Anticipatory obedience is not good. It is a basic indicator of tyranny, something that you should not do or expect in healthy politics. Not in a functioning democracy.

Anticipatory obedience means, for example, sucking up to someone, or at least not offending them, because you think they are going to have power over you. So, Trump’s flunkies have been on their knees for quite a while. But now, the sucking-up is clearly starting to show in the news media. Please understand, stifling the media is a whole new level of fear-based subservience, a dire undermining of the first amendment. We have been warned repeatedly. And here it is.

Like Orbán like Trump. Gradually and in plain sight. Well laid plans to throttle and control the media are getting traction in the USA. It comes in the form of anticipatory obedience, the first and foremost tenet of tyranny, as well articulated by Tom Snyder. The Columbia Journalism Review provides clear insight into how Trump has assaulted the free press. Trump began following Orbán’s playbook during his first presidential campaign, and it is now bearing dark fruit.

Today, the North Carolina GOP came with a cockamamie scheme to give its electoral votes to Trump even before the election takes place. So, how’s that for an extreme suck up.

Independent news sources are being financially choked out. This, as mainstream news media are ditching their fundamental responsibilities and refusing to endorse a presidential candidate. They are hedging their bets. This is not speaking “truth to power”. They have seemingly even stifled left-leaning pundit Rachael Maddow. Basically, Trump is making the news media serve him, or they become targets.

Anticipatory Obedience Just Knocked Down Two Major Newspapers

The media industry has had more than usual turmoil, editor changes and resignations, etcetera. This includes NPR, who did a good piece of reporting that features the unnatural failure of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post to endorse a presidential candidate. These failures are at the hands of the newspaper owners. Shock waves and cancellations are in the air.

Trump celebrates these knock-downs of the press as big wins. It is blatantly un-American, but the people who want to end democracy write it up as success stories.

Trump Openly Threatened Billionaire Bezos and His Paper, the Washington Post

Amazon owner Jeff Bezos does not want to fight with Trump anymore. No mas. Not only did the Post slow its criticisms of Trump, it chickened out on endorsing Harris, the obvious choice of its writers. This was a political-business decision, not journalism. Bezos has no legitimacy in journalism.

Democracy dies in the dark.

For the first time in 36 years, the Washington Post did not make an endorsement in the presidential race. Kudos to Karen Tumulty of the Post for writing her insightful candid opinion on the very same day of the announcement (she’s probably gone).

The tragedy is not that the Post did not endorse Harris; the effect would have been negligible. The tragedy is that the Post gave pause to every reader, pause to ask how else and what else has Bezos influenced in the publication’s reporting.

Israel’s anticipatory obedience is far advanced; they stand proudly on full-fledged fascism

Israel does not mess around. Just ask Joe Biden. If you are not sucking up, it is antisemitism, and they will just kill you. No questions asked. Just keep giving them bombs and money. Right, Joe? The saddest thing in this reality is that Kamala Harris refuses to distance herself from Biden, even if it causes her to lose the election. Just burn, babies, burn. Let us hope she wakes up on this. She cannot call Trump a fascist and not Netanyahu, and by proxy, even herself. But let me not digress.

Here is how anticipatory obedience has gone to the extreme, all the wasy fascist, in Israel. It is significant because this is the way the USA is headed. This is what the USA is paying for. Please do not read it unless you are ready for what Chris Hedges calls “Catch and Kill Journalism”.