“The government crosses the Red line as it resorts to treating white people it hates as though they’re America’s new slaves.” John Johnson II 10/01/25
By John Johnson II
The phrase “reduction in force” sounds bureaucratic, a budgetary shuffle more suited to corporate boardrooms than the Pentagon. But when applied to America’s highest-ranking officers, it becomes camouflage for something far more sinister: the purge of four-star generals in preparation for authoritarian rule.
A president bent on consolidating power can disguise a bloodless massacre as efficiency. Loyalists are promoted, independent thinkers pushed aside, while a compliant military command is cultivated to support a coup. Generals are trained to analyze data, detect patterns, and anticipate threats from abroad. If they cannot recognize this pattern emerging from within, they will have turned a blind eye to the peril now stalking the Republic.
The prelude is already visible. Deploying the military to fight crime in American cities is not about safety. It is a smokescreen, a training exercise to normalize illegal domestic militarization. Tanks on city streets condition citizens to accept soldiers as police, eroding the bedrock principle of civilian control.
The wedges making this conditioning effective are hatred itself: racism, cultural bigotry, and open hostility toward LGBTQ and transgender communities.
Immigrants are the test case. By targeting them, the government experiments with how the machinery of exclusion and persecution can be wielded. James Comey’s vilification has already shown how individuals are placed on lists, demonized, and punished. Who will comprise the hit lists next: America’s Jews and Hispanics?
Hitler perfected this strategy in 1930s Germany, first against Jews, before turning it against wider opposition. Under the disguise of hatred, Republican congresspersons and white supremacists stand shoulder-to-shoulder with this president — not by accident, but by design.
Why such complicity? Because America was founded on a white supremacist ideology that still festers. A segment of white America is willing to sacrifice democracy itself to preserve racial privilege, even if it means watching the nation toppled by a demagogue. Yet it does not have to happen. The American people still hold power to resist.
Consider the lesson of the Nuclear Media Blackout. When billionaire media titans were threatened with silence, they stood together to defend free speech. Imagine what a Nuclear People’s Blackout could achieve — the collective refusal to accept the weaponization of the Department of Justice, assaults on free speech, manipulation of fair elections, weakening of the CDC, or the dismantling of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Department of Education. Imagine refusing to tolerate a co-opted Supreme Court, the weakening of NATO, the misuse of tariffs, the sabotage of free markets, or the blatant violation of the Emoluments Clause for self-enrichment.
History offers precedent. In 1974 a Bipartisan Senate “deliberate body” pressured Richard Nixon to resign or face impeachment. Nixon chose resignation because he knew he had betrayed the trust of the people. And yet Nixon’s crimes — serious as they were — are minuscule compared to the abuses of today’s president.
The question is whether this Congress has the same courage to place country above party, or whether it will bow to fear and complicity.
This government does not belong to a president who lusts for dictatorial power. It belongs to the people — because it is, and will remain, “of, for, and by the people.” For too long, far too many white Americans have allowed prejudice to blind them to democracy’s dismantling. But no longer will the nation remain divided.
On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln warned, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Today, his words demand action.
If generals stand firm, if Congress finds its integrity, if the people unite, America can withstand this assault. If not, the “reduction in force” will not merely reduce numbers — it will reduce freedom itself.
YOU BE THE JUDGE!
