John Ambrosio on the Super-heroes taking on Trump

The following was published on 3 Quarks 

The Achilles Heel of Trump’s Mafia-State Authoritarianism
Posted on Sunday, Apr 5, 2026 5:00AM by John Ambrosio

If Trump has an Achilles heel, why was his political life cut off long ago? Did the Dems really want to lose the White House twice?  Perhaps, Ambrosio has only now discovered this Achilles heel. But if it was there to be discovered, someone smarter than him would have found it already. 

In a recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, drew on a paper written by the renowned Czech dissident, and later president, Václav Havel that discussed how totalitarian regimes, like the former Soviet Union, seek to control the population

they did it by killing people and sending their families to the Gulag 

by providing individuals with an “ideological excuse”

Nobody needs any such thing if it is common knowledge that lack of enthusiasm for the regime will get you shot or sent to the fucking Gulag.  

that enables them to conceal from themselves their silent capitulation,

Why conceal it? You congratulate yourself on having lived another day while your neighbour was dragged out of his bed by the Secret Police & is now being tortured in the Lubyanka. The reason most people supported the regime was because the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Change might be for the worse. Maybe, if the whole world turns Communist, the regime won't need to spend so much on guns. There will be more butter.  

in the face of real and threatened state repression, in order to avoid the shame and indignity of having their obedience to the regime exposed.

There was and is no shame in doing what you have to do to stay alive. Prostitutes say 'we're putting food on the table for our kids'. They don't say 'we are ideologically opposed to sexual repression'  

In The Power of the Powerless, Havel used the example of a greengrocer who put a sign with an official slogan in his shop window

because he is required to do so or may get into trouble if he does not 

to illustrate how totalitarian regimes seek to control and manipulate the population.

They do it by beating and killing them.  

Havel wrote that “the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience,

Similarly, if he is required by the wholesaler to display a poster for Marmite, the sign conceals from himself the fact that he has a contractual obligation to do so. He looks at the poster and says to himself 'I must really like that beastly stuff.  Otherwise, why would I have put up that sign?'

at the same time concealing the low foundations of power.

Similarly, when the motorist sees a traffic light, he conceals from himself the fact that if he does not obey it then he might lose his licence. Instead he says to himself 'What an odd coincidence! It seems that whenever I feel like stopping the traffic light is red! When I feel like driving ahead, it is green! Perhaps I am controlling the traffic lights with my mind.' 

It hides them behind the façade of something high. And that something high is ideology.

Nobody gives a shit about ideology except for a few paranoid nutters. Those paid to gas on about it are just going through the motions.  

It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo,” an “excuse that everyone can use” to maintain an “illusory identity, dignity, and morality,” to “live within a lie.”

Very true. You go to work because you really enjoy doing boring shite. It isn't the case that you need the money.  

As the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci argued, in capitalist systems with highly developed civil societies the ruling class exercises power through a combination of force and consent.

This is true of all governments everywhere at every time. Why not say 'under neo-liberalism, people fart. They are blinded by the occulted hegemony exercised by the Bourgeoisie into thinking they are farting because of some biological process occurring within their own bodies. Actually, it is capitalism which is making them fart.'  

That is, it achieves hegemony through coercion and state violence, and by obtaining the passive or active consent of the masses of people by exercising moral and intellectual leadership.

Nonsense! A State can be ruled well enough by a bunch of Army officers or Party hacks or plutocrats without anybody thinking any of them have a shred of morality or intellect.  

Hegemony is never complete or final and must be continually reproduced,

Capitalism must continually exert itself to make us fart. 

which is why authoritarian regimes strenuously repress criticism of their ideological excuses,

The Beloved Leader also kills any of his comrades whom he starts to see as a rival for power.  

of the official stories people tell themselves about themselves, one another, and the nation that enable them to conceal from themselves their obedience to the regime.

No. Once people are doing what you want, you don't bother expending any further effort on making sure they believe that Capitalism is causing them to fart. After all, you don't want those who slave away to create wealth for you to become complete lunatics.  

For most people, avoiding the shame of having their accommodation to the regime exposed is a powerful motivational force.

Who would do the exposing? A guy who would be swiftly killed. On the other hand, there may be guys who say 'you want to suck my cock. Sadly Capitalism has brainwashed you into thinking you aren't a raving poofter.' In cases like this, beating the shit out of the cunt is a fine way to get a bit of exercise. 

I would argue that Trump and his MAGA allies are experiencing a kind of legitimation crisis

they are going to lose the mid-terms. SCOTUS is already turning against Trump. If the Dems win big in November, Trump will face impeachment hearings. He may have to resign to get a pardon from Vance. But who will pardon Vance?  

that has weakened their political power, given the complete absence, or even the pretence, of needing to provide people who are not his core supporters with “something high” to conceal their adaptation to the administration’s lawlessness and sadistic cruelty.

Unlike Obama. He often provided White Racists, who hated him, with something to get high with which would cause them to see him as Dolly Parton.  

In place of ideological excuses, such as the meritocracy to justify extreme inequality at home,

as opposed too DEI which would cause America to become a starving colony of China 

and American exceptionalism to legitimize military interventionism abroad,

 America doesn't care about legitimacy. It only back off if the thing costs too much.

Trumpism substitutes a constant stream of lies, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.

Yet, he isn't a Marxist. How strange! 

While these false narratives are uncritically absorbed by his base,

People don't care about narratives. Anybody can tell a story.  

they leave others, who do not inhabit Trump’s alternate reality and whose political support is more tenuous, without a way to conceal “their own fallen existence” from themselves.

Why are they not sucking off hobos at truck stops? It is because Neo-Liberalism has brainwashed them.  

As Masha Gessen 

who wrote about the return to totalitarianism in Russia. She didn't mention that, historically, the alternative was economic collapse. 

and others have pointed out, individuals need not believe the lies and mystifications, only act as if they do, or simply tolerate them in silence.

Or ignore them completely or laugh at them but still end up voting for the candidate who is less shit.  

While individuals need not accept the lie, they are nonetheless expected to publicly perform their adherence to it.

Only if that is what they are paid to do. I had gone to Bucking Palace to perform my adherence to Britain's Monarchical ideology. Sadly, I wasn't permitted to enter even though I claimed to be the Dowager Duchess of Dublin.  

What is different today is Trump’s view that the exercise of state power is no longer in need of ideological excuses, that he possesses a king-like divine right to do as he pleases, unconstrained by norms or law, which people must simply accept as legitimate.

Also Capitalism is causing him to fart.  

While Trump’s staunchest supporters in the MAGA movement do not need the false justifications, those in the outer rings of his political universe, many of whom are young, racially diverse, low information, and low propensity voters, are left without a way to rationalize their support or indifference to his gangster authoritarianism, which relies on thinly veiled and coded threats, bullying, extortion, and extreme violence to achieve its political objectives.

He promised that he would bring peace & prosperity. Currently, it looks as though he has done the opposite. Sadly, if enough people want to see darkies deported in the most brutal manner possible, he may still win.  

In this sense, Trump’s remarkable openness and transparency about his illegal, unconstitutional, and corrupt practices, his penchant for saying the quiet part out loud, makes it more difficult for less partisan Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to hide their adaptation to the regime from themselves.

Why would they want to? The question was always 'can Trump deliver?' He did so well enough in his first term till COVID blindsided him. Currently, it looks as though his economic & diplomatic strategies have misfired. But if the American military inflicts a crushing defeat on Iran, he may still win the mid-terms.  

What is a source of political strength in relation to his most ardent supporters can be a significant weakness for voters who are not securely on board the MAGA train, as the recent gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey demonstrate. Being open and unapologetic about

the fact that he has a penis- a white penis!- is totes triggering to me.  

his bigotry and lawbreaking, and offering only implausible and easily refutable narratives to justify his actions, makes it exceedingly difficult for Trump to assemble a stable political coalition.

Other Presidents had the same problem, even affable Biden & charismatic Obama. 

Some might argue that it’s better that Trump dispenses with the need to provide ideological excuses that give people a way to accommodate themselves to his lawlessness, to carry on with their everyday lives. Telegraphing his thinking and intentions gives Trump’s political opponents a heads-up and an opportunity to prepare for what’s coming. But by not seeking to obscure or hide his crimes, Trump normalizes his criminal behavior, makes it appear as if his lawlessness is just business as usual, no big deal. If they were crimes, why would Trump repeatedly talk about them in public?

If they were crimes, why couldn't Joe & Kamala lock him up?  

The failure to provide individuals with a means to avoid the shame of having their complicity with Trump’s crimes exposed

fuck shame. It's going to prison which scares people. I bet there will be tens of thousands of pardons before Trump leaves office.  

means he must increasingly rely on fear and intimidation, on the use of coercion and force,

& mind control rays 

which will lead to a further weakening of his political support, as was made clear by Trump’s declining approval ratings on immigration in the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE and CBP agents in Minneapolis after videos of the shootings that circulated widely on social media and elsewhere contradicted the official story.

Don't shoot white peeps.  It's not like America is running out of niggers, spics, wops, dagos & those fucking annoying dot Indians who stink of curry. 

Trump’s political strategy, which depends primarily on

offering enough voters things they really want. Politics is a business. If you can't deliver, your rival takes market share from you.  

the unflinching support of a cultish base of loyal voters is unlikely to succeed, although he will have done a lot of long-term damage to the country in the meantime.

In which case the Dems share the blame for being so utterly shit.  

As Gramsci argues, like other liberal democracies in the West,

Gramsci had never seen a liberal democracy. The King appointed Mussolini & the King dismissed him two decades later.  

the U.S. developed “a sturdy structure of civil society”

a sound economy. Civil Society is meaningless shite.  

that constitutes “a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks”

reservations for such indigenous people as had not been killed.  

, a kind of firewall, that makes it exceedingly difficult for Trump and his MAGA allies to consolidate an authoritarian takeover of the country.

If he has both SCOTUS & Congress on side, he can do pretty much anything he likes. Now Gorsuch & Amy Coney Barret are defying him because it looks likely that he will lose the mid-terms.  

This is the case, despite the fact that much of the mass media is controlled by a few oligarchs and large corporations, the judiciary is dominated by a rouge MAGA-friendly Supreme Court, and elites in some major law, firms, universities, and media organizations capitulated to Trump’s threats and extortion.

The MAGA tide appears to be ebbing.  

Nearly half of the U.S. electorate identify as independents. While the overwhelming majority of them lean toward one of the major parties, about 9% of these unaffiliated voters demonstrate a pattern of voting behavior that is unstable and inconsistent, and are potentially up for grabs. In a nearly evenly divided electorate, these potential swing voters can determine the outcome of a close national election, along with anti-Trump and establishment Republicans.

In Economics, Expectations create Reality. In Politics, perception is Reality. The Dems need to put their best foot forward.  People need to believe they will deliver lower inflation. 

The point is not that Trump’s inherent political weakness will necessarily lead to his electoral defeat, given the Republican Party’s success in limiting access to the ballot and controlling the administration of elections in many Republican-led states,

also, they are using mind-rays to cause people to fart. Flatulence is a Neo-Liberal conspiracy.  

but that his attempt to control the country through fear, intimidation, and the random use of force has become increasingly necessary and politically problematic.

not to mention smelly. Did you know that in a truly Socialist Society, farts smell like roses?  

Absent significant popular support or widely accepted ideological excuses, which white Christian Nationalism does not provide for the majority of voters, Trump’s gangster authoritarianism will require a continual ratcheting up of threats of violence and actual violence.

We get it. He is a Nazi. Trillions of disabled Lesbians of colour have already been forced on to cattle trucks & sent to gas-chambers.  

The purpose of engaging in extreme and unaccountable violence is not only to shock and terrorize the population, but to normalize the brutality, to condition people to accept state violence as an ordinary aspect of everyday life.

Very true. Americans first started to suspect something of the sort when the Postman took to brutally sodomizing them while delivering the mail. 

Despite the growing unpopularity of how immigration laws are being enforced, and public revulsion at the brutality and murderous violence of Homeland Security agents,

The problem is that a lot of people who say they don't like it, may still want the intended outcome. We don't like the way the sausage is made. But we like sausages. 

Trump will likely respond to declining public support by doubling down on intimidation and state repression to advance his political agenda,

He will set up more concentration camps.  

since there is no other plausible path open to him.

There is one. Trump could use the excuse of the Hormuz crisis, & rising oil prices, to invoke the  International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to seize assets and 'redistribute' them- i.e. buy votes. But there would be legal challenges. Still, that seems to me to be the logical move. 

His abject indifference

gloating, not abject  

to acknowledging, much less seriously addressing, the concerns of people who did not support him, leaves Trump little choice but to push ahead, despite the negative electoral consequences for the Republican Party.

Voters care about money. They want more of it in their pockets. Trump needs to deliver on that though he may still lose.  

While Trump ostensibly cares little about public opinion,

He may not care about opinion. He cares about votes.  

it turns out that the forces of political gravity have not been completely suspended, that elections still matter, which is why Trump and his MAGA allies have pursued numerous strategies in Republican-led states to disenfranchise potential Democratic voters by limiting access to the ballot and putting loyalists in control of who counts and verifies election results.

Also he is using Neo-Liberalism to force them to fart.  

If necessary, they are prepared to steal the election through bogus claims of voter fraud and foreign interference, and by manipulating the vote.

No! Trump will stage a coup & declare himself Emperor.  

In an effort to further tilt the political playing field in their favor, the Republican majority in the House recently passed the Save America Act which would mandate in-person voter registration and require a birth certificate, passport, or certain state-issued forms of identification that match your current name,

This could backfire. Rednecks don't carry no identification. My guess is, anyone at risk from ICE would be careful to keep such things to hand at all time.  

so that people without access to these documents, including married women who took their husband’s name,

who tend to update their documentation 

would be unable to register to vote. It would also allow the Department of Homeland Security to seize state voter rolls in order to challenge and preemptively remove potential Democratic voters.

Who believes they are that efficient? Trump's henchmen don't exactly have a sterling track record. 

Although the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, and will have the unintended effect of disenfranchising many Republican voters as well, the political motivation of the legislation is clear.

Bills generally do have a political motivation. Sad.  

Trump might also seek to instill fear and terror, and scare off potential Democratic voters by stationing ICE and CBP agents near polling stations in some blue cities and states, by flooding the zone with his paramilitary force of Brownshirts, and by

holding Nuremberg rallies?

deploying National Guard troops or other military units in highly contested congressional districts.

The smart move would be to deploy hookers. Wives won't let their husbands vote. Dems tend to be pussy-whipped.  

Like European fascism, Trump’s mafia-state authoritarianism celebrates the naked exercise of state power

as opposed to exposing its limp & tiny dick 

by an omnipotent strongman, the unapologetic use of violence against its perceived enemies,

Iran? 

and the triumph of emotion and action over reason and deliberation.

Like this guy can reason! 

But in the absence of significant popular support for his Project 2025-inspired political agenda, his unconstitutional war of choice against Iran, and his increasing reliance on fear, intimidation, and state violence to control the population, the MAGA movement may have reached its political limits.

It also may have turned into a pussy cat.  

People who refuse to capitulate to Trump’s gangster authoritarianism

are like people who refuse to let goats sodomize them while playing tennis

do not have to constitute a majority of the population to succeed. According to Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, a relatively small percentage of the population, as little as about 3.5%, that actively participates in nonviolent resistance can bring about significant political change.

That's why if sex offenders could just raise their numbers a little they can get rape decriminalized.  

This is not an iron law of history

It is nonsense. The fact is even 0.0001 percent of the population can bring about significant political change if they come up with a better solution to a collective action problem.  

but a tendency that depends on other factors, such as

saving tax payers money?  

“momentum, organization, strategic leadership, and sustainability.”

Money.  

There are no guarantees. Although peaceful resistance is twice as likely as armed conflict to succeed, it still fails around 47% of the time.

What succeeds 100 % of the time, in a Democracy, is being more popular than the other side.  Pretending you are fighting Hitler doesn't make you popular. People think you are a hysterical nutcase. 

Meeting the threshold for significant political change in the U.S. would require about 12 million people to become actively engaged in nonviolent resistance.

Masturbation is one of the best ways to non-violently resist Patriarchy, Neo-Liberalism & the Military-Industrial Complex. That's why teechur tried to get us not to do it in class. Fuck you teechur! Fuck you very much! 

Trump demands that people repeatedly perform their loyalty to him

He wants loyalty, not the performance of it. Anyone can pretend to be loyal while stealing all your money or sticking a knife in your back.  

without the cover of an ideological excuse,

He genuinely isn't ideological.  

to accept his unrestrained and lawless

clueless maybe.  

exercise of political, economic, and military power as inherently justifiable, as the natural order of things, as the rightful domination of the weak by the strong.

Ambrosio goes weak at the knees when the contemplates the Donald. I bet he was stroking himself off as he wrote this.  

Stephen Miller,

another of Ambrosio's crushes 

Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff, summed up this view in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN: “We live in the real world,

Not Germany in the 1930s 

Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Ambrosio thinks the world has always been ruled by cute little kittens. 

As others have pointed out, a key flaw and political weakness of the purveyors of Trumpism is their belief that everyone is more or less like them, corrupt, mendacious, and transactional, but only pretend to be otherwise.

Actually everybody is a cute little kitten.  

This false assumption relies on the belief that everyone has a price and can be bribed, bought off, or bullied, that liberal notions of fairness and social justice are just ideological cover for exercising the baser instincts that drive all human behavior.

What people really want is a ball of yarn to play with. Trump doesn't understand this. That's why he lost to Hilary & Kamala/ 

They simply cannot imagine a world in which truth, virtue, ethics, and ideals motivate people, in which people are willing to risk their lives for the benefit of others.

Ambrosio is risking his life helping disabled lesbians of colour escape from Trump's gas chambers. Does he get any thanks for this? No. Those ungrateful lesbians make him eat out their pussies while they are on their periods. Would Trump do any thing similar? No! That's the difference between a pussy-grabber & a pussy eater. 

The “morally depraved” Homeland Security agents in Minneapolis and elsewhere are finding out otherwise,

At some point, the penny is going to drop that in a country with lots of guns & jury trials, people are going to start shooting back.  

that there are many people who refuse to “live within a lie”

I hear of this one disabled lesbian of colour who refused to give the Nazi salute to Hesgeth. True, she didn't have any arms, but it was the thought which counts.  

and perform loyalty rituals, who will not succumb to threats and murderous state repression,

indeed some won't even sing the Horst Wessel song. Not many. Still.  

and who will put their lives at risk to protect their neighbors.

Masturbation can be a very dangerous activity. Still, to protect your neighbours by masturbating incessantly is the act of a real hero.  

It turns out that the “suckers and losers” who refuse to be like them are the real heroes in America.

Heroism is not enough. They need to gain the superpower of being able to drown swarms of attacking ICE agents with a vast torrent of their own jizz.