2025 Life Logs, Day 85: Back to the Computer Photo Project
Date: Wednesday March 26, 2025
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Some Precipitation; High Temp 47, Low 33 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Today I was back on the computer working on the photo project that I started weeks ago. I am getting there but not done yet.
Thankfully, I got a little break when I picked Ollie up after school today. I took him home, but as he started to get out of the car, he asked if we could go to my house to get a kayak. There is a pond the boys can access from a neighbor’s backyard that Ollie wants to kayak in. The kayaks have been stored under the adjoining studio apartment since I moved here. I have two, but we decided to clean and move one today. We’ll get the second one if someone else would like to kayaking with Ollie.
Tonight I am back on the photo project, but stopping for the night. It is time to watch the Rachel Maddow Show while getting in my exercise bike time for tonight.
Here’s a little list you might be interested in. It was posted today by Robert Reich.
20 SIGNS OF IMPENDING TYRANNY
As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically:
1. Demand personal loyalty from all appointees.
2. Organize military parades and other choreographed shows of force.
3. Threaten to fire independent prosecutors who get too close to the truth.
4. Spread conspiracy theories about “deep state” forces seeking to oust the tyrant.
5. Refer to top-ranking military leaders as “my” generals.
6. Threaten to jail political opponents.
7. Claim to have won an election by a landslide even after losing the popular vote.
8. Stoke tensions abroad, even the specter of nuclear war, to distract from the tyrant’s efforts to consolidate power at home.
9. Circumvent the independent press and communicate directly with followers.
10. Vilify legislators and judges who are critical of the regime.
11. Repeatedly claim massive voter fraud in the absence of any evidence, in order to restrict voting in subsequent elections.
12. Turn the public against journalists or media outlets that criticize the regime, calling them “deceitful” and “scum.”
13. Repeatedly tell big lies, causing the public to doubt the truth and to believe fictions that support the tyrants’ goals
14. Blame economic stresses on immigrants or racial or religious minorities, and foment public bias and hatred against them.
15. Threaten mass deportations, registries of religious minorities, and the banning of refugees.
16. Attribute acts of domestic violence to “enemies within,” and use such events as excuses to beef up internal security and limit civil liberties.
17. Appoint family members to high positions of authority.
18. Draw no distinction between personal property and public property, profiteering from public office.
19. Make personal alliances with foreign dictators, but express indifference if not defiance toward leaders of democracies.
20. Maintain a powerful propaganda arm that claims to be “fair and balanced” but only amplifies the tyrant’s lies and accusations.
