Will Enough Americans Show Up to Stop Trump From Using the Dictator's Playbook?

Thom plus logo The single most consistent defining characteristic of an emerging dictatorship in a country that started as a democracy is that the dictator regularly holds elections and always wins, because he uses the instruments of government to make sure he wins.

Trump has now done this with the Justice Department, the Post Office, the Department of Homeland Security, The Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Reserve, and our intelligence agencies.

Over at Justice, Attorney General Bill Barr has already said that he intends to investigate Joe Biden and his son's activities in Ukraine and to report on that just before the election.

Trump has seized control of the Post Office, decapitated it's senior management, and has already begun slowing down the mail and more than doubling the cost to states for mailing ballots just before we conduct an election that'll probably be more than half mail-in.

Trump has gotten the Department of Homeland Security and various factions within their immigration police to challenge protesters for a test run in Portland, and plans to bring this crew to other cities just in time for a massive display of police power during the elections.

Trump has redirected all reporting on coronavirus statistics away from the Centers for Disease Control to HHS, run by his toady, Alex Azar. Now hospitals and public health officials, as well as news agencies, can no longer get accurate data on the severity of the pandemic in the United States.

Over at the Fed, Trump has installed Jerome Powell, a multimillionaire bankster who is not an economist and was on the board of the Carlyle Group. Powell has created about $7 trillion out of thin air, and is using it to buy corporate stocks and bonds to maintain the stock market, making it appear that the economy is not as bad as it is.

And when our intelligence agencies first reported that Russia, the source of much of Trump's wealth cording to his own children, was already actively interfering in the 2020 election, Trump got them to change their assessment to downplay Russia and highlight that China and Iran had a "preference" for Biden. He got the intelligence agencies to omit the fact that China and Iran are not engaged in active measures, creating the false impression that there was some kind of balance among foreign actors messing with our elections.

Meanwhile, in a further tip of the hat to his racist white supporters, Trump wants to declare his candidacy while simultaneously symbolically declaring victory for the white supremacist Confederacy at Gettysburg.

As the federal government's website for Gettysburg proclaims, "Often referred to as the 'High Water Mark of the Rebellion,' Gettysburg was the Civil War's bloodiest battle..." By proclaiming his candidacy at Gettysburg, Trump would essentially be reversing the Confederacy's 1863 loss at that site.

All of these actions make it clear that Donald Trump doesn't think of himself as a President of United States, but rather as a tinpot dictator who has seized control of a country that can be turned into a Third World autocracy. The question we will see answered over the next six months is whether Trump has taken America so far down the road to oligarchy and fascism that we can't recover.

It will take tens of millions of us showing up, speaking out, and making sure that our votes are counted to stop this train-wreck before it utterly destroys the American experiment.

-Thom

Comments

Legend 2 years 42 weeks ago
#1

All of this is done with Republican Party approval. Except for the break away Republicans (the few with a brain) called the Lincoln Project. It will take years for Biden to undue the mess. About the length of time that people will remember what caused the mess.

vetinla's picture
vetinla 2 years 42 weeks ago
#2

This "election" will be very interesting. We'll all find out if the death grip the ruling class has on our nation is irreversible or not. If COVID-45 "wins" again, probably not, but if the Biden/Harris ticket wins, our nation's direction is still problematic. Both are, IMO,totally immersed in our country's "corporate culture", and won't persue the people's interests over the interests of the corporations, and our new brand of "disaster capitalism" and profits "uber alles".

The big question remains; If the Dems win, can the Biden/Harris ticket channel their inner FDR inclinations, if, they even exist?

avn013's picture
avn013 2 years 42 weeks ago
#3

Legend: thanks for the Lincoln project link. It reinforces my superstition that if this (human) "experiment" (as Thom very interestingly described it) is to survive and evolve, all are needed on board (inclusiveness is a hard-wired characteristic of Democracy). (I could even go that far as claiming that we deserved the current presidency. As no one is perfect, it has revealed an ugly/dark part/side of ourselves. It is best to confront it and cure it, than "bury" it deep inside us and "go back to 2016". Evolution is better than "denial").

vetinla: Sadly (in a sense) i agree with you and share the same worries. The Biden/Harris combo shows (to me) that the "Rep" side of the Dems (the crypto-Reps) are still winning their "left" or "Roosevelt" side. Biden's team waited too long (imo) to announce the running mate.Possibly the intra-"battle"was fierce? I would like to read about commitments of Biden/Harris with respect to who is going to run the federal executive departments like education, health&human services, treasury, labor, commerce, state etc. Are they simple ready to just win the nomination or are they (getting)prepared to run the country? How can they convince me that this election is really crucial if they are not behaving as if they are true leaders with specific proposals as to how the country should be run since....yesterday? What is the purpose of this "ticket"? Simply to win and pacify people that everything WILL (when? afterlife?) be allright? Who is going to be the team that will (attempt to) turn things around? Just the two of them? I do not think they suffice. The future "promise" of Kamala 2024? A VP is #2. If #1 is too slow to take the initative, #2 should step in and take the initiative whenever #1 needs to take a rest, BEFORE the elections and show us with whom they are going to work with to materialize any of their FDR and Lincoln and other American inclinations they may have. If short of ideas, they should do well to consult people like Sanders, the math guy (Yang), John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert to name just a few.

Rob Obodzinski's picture
Rob Obodzinski 2 years 41 weeks ago
#4

comment from the day before for election judges. For thoes voters with out masks, have seperate rooms. Just have , for what ever reason, seperate booths and rooms. Move people w/o masks into that group of republicans to keep the real people voting. PS if you do not want to clean the covid booth ...don't.

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