WN: The video below is highly disturbing. It is an interview with Yale historian Timothy Snyder, author of the widely acclaimed study: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

It is indeed ominous.

A portion of the transcript reads:

ARI MELBER: “When you see this effort to put this much pressure on installing partisan officials who’ve embraced lies and tried to overturn elections in these official positions for next election, how concerned should we be? What, if any, foreign analogs do you see?”

TIMOTHY SNYDER: “Well, as someone who follows contemporary Russia, there is a Russian phrase that comes to mind, which is ‘the administrative resource.’ What the administrative resource means in Russian is that, sure, you have an election, but the people who are running the election are going to determine how the election turns out. What the Republicans are going for is precisely that thing—the administrative resource.

Historically speaking, what we know about a big lie is that, because of its very scale, it’s not about truth or not-truth, it’s about living in a kind of alternative reality. And what we’re looking at is people who believe in or pretend to believe in this Big Lie actually carrying out our elections. And the problem with this, or one of them, is that, since these people have already claimed that the other side cheated, that basically legitimates their cheating. In other words, if you talk about the Big Lie now, you’re basically promising to cheat the next time around, and that’s very concerning.”

MELBER: “How worried are you that the United States could face a situation where coordinated efforts by these kind of officials could actually swing an election?”

SNYDER: “Oh, we don’t need the ‘could’ … I mean, I would say we should be thinking of this as what is happening, and then ask ourselves what we can do to prevent it. I mean, it’s very clear that some combination of people who talk about the Big Lie being in important administrative posts, along with nonlegal or extralegal reviews of the election, perhaps along with states claiming for themselves the right to allocate electoral votes against the wishes of their own people. Some combination of that is clearly in the works, alongside voter suppression, which has a long and dark history in our country.

The scenario for 2024, for most influential people around Donald Trump, which unfortunately means one of the political parties, is precisely to be installed without winning the election. That’s very consistent with everything Mr. Trump has ever said—in 2016, 2020, and now. So I don’t think it’s something that could happen; I think it’s something that’s underway, and the question is, can we accept this reality in time to take the measures we need to take to prevent it?”

Go to 4:50 for Snyder’s interview.

Then please read Alfred McCoy‘s October 26, 2021 highly disturbing: An American Coup: A Recurring Nightmare?

We read in Tom Engelhardt‘s introduction:

And so we pray: Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers.