Trump's Ongoing Assaults on Democracy

Events unfolding in Portland and other cities have put on display troubling efforts by the Trump/Pence regime to incite confrontations with otherwise protesters to generate visuals that Trump can use to try to frighten white/elderly voters into overlooking the threat that his field pandemic response poses to their very lives. For Virginians a name that is showing up in coverage should generate concern and/or nausea is that of Ken Cuccinelli - a far right extremist who Virginians soundly rejected when he ran for governor of Virginia - who seemingly is all onboard with creating conflict where none would otherwise exist.  It's telling that Cuccinelli holds and "acting" position since he was too extreme to garner Senate approval even with racists and extremists like Mitch McConnell wielding the gavel in the Senate.  Frighteningly, the scenes from Portland - Trump now says he is sending goons to Chicago - are like something out of Hitler's brown shirt operations as Hitler sough to overthrow Germany's democratic government.   A piece in Salon looks at the disturbing happenings.  Here are highlights:

Let's have the decency not to pretend we weren't warned about this, shall we? Since virtually the day Donald Trump was elected, if not before that, people like journalist Masha Gessen and historian Timothy Snyder have told us that his presidency would be a sustained assault on democracy, and that America stood at a historical fork in the road, with at least one of the paths leading into darkness. We began to talk about "fascism" and "authoritarianism," and maybe those terms seemed metaphorical or melodramatic, for a while. Do they seem that way now?

It didn't feel like the end of democracy, did it? To use Gessen's language, did it feel like the dangerous moment between the "autocratic attempt" and the "autocratic breakthrough"? Not the way that alarming news reports from Hungary and Russia and Turkey and the Philippines do. The problem is, as history informs us, that we're not likely to notice such dangerous moments while they're happening. So the insults and outrages piled up and the news cycle grew ever more discordant and surreal, but there was still takeout and Netflix and Amazon. . . . . There was no Reichstag fire. There were no troops in the street. Not until now. 

We can argue about whether Trump is simply the vector through which the authoritarian current flows — the Forrest Gump of fascism — or is, after his stupid-brilliant fashion, a very small Great Man of History. Both things can be true, which is effectively what Gessen argues in her new book "Surviving Autocracy." We can argue that this is all part of a larger global pattern of democratic crisis, which is clearly true, and that the United States had already become a degraded and dysfunctional pseudo-democracy in 2016, because only such a society could have allowed Trump to rise to power.

[A]ll of us — should be called to account for how we got here. Because whatever we believe we did or didn't do, it wasn't enough, and here we are: Fourteen weeks before a presidential election, there are troops in the streets.

OK, we're not supposed to call them "troops." They're not members of the military. I don't think that improves matters. For the last week, armed men in camouflage uniforms marked as "POLICE," who do not seem to have recognizable insignias or badges, and do not have names on their uniforms, have been battling Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon. But even the language we use to describe these events grows slippery — another consequence of encroaching authoritarianism, which drains the meaning out of ordinary words. These police are not real police, and the protesters in Portland (and many other places) have moved past the Black Lives Matter agenda to something much larger and more difficult to define. They are standing up against autocracy, I think we can say, while these so-called police are trying to enforce it.

These federal paramilitaries or pseudo-cops have reportedly been seeking or inflaming confrontations with Portland protesters since at least July 14, using tear gas or pepper spray and what are described, in Orwellian cop-speak, as "less-than-lethal munitions." One protester suffered a fractured skull after being shot in the head with one of these not-quite-bullets. These federal forces have also been driving around downtown Portland in unmarked vans, according to multiple reports, sometimes pulling suspected protesters off the street for questioning without making formal arrests. 

Customs and Border Protection, one of the alphabet-soup agencies apparently supplying troops or officers or whatever we choose to call them to this effort, explained one such incident to the New York Times by claiming that "agents who made an arrest had information that indicated a suspect had assaulted federal authorities or damaged property and that they moved him to a safer location for questioning." CBP would not identify the agents in question or the suspect, and did not explain what its forces are doing in an American city 375 miles from the nearest international border.

Describing all this, Mary McCord, a Georgetown Law professor and former Department of Justice official — in other words, probably not a raging Marxist — told the Times, "This is the kind of thing we see in authoritarian regimes."

Indeed it is, which might raise the question of what kind of country this is in the summer of 2020. Let's give the big dogs of the mainstream press some credit here — after three-plus years of ceding rhetorical and political ground to the Trump regime, they have seized on the Portland story with evident alarm.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have made clear that these shadowy federal forces are on the streets of Portland under dubious legal authority, and against the objections of Mayor Ted Wheeler, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and both of the state's U.S. senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden.

All those officials are Democrats, of course, which makes them illegitimate in the eyes of the Trump regime's toadies and defenders. . . . . Brown has repeatedly argued that "the presence of federal officers has inflamed the streets" rather than calming the situation, and says she told acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to withdraw the troops: "I said it's like adding gasoline to a fire." 

Wolf refused, and has issued statements that sound as if they were dictated by his boss in the White House, claiming that Portland "has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob," and that "each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property." Brown's conclusion, as she told the Washington Post, is that federal forces are deliberately provoking confrontation, "purely for political purposes."

Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman of the Post took this a step further in an opinion article published Friday, observing "that the bigger picture is that it's plainly obvious that the government is trying to inflame the situation":  We know Trump wants these scenes to be playing out on people's televisions in faraway states, such as — to select a few at random — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Florida.

It's entirely sensible to perceive nearly everything Trump does as cynical showmanship calculated (whether rightly or wrongly) to improve his dwindling chances of re-election. But it may not be sufficient. The president and his sniveling retinue of "acting" factotums up and down the national security chain may not have a coherent master plan to rip out the rest of American democracy by the roots and replace it with something more to their liking. But that is unquestionably what their collective hive-mind desires, and there are people behind them, just out of view, who are willing and able to articulate such an agenda clearly.

Is it an irrelevant side note to mention how many key posts in the Trump administration are held by acting officials? I don't think so: That speaks to the feudal or monarchic or fascistic character of the Trump regime, and no president in recent history has conducted his affairs in remotely similar fashion. Wolf, the acting DHS secretary, has not been confirmed by the Senate; neither has his acting deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, who is also the acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Neither has Mark Morgan, the acting director of CBP. Neither has Matthew Albence, the acting head of ICE, or his acting deputy, Derek Benner. (Albence's chief of staff does not require congressional approval, but for some reason he's "acting" too.)

What exactly are all these wormy white men in temporary posts under a cratering presidency up to? It isn't something good. What's happening in Portland is distinctive in various ways — a small city, far from the media capitals, known, with some justification, as a hotbed of anarchist activism — but not isolated. We first saw these ambiguous "federal police," seemingly operating under the direct authority of Attorney General Bill Barr, on the streets of Washington in early June, before and after President Trump's famous photo-op sojourn across Lafayette Park. 

There are numerous reports that these goons, drawn from a laundry list of federal law enforcement agencies most of us had never previously heard of, have been seen on the ground in other cities, including Buffalo, Las Vegas, San Diego and Seattle. Less clear accounts suggest they have been used in numerous other places as well: For instance, the New York Times mentioned on Friday, almost in passing, that CBP "drones, helicopters and planes" have been used to conduct surveillance of BLM protesters in at least 15 cities. 

Wolf and Cuccinelli and Morgan and their underlings have eagerly dialed up the rhetoric, vowing not just to crush the Portland protests but to bring down the hammer of so-called federal authority with even more enthusiasm in more places. That too is part of the beta test: Trump needs them to play Mouth of Sauron, both because he lacks the courage or conviction to say those things flat out, and because he requires the latitude to throw those guys overboard if this flirty little coup-experiment blows up in his face.

What's the endgame strategy here? Is all of this "purely political," as Kate Brown said, aimed at terrifying a few white suburbanites in "battleground states" into believing that only Trump can save them from rampaging antifa hordes who want to steal their homes for government-funded Black Marxist communes? Or is this an ingenious backdoor attempt at imposing martial law, Keystone Kops-style (since the actual military wouldn't do it), with a hopeful eye toward canceling or nullifying the election and declaring democracy on hold?

[W]hen it comes to Donald Trump and the dangerous currents that flow through him, both things can be true. Either way, there are "paramilitary squads," in Sen. Ron Wyden's words, on the streets of an American city. History will judge us for how we respond.

Trump needs to be defeated in November, put on trial, convicted and, if it were up to me, dealt an extremely and permanent punishment.  The man - and those like Cuccinelli - is pure evil.

Echos of Charlottesville: Trump Praises Covid-19 Protesters

When out of state far right Neo-Nazis and white supremacists invaded the grounds of the University of Virginia and terrorized the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, Donald Trump could never bring himself to condemn the far right extremists and ultimately said there were "very good people" on both sides of the protests.  Tell that to Charlottesville residents or supporters and alumni of the University who remain livid to this day that outside elements invaded Charlottesville. Now, we are again seeing Trump unwilling to condemn the far right protesters showing up in state capitals to protest stay at home orders supported by medical experts.  Many of these protesters look much like those who invaded Charlottesville: armed militias, white supremacists, and anti-government extremists who Trump has incited through tweets.  These protesters consist of the deplorables that Hillary Clinton so aptly described. A piece in Huffington Post looks at Trump's coddling of dangerous extremists, many of whom are armed.  Here are excerpts:

President Donald Trump on Sunday defended right-wing protesters he appeared to previously encourage to rally across the country for states to reopen the economy despite governments and health experts deeming it not safe enough to do so.

Since last week, thousands of protesters in more than a dozen states have taken to the streets to demand stay-at-home orders be lifted, even though public health officials have warned that lifting restrictions too early could lead to a spike in cases. 

The protesters have been mostly right-wing followers, anti-vaccination advocates and gun rights activists who in some photos can be seen standing close together without masks or gloves, in defiance of the social distancing guidelines meant to slow the spread of the virus and flatten the curve.

At Sunday’s White House coronavirus briefing ― an event that the president has mostly used to campaign and push misinformation ― Trump was asked what his advice would be to protesters who want to lift states’ stay-at-home orders.

“You’re allowed to protest. … I watched a protest and they were all six feet apart, I mean it was a very orderly group of people,” Trump said, despite photo evidence of many of these rallies showing otherwise. “But you know, some governors have gone too far. Some of the things that happened are uh, maybe not so appropriate, and I think in the end it’s not gonna matter because we’re starting to open up our states.

“I see protesters for all sorts of things, and I’m with everybody,” he said. Asked on Sunday if he was concerned that his tweets helped incite violence against the governors ― some of whom are receiving death threats from protesters ― Trump immediately denied it.

“I’ve seen the people, I’ve seen the interviews of people. These are great people,” Trump said. “Look they want to get ― they call cabin fever, you’ve heard the term ― they’ve got cabin fever.

When the reporter who asked the question pointed out there have also been Nazi flags flown at these rallies, Trump repeated: “No, no.” . . . . These people love our country and they wanna get back to work.”

Trump’s enabling response to the protesters echoed his handling of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia ― where neo-Nazis protested against taking down Confederate monuments in a violent white supremacist rally that left one counter-protester dead and dozens more wounded.

After the Charlottesville violence, Trump refused to single out the activity of white supremacists and instead falsely claimed that there was “bigotry and violence on many sides.” He then doubled down on his comments, equating Nazis with people who are against fascism by saying there were “very fine people on both sides” at the rally.

Whether my Republican "friend" like it or not, Trump's main appeal to his base is his open racism and refusal to condemn the most extreme elements of the far right, people to whom such "friends" have tied themselves through their continued support of Trump. 

A column in the Washington Post looks at the hypocrisy and derangement of these protesters:

We haven’t heard from them much in the past 3½ years. Not that they shouldn’t have found plenty of fodder for outrage: record deficits and debt; an autocrat in the White House who regularly claims extra-constitutional authority; economic policies that tilt heavily in favor of the wealthy and big business.

Tea party activists have looked the other way on all of these things throughout the presidency of Donald Trump. But now they are appearing again in state capitals across the country, screaming and waving their “Don’t Tread on Me” banners to vent at the lifesaving measures that governors have taken in the face of an epidemic that has already caused upward of 40,000 deaths in the United States.

There is a legitimate — and reasonable — debate to be had about how much economic pain the country should be willing to bear to bring the epidemic under control.

But that is not what we are hearing in their nihilistic fury. Some of them carry Confederate flags and assault weapons as they protest. Theirs is a doctrine fueled not by high-minded principles, but by conspiracy theories and populist resentment.

Tea party 2.0 is proposing a tri-cornered suicide pact: Give them liberty from stay-at-home orders and give them death. And while they are at it, endanger the lives of everyone around them as well.

[P]olls show the vast majority of Americans want restrictive measures to remain in place to fight the virus.

Two-thirds of respondents in a poll that Pew Research Center released last week said they were more concerned that states would move too quickly to lift the measures, as opposed to only 32 percent who said they feared it would not happen fast enough. In an April 8 Quinnipiac University poll, 81 percent said they would support a national stay-at-home order, rather than leaving it up to the discretion of the states.

The Quinnipiac survey also showed that nearly three-quarters approve of their governors’ handling of the crisis; by comparison, only 46 percent felt positive about Trump’s performance.

FBI Arrests White Nationalist Leader

Hate crimes committed by far right groups and white supremacists are on the rise yet Trump and Republicans are depicting Democrats as a "dangerous mob."  It is part and parcel with the campaign of fanning racial fears that put Trump in the White House.  Sadly, his supporters can nothing about the truth and seem only too happy to disseminate outlandish posts that have the look of deriving from Russian bots (I just "unfriended" two people on Facebook because I could not stand seeing the utterly batshit crazy and racist stuff they were parroting).   Demonstrating were the true threat to civil order is really coming from, the FBI has arrested a number of white nationalists who have engaged in the behavior Trump pretends to condemn notwithstanding the incendiary rants at his "campaign rallies" which look like smaller versions of Hitler's infamous Nuremberg rally.  A piece in the New York Times looks at some of these arrests.  Here are excerpts:

The F.B.I. arrested the leader of a violent California neo-Nazi gang on a federal conspiracy charge after he fled the country earlier this month.

Robert Rundo, 28, of Huntington Beach, Calif., is being held at the federal jail in downtown Los Angeles. He was charged in a criminal complaint that was unsealed Tuesday.

He is the founder of the Rise Above Movement, a neo-Nazi gang based in Southern California whose members were involved in violent activity at protests throughout California in 2017. He and three other Californians associated with the group — Robert Boman, 25, Tyler Laube, 22, and Aaron Eason, 38 — were charged with inciting riots, according to court documents. Mr. Boman and Mr. Laube were arrested on Tuesday morning in Southern California. The F.B.I. said it was still searching for Mr. Eason.

Earlier this month, another four members of the Rise Above Movement — Benjamin Daley, Michael Miselis, Thomas Gillen and Cole White — were indicted on conspiracy to riot charges for attacking counterprotesters during last year’s Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Mr. Rundo left the country shortly after the four were arrested at the beginning of the month.

The F.B.I. said that Mr. Rundo and other members of the group attacked protesters in 2017 in several places, including Huntington Beach, Calif.; the University of California, Berkeley campus; San Bernardino, Calif.; and Charlottesville, Va. The criminal complaint outlined the group’s hateful ideology and its embrace of violence.

At a rally on March 25, 2017, in Huntington Beach, Mr. Laube grabbed a journalist and punched him in the face three times, according to videos of the incident that the F.B.I. referenced in the complaint. During the same rally, the F.B.I. said videos showed that Mr. Rundo punched one protester in the back of the head, and then assaulted a second protester.

Later that same day, Mr. Daley, who was at the rally, sent a text message to another member of the group bragging about the incident: “Front page of the stormer we did it fam.” The stormer is a reference to “The Daily Stormer,” the neo-Nazi website.

In April 2017, Mr. Rundo and others traveled to Berkeley, Calif. Video referenced in the complaint showed the men taping their hands in preparation for fighting and wearing skeleton masks. Mr. Boman is also seen punching at least two people. Mr. Rundo later attacked another protester and then punched a Berkeley police officer twice in the head before he was subdued and arrested.

The F.B.I. said that Mr. Rundo and other gang members used the internet “to prepare to incite and participate in violence” at various political events and committed violent assaults while at those events. The F.B.I. added that the men applauded each other for the attacks and “publicly documented their assaults in order to recruit more members” to carry out violence.

Before founding the Rise Above Movement, Mr. Rundo served 20 months in a New York State prison for stabbing a rival gang member from MS-13 in a 2009 attack in Flushing, Queens. At the time, he was part of a small, multiracial neighborhood gang called the Original Flushing Crew, which was in a feud with a subset of MS-13, known as the Guanacos Little Cycos Salvatruchas, according to a 2012 federal indictment.

Since creating his movement sometime around 2017, Mr. Rundo has established ties between the group and the West Coast chapter of the Hammerskins, an international network of neo-Nazi skinheads whose members have been involved in at least nine murders in four states.

Earlier this year, Mr. Rundo traveled to Europe with members of his group in order to participate in mixed-martial arts tournaments hosted by neo-Nazi organizations in Germany and Ukraine. While in Europe, the F.B.I. said that Mr. Rundo and others celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday and met with European white supremacists.

Frightening to say the least.  And these dangerous individuals are part of the Trump/Pence regime's base.

Donald Trump and the Call to Dehumanize Others

One thing that unites much of Donald Trump's base of support - especially the white supremacists and the evangelical Christians, although in my view, the two groups overlap to a great extent - is their hatred of those who are different.  Gays are target of their hate as are blacks, Muslims, non-Christians of every stripe, Hispanics, those born overseas.  They insist that they are the "real Americans," ignoring the fact that America was stolen from its original occupants through genocide or that some of those they deem "other" have ancestries in America that go back for many decades - or centuries - longer than their own.  Some of my own ancestors go back to New England prior to 1800 while others seem to trace back to Louisiana following the "Great Expulsion" of  French Acadians from Canada by the British during the 1755–1764 time-frame, but since I am gay, in the world of these people I do not rate "real American" status.  During his campaign, Trump called to the racism and simmering hate and has since incited violence against the media - CNN has increased security to protect its employees - and those who oppose his toxic agenda.  A piece in the New York Times looks at one of the victims of such hate, the wife of an Indian man murdered by "real American" in Kansas. With my large number of Hindu clients, the piece resonated with me and made me sad for what Trump and his followers are doing both to the country and to decent, hard working people who are just as human and deserving of life, liberty and happiness as anyone else.  Here are article excerpts (please read the entire piece):

Mr. Kuchibhotla, an Indian-born engineer, was confronted about his immigration status at a bar, then fatally shot. By the time the police arrived, Mr. Kuchibhotla was dying, and his close friend Alok Madasani was wounded. Another patron who tried to stop the attack was also struck by gunfire.

In some ways, what one man shouted in anger and one woman uttered in grief capture one of America’s most troubling intersections.

“Get out of my country!” the gunman would yell, before opening fire on the two Indian men he said he believed were from Iran.

The episode happened at dinnertime in America, in a neighborhood bar, part of a spasm of hatred uncoiling in small towns and big cities across the nation — and in rising numbers.

A month before the shooting, the Victoria Islamic Center in Texas was torched, destroying the mosque. A month after the shooting, a white supremacist traveled from Baltimore to New York City on a mission to randomly kill a black man. He did just that. The reason:a deep hatred of black men.

Ms. Dumala had wondered how the couple fit into this new narrative, if they should move to a different country, and once even asked her husband, “Are we doing the right thing of staying in the United States of America?”

The realization that her husband was killed because of intolerance, because he was not born in America, is what forced her to emerge from this personal, private hell. If people were to know the aftermath of a hate crime, the crater-sized void and endless questions left behind, if the victims were rendered as three-dimensional, maybe there would be less fear, less hate, she thought.

“My story needs to be spread,” she says plainly. “Srinu’s story needs to be known. We have to do something to reduce the hate crimes. Even if we can save one other person, I think that would give peace to Srinu and give me the satisfaction that his sacrifice did not go in vain.”

The best friends, more like brothers, were at Austins. Typically the two went with another close friend from the office, Manju Nag, but he had been out of town on business. That night, it was just Mr. Kuchibhotla and Mr. Madasani at their regular table on the patio, the one closest to the door, discussing Bollywood movies and drinking a pair of Miller Lites.

The assailant approached the friends. Witnesses recall him wearing a white T-shirt with military-style pins, his head wrapped in a white scarf. He was intent on finding out one thing: Did the men at the table belong in the country?

Adam W. Purinton, a white Navy veteran, turned to the two brown-complexioned men, both living in the United States for years, and demanded to know their immigration status.

Not long after, according to the authorities, Mr. Purinton returned to the bar with a handgun. He stood in the door entrance, pointed his gun toward the two men, and fired.

Mr. Kuchibhotla was hit first. Mr. Madasani, who had been sitting on the other side of the table, hit the ground, forced by a bullet, instinct or both. He crawled on his belly toward the opposite door. He thought the bullets were close by because the floor shook with each gunshot. “All I was thinking about at the time was about my baby, all I was thinking of was my wife’s belly,” said Mr. Madasani, whose wife was pregnant with their first child, a boy due in July. “In flashes, I was thinking, ‘I have to live.’”

Once outside, he realized he had been shot in the left leg. “I saw Srivinas on the floor, not moving. I kept on yelling to everyone, ‘Leave me, go and attend to him.’”

Mr. Grillot, the bar patron who had intervened earlier, chased Mr. Purinton into the parking lot. Mr. Purinton turned and shot him in the chest and hand.

Mr. Purinton, 52, was formally charged with premeditated first-degree murder and two counts of premeditated attempted murder. Last month, he was also indicted on federal hate-crime charges.

The term “hate crime” was being used over and over and by the police, journalists and politicians to describe the death of her husband. All of a sudden, Mr. Kuchibhotla was a hate crime statistic, an example to bolster anti-hate legislation  . . . . . 

This is not the America that I want to live in.  The majority of Americans I suspect do not either.  It is time we take back America from the bigots and haters. 

Are Trump's Lies and Hypocrisy Good for America?

Anyone who bothered to pay attention and wasn't merely swept up by Donald Trump's appeals to their racism and overall bigotry should have known that much of Trump's campaign rhetoric and "promised" action if elected were lies.  Slowly, those others than the hard core racists, white supremacists and evangelical Christians who have long lived in their own alternate universe, Trump voters may be waking up to the reality that they were deliberately conned by America's would be fuhrer.  An column by Republican columnist Michael Gerson makes the argument that this awakening and Trump's willingness to walk away from continually made campaign promises is good for America albeit, I would argue, not sufficient to save the nation from a catastrophe.  Here are column highlights:

As Donald Trump’s campaign promises have been dunked in reality’s strong solvent, many have been transformed in one way or another — modified, moderated, qualified, abandoned or pushed off into the distant future. Not a wall across the whole southern border. Not every part of Obamacare repealed. Not all illegal immigrants deported, at least in the foreseeable future. Not literally tearing up the Iran agreement. Not an actual prison cell for Hillary Clinton.

All this has opened up Trump to the charge of being a hypocrite. For the nation’s sake, let’s hope so.

But we should take care in defining hypocrisy. . . . British political scientist David Runciman says that hypocrisy involves “claims to a consistency that one cannot sustain, claims to a loyalty that one does not possess, claims to an identity that one does not hold.”

[I]t is worth recalling that the founder of Christianity took hypocrisy quite seriously: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.” Purity of heart and motivation, in the Christian tradition, does matter. But the hunt for hypocrisy should begin in the mirror.

The issue at hand, however, is a certain kind of political hypocrisy — the conscious use of a mask to fool the public and gain political benefit. Most would concede that this type of hypocrisy is generally harmful for a democracy, in which self-government requires informed choices. Trump’s brand of personality-driven politics — emphasizing the virtues of a single leader — exaggerates the challenge. 

Some of Trump’s strongest supporters seem to assume his cynicism. The part about forcing Mexicans to pay for the wall, according to Newt Gingrich, was “a great campaign device.” Of the largest construction project since the Qin dynasty, Rush Limbaugh now says he never expected Trump to do it.

This is a rare ethical circumstance in which realism and good sense take the form of hypocrisy. On a variety of issues, the sincerity of Trump’s current intentions — or the cynicism of his past intentions — should not matter. If the candidate who gave a wink and nod toward white nationalism now repudiates the alt-right and promises to “bring this country together,” so much the better. If the candidate who promised a trade war with China reconsiders, it is all to the good.

It is admittedly an odd thing to cheer for cynicism. But in this strange, new political era, hypocrisy is our best hope.

Personally, I believe that Gerson is too quick to assume that Trump will walk away form some of his more extreme campaign promises.  His announced appointees to date are a study in extremism that ought to terrify thinking, moral Americans.  We can hope that Trump totally lied and conned his supporters, but I am much afraid some of the ugliest promises will be delivered on.  

Anti-Trump Republican Attacked at Trump Rally

In the early years of his rise to power, Adolph Hitler utilized his "brown shirts" - the German term was Sturmabteilung, or "SA" - who among other things keep down protesters at Nazi rallies and later work ed to intimidate those opposed to Hitler and the Nazi regime.  At a rally in Reno, Nevada, the world got to witness Donald Trump's unofficial equivalent to Hitler's SA when a self-identified Republican who opposes Trump was attacked by Trump loyalists simply for holding up a sign that stated "Republicans Against Trump." Trump, of course, has done nothing to discourage his supporters from engaging in violence and has even urged them on in some instances.  The sad reality is that Trump's message of hatred and bigotry sets the stage for these acts of violence.  Combined with Trump's desire to stifle freedom of the press and to change the libel laws so as to silence critics, his supporters' willingness to resort to violence is more than disturbing.  A piece in The Guardian looks at the experience of the Reno protester.  Here are excerpts:  

The man whose protest saw Donald Trump rushed off the stage by Secret Service agents has said the Republican nominee’s supporters turned on him when he held up a sign reading: “Republicans against Trump.”

The man, who identified himself as Austyn Crites from Reno, told the Guardian he was holding the sign at a rally when Trump supporters wrestled him to the ground.

The 33-year-old – who says he has been a registered Republican for about six years – said he was kicked, punched and choked, and feared for his life when the crowd turned on him at the gathering in Reno, Nevada.

Crites cited Trump’s treatment of Mexicans, Muslims and women as the reason he decided to protest again Trump, who he described as “a textbook version of a dictator and a fascist”.

The Guardian found a bruised and shocked-looking Crites outside the auditorium. He said he was shaken and had pain in the back, but was otherwise uninjured.

Crites, who said he was an inventor who works with high-altitude balloons, said the incident occurred after he walked toward the front of the stage to protest silently against Trump.

He confirmed witness descriptions of him moving through the crowd toward the front. However, he said he was not barging through but saying: “Can I please come through, can I please come through.”

When he was near the front of the crowd, he said he silently held aloft his sign.

Initially, there was the expected reaction of people around him booing, he said. “And then all of a sudden people next to me are starting to get violent; they’re grabbing at my arm, trying to rip the sign out of my hand,” he said.

He said he could not be sure but “it looked like” Trump was pointing at him, and may have been “instigating something”. Either way, the crowd piled on him, he said, kicking, punching, holding him on the ground and grabbing his testicles.

Crites said when he was on the ground he heard someone yell “something about a gun” and he kept telling those on top of him that he had merely been holding a sign.

For his part, Crites said he felt relieved when police arrived and placed him in handcuffs, but said officers had to fend off Trump supporters who continued to attack him. “As I was taken from the room, people are just looking at me like I’m a demon,” he said.

He said he was taken to the back of the auditorium, searched, subjected to a background check and then swiftly released.

Although he described himself as a Republican and fiscal conservative, Crites said he had canvassed “for a few hours” with the Clinton campaign in Nevada because he wanted to do all he could to prevent a Trump presidency.

He said he was not fully supportive of Clinton but believed she was the only candidate who could stop Trump from reaching the White House.

Crites said he had not formal connection to the Clinton campaign and decided to attend the rally on his own volition.

Sadly, too few Americans know accurate history.  They continue to close their eyes to the threat that Trump poses both to the nation and to minority groups that do not fit into his white supremacist vision for America.

Did Trump Again Suggests Clinton Assassination?

I am a huge supporter of gun control laws and believe America needs to take action akin to what Australia did in the mid-1990's to remove assault style weapons and other dangerous guns from public hands.  As a result, gun violence in Australia has dropped remarkably.   Guns and violence are a last resort when one's policies and positions cannot be supported by logic, reason, and morality. Yet, Donald Trump is courting the gun nuts of America and dangerously alluding that perhaps some of these psychopaths should "do something" to Hillary Clinton.  Friday evening, he dd so again perhaps in the hopes that one of his deranged followers might be spurred to action.  I do not advocate assassination, but if one were to occur during this election year, I'd be hoping it would be Trump's, not Clinton.  The Washington Post looks at Trump's latest dangerous provocations.  Here are highlights:

The New York Times says Donald Trump on Friday night "once again raised the specter of violence against Hillary Clinton." The Guardian, meanwhile, titled its tweet "Trump hints at Clinton's assassination again."

If you just glanced at those recaps and noted the word "again," you might think Trump had brought up his controversial "Second Amendment people" comment — the one about how Republicans could prevent a President Clinton from appointing liberal judges.

But Trump was actually repeating a formulation that he has used many times before, about how Clinton should have her guards disarm if she believes so strongly that guns aren't the answer to stopping violence.

And it's not even an argument that's unique to him. It's an extension of a favored argument used by the National Rifle Association -- "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" -- and it's one the gun rights crowd has used with gusto against Democrats who support gun control, including President Obama.

So Trump was on well-trodden ground here. The difference Friday night, though, is that he took a comment that was worn and not all that interesting and spun it forward with just a few extra words, giving it new life by painting a more violent picture.

Let's recap what he has said about this, first from Friday night (emphasis ours):

She goes around with armed bodyguards like you have never seen before. I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm. Right? Right? I think they should disarm immediately. What do you think? Yes? Yes. Yeah. Take their guns away. She doesn't want guns. ... Let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away, okay? It would be very dangerous.

[W]hat Trump said Friday night went beyond what he'd said previously. The "specter of violence" raised was much more directly. When Trump said, "Let's see what happens to her," and "It would be very dangerous," he's taking things to a new level and talking about the actual result — not just Clinton allegedly putting her money where her mouth is on how guns aren't safe.

This is classic Trump. He takes something old and dips it in controversy, letting the media raise a fuss about it. Then he accuses us of being too hard on him, and his supporters point out that he has said similar things before.

The funny thing is that Trump seems to think this works for him. He probably thinks that because the presidential race is close. But that's not because Trump is doing much right; it's because his opponent has her own problems.

The man is dangerous and if Americans are stupid and bigoted enough to elect him, I predict that the end of our democracy is well on the way to occurring.  I like to think most Americans are that stupid, but then one observes a Trump rally - of a conservative Christian church service - and my confidence in our citizenry crumbles.  Look at 1930's Germany if one wants to see where hatred of others and the courting of bigots can take a nation.

Trump Supporters Pepper Spray, Yell "N****r Lover” to 15-Year-Old Girl

Nearly daily now, we are seeing incidents that underscore why I left the Republican Party quite a few years ago.   Things that would never have been accepted are being normalized by the GOP and its toxic standard bearer, Donald Trump.  A piece in Salon ask the question, what's wrong with Janesville, Wisconsin?  No, not because the place has repeatedly elected Paul Ryan to Congress, the same Paul Ryan who wears his Catholicism on his sleeve while pushing policies that are the antithesis of Catholic social justice teachings, but because a 15 year old girl was pepper sprayed and called a "nigger lover" by white male Donald Trump supporters at a Trump rally. Navel contemplating pundits and GOP demagogues continue to whine about Hillary Clinton's statement about half of Trump's supporters being a "basket of deplorables,"yet every day we see examples to confirm that Clinton was correct.  The situation looked at in Salon was all caught on video, so try as they might, the Trump apologists cannot try to claim it never happened.  Here are article highlights:

Police in Janesville, Wisconsin, are searching for two Donald Trump rally attendees who pepper sprayed and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old anti-Trump protester outside the Republican presidential frontrunner’s rally on Tuesday. Video of the incident shows other apparent Trump supporters shouting “bitch” and “nigger lover” to the teenager as she attempts to walk away with pepper spray in her eyes.

“Damn, Donald, back at it again with the white supremacy,” read 15-year-old Alex Drake’s topical protest sign, according to video that captured the incident. As another protester raised a sign that read, “Black Lives Matter,” the crowd of mostly older white Trump supporters began chanting “All lives matter,” attempting to drown out the Janesville teenager.

Law enforcement in Janesville, home of Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, said that “a male in the crowd groped the 15 year girl, when she pushed him away; another person in the crowd sprayed her.” . . . . Another video shows one Trump supporter yelling to “get that bitch out of here,” after the teenage girl stumbles from being pepper sprayed. . . . “Goddamn communist, nigger lover! Get out of here,” another Trump supporter can be heard shouting.

Inside, the Trump rally was hardly more civil. Speaker Ryan’s hometown booed him when Trump merely mentioned his name — and continued to boo him to the surprise of even Trump. Ryan, of course, has been out publicly bemoaning the “ugliness” that has befallen the Republican primary, a not-so-thinly veiled jab at Trump. Janesville Police additionally reported that they had to turn away two people last night who had concealed weapons, and two others who were openly carrying firearms.

Physical violence against minority protesters, the yelling of homophobic remarks, punching elderly women on oxygen, pepper spraying girls, and yelling racist remarks - all normal among Trump supporters.  When will these folks start killing opponents?  Be very, very afraid.

Do We Face a Threat of Armed Sedition?

As noted in prior posts, Donald trump and his surrogates have been planting seeds for a claim that the election was stolen or "rigged" if Trump goes down to defeat.  Combine this with the manner in which Trumps supporters seem to buy into every possible conspiracy theory - e.g., Benghazi - and it could make for a dangerous and toxic mix.  Adding to the toxic brew is Matt Bevin, the Republican Governor of Kentucky (pictured above),  who has suggested that "Patriots" might have to shed blood if Hillary Clinton is elected in November.  Bevin made his remarks - which were vague on whose blood would be shed but certainly suggested that "tyrants" would die - at a closed session at the hate fest known as the Value Voters Summit, a gathering sponsored by a group of certified hate groups.  Right Wing Watch captured Bevin's inflammatory batshirty.  Here are excerpts:

Numerous speakers at last weekend’s Values Voter Summit suggested that the American republic might not survive a Hillary Clinton presidency. During the Obama administration it has become almost routine to hear far-right leaders talk about the possibility of armed revolution against the federal government. But it was still jarring to hear a sitting governor suggest that America might only survive the election of Hillary Clinton through bloodshed.  Speaking on Saturday, he told VVS attendees that the country is facing a fork in the road: “We don’t have multiple options; we’re going one way or we’re going the other way, politically, spiritually, morally, economically, from a liberty standpoint. We’re going one way or we’re going the other way.” American freedom, Bevin said, was “purchased at an extraordinary price,” saying that one and a half million Americans have given their lives in uniform. “America is worth fighting for. America is worth fighting for, ideologically.”

“I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically,” said Bevin. “But that may in fact be the case.” He explained that it might take the shedding of the blood of tyrants and patriots for America to survive a Hillary Clinton presidency:
 “Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview and they said, ‘Do you think it’s possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it’s possible that we’ll be able to survive? That we would ever be able to recover as a nation?’ And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. But I will tell you this: I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something, that we through our apathy and our indifference have given away.” – Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, addressing the closing session of the Values Voter Summit yesterday.

A sitting governor urging violence against elected officials and others.  It is both frightening and disgusting, but that is what the Christofascist and white supremacist dominated Republican Party has fallen to.  These people are downright dangerous. 

Encouraging Political Violence is No Joke

William Kennedy Smith and Jean Kennedy Smith, the nephew and sister of President John. F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, have a joint op-ed in the Washington Post which should be required reading for all Americans, even though I sadly suspect that doing so would have little effect on the Christofascist/white supremacist core of the base of today's Republican Party.  Encouraging political violence even through a "joke" as Donald Trump's disgusting apologists are now trying to defend Trump's possible encouragement of the lunatic gun rights crowd to assassinate Hillary Clinton and/or federal judges.  Here are op-ed highlights:

On April 4, 1968, the day the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed, Robert Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency in Indianapolis. Bobby conveyed the news of King’s death to a shattered, mostly black audience. He took pains to remind those whose first instinct may have been toward violence that President John F. Kennedy had also been shot and killed. Bobby went on, “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”

That speech has crystallized into the single most enduring portrait of Bobby’s candidacy. Because it was extemporaneous, it conveyed directly, and with raw emotion, his own vulnerability, his aspirations for his country and a deep compassion for the suffering of others. Bobby concluded his remarks that night by urging those listening to return home and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Those words mattered. While there were riots in cities across the nation that night, Indianapolis did not burn.

Today, almost 50 years later, words still matter. They shape who we are as a people and who we wish to be as a nation. In the white-hot cauldron of a presidential campaign, it is still the words delivered extemporaneously, off the cuff, in the raw pressure of the moment that matter most. They say most directly what is in a candidate’s heart. So it was with a real sense of sadness and revulsion that we listened to Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, as he referred to the options available to “Second Amendment people,” a remark widely, and we believe correctly, interpreted as a thinly veiled reference or “joke” about the possibility of political assassination.

Political violence is a terrible inherent risk to any free society. Dictators and strongmen like Vladimir Putin have an answer. They are surrounded and shielded by force at all times. They do not brook dissent. In democracies, we expect our leaders to be accessible and, by and large, they want to be. Inevitably, that makes them vulnerable and the loss of a leader at a crucial time impacts family, country and even the world, for generations. Anyone who loves politics, the open competition of ideas and public participation in a free society, knows that political violence is the greatest of all civic sins. It is not to be encouraged. It is not funny. It is not a joke.

By now, we have heard enough dark and offensive rhetoric from Trump to know that it reflects something fundamentally troubled, and troubling, about his candidacy. Trump’s remarks frequently, if not inevitably, spark outrage, which is followed by a clarification that, in lieu of an apology, seeks to attribute the dark undertones of his words to the listener’s twisted psyche. This fools no one. 

But what to make of a candidate who directly appeals to violence, smears his opponents and publicly bullies a Gold Star family, a decorated prisoner of war and a reporter with a disability, among others? 

The truth remains that words do matter, especially when it comes to presidential candidates. On that basis alone, Donald Trump is not qualified to be president of the United States.