Is this what deluded voters want to see in January, 2025?
"Trump and his believers must be met where true tests of democracy take place: at the polls. Courts and juries have roles to play in this chapter. But so must voters. This is how we will be judged. Will next year’s election be democracy’s day or the day that democracy dies? The answer is in our hands." - Colbert I. King, The Washington Post
"There is no Plan B if Trump wins in 2024 and the Republicans take both Houses of Congress. If that happens, we really are done. We will become an autocracy and our Republic will be history. Imagine our future. Dystopian comes to mind. If I have to crawl through broken glass to vote in 2024 I will be crawling." - Commenter in NY Times
The lead NY Times story yesterday :
Is one every sentient, sane American ought to have read carefully and processed, but amidst the ongoing political turmoil it's likely they did not. More plausibly, most were either on Tik-Tok watching dance videos or distracted in other benign ways - or dismissive of the story as "more histrionics". That is a bad mistake. As the Times account pointed out:
Donald J.
Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power
over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in
2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far
greater authority directly in his hands.
Their plans to centralize more power in the
Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he
would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden,
signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House
political control.
Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader
goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority
over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or
tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White
House,
Make no mistake this is deadly serious shit. It also ought to blow to smithereens any false hopes or fantasies that some third party movement can save this country, or there is some new, younger democracy champion waiting in the wings to step forth. There isn't. Full stop. It is either Joe Biden coming to the rescue again or we end up in Trump's maw - and this time - if he's enabled to alter power as profoundly as the Times' political cognoscenti predict it's game over. Kiss the American democracy experiment goodbye, like too many distracted and distressed Germans did to theirs in the early 1930s.
Those who've actually studied German history know that Hitler made no pretense of how he planned to use power once he snatched it using the machinery of Weimar democracy itself. And indeed, one of his first steps was to get the Enabling Act through the Reichstag, which formally ended any semblance of a free, democratic entity. As I wrote in my June 20th post:
"The February 1933 attainment of Chancellor (handed off to Hitler by existing Chancellor Paul von Hindenburg) was the final nail in the Weimar Republic's coffin, formalized with the passage of the 'Enabling Act' which effectively dissolved parliament. "
Those who assert "it can't happen here" are living in Neverland. Prof. Ruth Ben Ghiat said it all just over a month ago,
"He will never leave, and claim total power'. E.g.
Think it's all a pack of baloney? Here are the specific actions Trump has planned if he gets back in, or rather if enough voters are either dumb enough to stay home or vote 3rd party - to let him back in. From the same Times' account:
1)Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission,
which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the
Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer
protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.
2)He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds,
refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president
doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.
3) He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil
servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his
agenda.
4) He plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the
defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick
political class that hates our country.”
Action (1) means that, like Hitler, Trump gains total control of the media - as well as all newspaper websites. It also means he can rewrite the rules to permit whomever or whatever he wants to control our products and their quality. Action (2) gives him the power to thwart any congressional actions or laws including - if he so desires - Social Security, and Veterans' benefits.
Action (3) means all government workers now serve at his beck and call and can be replaced, anytime, anywhere - and by anyone he so chooses - no matter how incompetent. Oh, and it also means an end to any 'whistleblower' protections or even agency.
Action (4) means he will not only have the power to exact retribution on those in the FBI, CIA, DIA etc. he deems enemies, but also remake those intelligence agencies to his own designs. Or even aggregate them into one single entity - like a super powerful, all-seeing, all-tracking Gestapo.
Ultimately it's clear to even the lowest political I.Q. American that Trump's thrust is to destroy the separation of powers which distinguishes this nation from all others. I don't know about anyone else, but I plan to protect this democracy via my actual serious vote for the only one who can stop Trump for the last time: Joseph R. Biden. No, he ain't a latter day wit, often talks slow and walks slow, but I will take him any day over a feral rat who talks fast and furious but lies like he breathes. Joe Biden has our nation's back and democracy at heart and takes his oath of office seriously to protect the Constitution, not burn it. Those who think otherwise - and vote 3rd party - place our future in jeopardy and will have to answer for that - like the "good Germans" who handed their country over to Hitler and the Nazis in February, 1933.
As WSJ Columnist William Galston pointed out in his piece (p. A15, No Labels Will Make 2024 Even Worse) today:
"The net effect of a bipartisan (third party) ticket would be to weaken Joe Biden’s prospects against Donald Trump. The most recent poll, conducted by the Prime Group, offers details about how this would work. In a two-way race, Mr. Biden would beat Mr. Trump in the popular vote 52% to 48%. But in a three-way race, Mr. Trump would receive 40% of the vote to Mr. Biden’s 39%, giving the former president a majority in the Electoral College."
This would be a near "echo" of the March, 1933, German elections, in which Hitler and the Nazis grabbed 43.9% of the vote, highest amongst all contesting parties-candidates. (Yielding also a plurality of 288 seats in the Reichstag). Setting the stage for Hitler's takeover of the country and the torpedoing of Weimar democracy.
Yes, Trump said yesterday that he received a letter from the Justice Department saying that he is the target of the long-running investigation into the January 6th efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. And that almost certainly heralds another federal indictment. But no one should hold his or her breath that this will finally put the loathsome criminal and power hungry traitor away. No, all signs point to the voters - hopefully another 80-81 million - repeating what they did in 2020. This time making it stick.
See Also:
by Thom Hartmann | July 22, 2023 - 7:24am | permalink— from The Hartmann Report
Excerpt:
Trump could mandate that any media critical of him — including online media like Daily Kos, Raw Story, or Common Dreams — must be heavily “regulated,” just like in Russia and Hungary. And he could do this in the first weeks of his presidency, to tamp down the ability to organize protests around his other fascist policies.
Taking over the Federal Trade Commission would allow him to do all kinds of favors for his CEO and billionaire backers, bringing industry behind his fascism, just as happened in the early years of Nazi Germany.
In addition, Trump has already proclaimed his intention to turn the FBI, IRS, and DOJ into weapons against his political enemies. Just like Putin and Orbán.
Lest you think Trump doesn’t have plans to take on the “fake news” media and “liberals” he regularly lambasts, consider what he reposted on his Nazi-infested social media site just three days ago:
“If you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before.”
And:
by Brandon Gage | July 19, 2023 - 7:39am | permalink— from Alternet
United States Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith's target letter to former President Donald Trump on Sunday specifies the crimes that Trump is accused of having committed in his scheme to overturn the 2020 election, Rolling Stone's Jana Winter reported on Tuesday.
And:
And:
by Robert Reich | June 19, 2023 - 6:40am | permalink
by Thom Hartmann | June 20, 2023 - 6:13am | permalink
— from The Hartmann Report
Excerpt:
The GOP is increasingly clear about their goal: Make America Russia, or at least Russia’s mini-me, Hungary. They are openly embracing a modern, westernized, Christian white supremacy-based version of classic fascism.
And the MAGAT Republicans have a three-step process to bring it about that they’re already putting into place.
They’re willing to put enormous time and resources into the project, because they know that once fascism fully seizes a nation it’s extremely difficult to dislodge it.
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