Trump's Tyranny

Global Warming:

The most damage will be done not to country but to the planet. Global Warming (renamed benignly as Climate Change) is already upon us in the form of Hurricane Helene flooding in the Appalachian mountains (Asheville, NC area), forest fire infernos in Maui, Hawaii and Paradise, California and the current fires in Santa Paula area of California. Epic flooding has occurred in Spain, Italy, Thailand, Bangladesh, Morocco and Algeria. Flooding in Africa has affected Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Typhoon Yagi struck China, the Philippines, and Vietnam. It was the first Category 4 or stronger typhoon to make landfall in Vietnam.

A pair of quotes, separated by eight years, spotlight a chronic political mentality at the top of the Democratic Party:

 “The path to victory in a state like Michigan, Harris campaign officials are betting, is through suburban counties that are home to many college-educated and white voters,” the New York Times reported three weeks ago.

Impeachment dramas on Capitol Hill have routinely skipped over a question that we should be willing to ask even if Congress won’t: “What about a president’s unimpeachable offenses?”

The question is the flip side of one that Republican Gerald Ford candidly addressedwhen he was the House minority leader 50 years ago: “What, then, is an impeachable offense? The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

By narrowly defining which offenses are impeachable, political elites are implicitly telling us which offenses aren’t.

So, when the House approved two articles of impeachment on Donald Trump in December 2019 and one impeachment article last month, the actions were much too late and much too little.

The democracy of United States of America barely survived the disgraced ex-President, who made a very serious effort at performing a coup in order to stay in power. Even today, Republicans are afraid to cross him, and he has an army of deluded MAGA supporters who believe themselves to be patriotic. When attacking the nations Capitol, they don't all carry Confederate Flags. Some of the MAGA Patriots instead carried USA flags to then be used as weapons against the Capitol police.

Everyone in America should have known This Man would not to quietly into the night, but few expected outright treason.

We are eventually going to find out just how far President Donald J. Treason would go to destroy our governing structure in order to retain power. Treasonous Trump's authoritarian tendencies went spiraling out of control during the time between his election defeat and the inauguration of Joe Biden. Another 4 years of his tyrannical rule would have ended America as we know it. Instead, our democracy is deeply wounded.

One keeps hearing that former President Donald Trump will be judged well by the history books because he was the only American head of state in recent memory who did not start any new wars. Well, the claim is itself questionable as Jimmy Carter, for all his faults, managed to avoid entering into any new armed conflict, and Trump can hardly be described as a president who eschewed throwing his weight around, both literally and figuratively. He attacked Syria on two occasions based on fabricated intelligence, assassinated an Iranian general, withdrew from several arms and proliferation agreements, and has been waging economic warfare against Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Iraq. He has sanctioned individuals and organizations in both China and Russia and has declared Iranian government components and Yemeni Houthi rebels to be terrorists. He has occupied Syria’s oil producing region to “protect it from terrorists” and has generally exerted “maximum pressure” against his “enemies” in the Middle East.

History is being written in the United States today. Even the most pessimistic about the prospects of American democracy have rarely ventured out this far while offering a bleak analysis of America’s future, whether in terms of political polarization at home or global standing abroad. 

 As shocking and, certainly, telling as the images of thousands of American protesters taking over the symbols of America’s federal, representative democracy in Washington DC on January 6, it was only a facet in a far more complex and devastating political trajectory that has been in the making for years. 

As the sun sets slowly on Trump’s presidency and we bid a not-so-fond farewell to the ex-resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, presumably leaving for exile at Mar-a-Largo, it’s worth reflecting: After all he’s said and done, what have we really learned from The Donald?

By this, I don’t mean some sort of high-minded platitude, such as “Democracy is a fragile thing.” Rather, I am referring to what of value, that one can put to practical use, has Trump actually taught us?

AN OPEN LETTER TO MAGA MARCHERS

When Donald Trump incited you to assault the Capitol, he said he would be with you.

He wasn’t.

Four of you are dead and you’ve killed a policeman. More of you will suffer and die from the COVID that spread through your maskless march. Many of you now face prison terms and ruined lives.

Had you been black, you’d’ve been gunned down before you got anywhere near the Capitol building.

Some of you in Los Angeles compensated by assaulting a black woman who accidentally walked into one of your rallies. Others expressed your opinions about Jews by wearing hats saying 6MWE (Six Million Wasn’t Enough).

Maybe Trump’s bone spurs kept him from marching with you.

When Alice Paul and Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez and so many other great American leaders have organized marches for social change, they personally endured gassings, beatings, imprisonment. They never hesitated to risk their own bodies for a higher cause.

I still see the noose in front of the capitol building, dangling oh so metaphorically.

“No matter how all this plays out, it’s only the beginning,” wrote a user on TheDonald message board, according to the Associated Press.

I couldn’t resist putting together this little group of photos from two fascist-leaning nations from different eras that exhibited similar political leanings.

No comment should be necessary, but it needs to be understood that proto-fascist cults have a disdain for liberal education and their cult-leaders (who are amoral, paranoid, narcissistic, megalomaniacal wannabe dictators) readily use violence and terror to take and maintain power. In addition, fascist movements always try to silence their opponents and enemies and therefore make use of censorship in their attempts to take power. (GGK)