Lest you believe the MAGA movement is unique, it’s happening in Venezuela, too.
Is there hope for Venezuela as Maduro clings to power?From the 08/15/24 Sun SentinelWill Freeman, Los Angeles Times
MADURO
The Latin American left has a decision to make about Venezuela: Oppose Nicolás Maduro’s totalitarian bid to remain in power indefinitely or enable it.
Efforts to constrain Maduro may not succeed.
According to an Associated Press review of about 80% of Venezuelan voting machines’ paper tallies provided by the opposition, Maduro lost the July 28 election to opposition coalition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
Rather than acknowledge it, however, Maduro simply announced that he had won and blamed an unsubstantiated cyberattack by Elon Musk for his inability to prove it.
Maduro’s blatant steal marks a dark new chapter in Venezuela. Until July 28, the country was authoritarian with a patina of democracy, holding periodic unfree, unfair elections.
Now that Maduro knows he lacks the popular support to win even on a tilted playing field, he is scrapping the facade and going full totalitarian, exceeding even his previous crackdowns.
Trump lost the popular vote by a vast 7 million-vote margin.
He also lost the electoral vote despite it being slanted to favor the smaller red states.
The right-wing Supreme Court he installed didn’t save him, and his own Vice President didn’t save him.
His attack on Congress didn’t save him, even when he waited 3 hours before calling it off, hoping that somehow the mob would succeed.
His attempts to cheat by installing fake electors didn’t save him.
He lost all 60+ lawsuits in the states he had lost electorally when he falsely claimed he had been cheated.
And when none of that worked, he simply declared he had won. He tried every dirty trick he could think of.
His followers are still being prosecuted for their role in his illegal coup attempt. Now, he wants to be President again, and when he loses again, he will claim he won.
Maduro’s government has arrested more than 2,000 people without trial since election day; deployed Russian Wagner group mercenaries, Cuban secret police and other forces; and promised to send critics to “reeducation camps.” At least 24 people have been killed since election day.
TRUMP
Venezuela’s descent into authoritarianism and a coinciding economic collapse in the 2010s pushed about 8 million Venezuelans into exile abroad, more than half a million of whom came to the United States.
The lurch toward full-fledged totalitarianism could prove even more destabilizing. Preelection polls suggested about 3.7 million additional people planned to migrate if Maduro remained entrenched.
Can anything hold Maduro back? Barring an improbable uprising within his security forces, further mass protests seem unlikely to rein him in. The United States could tighten its sanctions, but Maduro and his inner circle already know how to live under them, having forged ties with other pariah states.
Fortunately, Trump does not control America’s security forces.
That all could change should he become President.
Trump promised that, as President, he would deport 15-20 million undocumented immigrants.
He falsely claims they are causing increased crime in America. As usual, the facts say otherwise.
The research does not support the view that immigrants commit crime or are incarcerated at higher rates than native-born Americans.
In fact, immigrants might have less law enforcement contact compared to nonimmigrants.
Focusing on the facts is imperative, especially given that immigration has become a top issue for voters ahead of the election.Substantial research hasassessedthe relationship between immigration and crime.
Numerous studies show that immigration is not linked to higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite.
Studies have alsoexaminedthe impact of the concentration of immigrants in a community on crime patterns, finding that immigration is associated with lower crime ratesand an increase in structural factors — such as social connectionandeconomic opportunity— that are linked to neighborhood safety.
When looking specifically at the relationship between undocumented immigrants and crime, researchers come to similar conclusions.
Numerous studies show that undocumented immigration does not increase violent crime; research examining crime rates in so-called sanctuary cities also found no discernable difference when compared to similarly situated cities without sanctuary policies.
One study found that undocumented immigrants are33 percent less likelyto be incarcerated than people born in the United States. Indications of a negative relationship between immigration and crime also emerge when looking at conviction rates.
In recent years immigrants were 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born citizens.
Thus, disappear Trump’s excuses for destroying the lives of millions of hard-working, tax-paying people, as well as destroying the U.S. economy that relies on those people.
“It would,” Trump said, adding, he would “have no problem using the military, per se,” although he thinks the National Guard would suffice.
He does not think that laws meant to prevent the use of the military against civilians inside the US without congressional approval would apply to his effort.
“These aren’t civilians,” Trump said of migrants. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.”
Fear-mongering Trump invents his new definition of a “civilian.” The normal definition is: “a person not in the armed services or the police force.”
Because Trump does not even consider undocumented foreigners to be people, no wonder he claims they are not civilians.
He also repeated the conspiracy theory, for which there is no evidence, that “fighting age” males from China are somehow embedding themselves in the US.
He continues to invent idiocy to justify his craziness.
What about massive migrant camps?Trump tried to downplay the idea that there would be massive camps of detained migrants like those described to The New York Times by his immigration policy mastermind Stephen Miller, since, according to Trump, he would be deporting people so fast.
“We’re not leaving them in the country. We’re bringing them out,” he said. When asked under what authority he would make all of this happen, Trump suggested he would use federal money to pressure local police.
To where would these 15-20 million men, women and children be deported and how would he get them there? That hasn’t exactly been figured out. Presumably he would use the Nazi final solution of boxcars. Even Trump’s cruel advisors bear an uncanny resemblance to Hitler’s.
Finally, when Trump’s favorite lickspittle, flatterer, sycophant suckup softballed him with the easiest possible question, “Will you be a dictator,” Trump could simply have answered, “No.”
Instead, he answered, “Only for a day.” Would he do it. Would he violate the U.S. Constitution?
Is this the America you love? Is this the America you want? Trump is telling you exactly what he plans to do. Believe him.
Palm Beach Sun Sentinel
Gestapo in the Streets. Trump’s America
ELECTION 2024Trump leans into mass deportationsEx-president asserts plan would target up to 20 million people
By Stephen Groves Associated PressWASHINGTON — “Mass Deportation Now!” declared the signs at the Republican National Convention, giving a full embrace to Donald Trump’s pledge to expel millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in American history.
Some Republicans aren’t quite ready for that.
Lauren B. Peña, a Republican activist from Texas, said that hearing Trump’s calls for mass deportations, as well as terms like “illegals” and “invasion” thrown around at the convention, made her feel uncomfortable.
Like some Republicans in Congress who have advanced balanced approaches to immigration, she hopes Trump is just blustering.
Families into boxcars. Trump’s America
“He’s not meaning to go and deport every family that crosses the border, he means deport the criminals and the sex offenders,” Peña, 33, said.
But Trump and his advisers have other plans.
He is putting immigration at the heart of his campaign to retake the White House and pushing the Republican Party toward a bellicose strategy that hearkens back to the 1950s when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched a deportation policy known by a racial slur — “Operation Wetback.”
Trump, when pressed for specifics on his plan in an interview with Time Magazine this year, suggested he would use the National Guard, and possibly even the military, to target 15 million to 20 million people — though the government estimated in 2022 there were 11 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal permission.
His plans have raised the stakes of this year’s election beyond fortifying the southern border, a longtime conservative priority, to the question of whether America should make a fundamental change in its approach to immigration.
After the southern border saw a historic number of crossings during the Biden administration, Democrats have also moved rightward on the issue, often leading with promises of border security before talking about relief for the immigrants who are already in the country.
Latino voters could be pivotal in many swing states.
Trump won 35% of Hispanic voters in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, and support for stronger border enforcement measures has grown among Hispanic voters.
But an AP analysis of two consecutive polls conducted in June by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about half of Hispanic Americans have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump.
Dragged from Homes. Trump’s America
GOP lawmakers have largely embraced Trump’s plans.
“It’s needed,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at a July interview at the conservative Hudson Institute.
Some, however, have shown tacit skepticism by suggesting more modest goals.
Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, pointed to over 1 million people who have already received a final order of removal from an immigration judge and said, “There’s a difference between those that are in the process right now and those that are finished with the process.”
Mass deportation to concentration camps. Trump’s America
Are we as ignorant as the Germans and Italians were when Hitler and Mussolini told them what would happen?
Even Hitler didn’t round up 15-20 million people. During the war, Nazi military forces rounded up 11 million victims.
Trump says he will outdo that.
Is this the America you want?
Hitler had Heinrich Himmler. Trump has Stephen Miller. Himmler/Miller, odd how similar the names are.
Trump entered office in 2016 with similar promises of mass deportation but “only” succeeded in deporting about 1.5 million people.
This time, though, there’s a plan.
Trump has worked with Stephen Miller, a former top aide who is expected to take a senior role in the White House if Trump wins.
Miller describes a Trump administration that will work with “utter determination” to accomplish two goals: “Seal the border. Deport all the illegals.”
To accomplish that, Trump would revive travel bans from countries deemed undesirable, such as majority-Muslim countries.
The banal faces of evil
He would launch a sweeping operation by deputizing the National Guard to round up immigrants, hold them in massive camps and put them on deportation flights before they could make legal appeals.
Beyond that, Trump has also pledged to end birthright citizenship— a 125-year-old right in the United States.
Trump even would deport many children who were born in America.
And several of his top advisers have laid out a sweeping policy vision through the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that would choke off other forms of legal migration.
“Hold them in camps.” Trump’s America.
The Trump administration, under those plans, could also grind to a halt temporary programs for over 1 million migrants, including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Ukrainians and Afghans who fled recent conflicts as well as others who receive temporary protection due to unrest in their home country.
The policies would have far-reaching disruptions in major industries like housing and agriculture.
“If the 75,000-plus immigrants who perform the hardest of work in Wisconsin’s dairy and agriculture were gone tomorrow, the state economy would tank,” said Jorge Franco, the CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, Democrats feel Trump’s threats are motivating Latino voters.
“The mass deportation put a lot of people on high alert,” said María Teresa Kumar, the CEO of Voto Latino, a leading voter registration organization that is backing Democrat Kamala Harris.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 