The news is very bad and worse: Euphemisms can kill

There have been too many major major blows to democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and truth for our country to survive as it was. The damage that djt and MAGA elites already has caused is enormous. What little is left of our democracy and rule of law will probably not survive much longer. The November 2026 mid-term elections will probably, ~70% chance in my opinion, be manipulated to favor dictatorship if it is necessary to keep the Republicans in power in congress. Otherwise, American voters will voluntarily end the democratic experiment, their rights and our republican form of government. America is reverting to the historical mean, old-fashioned kleptocracy and dictatorship.

Evidence that our elected leaders and the MSM failed us is solid. A NYT opinion (not paywalled) by Frank Bruni, November 2026 is Everything, is one of the few items that evinces significant understanding of what is happening to us and what has already happened. But that either falls short of full understanding, or reflects damage to an MSM now afraid of djt and MAGA power. Bruni writes: 

.... Republicans — devoid of conscience and terrified of Trump — have shown an almost complete willingness to let him do whatever he wants and drag the country wherever he pleases, which is down into a sewer of despotism, corruption, cruelty and fiscal insanity.

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court is clearing the way for him. Meanwhile, Trump and his enablers are busy trying to neuter the rest of the justice system with strategically placed sycophants.

In The Seattle Times, Danny Westneat sympathized with Senator Lisa Murkowski, who said she felt “cheated” by Trump’s reneging on a deal with her: “If only there had been some clue, some sign, that a politician who cheated with his charity, cheated on taxes, cheated on his wife, cheats at golf, cheated his contractors, cheated his customers and then attempted the biggest cheat of all — on the American election system — might eventually work his way around to cheating you, too?”

Yes, the terrified Republicans support and enable djt. Knowingly or willingly or not, they put themselves and their jobs over our country. Yes, Murkowski was an absolute idiot (or a cynical liar) claiming to trust djt. Maybe it was idiocy or gross incompetence amounting to treason. Is it possible to be a traitor in the court of public opinion out of gross incompetence, with or without malice? Yes, but that is a matter of public opinion, not law.[1]

Just as bad, Bruni represents the dismal MSM norm by once again making the same horrific mistake that most of the MSM have been making over and over and over since 2017. He and the MSM call djt and MAGA "conservative." Under current political circumstances, political history since 2010 (especially since 2017), and based on facts, the label "conservative" is a euphemism for dictatorship, theocracy, plutocracy and kleptocracy, where dictatorship is dominant.

Euphemisms

By now, the MSM knows that djt and MAGA are authoritarian and deeply corrupt. But to keep from losing some readers, players like Bruni and the editors of the NYT continue to use to the deceptive, misleading euphemism "conservative." Conservative is an effective rhetorical shield. It has decades of positive associations built in, e.g., small, efficient government. That allows authoritarianism and corruption to masquerade as just normal politics as usual. Poll data indicate that about one-third of Americans, including a Repub supermajority, grossly underestimate the MAGA movement's autocratic, plutocratic and theocratic ambitions in large part because of the label. 

The "conservative" rhetorical con game that MAGA elites play is reinforced by a radicalized authoritarian  MAGA USSC. The court calls djt's dictatorship "conservative constitutionalism." That sleight of hand numbs the public. The conned public lets its guard down. Remember "compassionate conservatism"? Same cynical trick, same authoritarian goals, different decade.

A final observation. The "conservative" euphemism for MAGA politics and policy will literally get people killed. There is no rational basis for any doubt about that. Dead people is foreseeable and inevitable when you kick 11 million people off Medicaid, con people into not getting vaccinated, get rid of consumer and worker safety regulations, reverse environmental protections and allow poisoning of the air and water, or etc. Even if it is called conservative constitutionalism, MAGA's authoritarian, kleptocratic politics and policy will kill more people than honest democratic politics and policy. Period.

 

Footnotes:

1. Shockingly gross incompetence and/or cynical lying sometimes morphs into a public verdict of betrayal and treason even if no ill intent existed. Murkowski's vote cast in moral terms, the  foreseeability of djt's dishonesty, her fiduciary duty, and the harm of her vote was enough for some people to see her vote as "treason." Leaders who ignore predictable consequences, or shift blame by claiming they were heated can expect the court of public opinion to rationally treat their failures as a profound breach of trust amounting to treason. In the law, intent matters to judges and juries. In the court of public opinion, things like competence, foresight and duty sometimes matter.