Democracy Itself Has Become A Partisan Issue
Three videos worth watching.
Donald Trump’s closing message (more or less) to American voters:
I am not Hitler. Not. Not. Not. Not. Not. Not. Not. Not. Not. Not. Not. Not. NOT. Hey, don’t listen to my own advisers when they refer to the violent police gangs I’m setting up as “death squads”. And ignore my promise to fire 50,000 government employees and replace them with MAGA cult members who will obey my every word. Okay, I lied before: Project 2025 is, of course, my Bible. Can you believe two more women came forward in the last few weeks and said I sexually assaulted them (#27 and #28, maybe) — and both reports got almost zero media attention? Also, those numerous concentration camps in which brown and black people (regardless of actual status in the US) will be locked up until they are deported — not true, you can trust me. Bow down to me or you will die. Forget all that fake news. Can I tell you what I heard about the impressive girth of Arnold Palmer’s hog — he was all man, he was a man . . . all of him was man . . . So I just gave you a little bit of a thing — and by the way, the press will say, oh, he rambled — no, that’s not ramble, you know what that is? That was genius, that’s the weave, now, see, I, I wove — frankly the rest of it, I don’t really even have to talk about, but that was the ultimate weave and, and think of it . . . I will mime giving a blowjob to this microphone stand (not weird at all) and then me and my very fertile a-brain will win this election against . . . ummm . . . “Biden or the other one”.
Is Donald Trump A Fascist Threat to America? Mehdi Hasan and Steve Schmidt Discuss
Zeteo, October 29, 2024
Schmidt: “There is nobody ever, in all of history, who has made the threats that Trump is making who didn’t follow through on them upon taking power. Exactly nobody. Every person who’s ever taken political power, riding to power on the crest of a wave of threats and vengeance and grievances and all of it, has always done exactly what they said they were going to do.”
Hasan: “[If Trump wins] I think it’ll be the first time someone took over a country and brought in authoritarian rule without hiding it. I think Victor Orban and Narendra Modi and all these other authoritarian leaders, we look around the world, they kind of hid their motives and continue to do so. Trump is the first person I can think of in a long time who’s like, Yeah, I want to be a dictator and I want to terminate the Constitution and, guys, if you vote for me, you don't have to vote for me again in four years. I mean, he’s saying it out loud. I don’t know what else to say. I’m losing my mind at the complacency and the inertia and the denialism of some media and in the general public.”
Fascism Expert [Ruth Ben-Ghiat] Gives FINAL WARNING on Trump Before Election | Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen
Meidas Touch, November 3, 2024
Cohen: “Not just at the rallies, but anytime Trump can, he continues to push this narrative, this false narrative, that America is under siege, claiming towns and cities and villages are all being overrun by crime and chaos under, of course, Democratic leadership. How does this apocalyptic rhetoric reflect the authoritarian playbook and, more importantly, why is it so effective with his core base? They know it’s not true. Many of them actually live in some of the cities that Trump is talking about being overrun by crime and chaos and migrants. They know it’s not true, but they back him anyway.”
Ben-Ghiat (in part): “Millions of Americans are being convinced that their country is failing and the endgame is, of course, democracy is failing, that’s the big picture, because Trump is allied with these autocrats, as you mentioned. He praises only autocratic leaders. He wants American democracy to fail. That’s why we have the most booming economy in the world — The Economist recently [October 19] said the American economy is “the envy of the world” — but in Trump’s mouth, we’re failing, the American dream is dead . . . We can never forget that the endgame is to show that democracy is failing, that it leads to anarchy and crime. I’m very concerned with Trump’s escalation of his rhetoric, where he’s actually talking about using the military on our domestic population, talking about cities as occupied and that he’s going to liberate them. It’s like Aurora or Springfield or the Heartland becomes Iraq, and we’re going to go in there and liberate it. And that’s the language of counterinsurgency, when you’re sent there, to free in a war, so he’s really declaring war on the American people.”
Also: Ben-Ghiat remarks that the immunity gift-wrapped for Trump by the Supreme Court would be the dream of every authoritarian. She also mentions, in light of the Washington Post’s and Los Angeles Times’s refusal to endorse Kamala Harris, “there is a lot of obeying-in-advance”, of corproations already showing fealty to Trump, so they can hopefully avoid his wrath or (in Bezos’s case) keep lucrative government contracts, should he win.
Trump Is TRAINING America For TYRANNY: Fascism EXPERT Ruth Ben-Ghiat Explains The Playbook
Mary Trump Media, November 2, 2024
Trump, on the problems with corporate media: “I’ve been thinking a lot about this trajectory, yes, it’s an antiquated system, but the fourth estate exists to hold the elites’ feet to the fire, to be in tension with the government, to keep the government honest, etc., etc., in an attempt . . . to protect democracy and to strengthen democracy, but it seems like the mandate has completely changed. Now we’re dealing with corporate media that seems to think that facts and truths don’t matter, what matters is being ‘fair to both sides’ and we’ve slid even further from that mandate . . . I'm not even sure what it is, because it’s so mistifying — as if it’s rude to point out that Donald has cognitive issues or it’s unseemly to put in 80-point font the most important story of the day, that a candidate for the presidency said that his political opponent — one of his political “enemies” — should be put in front of a firing squad. How did that happen?”
Ben-Ghiat: “It’s as though democracy itself has become partisan and that is a testament to the strength of the message that has been spewed — that’s the correct word — and this is part of Steve Bannon’s original intention, you flood the zone with you-know-what —”
Trump: “Bullshit.”
Ben-Ghiat: “Yes — and that plus all the pressure, all the frivolous lawsuits, all the threats, has worked over time — because I’ve seen this in other countries (it’s just our turn [now]) to make people get into a state where defending democracy — precisely because we’re in this split screen, that’s what I call it. We only have two parties and this is making it immeasurably more difficult for us right now. Other countries have multi-party systems, we only have these two — one of them, the Republicans, is gone from democracy — they’re aggressively antagonistic and they want to wreck our democracy and destroy it, and many of them are in alliance with autocrats and Putin particularly, so if that’s the situation, democracy itself becomes a partisan word — or I’m thought of as a partisan historian, because I study authoritarianism — I was supposed to give a lecture at the Naval Academy and it was cancelled after a pressure campaign from many GOP members of Congress, because talking about authoritarianism in a negative light is partisan now. Defending democracy explicitly and the values of transparency, professionalism, objectivity, accountability, becomes partisan and thus people are pressured into wanting to stay on the sidelines and defend neither of those things. That's where we've gotten . . .”
Another great point: In addition to authoritarians being masterful liars and experts at getting other people to lie for them, Ben-Ghiat says autocrats also believe they reserve the right to decide what is truth. This is why Donald Trump has refused to be a part of any televised debate or interview (such as with “60 Minutes”) in which he will be fact-checked. “Trump cannot be fact-checked. He’s above facrs. He decides what facts are.” [There is also the issue of Trump being unable to counter any pushback about claim he has made, due to ignorance or his dementing mind.]
This is why Trump fixated on Harris suddenly “turning Black”, or her being “dumb as a rock” (he said “she was born that way”). He has also claimed that no one knows what her last name really is and whether she was truly eligible to run for president. Trump says all of this shit because he believes Kamala Harris has no right to define herself. Trump will decide what ethnic background she has. Trump will decide what her name is. Trump will decide if she is eligible or smart enough for whatever job she might want. Trump and Trump alone decides who and what she is. And he wants that power over everyone. If Trump wins this election, he will define what it means to be an American.
His stated plan to deport more than 15 million people (after kidnapping them from their homes and locking them in huge concentration camps) also includes immigrants who have gone through the legal process. Both Trump and JD Vance have said they are making no distinction between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants. Those labels are irrelevant. Trump’s Hiterlian language has not changed at all. These people are “animals”, “savages”, “vermin”, “subhuman”, “not human”, “stone cold killers”, they will “cut your throat” and “rapew your daughters”, they are “poison” and their immediate disposal is necessary to make America great again. Less than two weeks ago, Trump described the United States the “a garbage can for the world”, where other countries send their trash — and later posed in a garbage truck.
Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: “What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments. Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”
Repeating what Steve Schmidt said above: “There is nobody ever, in all of history, who has made the threats that Trump is making who didn’t follow through on them upon taking power. Exactly nobody. Every person who’s ever taken political power, riding to power on the crest of a wave of threats and vengeance and grievances and all of it, has always done exactly what they said they were going to do.”