"Animal World"

TUCSON — Now they are coming for the journalists, and we won't know what happens next. If these pigs who walk on two legs prevail, before long no one will be around to write "Animal World," a non-fiction sequel to George Orwell's farmyard allegory.

Even if our overheating planet does not slough off us hapless humans like dead skin, those tempted to "speak truth to power" will have a hell of time finding safe exile in an authoritarian world.

Last week while Donald Trump was making crystal clear that he is the worst U.S. president ever, a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt went viral. The man who ended the Great Depression and led allies to beat back Nazi Germany declared:

"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."

As an old hand still able to jump out of a jeep and navigate hostile territory, I am shifting modes from Quixote to Zapata. Upcoming dispatches will shape big-picture mosaics of global challenges — and ways to confront them.

But this is drop-dead urgent. A senile, malignant narcissist president is siccing masked goons onto American streets to summarily execute good-hearted citizens, label them "domestic terrorists" and then flip a middle finger at anyone who objects.

Trump's thugs arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon, now independent, on an obscure charge at a church protest in St. Paul, Minnesota. White House aides — civil servants paid by taxes — mocked him with an anti-social media post.

Over his photo, a caption read, "When life gives you lemons..." with emojis of shackles. This is Vladimir Putin's tactic — to come after a big name to intimidate others. A federal judge refused prosecutors' attempt to jail him until his Feb. 9 court heating.

If this sounds alarmist, skip "Animal Farm" and wade into Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism." Neither were "influencers" or 20-something TV panelists who say things like, "Well, in my experience..."

Orwell fought Spanish fascism in the 1930s, then watched the aftermath of World War II. "Animal Farm" was about Stalin's Marxists. In his next book, "1984," the last stage of despotism is when people no longer believe what they see with their own eyes.

In 2026, many Americans are already there. We know about Alex Pretti and Renee Good only because courageous people caught savagery on video. Now ICE is tracking down protesters with facial recognition and visiting their homes with dire threats.

Arendt survived Auschwitz to reveal Hitler's horrors in grim detail. Fascism and Marxism, she concluded, are two sides of the same coin. The point is total state domination.

If Donald Trump implodes from worsening dementia or poor health, his young, articulate vice president, utterly unprincipled and manipulated by soulless billionaires, is likely to be worse.

It is way past time to stand up and shout Samuel L. Jackson's plea to sleepwalking citizens when the danger was only George W. Bush: WAKE THE FUCK UP!

When I began the Mort Report a decade ago, already convinced that Donald Trump was intent on a creeping coup de etat, a former Associated Press colleague wrote a scolding note: "Don't tell people what to think." That made sense.

I had pursued elusive objectivity at AP for nearly 40 years. The world's bedrock news agency reached a billion people and governments of every political extreme. We were tasked with giving "both sides" of stories that had dozens.

As editor of International Herald Tribune in Paris for two years, I faced legal imperatives. At least one copy landed in just about every country, exposing the paper to frivolous or serious libel suits from everywhere. Our defense was accuracy and even-handedness.

Today, anything goes. News stories, editorials, op-edits and bullshit propaganda are lumped together as "articles." After six decades of earned credibility, it is time to say it straight. As Christiane Amanpour says it, truthful, not neutral.

State terror and rampant corruption in America foreshadow variants of authoritarian rule I first covered in Africa and later in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe.

AP sent me to Kinshasa after the Congo correspondent was expelled for the fourth time. I hired Baudouin Kayembe, a gentle intellectual, to help cover political turmoil. He published Presence Congolaise, an insightful ex-Belgian weekly.

Mobutu, deciding he was an enemy of the people, imprisoned him on trumped up charges. Baudouin died mysteriously soon after.

It is a far stretch to compare an American president to a despot in the sort of place Trump dismisses as a shithole. But the parallel is about principle, not the degree of depredation.

So I bang on about "context" and "historical continuum." No one can make sense of the present without understanding the past. History not only repeats itself, but it also gets steadily worse. And we are now out of time.

Trump slimed his way into the White House, twice, in an America largely clueless about the outside world. Lyndon Johnson's CIA put Mobutu in power, fearful of Patrice Lumumba's leftist leanings. He lasted 32 years with America's support.

Like all authoritarians, Mobutu corrupted the military, fortified the police, cowed the legislature, packed the courts and thoroughly muzzled the press. He considered the public treasury his personal piggy bank, and that collapsed the economy.

My best guess is he diverted $6 billion to his family, friends and inner circle. That comes close to what Trump pocketed during the last year. A New York Times documented $4 billion, which does not include secret shady deals.

In the Congo, no popular uprising stood a chance in a vast country of warring tribes with impassable roads and rudimentary airline service. Police brutally quelled protests in big cities. Americans today do not have that excuse for inaction.

This is not about immigration. That is only an easy sell to fearful people who blame a convenient Other for the hardships Trump caused with his devastating Covid denial and other self-serving policies. He is playing for keeps.

In Minnesota, Georgia and other "blue" states, Attorney General Pam Bondi offers to call off the attack dogs in exchange for voter rolls — including personal details that the law says should be private.

Stephen Miller is pure, calculated evil, a Rasputin who exploits a weak monarch's delusions. Renee Good was clearly trying to reach safety. Alex Pretti was helping a woman shoved to ground. Miller says they planned to massacre federal officers.

Faced with irrefutable evidence, he had no apology and shifted blame to Kristi Noem, the inept Homeland Security chief, and Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander. Both had read almost identical statements, which Miller probably drafted.

Decent Americans are standing up to robocop Feds who terrorize off-white minorities, even those legally in the country. They see how billionaires plunder while hard-right ideologues mislead the greedy and the gullible.

But voters need to grasp the underreported impact across the wider world.

"Global warming" is really climate chaos. Heat is unbearable on much of the planet. People squander surface water and ancient aquifers to stay cool. High-tech industry, mining and agriculture use much more. We soon may need Dune suits to survive.

Yet early winter ice storms paralyze much of America, a small patch of Earth's closed-circuit ecosystem. Extreme heat and cold, with devastating freak storms and a rising ocean, are only a foretaste of what hard science predicts what is to come.

But Trump ignores scientists, from epidemiologists who warned about Covid, to climatologists who have banged on alarms since the 1980s. Dependent on funding by fossil fuel producers, he is speeding up the sell-by date for Homo sapiens.

His bald lies about economic success are transparent to workaday families trying to keep food on the table while struggling with soaring medical bills. Cracks widen in his perverted party as legislators see their plush jobs at risk.

Voters in November can begin to reassert American values, scale back Trump's maniacal land-grabs and restore the nation's post-war leadership. But only if enough voters realize that apathy and ignorance are killing us all.

Peaceful protests across America offer hope. But if history is any guide, not yet nearly enough. Consider Ukraine's Orange Revolution.

In November 2004, most Ukrainians saw the wrong man declared winner in their presidential election. For two months, nearly 20 percent of them came back day after day in bitter cold to demand new balloting. In a rematch, their candidate won.

Figuring in population sizes, that equates to more than 60 million Americans. And still, Ukrainians' triumph did not last long. Replacing a president is not enough, especially when determined predators double down.

Trump blames Joe Biden for the invasion, but he himself is almost entirely responsible starting with his 2017 attempt to extort Volodymyr Zelensky. His public disdain for NATO convinced Putin that seizing Ukraine would be a pushover.

Well-placed U.S. intelligence sources I trust but can't name detail what happened.

A low-level official tipped off congressional investigators that weapons approved for Ukraine were put on hold. The paper trail led to Trump, who saw Biden as a likely opponent in 2020. The investigators recommended impeachment. Nancy Pelosi agreed.

In House hearings, sneering questions from Jim Jordan and others showed no intention to establish truth for constituents they are sworn to serve regardless of party. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell refused to hear witnesses or see crucial evidence.

That echoes today. Jack Smith's detailed investigations laid Trump bare, beginning with top secret "Five Eyes" documents he purloined, then left laying around Mar-a-Lago. As a result of that, the country's closest allies stopping sharing crucial intelligence.

During recent House Judiciary Committee hearings, Jordan and other spineless Republicans did nothing but defend Trump and attack Smith's motives.

In 2017, experienced, effective diplomats and East European specialists were axed. Fiona Hill, an uncommonly astute adviser, left government to watch events take shape as she feared. Allies' respect for America's wisdom and guidance took a sharp nosedive.

Then all the rest: "Russia, Russia, Russia." The Mueller Report. Discredited CIA and FBI intelligence. Irrefutable evidence from key people involved. And, mostly, Trump's inexplicable crush on Putin and his contempt for U.S. allies.

Biden knows what NATO partners contribute beside annual dues. He bypassed his own over-protective handlers to call out Putin for who he is. NATO added Sweden and also Finland, extended its borderline buffer with Russia by 850 miles.

Whether his measured aid to Ukraine was enough is open to debate. Playing nuclear chicken with a despot is no job for amateurs. He anticipated Putin's invasion and warned Zelensky in time to defend Kiev.

Trump could have stared down Putin at the Alaska summit in December. Instead, he fawned over him like a smitten fanboy. As Ukraine bleeds out, he makes Europe pay for American arms to defend it and pushes Zelensky to give up future security guarantees.

In sum, it amounts to another strong-arm "deal." A year ago, Trump demanded $500 billion in rare earth minerals from crippled Ukraine, far more than U.S. aid up to then. "We have to get something." he said. " We can’t continue to pay this money.”

By now, estimates tally two million dead in the war, mostly Russian. And there no end in sight.

Greenland illustrates the danger of a manchild who grasps at whatever attracts him, whether it is a woman's privates or sovereign territory. He threatened to invade Denmark if it did not acquiesce.

Then he punished NATO members that prepared to defend Denmark by imposing high tariffs that Americans would end up paying as sales tax.

The deepest cut was his absurd claim that allies hang back to let Americans fight and pay the bills. Denmark, especially, reacted with seething, demoralizing resentment.

Denmark answers every call, whether for combat troops or humanitarian aid. Danes had no stake in the Afghanistan war, yet per capita more of them died than Americans during 20 years of war. They had already proved their mettle in Bosnia.

Serb gunboats pounded Dubrovnik in 1992 to test resistance. Adm. Bill Owens, who commanded the U.S. Sixth Fleet in Italy, told me the Pentagon refused permission to fly fighter jets across their bows. That likely would have averted a brutal four-year war.

Finally in 1995, U.S. forces took over a large base in Tuzla. They built a road heading north named Route Arizona. Army press flacks denied access to reporters. I went to the Danes, who happily took me along on a Leopard tank.

Serbs had dug in on a mountainside to harass NATO convoys. They knew that cautious commanders in Sarajevo had ordered them not to return fire. On an open exposed stretch, artillery rounds began to rain down in our direction.

The tank driver flicked off his radio and smiled. We've lost contact, he said, so I guess we're on our own. He swung the 105mm cannon around and blasted away. As far as I know, the Serbs never messed with the Danes again.

In later dispatches when I return to Europe I'll dig into essential global crises — and what can be done to confront them. But the priority now is rescuing America. Pogo, Wally Kelly's perspicacious possum: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Trump emerged in 2020 as the plutocrats' godsend, an easily manipulated outlier who faked charisma. Today, he is Frankenstein's monster out of control. His racial spectrum is limited to white and not-white. When denied what he wants, he seeks vengeance.

None of this mentions the Jeffrey Epstein files, likely a main reason Trump is creating such havoc to divert attention from his sexual proclivities. That matters, but he told us who he is in the Access Hollywood tape before his first election.

In the end, I am hopeful, but I have never been so apprehensive. Unless a lot more people flood the streets in peaceful protest — and work their circles of contacts to explain what is at risk — November elections they may be America's last chance.