A classic a bumper sticker posed this alarming question: “Where are we going, and what am I doing in this handbasket?”

What we’re in today is an Orwellian basket to political hell, propelled by Trump himself. He has assembled a cohort of anti-democracy zealots, who are autocratically cutting off people’s fundamental freedoms—including speech, press, travel, and even thought.

The first Trump term unleashed a gaggle of right-wingers promoting mass ignorance by demonizing books, librarians, teachers, scientists, and our own people’s history. Next came a maniacal MAGA assault on America’s most essential, unifying democratic value: The reality that we are a proudly diverse bunch of people, striving to achieve the ideal of equality for all. “Heresy,” shouted Trump’s GOP, demanding that the pursuit of such goals literally be outlawed.

And now comes all-out, Kafkaesque crazy, with Trump going on a binge of mass censorship and goofy executive dictates. Consider just two of his recent commands. One bans government cafeterias from using paper straws! Another suspends a law that made it illegal for US corporations to bribe foreign officials. There’s the new morality: Paper straws, OUT; corporate bribery, IN.

More dangerous for our freedom, though, is the MAGA regime’s purging of words and ideas it doesn’t like, trying to force its government-approved Newspeak on America. Trump’s minions are now going through every agency’s documents and websites, literally deleting hundreds of common words to be officially verboten—including: Equality, injustice, pollution, transgender, race, women… and, of course, Gulf of Mexico.

This is Jim Hightower saying… These are not just words, but values and people. A president that starts by censoring our freedom of expression is a weakling, admitting that he’s afraid of free-thinking people.

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