Blog#179- 11/12/23
THE DICTATOR IS EMBOLDENED
By Richard Davis
When Trump ran for President the first time it seemed like a bad joke when he was elected. Then the nightmare began. America became a country with a mentally ill fool for a leader. He trashed the economy and ruined any semblance of good relations we had with other countries around the world.
Despite the fact that he is facing 91 legal charges against him he is more emboldened than ever to assume the presidency and transform it into a military dictatorship. Snubbing all of the Republican debates is a very bad signal. It means that he is convinced he is the only one who can win the election and it also makes it clear that he will make up his own rules as the election season moves ahead.
Trump and his team of maniacs are already mapping out plans for when he wins the election. He is talking about clamping down on immigration and turning anyone who wants to enter this country into a criminal.
Then there is this tidbit that was in a Washington Post piece by Ian Bassin recently. “Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.”
It is clear that Trump’s ego is so big that he has decided that he can transform the U.S. government into something that will install him as permanent dictator. It sounds far-fetched but just remember how far-fetched it seemed that he could ever become President. These are strange times and they are about to get even stranger.
Most of the Republican party supports Trump publicly. In private they make it clear that they know he is an immoral, unethical and unhinged egomaniac. I used to believe that they would come to their senses and throw Trump under the bus but I now know they will support anyone who can get a lot of votes, no matter what they say or do.
The January 6 insurrection gave Trump and his followers a taste of the power they have to wreak havoc on this country and they are already plotting to figure out a way to trash the constitution. If Trump is elected it is clear he will pardon anyone in jail for taking part in January 6. That will be the beginning of the new American Revolution.
Consider this news story from Mark Gruenberg and John Wojcik. “When he was president Trump stacked the Supreme Court and the Federal courts with right-wing lawyers screened and put forward by the extreme right Federalist Society, the group that generated all of his right-wing appointments to the Supreme Court, the Federal Courts, and to his own administration. That approach, top Trump operatives have decided, is not going to be enough to satisfy Trumpites if their master wins the 2024 election.”
They go on. “The press has reported that exchanges between the fascist Stephen Miller, who designed the program that ripped apart immigrant families, and other top Trump movers and shakers stipulate that in a second Trump administration, right-wing lawyers alone will not do the trick. What they need is lawyers willing to toss out entirely the Constitution of the U.S. in order to turn Trump into a dictator.
Specifically, they are looking for legal justification for Trump to directly take over all the federal agencies, from the Justice Department on down, and to dismantle the entire civil service system. The government will become, essentially, an army of people dedicated to Trump as the new Great Leader. The Attorney General would become Trump’s personal lawyer and public television and radio would become Trump TV and radio.”
This is what they are plotting. I am very scared. Our only recourse is to vote and vote in large numbers.
Too Insulated and Cozy
Voting is key, of course, but that’s the 2 minutes to midnight answer to a rising tide of theocratic fascism. I’m just as concerned that this mindset of violent despotism is the human norm, certainly in place since the Mongols and in evidence on all continents throughout our history. The media should be using its bandwidth to call attention and educate, rather than play for clicks..Seems like the liberals are left with late night comedy monologues, and satirical sketches on SNL to diffuse the threat, and that is feckless. Just makes the danger seem shrug-able. I’d like to see Democrats, especially VP, on a much more high profile campaign, spelling out precisely the peril that needs to be addressed before it’s too late.
Why?
Would the billionaire class – who actually calls the shots, globally – benefit from installing Trump as some theocratic dictator?
It strikes me the billionaires aren’t concerned with theocracy at all, just money. And how would making anyone dictator make the billionaires more money? Things are humming along very well right now: The ruling elites make huge profits while the bottom 99% see their income and standard of living decline. Why actually end democracy – which would rightly make most people upset – when we can continue with the present illusion, where we have the “choice” between 2 billionaire-approved candidates with near-identical views on economic issues?
Genghis Don
These are good points, and I don’t know the numbers well enough to say if oligarchs and their underlings do better under the completely unrestricted marketplace of a dictatorship. Based on prevalence and persistence, they might. And it’s worth noting, for the greedy there’s no such thing as enough. I was reflecting on comparisons between Trump and Genghis Khan.
Pop quiz, who said it, Don or Khan? “A man’s greatest joy is crushing his enemies.”
Having no evident appreciation of democracy, it strikes me this comparison would probably be embraced by MAGA, rather than recoiled from.. Conqueror, prodigious libido, brutal ambition… Empire as big as Metastasized Ego.
As for theocracy, my current take on it is more a measure of control and expedient amorality, rather than the dogma driven Pope and King buddy-show of old.
embraced rather than recoiled
That’s part of the problem, in my view. There’s a dopamine hit if the perception is that liberals are annoyed/upset, so the more reaction, the more fuel on the fire. The strongest anti-Trump action would be to completely ignore him.
Hard to ignore oncoming cars, though. : )
Odds
I get that for some there’s a rush in mocking those we were taught to despise. I also understand why people peer over the rail of a cruise ship, or go to the edge of a viewing platform to gaze into the abyss of a canyon. It’s a cheap thrill in an adrenaline addicted culture..
What I don’t understand is the supposedly solid support of someone who would demolish what’s left of civil society. To use your metaphor, the headlights are bearing down upon us, and we either have a mass death wish, or a craven willingness to bet it’s not a car but in fact two motorcycles in a side by side stunt, outrageous but harmless.
> What I don’t understand is the supposedly solid sup
> What I don’t understand is the supposedly solid support of someone who would demolish what’s left of civil society.
A large part is that tons of people don’t see civil society as being worth very much anymore. If you’ve seen your standard of living – and your community’s and your region’s – decline more or less steadily for a few decades, we should expect that some people would not value that status quo very much.
The exodus of decent-paying manufacturing jobs happening over the same period that the Democratic party abandoned working-class people in favor of white collar types goes a long way toward explaining why there’s a reservoir of downwardly-mobile people open to the message “this is not working, let’s blow it all up”.
Hyper-partisanism has certainly increased in the last 20+ years, but that increase is smaller than the increase in people who feel checked-out and unrepresented. Most of the blue-collar and working-poor people I talk to have very strong political opinions, and are often very open to universal, populist policies that would benefit them personally (higher wages, universal healthcare), but don’t vote because they don’t trust anyone to represent their interests.
The Old Playbook
Well said, and entirely valid…except, cynicism like that shows a disregard for history (struggle to get a vote/the actual manifestations of fascism) and a selfish sense of privilege.
Not to say our system isn’t deeply flawed, but a bit of travel or study reveals how fortunate Americans are in terms of material wealth. And it’s easy to see how a strategy in which people are increasingly distracted and dumbed down, then squeezed and made to feel they can never have enough is a winning formula for populism as a runway to dictatorship.