Bulletin Eight: The Comfort of Denial Is the Birthplace of Tyranny

When even the trusted voices avert their eyes, the truth becomes unbearable—for them.

Bulletin Eight: The Comfort of Denial Is the Birthplace of Tyranny When even the trusted voices avert their eyes, the truth becomes unbearable—for them.

By Robert J. Rei, April 30, 2025

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“I think 100 days in, that Donald Trump is losing, and I think Americans defending democracy are winning.”
— Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, April 29, 2025
(Segment viewable at: Heavenlight Note – Substack)

She says it calmly. Confidently. As if the balance of power still lies with the people.

Rachel Maddow opens with urgency. She warns of Supreme Court decisions that could reshape the nation, discusses the reach of Project 2025, and addresses authoritarian behavior emanating from within the American system. She raises the alarm.

And yet—she ends with reassurance.

“I think Americans defending democracy are winning.”

But are they?

She emphasizes elections, legal systems, and civic participation—implicitly trusting that these instruments still function in their original keys. That what we face can still be corrected by procedure, patched by precedent.

It is a familiar cadence. It comforts those who still believe the system is bending, not breaking.

We are past the bend. The glass is already shattered—
We are simply being asked to pretend the shards still form a window.

The Line That Must Be Crossed

Rachel Maddow is not the enemy. But she is, like so many, a gatekeeper of the acceptable frame. She can warn of threats so long as they remain hypothetical. She can name patterns so long as they do not lead to one inescapable conclusion:

The 2024 election was not legitimate.

Say it, and you are banished. Say it, and you are smeared. Say it, and you are thrown in with the conspiracy-mongers and lunatics—regardless of your grounding, your sources, your lived clarity.

But not saying it does not make it untrue.
And saying it now—clearly, unapologetically—may be the only act of courage left that still matters.

A System Hollowed from Within

We are living in a post-constitutional shell.
– The courts are performative.
– The press is fragmented.
– The legislative branch is neutered.
– And the executive, emboldened by silence, is preparing its next consolidation through Project 2025—with legal blueprints and compliant institutions already in hand.

To suggest that the next election will fix—

what the last one broke—

is not optimism.
It is complicity.

What the Public Still Refuses to Confront

January 6th has become the touchstone of liberal outrage.
And yet—what if that moment, chaotic and unlawful as it was, was the last available eruption of a system in collapse? Not its origin point, but its cracked mirror—reflecting how deeply Americans had already lost control of their institutions?

The true coup did not happen on January 6th.
It happened in silence, in code, in courtrooms, in executive orders, and in coordinated delay.
It happened in 2024.

And it was not the doing of one man. It could not have been. Because here is the final veil that must fall:

Donald Trump is not capable—mentally, strategically, or intellectually—of orchestrating the sustained, complex unraveling of American law, language, and legitimacy.

This was not his design. It was designed through him.
He is the blunt object. The velvet crowbar.
The vessel, not the vision.

The Real Conspiracy Is Not Hidden. It Is Boring. Legal. Gradual.

While Americans bickered over Trump’s tweets and tantrums, a vast network of strategists, judges, donors, and Christian nationalist operatives were shaping the country’s next chapter.

Project 2025 is not a contingency plan.
It is the blueprint.

And the people advancing it are not waiting for the next election.
They already believe they controlled the last one.

If you think the vote in 2024

—was free, fair, and untouched—

prove it.
Do not feel it.
Do not hope it.
Prove it.

And if you cannot…
Then do not mock those who dare to question it.

Let Me Be Clear One Final Time

I am not asking for belief.
I am not offering proof you can digest in thirty seconds.
I am not here to make you comfortable.

I am here to rupture the lie you have been living under.

Because this is not political theory.
This is lived collapse.
And we are inside of it now.

Final Stanza

History will not ask whether we were polite.
It will ask whether we saw clearly—and spoke anyway.

I have spoken. Now it is your turn.
Will you remain in the comfort of denial?
Or will you step fully into the unbearable clarity of now?

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“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
— Aldous Huxley

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Thank you for reading,

Robert J. Rei, April 30, 2025