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Dr. Trump, Dystopian Novels, and Channeling Your Outrage

We can’t afford to indulge our collective outrage — channel it toward the greater good.

Heather M. Edwards
The Political Prism
6 min readNov 14, 2024

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Mary Trump
Dr. Mary L. Trump, PhD on the Nexus Institute round table “Why is fascism popular again?” © Wikimedia Commons

I fear one of the first things the second Trump administration will do is create a rebranded and revamped House UnAmerican Activities Committee. A real-life Ministry of Truth in the U.S., not unlike the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, would target and censor online activists, broadcast journalists, writers, and protest photographers. I fear they will defund public radio and television. I fear they will revoke FCC licensing of “dissenting” news for “security reasons.” Or worse.

American McCarthyism wasn’t that long ago; the Nazi’s Ministry of Propaganda not long before that.

Freedom of speech and the press are intrinsic non-negotiable tenets of democracy.

When clinical psychologist Dr. Mary L. Trump, PhD published Too Much and Never Enough in 2020, I had zero interest in reading about the lightning rod bringing out the worst in my fellow Americans. (It has since become obvious that Trump did not create their bigotry but normalized and elevated it.)

Those of us adhering to necessary quarantine restrictions in 2020 were still sheltering in place after months. By summer, there was…

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