The previous post,“The Day America Will End,”describes how Donald Trump and the Republican Party are attempted to remake our American democracy into a theocracy, with Trump as the pontiff.
Lest you believe that is mere partisan hyperbole, read these excerpts from an Axios article:
Donald Trump and his associates are systematically reshaping the Republican Party, working to install hand-picked loyalists across federal and state governments and destroy those he feels have been disloyal, sources close to the former president tell Axios.
In Trump-world, “loyalty” means unquestioned obsequence to Trump — not to America, not to your religion, not you or your personal moral code — but only to Trump no matter what Trump says or does, regardless of the evil it may do to America.
Even the slightest deviation from absolute fealty will be punished.
If most or all of Trump’s candidates win, he will go into the 2024 election cycle with far more people willing to do his bidding who run the elections in key states.
If he had owned enough such people in January of this year, he would be President today, despite losing the election, and possibly, become President for life.
We came that close.
He will also have a well-funded policy and political infrastructure and his own social media ecosystem.
He’s made dozens of endorsements since last year’s election, with many more expected ahead of crucial primaries next year.
Trump is tapping his national network of allies to identify Republicans who were “weak” in 2020 because they refused to go along with his efforts to overturn the election. No office has proven too small.
Trump is the living embodiment of the anti-democracy. His goal: Any vote that is not a Trump vote should be prevented, or if not prevented, discarded.
In this regard, he wishes to out-Putin Putin (whom Trump admires) by controlling faked elections. Trump visualizes himself as becoming the absolute lord of America.
And after Trump, Trump Jr? Or Ivanka, whom Trump groomed for power?
His apparatus touches everything from unseating governors, members of Congress, state legislators and secretaries of state, to formulating policy and influencing local school boards.
One common thread with many of the candidates he’s backed so far: They all support his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
While Trump was in office, he surrounded himself with liars, traitors, and criminals (see: How America is winning a national Darwin Award}. Now, in defeat, he has redoubled his efforts to gather the same amoral and immoral characters into a Trumpian crime sydicate.
He is seeking out people who not only will obey him totally, but people who have no allegiance to America or to American mores or to American democracy. They are people who have no positive ideology, but merely wish to be close to royal power.
Trump-backed Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue — who is challenging Gov. Brian Kemp in the GOP primary — told Axios’ Emma Hurt on Wednesday that he wouldn’t have signed the certification of the state’s 2020 election results if he’d been governor.
Will Georgia back Perdue, a notorious liar, who acknowledges he values Trump over America? We soon will see the power of bigotry vs. the power of true American patriotism.
Behind the scenes: Sources who have spent time with Trump at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago say it’s impossible to carry out an extended conversation with him that isn’t interrupted by his fixations on the 2020 election.
He’s intensely focused on demands that Republicans “get smart” and pursue efforts to “audit” and overturn that result.
Trump is maniacally blind to the fact that the results have been audited again and again, even by Trump-appointed judges and politicians, and in no case has anyone found enough so-called “steal” even to come close to overturning an election.
Facts, be damned, Trump simply wants the fair elections to be ignored and for him to be named Emperor.
“We try to get him onto other topics, but you always get dragged back,” said an adviser to the former president.
Trump is also thinking about the future. He’s not just taking the standard steps of establishing a PAC, courting donors, and building a political operation; he’s also trying to purge his critics from all levels of the GOPand replace them with loyalists who could object to the certification of future elections.
We fought to free ourselves of a ruthless, crooked king.
If he succeeds, that will be the end of America as you know it.
He endorsed Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who lodged the objection to Georgia’s electors, in a challenge against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who publicly resisted Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
He encouraged Perdue’s primary run against Kemp. Perdue’s launch ad makes clear he agrees with Trump about what constitutes Kemp’s unforgivable sin.
Trump has also thrown his support behind secretary of state challengers in Arizona and Michigan. And candidates casting doubt on 2020’s election processes are also running in Wisconsin and Nevada.
Trump backed a challenge to Texas state Sen. Kel Seliger after Seliger cast the only Republican vote against an audit of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has found an opportunity to rebuild Michigan’s GOP state legislature in his image, endorsing five first-time candidates based on their belief in his baseless “stolen” election claims.
Michigan state legislators are term-limited, giving Trump fresh opportunities to fill seats with loyalists. Trump unsuccessfully tried post-election to persuade state GOP lawmakers to reject the election results.
Trump has also endorsed a candidate for state attorney general, Kristina Karamo, who embraces conspiracy theories including her false claim it was “completely Antifa posing as Trump supporters” who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
In Arizona, Trump endorsed the reelection of Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who led a letter with 138 state legislators calling for election audits in all 50 states.
He endorsed Kari Lake for Arizona governor. Lake told OAN she wouldn’t have certified Biden as the victor if she’d been governor.
Trump is also going after the few congressional Republicans who have defied him. He’s endorsed primary challengers to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) and Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) — all of whom voted for his impeachment.
What they’re saying: “To the dismay of Democrats and Republican-sellouts, President Donald J. Trump continues to be the most dominant voice in American politics,” Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich told Axios in a statement.
In Trump-world, anyone who does not support his dictatorial ideas is a “sellout.”
Consider being called a “sellout,” by the man who created the scam operation known as “Trump University” (for which he was forced to pay $25 million) and the fraud known as “Trump Foundation (for which he was fined $2 million).
“Through his Save America PAC and allied America First organizations, President Trump’s vision for America and the GOP will shape the future of our nation.”
God save America if this proves to be true.
Trump has called for bills instituting reforms some of his advisers say would have kept him in power.
Meaning, “kept him in power despite having lost the election by more than seven million votes.”
Republicans in state legislatures enacted dozens of voting laws this year — many designed in direct response to Trump’s post-election pressure.
Trump cheered on Georgia’s sweeping voting bill, saying the GOP legislators “learned from the travesty of the 2020 Presidential Election.” He added, “Too bad these changes could not have been done sooner!”
At least 10 bills introduced at the state level — none yet passed — would allow partisan actors to overturn election results.
Trump’s relentless messaging has forged an alternate reality for his followers: 58% of Republicans in an Axios/Ipsos poll last month said there was enough fraud to change the outcome of the 2020 election.
Now he’s harnessing that energy.
So long as the Republican party and its followers are willing to sell their souls in exchange for the possibility of political power, the free America of which you are proud, will be in grave danger.
Ironically, the same GOP that preaches against COVID vaccine mandates because of “freedom” of choice, does not want you to have the freedom to choose your political leaders via free and fair elections.
They support a man who, as you read this article, is doing his best to substitute his lies and “royal” decrees for facts and your freedoms.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
The “spacious skies and amber waves of grain” still are here. The “broad stripes and bright stars” still wave. “The mountains, the prairies, the oceans white with foam,” all still there.
But they are just window dressing.
The traditional America, the America that welcomed the tired, the poor, the masses yearning to breathe free, the America where someone could rise from the depths of poverty and reach for the stars — the democracy America — that America is gone, replaced by a right-wing, bigoted, hate-mongering, fascist America.
Perhaps, it all was an illusion. Perhaps that kind, generous, one-for-all, -and-all-for-one never really existed. Perhaps we only dreamed it.
But what a beautiful dream.
We did have it for a moment, back in the early 1940s, when Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito were reviled dictators, and we clung together to fight against such monsters and for “Liberty for All.”
But after the monsters were defeated, their shadow lurked in the background, and now a new monster has returned, sporting the same old hate-based clothing, waving our flag but telling the same old anti-democracy, “me-first, me-only” lies.
The new “democracy” of mob rule and hatred, flags a-waving.
They always were there, of course, the haters and bigots, the Ku Klux Klan, the anti-semites, the communists, the torch-bearing marchers for Naziism, but they never were the real America.
They were mocked as some alien thing, foreign to our welcoming heritage.
Surely, the disgrace of the slavery-funded South would be seen as an aberration to our “all-men-are-created-equal” ethos. Surely the spirit of America will not die, crushed in the hands of a lying, ignorant, bigoted tyrant.
That could not happen here. Surely.
And yet . . . Infowars, Fox News, QAnon, Alex Jones, conspiracy theories, Donald Trump all seem to indicate that slavery and bigotry are not aberrations, but are fundamental, at least to a large segment of the American population.
The right would have you believe that merely teaching the facts of racism is accusatory, and designed to make our children feel guilty.
As usual with the right, it’s a lie, and also as usual, the facts are distorted or denied (as are facts about election honesty, global warming, police bigotry, vaccination, Muslims, gays, Mexicans, immigrants, the poor, and Trump himself.)
If you get your information via Tucker Carlson and Fox, you are sadly misinformed.
Freedom, democracy, and fairness are not to be taken for granted. They are fragile features, even of America, that must be protected with both hands.
TRUMP’S NEXT COUP HAS ALREADY BEGUN January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election. By Barton Gellman DECEMBER 6, 2021
Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place.
If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect.
The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they are acting already.
“The democratic emergency is already here,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine, told me. “We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” he said.
For more than a year now, Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft.
Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election. Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject.
They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They would allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters.
Trump and his party have convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at the polls, that tyranny has usurped their government, and that violence is a legitimate response.
Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination for president in 2024. The party is in his thrall. No opponent can break it and few will try. Neither will a setback outside politics—indictment, say, or a disastrous turn in business—prevent Trump from running. If anything, it will redouble his will to power.
Virtually no one a year ago, predicted that Trump could compel the whole party’s genuflection to the Big Lie and the recasting of insurgents as martyrs.
Trump has reconquered his party by setting its base on fire through black clouds of his smoke. His deepest source of strength is the bitter grievance of Republican voters that they lost the White House, and are losing their country, to alien forces with no legitimate claim to power.
To Trumpers, everyone not white, not born here, not Christian, and most importantly, not a Trump toady, is an enemy.
Jews, Muslims, blacks, browns, immigrants, and of course, those who seek truth, commit political and social suicide when supporting Trump and his minions.
The GOP, and especially the Trump GOP markedly favors the rich over the not-rich.That is why the GOP so strongly opposes benefits such as Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Social Security, and other anti-poverty initiatives, while favoring massive spending increases for the military/industrial complex plus increased taxes on the middle classes.
If you criticize Donald Trump, you will be excommunicated from the GOP. Just ask Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Not only is the right-wing anti-democracy, but it is anti-sciencewhile being pro-religion. The three ideologies — anti-democracy, anti-science, and pro-religion — have combined through the ages to produce theocracies, the most repressive dictatorships in world history.
In a theocracy, the leader pretends to speak the “word of God.”
Thus he/she never can be wrong, never even can be criticized, never can be unelected, and even simple lack of support can be considered blasphemous.
The US Supreme Court on Wednesday took up a case that asks whether schools that make the bible an essential teaching tool and reject gay and transgender studentscan receive government funding.
The nine-judge court featuring six conservatives were considering a school aid program in the northeast state of Maine and will render a decision in the spring of next year.
Parents can choose public or private schools, in Maine or another state, and even schools affiliated with religion, so long as the teaching there is not “sectarian.”
Two evangelical Christian families have sued to be able to use the education subsidy money to send their kids to religious schools.
In denying them a spot in the program, local authorities argue that one of these private schools “teaches children that the husband is the leader of the household” and encourages kids to recognize “God as Creator of the world.”
The other makes use of the bible in all academic subjects. Both of them mix religious and academic teaching and do not accept LGBTQ students or employees.
Religious schools would legally be allowed to exercise bigotry against LGBTQ people, and anyone else, while using public money.
Both sides in the argument invoke the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion but forbids any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”
The parents who sued — they are backed by a dozen or so Republican senators, 20-odd conservative-ruled states and many religious institutions — insist on the freedom of religion clause to say they have the right to choose a school that reflects their values and say they are suffering discrimination because of their religious views.
The state of Maine says in turn that the clause on establishing a religion bars the use of government money to finance a religion.
It already may be too late to prevent the right-wing from establishing a Trumpian theocracy in America.
But for those of you who would welcome that form of government, and who believe it will protect you from criminal, “alien” hoards, I only can advise: Be careful what you wish for.
A dictatorship is a hole into which it is far too easy to slip and quite difficult to escape, but a theocratic dictatorship is nearly impossible to cure.
And when that happens, the America you think you love, will be gone.
SUMMARY
There can be little question about the fact that Donald Trump wishes to set up a dictatorship with him as dictator, and that under his leadership, the GOP is doing everything it can to eliminate or negate the votes of those who do not support Trump or the GOP.
All votes, not for me, are stolen. So, they must be stopped.
While it is one thing for a political party to try to win votes on the basis of merit, it is another thing entirely, for a party to try to prevent people from voting or to prevent their votes from counting.
The former is the natural democratic competition among ideologies, while the latter is the road to authoritarianism and tyranny.
Further, there is no doubt that many in Trump’s base, perhaps the majority, would welcome a theocracy in which Christianity (of course) not only would become the ruling religion of America, but that Christian religious leaders would become our unelected monarchs.
It has happened all over the world; America is not immune.
Lest you believe it is unlikely here, answer this: Did you predict that armed traitors would attack Congress, trying to intimidate Congress into ignoring or reversing our election, while waving Trump, rebel, and American flags, and that the Republican party would excuse the attackers and support their leader?
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
I am above the law. I am the law.
I own the Attorney General.
I own the Justice Department.
I own the U.S. Senate and the Majority Leader.
I own the Republican Party.
I own the Supreme Court.
I own the Appellate Courts.
I own the Military.
I own the prisons.
I own the favorable media, and I will destroy the rest.
I will pervert the criminal justice system in any way I wish.
I will pardon all criminals who are loyal to me.
I will continue to lie, cheat, and steal, but I will not be punished.
I will ignore the Constitution.
I will exact revenge against my political enemies.
I will punish whistleblowers who reveal my secrets.
I will punish any who displeases me.
I will enable my political loyalists to break the law, free from punishment.
I will continue to put my friends and family into positions of financial and political power.
I will continue to hire political hacks who do as I say, not what is best for America.
I will make billions of dollars from my position.
I will reverse all judicial decisions that displease me.
I will reverse all Congressional decisions that displease me.
I will fire the Federal Reserve chairman if he doesn’t make me richer.
I will divorce another wife and cheat on the next one.
I alone will send America into war.
I alone will decide who enters America and who must leave.
I will do whatever I want, whenever I want.
There is nothing you can do about it.
King George III was America’s last old king.
I am America’s first new king, King Donald I.
The religions will support me, just as they always support kings.
You will obey me.
Or you will be punished.
The New York Times obtained a 20-page letter Trump’s attorneys sent Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in January, arguing that he could not have obstructed justice because he has total, unfettered authority over the Justice Department.
Rudy Giuliani said that while he only agrees with about 80 percent of the argument laid out by Trump’s former legal team, he thinks a sitting president can’t be indicted or subpoenaed.
Giuliani explained that if there’s a criminal in the Oval Office, the law can’t touch him until the Legislative branch acts. “If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”
In the eyes of some backers, Trump only can be touched by the political process of impeachment, not by the legal process of indictment or subpoena.
In short, Trump’s flunkees believe the American President, like a king, is above the law.
Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt said Trump would “fly into Brussels like a seagull” and “defecate all over everything, squawk, and fly away,” he told host Shannon Bream.
Trump went into the NATO meeting prepared to challenge the organization, saying the U.S. protects its allies more than they protect America and deserves a break on tariffs to make up for it.
That prompted concern from former diplomats and even Republicans, including Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), who warned Trump against making consolations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump is meeting with Putin next week.
“I want to tell these Republicans, quit kidding yourselves,” Stirewalt said on Fox News @ Night. “You will not stop Donald Trump from undermining NATO … and you will not stop him from realigning U.S. foreign policy to be more favorable toward Russia.”
So far, Stirewalt has been right. Trump didn’t even make it through Wednesday’s breakfast before tearing into Germany for being “captive to Russia,” and on Tuesday he said his upcoming meeting with Putin may be the “easiest of them all.”
Only time will tell how many more messy bombshells Trump will drop.
Two things are clear:
Putin’s primary goal, for several years, has been to divide and weaken NATO.
Putin has leverage over Trump, either financially (i.e. Trump Moscow and other properties), or privately (i.e. tapes of Trump conjoining with prostitutes).
Trump historically accuses people of his own faults.He accused Hillary Clinton of being “crooked” at the same time he was paying a $25 million fine for his crooked Trump University, and paid IRS fines for his crooked Trump Foundation.
He routinely calls opponents liars, and has coined the expression “fake news,” while he himself has set records for lying. (See: “Trump lies.”)
In the following article, he follows the same pattern:
Trump tweeted that NATO was bilking the U.S., implicitly undermined struggling British Prime Minister Theresa May.
(Then he said), “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia.”
Trump has criticized just about every NATO ally, but has rarely if ever criticized Putin — “Frankly, Putin may be the easiest [meeting] of them all,” Trump said — and there is widespread concern on both sides of the Atlantic that Trump will say or do things to undermine the U.S.-Europe alliance.
Driving a wedge between Europe and the U.S. is believed to be one of Putin’s key priorities.
It is difficult to see what could be more traitorous than destroying NATO on behalf of Putin and Russia.
So the question remains, “What can America do about a President who is a traitor?”
Is he untouchable by the law? Will our too-political Congress cave to power, as Dukes, Marquesses, and Barons did in the eras of British kings?
(SCOTUS nominee) Brett Kavanaugh has been an open advocate for precisely the sort of imperial presidency that the founders of the American experiment feared—and that Donald Trump relishes.
As Bloomberg News has noted, “Kavanaugh addressed some of the constitutional issues that could emerge from an investigation like Mueller’s in a 2009 Minnesota Law Review article.”
What Kavanaugh wrote ought to trouble everyone who believes that the president is a servant of the people, rather than “a king for four years.”
“I believe that the President should be excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship while serving in office.
The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility in either the international or domestic arenas.
“Such an outcome would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.”
Will SCOTUS decide that, like King George, who ruled us before we fought the Revolutionary War, Donald Trump is above the law?
Will SCOTUS decide that, like King George, who ruled us before we fought the Revolutionary War, Donald Trump is above the law?
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 