Friday, December 13, 2024

Today's News: "So how does one prepare for a dictatorship?"

Is everyone just whistling past the American graveyard right now?
I'm seeing a lot of coverage of Trump's incompetent, unqualified toady nominees for this or that or the other -- "The Trump cabinet: A merger of Fox & friends and The Sopranos". And I'm seeing coverage about how Trump expects everyone to "bend the knee" and I'm seeing comment on Trump's crazy ideas for ridiculous tarrifs and mass deportations and closing the border and sending troops into American cities and pardoning all the J6 people and rewriting the 2020 election and jailing anybody who resists or ever did resist Trump.
But shouldn't our media be putting this all together?  
Yes, each awful nomination gets some push-back from American media, and the blizzard of "executive orders" released on Jan 21 will be poured over individually and likely challenged in court. But its the whole picture that is really terrifying. 
This isn't going to be politics as usual. 
When you put it all together, Trump's administration is going to be a dictatorship. 
I have called it it "Trump 2: The Revenge Tour" and that is exactly what it will be.  
And dictators never leave voluntarily. 
And they don't allow opposition parties to win elections either. 

Here's what is happening now:

Kim: You have a number of nominees who are literally, their mission is to dismantle the organization that they are being nominated to be in charge of. I find that to be so dangerous at this moment.

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) December 11, 2024 at 10:15 PM

this is what mass deportation is. people will necessarily be rounded up and processed. there’s no version of that that doesn’t involve camps.

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— Peter (@notalawyer.bsky.social) December 12, 2024 at 11:29 PM
Some already realize what Resistance will mean.

“We are a country that stands on the precipice, just six weeks away from swearing in, for the second time, a wannabe “dictator” with ambitions to wildly reshape our democracy. There is a desire to tune out. I get it.” www.vanityfair.com/news/story/w...

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— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) December 10, 2024 at 1:19 PM

“Who’s Willing to Get Arrested?” Immigrant Activists Ready for Trump Deportation Plans

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— Teddy Wilson (@reportbywilson.bsky.social) December 12, 2024 at 3:05 PM
Some still don't get it.

If you don't see it as a moral imperative to oppose the mass deportation of millions of immigrants, I just don't know what to tell you

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— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) December 9, 2024 at 10:27 AM
And who can stop this now? Nobody, apparently. Though some mayors and governors may try.

Tom Homan on Fox & Friends threatens that mayors, specifically the mayor of Chicago, will be prosecuted if they impede Trump's mass deportation

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) December 13, 2024 at 9:20 AM
Even the people who voted for Trump really have no idea what they voted for. 
When they looked at Trump, they saw The Golden Calf, reflecting what they wanted for themselves, rather than the reality of Trump as a dictator. 
They may still think he won't do what he already said he would do -- their Buyer's Remorse will be epic, but it will mean nothing to Trump.

After years of talking to Trump supporters my view of them has become very simple: They want socialist, even sometimes progressive reforms but they want them from someone who makes those reforms feel powerful and masculine and they want to make sure the people they don't like don't benefit from them

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— Ryan Broderick (@ryanhatesthis.bsky.social) December 10, 2024 at 8:51 AM

delusional

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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) December 10, 2024 at 8:37 AM

It is the ultimate victory of brand over product, which makes a certain kind of perverse sense.

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— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) December 10, 2024 at 10:15 AM

I say again that mass deportations, maximal tariffs, and impoundment austerity are perhaps three of the most unpopular policy programs ever thought of in American history and Trump wants to do them all, at the same time

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— Reconstructionist (@unavaleable.bsky.social) December 11, 2024 at 2:50 PM
And Trump will also want to revise history, to claim he won in 2020, Biden is a crook, America was broken, vaccines are dangerous, Ukraine is corrupt, etc. etc.

Yep. www.offmessage.net/p/no-democra...

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— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) December 9, 2024 at 6:20 PM
Dean Obeidallah / The Dean's Report
History is screaming at us to take Trump literally
The time to prepare is now!
...Trump—like Hitler did—will attempt to enact as policy every single thing he has vowed to do during the campaign. And while Trump in his first term was dangerous, this version of Trump is even more dangerous. He is angry and bitter. Trump believes he was wronged by Democrats who sought to hold him accountable for his crimes. He and his followers even believe Democrats were behind the attempts on his life. And in his second term, Trump knowns--courtesy of the corrupt GOP Supreme Court—that he has broad immunity for “official actions.”
There is also something else. As you can see from Trump’s nominations for his cabinet, he doesn’t care about competence, he solely cares about loyalty. For example, he is fighting hard for Pete Hegseth to be Secret
ary of Defense despite the fact he is objectively speaking unqualified, was credibly accused of rape, was drunk at past jobs and is a vile anti-Muslim bigot.
What matters to Trump is that he needs a blindly loyal Hegseth to order the military to do whatever Trump wants to do. As a reminder during the campaign, Trump said the military should be used to silence “the enemy within”-- which are simply his critics. Trump will 100% do this. Trump may even use the military to remain in power after his term ends.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to shutdown media outlets that he views as being unfair to him—from CBS to NBC News. He will attempt to do that as well as shutdown comedy shows that mock him--as he explored doing to “Saturday Night Live” in his first term.
And the list goes on from prosecuting Barack Obama, New York AG Tish James, Adam Schiff and others to mass deportations which he vowed would be “bloody.” Everything Trump promised to do, he will try.
All of this is why we must be prepared for what is coming. As Snyder wrote, “be calm when the unthinkable arrives” because fascists hope fear will paralyzes us. The key to doing that is by building strong alliances now before Trump enters office. And from there it will take courage. Snyder’s final line of his book sums that up so well: “If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”
We hope it doesn’t come to that. But history tells us that alone we will be crushed. Together, we have a fighting chance to win.
Well, maybe...God, I hope so.
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