Day Two of Donald Trump's Dictatorship

 

Tomorrow is the 4th of July and I do not think I have ever been so worried and afraid about the future of America.  The vast majority of Americans appear to be sleepwalking towards disaster just as too many Germans did as Hitler was rising to power.  By the time many in the 1930's belatedly opened their eyes, it was too late to avoid disaster - a disaster that saw millions lose their lives and Germany left in ruins. Apiece in Salon looks at the looming danger of a Trump dictatorship and the seeming unconsciousness of too many Americans and an unsupported belief that somehow things will turn out alright. The piece also touches on those who have prostituted themselves to Trump and/or are going along for short term gain with no thought of how history shows that once in power, dictators will then go against those in their own ranks who are perceived as insufficiently loyal, possible rivals, or simply no longer needed to achieve.  These individuals ignore the examples from Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China and other dictatorial regimes.   When will people wake up to the danger?  Here are column highlights:

You will obey! This is the mission statement for authoritarians and autocrats such as aspiring dictator Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. Donald Trump and his agents’ and allies’ revolutionary plans to end American democracy are not secret: they have been publicly announced and are detailed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, on Trump’s own campaign website as Agenda 47, and throughout the right-wing “news” media disinformation echo chamber. And now blessed by the highest court in the land. 

These enemies of American democracy would not be so bold if they were not reasonably certain of their success.

In series of recent interviews, MSNBC host and author Rachel Maddow has been trying to warn the American people about the existential danger to their freedom, lives, and safety from Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and larger neofascist project. As Maddow told CNN’s Oliver Darcey, Trump's threats are no joke: 

I'm worried about the country broadly if we put someone in power who is openly avowing that he plans to build camps to hold millions of people, and to 'root out' what he's described in subhuman terms as his 'enemy from within. Again, history is helpful here. He's not joking when he says this stuff, and we've seen what happens when people take power proclaiming that kind of agenda. I think there's a little bit of head-in-the-sand complacency that Trump only intends to go after individual people he has already singled out. Do you really think he plans to stop at well-known liberals?

It also seems pretty clear that some people in politics might think they'll be on the safe side — that they might even benefit from it — if they side with Trump. Ask Mike Pence about how that works out in the end. When Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to deploy the U.S. military against civilians on his first day in office, do you think he then rescinds the order on day two? For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he's planning are only for migrants?

Rachel Maddow is correct. History has repeatedly shown that authoritarian and fascist movements almost always expand the groups of people they target as the enemy or some type of Other. Eventually, these movements target their own supporters in a cycle of escalating violence and suffering, as they finally, as seen in Nazi Germany, consume themselves in destruction. Ultimately, almost all Americans are imperiled by Trumpism and American neofascism.

One of the great failures of the mainstream news media in the Age of Trump (and especially its hope-peddlers, institutionalists, and professional centrists) is treating aspiring dictator Donald Trump and the right-wing’s plan(s) to end multiracial pluralistic democracy as a hypothetical or something imagined and fantastical instead of as a real and present and growing danger.

In their new essay at Slate, Norm Ornstein and Dahlia Lithwick write with uncommon clarity and force about how the news media and the country’s political class have mostly failed in their responsibilities to warn the American people about the imminent dangers and reality of Trumpism and American neofascism

Americans have a normalcy bias. It leads them to believe anyone who tells them that everything is awesome and that a system is “holding” — even as that system is hanging together by way of dental floss…..And many journalists have a normalcy bias so acute they wouldn’t know how to cover an authoritarian takeover if it meant that one of the two presidential candidates threatened jail for his political opponents—even as he continues to refer to these journalists as “the enemy of the people.” . . .

[W]e’re normalizing the abnormal, covering the election as a horse race between democracy and illiberalism without mentioning illiberalism or considering the stakes and the consequences, and repeatedly applying a false equivalence to Trump and Biden…. The signals are flashing red that our fundamental system is in danger. “The system is holding” is not a plan for a knowable future. It never was.

The Republican Party will basically be made into the country’s official national party. Voting for the Democrats or other political parties that are deemed to be a threat to the MAGA movement will be made prohibitively difficult through voter intimidation, nullification and purges. White Christianity will be made into America’s official state religion. The civil rights of Black and brown people, the LGBTQ community, and women will be severely curtailed. Women will have their reproductive rights and freedoms taken away. . . . . Trump and his forces will target the human “vermin” who are polluting the “blood” of the nation, including but not be limited to non-whites, Muslims, Jews, and disabled people.

Universities and colleges will be targeted with censorship, lawsuits and other efforts to defund and close them down – as well as to threaten and intimidate faculty and administrators – if they do not sufficiently support the Trump regime and the larger right-wing reactionary and revolutionary project.

Freedom of the press and freedom of speech will be severely limited. President Biden and other leading Democrats, Republicans deemed to be disloyal, and any other individuals and groups who are targeted as the enemy will face the possibility of being put in prison for “treason” and then being executed. Donald Trump and his propagandists and other agents and allies have repeatedly made such explicit threats and promises of “revenge” and “retribution”.

There are prominent voices among the news media and political class (and general public) who will push back that this is all “hysterical”, “doomsaying”, and that “the institutions” and “the rule of law” will stop aspiring dictator Donald Trump and Project 2025 and his Agenda 47 and the other plans to end the country’s democracy.

Are you afraid? You should be. Where is the massive public resistance to aspiring Dictator Donald Trump and the other neofascist forces and enemies of American democracy and freedom? As compared to how Europeans are responding to ascendant neofascism in their own respective countries, the mobilization (or lack thereof) by the American people can reasonably be described as pitiful.

The insanity of doing the same thing over and over — begging millions of utterly tuned-out voters to like the (undeservedly, in my opinion) unpopular President Joe Biden and expecting a different result on Nov. 5 — isn’t working.

The American people would be wise to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. At this point, given the early 2024 polls, fundraising, and other measures – most notably the enduring if not growing popularity of convicted felon and aspiring dictator Donald Trump, the worst is the far more likely outcome. Given the obvious and growing danger, the American people cannot say that they were surprised or not told what awaits them and their democracy if Dictator Trump and his regime take power. They chose to sleepwalk eyes open into a disaster.