The day it was announced that Jimmy Kimmell Live! was being suspended over the Charlie Kirk controversy, it was announced that John Stewart was hosting The Daily Show that evening. It was a Wednesday, so this was very, very unusual. I like John Stewart a lot and I was sure he was going to have a lot to say about this knee jerk over-reaction by Disney / ABC. And The Administration and their minions. And he did.

   But that evening he had a guest on the show who made an even bigger impression. I don’t know if she had already been boked or if she was brought in last minute but what she said stopped me in my tracks and I ordered her book on Amazon IMMEDIATELY [i.e. before it could be banned].

   The guest was Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa, a journalist from the Philippines and her book is How To Stand Up To A Dictator [Harper Books, 2022].

   Very Long Story summed up: In 2016 the Philippines elected Rodrigo Duterte, a President who turned out to have autocratic [autocracy (per Oxford Languages): a system of government by one person with absolute power; A country, state, or society governed by one person with absolute power; domineering rule or control] ambitions.

  Maria Ressa worked for the Philippine government station PTV4,CNN  and Philippine TV’s ABS-CBN before founding the digital news site Rappler in 2012. Over several years Rappler researched and published articles on how Duterte’s campaign used social media to spread disinformation. And Facebook’s complicity [by choice or merely by inaction] in bringing autocrats to positions of power and influence. It’s a fascinating [though at times overwhelming with minutiae] story.

   I was shocked and dismayed by what I read. I could so clearly read the parallels. Like Duterte’s first “justification” for his crackdown and use of troops was the spread of drugs and murder and general mayhem and violence. It’s the story of the near death of democracy by a thousand cuts, the weaponization of law and the calls to shut down media institutions critical of The Administration.

   It’s The Playbook that The Administration took to heart and is running right now. It’s scary because it is real. It’s not happening somewhere else – it’s HERE. In the United States Of America. I know The States don’t seem very united right now, but that’s by design.

   We’re in a dangerous place where the civil rights of ALL Americans are on the line. We have all ready seen how The Administration and The Party have been working on diminishing the ability of people to vote by stoking the fear that non-citizens are swaying elections even though there is absolutely zero proof of that ever occurring. It’s just “coincidence” that the people impacted most by this are the people more likely to vote against the ideals and goals of  The Administration and The Party.

   The Administration and The Party have also taken the unusual step of redrawing their Congressional districts in the middle of the decade. The Administration begged Texas and Missouri and other “Red States” to do this in order to [hopefully] solidify a slim and shaky majority in the House of Representatives. And by golly, some of them did. They drew lines to break up areas where The Opposition has [had] seats and made them highly unlikely to be able to hold onto the new districts. They  Party is well aware that they won Congress on the coat tails of a fear monger populist against an unprepared and weak candidate in 2024, but they want to claim a “Mandate from The People,” when in fact The People seem unsure of anything political.

   Is it legal? Maybe. Are there lawsuits? Hell yes. Are there going to be more lawsuits? Most definitely. Is it moral? Absolutely not. But The Party is counting on The Judiciary to remain an active judiciary only this time in THEIR favor.

   It’s an utterly naked power grab by people who do not care about representing and governing; they only care about gaining and holding power.

   The framers of the Constitution that they claim to hold so dear are surely spinning in their graves.

   This is true disenfranchisement. They’re disempowering voters and the voters themselves are left in a lurch. In order to win back power they have to elect new representation but the lines have clearly been drawn to make that very, very hard.

   Democracy IS fragile and that is CAN be bled away from us by a thousand tiny cuts. It’s happened many times. The Philippines are a case study – they have been led by many tin pots [mostly backed by the military] since the 60s. It’s all laid out in Maria’s book. On pages 220-221, Maria reprints part of a 2019 letter from her dying friend Muriel ’Twink’ Macaraig.  See if this sounds familiar.

 

   “Duterte has enfeebled our institutions by populating them with minions who share his low regard for human rights, due process and what words really mean. These institutions that form parts of our nation’s immune system should have ensured that our freedoms were protected. Instead, they’re party to repressing dissent, demonizing the opposition and preventing scrutiny by a critical press. The Constitution, the last bastion of our democracy, and also a key component of the collective immune system, is in the process of being dismantled. When thet goes, all protection, all of the freedoms it guarantees goes too.

   “So where is the outrage? Where is the resistance?”

  

Maria put it the danger into perspective very well herself [page 260]:

 

   “We elected incompetent populists who stoked our fears, dividing us and turning us against one another, fueling and feeding off our fear, anger and hate. THEY [my emphasis] appointed officials like themselves; their goal was not good governance but POWER [my emphasis].”

   “Technology didn’t do this all alone; it was the accelerant to set fire to the kindling built up by decades of liberal progress. …The more progressive we became – women’s rights, gay marriage, pluralistic societies – the stronger the nostalgia for a simplicity that never really existed became.”

 

   Democracy IS fragile and that is CAN be bled away from us by a thousand tiny cuts. It’s happened many times. The Philippines are a case study – they have been led by many tin pots [mostly backed by the military] since the 60s. It’s all laid out in Maria’s book.

   So what’s the response here? Well, we have to remain vigilant. We have to speak up and fight like hell to hold onto our rights and hold the line of fascists and tyrants on all levels. We have to embrace old values such as honesty, vulnerability, empathy. We have to embrace our fear and believe in the good.

   But I take a small  grain of comfort in the words of Colleen Cornelio quoted on page 246:

   ““As long as there are good people, there is hope,” Coleen had said. “Those in power, they won’t be in power forever. And whatever wrong the do, it will come back to them.””

   Amen.

 

   As far as the Kimmell “controversy” itself, I am reminded that before anything was known about the person who planted the bomb at the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, the public went nuts blaming Muslims and Arabs and getting ready to bomb the Middle East into the stone age. Then we found out it was a couple disgruntled Caucasians from right here in the USA who met in the Army.

   Charlie Kirk was probably still on a table in the hospital and his killer had not even been identified and his motivations a complete mystery when The President called for action against “radical leftists” as opposed to saying “Let’s let the police and FBI do their jobs right now and let us pray for the family of Charlie Kirk.” By pointing out that The Administration had been using the assassination to score political points with their own base [Kimmell called them “the MAGA Gang”] was not incorrect. The powers also overlooked Kimmell’s comments of September 11 stating “"His death has amplified our anger, our differences, and I've seen a lot of extraordinarily vile responses to this from both sides of the political spectrum. Some people are cheering this, which is something I won't ever understand."

   I am not a fan of Jimmy Kimmell. I don’t care for him and I rarely flip to his show. BUT. It is well known that The President does not like to be questioned or lampooned, which is a pretty hard to understand when you are your own publicity machine and want to be the center of attention at all times. And any and all public figures are fair game for satire. It is a form of free speech. And I do believe in free speech.

   Was I going to cancel my Hulu / Disney / ESPN package over Jimmy Kimmell? The thought never occurred to me. But the fact that people who were upset with their discussion to suspend Kimmell’s show indefinitely [it turned out to be a week] took their discourse to the source and hit them right in the wallet [where it hurt them the most] is the most encouraging thing I have seen in a long time.

   I must say I have been on the sidelines of this whole thing for a long, long time. I did consider going to a “No More Kings” rally in Fort Worth or Burleson since I am totally disgusted by the politics in Tarrant County, the state of Texas and in the White House. But I guess I wasn’t disgusted enough. I thought that my vote was the best way to let my voice be heard. But after reading Maria’s book and seeing the path that was blazed in the Philippines and the playbook that was created being followed here in the USA today, I guess I am going to have to stand up and say something and “stop the new steal” for real.

 

  And as s a follow up [since Maria’s book was published in 2022], on March 11, 2025 Rodrigo Duterte was arrested for Crimes Against Humanity [to wit, murder, torture and rape]. On September 22, 2025 Duterte was indicted for involvement in 76 murders between 2013 and 2018.