth of the overthrow of the government by ne0-nazis, white supremacists, Christo-fascists, and other assorted ne'er-do-wells.

In addition, the Pilot has shared an interesting tidbit regarding well-worn but valuable philosophy quotes in proper context. I found it thought-provoking.

On a personal note, the Pilot wants people to stop asking if he is from Thailand. He finds this offensive. The first episode of season 3 of White Lotus showed monkeys, not apes. He is an ape. He is more evolved. The only thing they have in common is that they are both non-human primates.

Finally, I have included the details from the Pilot's Briefing below.

Respectfully yours,

James F. Stephens, JD

Enclosures

Nadub Brzezinski ~ A LETTER TO MAGA

In other words, we don’t want to hear it. We warned you. You are not victims. You refused to listen. You did own the libs, you think. You believe you are drinking liberal tears…well, that’s delusion from bullies. You owned yourselves. At this point, we are just shaking our heads. We know this will hurt all of us, but we don’t want to hear your delusions, conspiracies, or complaints when this goes sideways. And unless the courts manage to, because the REPUBLICAN Congress is out to lunch, it will. I guarantee it.

Civil Discourse ~ CALL IT WHAT IT IS...A COUP

Apparently, it’s easy to ignore such a ridiculous moment, and most people seem to have. But this is a form of Newspeak, the Orwellian construct of language that a government insists people use in order to narrow people’s range of thought. Sure, it was only over what we call the Gulf of Mexico, but this was not trivial buffoonery; it was a significant moment, a testing of the waters to see if this new White House could get away with stepping on the First Amendment without causing a furor.

Raul started his piece by questioning whether “the 49.8 percent of the electorate who elected Trump want all of this, and whether the 50.2 percent who voted for Kamala Harris or a third-party candidate want any of it.” My question is, who voted for a coup? And if we didn’t, why are we staying silent (or being excessively polite about it) now?

Holy Heretics ~ MAGA AND THE ALLEGED SIN OF EMPATHY

When comparing political movements like MAGA America and Nazi Germany, it's important to approach the discussion with sensitivity and academic rigor. The comparison between the two must be grounded in the analysis of both movements' ideologies, symbols, rhetoric, and policies. Without overstating things, both movements utilized nationalism to rally support, often with a focus on restoring a golden age of past glory. Both cults also exploited social unrest, attacked the intelligentsia, created an “us vs them” mentality, and enlisted the church to absolve their crimes. More sinister, both groups embraced xenophobic rhetoric and abject racism, identifying certain groups as threats to the nation’s purity and survival. While both groups rose to power legally, the Nazi Party and the MAGA cult quickly eroded the principles of democracy in route to a fascist regime.

There’s a lot of talk these days comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. I understand the analogy, but what I find even more significant is the correlation between Nazi Christians and MAGA Christians. As I said in the article, “The same cast of characters and religious propaganda that created the Holocaust are alive and well in the United States.” MAGA Christians are cruel because the MAGA cult is cruel; and MAGA Christians are cruel because cruel people tend to become MAGA members. For Trump evangelicals, empathy is a sin because cruelty is the point.

Thought Thinkers ~ IMMORAL POWER GAMES

For us Europeans, this represents a fundamental threat. For decades, we relied on the transatlantic partnership. The United States was a guarantor of security and stability in Europe. But under Trump, this relationship has radically changed. His “America First” policy has shown that he has no interest in a stable international order — unless it serves his own interests.

The Bulwark ~ LOCALS DECLARE OPEN SEASON ON IMMIGRANTS

If the Trump administration has been frustrated by the pace of its mass deportation efforts at the federal level—with ICE leadership being reassigned and new leaders coming in amid a scramble to reach arrest quotas—the same cannot be said at the state level, where Republicans are seizing on this new punitive approach toward immigrants to push increasingly harsh new measures.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez—the president of NextGen America, one of the largest youth voting organizations in the country, and a former U.S. Senate candidate from Texas—said these moves in her state, where one in three people are immigrants or children of immigrants, have been galling.

“State and local governments have been happy to be laboratories for the most draconian efforts around immigration, especially in the South, despite a huge population of immigrants helping them grow in construction and agriculture across Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia,” she told The Bulwark.

The Forward ~ TRUMP COPIES NAZI PLAN

Many historians argue that the Madagascar Plan was, at best, totally fanciful, and at worst a thinly veiled attempt to murder all European Jewry by deporting them to a harsh climate where they would undoubtedly die of attrition. The evidence we have is more complicated, indicating that the Madagascar Plan was the last serious, if highly problematic, effort to solve the “Jewish question” in non-genocidal fashion.

Similarly, Trump’s utopian designs to turn war-torn Gaza into a “riviera” while deporting Palestinians elsewhere may not invariably constitute a veiled effort to commit genocide. But the potential for mass violence and ethnic cleansing is endemic to any such efforts. Parallel “resettlement” plans pursued by colonial powers between 1850 and 1950 resulted in the mass murder of indigenous peoples across Nazi-occupied Europe, the U.S. frontier, Africa and Asia.

The Sophist ~ PHILOSOPHY QUOTES THAT ARE LEGIT

People are often intimidated by philosophy because it seems like a lot of complicated knowledge. But philosophy is an activity, not a collection of facts. Philosophy challenges us to evaluate everything we know. Just as intense exercise grows muscle, challenging our own ideas philosophically keeps our mind in a state of growth.

But like exercise, this can be uncomfortable. It’s not easy to examine your own beliefs and attitudes. But the pay off for doing so can be enormous. We can grow and flourish in all the relationships we have — as friends, partners, lovers, siblings, spouses and parents and citizens.

I come across quotes of philosophers and thinkers on social media feeds, ripped out of context and shared as vapid “wisdom” for likes and follows. Because of the lack of context, and because they are shared to please (and not to challenge), these quotes often actually stop us from thinking — they are rendered anodyne and neutral, making us feel smug and secure in our beliefs. We like them for their cleverness, but it’s cleverness for its own sake, rather than cleverness put to the purpose of actually thinking.

When we think deeply and philsophically, we break new ground. We see beyond appearence, we make novel connections. We privately innovate, which makes us publically more interested and more interesting.