Do You Ever Imagine How Hard You Would Fight Against A Fascist Take Over?

Lambchop by Nancy Ohanian

I don't think the theme of Suzanne Gamboa's report for NBC News yesterday-- 'White supremacy' was behind child separations-- and Trump officials went along-- would surprise many people. Like someone missed the fact that Trump's top domestic advisor, Stephen Miller is a deranged neo-Nazi, even if the media doesn't like using those words? Gamboa put it more politely just referring to Miller, as Señor Trumpanzee’s "senior adviser and immigration policy architect [as he] called for a show of hands among senior officials on separating children from parents [now looked at as] 'a damning display of white supremacy' and a repeat of crimes against humanity seen through history. In a meeting of 11 senior advisers, Miller warned that not enforcing the administration’s 'zero tolerance' immigration policy 'is the end of our country as we know it' and that opposing it would be un-American, according to two officials who were there." The Trump Cabinet, damning itself for eternity, voted with Miller who "saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a tool to deter more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have separated even more children. No one who attended the meeting argued on the children’s behalf or on the humanity or morality of separating the largely Central American families."

Have you watched A French Village (subtitles) on Prime? It's really an excellent-- if horrifying-- depiction of life in this fictional village occupied by the Nazis during World War II, especially for Jews and other minorities. And there are plenty of French characters like Stephen Miller. Would you take your life into your hands to resist or would you collaborate-- and how much?





Two years ago NBC ran a precursor by Noah Berlatsky: The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism He wrote that a new study "suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy."

White people who say they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race are more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results. MAGA!!

Trump's bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined. When Trump calls Mexicans "rapists," and when he praises authoritarian leaders, he is appealing to the same voters.

If You Support by Chip Proser

Miller and Davis' paper quotes alt right, neo-fascist leader Richard Spencer, who in a 2013 speech declared: "We need an ethno-state so that our people can ‘come home again’… We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy." Ethnic cleansing is impossible as long as marginalized people have enough votes to stop it. But this roadblock disappears if you get rid of democracy. Spencer understands that white rule in the current era essentially requires totalitarianism. That's the logic of fascism.

Trump's rise is often presented as a major break with the past, and as a repudiation of American values and democratic commitments. But in an email, Miller pointed out that white intolerance has long served as an excuse for, and a spark for, authoritarian measures.

"People are fond of the Framers’ grand vision of liberty and equality for all," Miller says, "but the beauty of the Federalist papers can’t paper over the real measures of exclusion that were baked into their understanding of a limited franchise."

Black people, Asians, Native Americans and women were prevented from voting for significant stretches of American history. America's tradition of democracy (for some) exists alongside a tradition of authoritarianism (for some). The survey data doesn't show people rejecting American traditions, then, Miller says, so much as it shows "a preference for the sort of white-ethnocentrism that imbued much of the functional form of democracy for the better part of two centuries."

The Founders supported democracy as long as it was restricted to white male property holders. Today, our understanding of democracy is more expansive-- at least in theory.





In practice, the GOP has increasingly been embracing a politics of white resentment tied to disenfranchisement. "Since Richard Nixon's ‘Southern Strategy,’ the GOP has pigeon-holed itself as, in large part, an aggrieved white people's party," Miller told me.

Trump's nativist language made the GOP's sympathies more explicit, leading to further erosion of support among non-white voters. George W. Bush won 35 percent of Hispanic voters in 2000; Trump won only 28 percent. His showing with Asian-American voters was only 27 percent-- worse than any winning presidential candidate on record.

White people continue to decrease as a percentage of the U.S. population; at some point, it's going to be impossible to win a national, democratic American election with a platform that alienates people of color. The GOP, seeing their coming demographic apocalypse, has pushed voter ID laws and other barriers to voting to try to prevent black and other minority voters from getting to the polls. In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker even attempted to delay elections for state seats that he believed Democrats would win.

"The GOP has dug itself into such a hole on this that the most practical effort to stave off these impending losses is to disenfranchise the votes of the same ethnic/racial outgroups against whom GOP messaging has been stoking animosity," Miller tells me. A party built on demonizing and attacking marginalized people is a party that will have to disenfranchise those same people if it is to survive.

Blaming authoritarianism on partisanship suggests that both sides are equally to blame for the erosion of democratic norms. But greater commitment to abortion rights and free healthcare in the Democratic party isn't a threat to the foundations of democracy. The growing concentration of intolerant white voters in the GOP, on the other hand, has created a party which appears less and less committed to the democratic project. When faced with a choice between bigotry and democracy, too many Americans are embracing the first while abandoning the second.

You can imagine that self-selected groups Americans reacted differently to the nationwide protests over the extrajudicial murder (lynching) of George Floyd. A new PRRI survey found that Republicans didn't change their opinions at all, while normal people were profoundly impacted:

The CEO of PRRI, Robert Jones, wrote that "In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a police officer, the attitudes of Democrats and religiously unaffiliated Americans have shifted significantly, but there has been no movement among Republicans and white evangelical Protestants. For example, approximately eight in ten Republicans and seven in ten white evangelical Protestants continue to say that the recent killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents, rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans-- views that are unchanged since PRRI began asking this question in 2015.”

The survey found that "a majority (56%) of Americans believe that recent killings of unarmed Black men are part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans, compared to 42% who say these are isolated incidents. These views are consistent with views in 2018 but the inverse of views from 2015, when a majority (53%) believed these events were isolated incidents. Republicans are about as likely today as they were in 2015 to say the killing of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans (78% vs. 82%), Democrats are about half as likely as they were in 2015 to agree with this sentiment (17% vs. 32%). Among white Democrats, this shift is even bigger (19% vs. 43%)." White evangelicals are nearly as racist as Republicans in general, their attitudes having remained unmoved over the last five years, with 72% in both 2020 and 2015 agreeing that the killing of Black men by police are isolated incidents."

Can Trump Be Toppled Without Bloodshed?

Melania avoids being seen anywhere near Trump as much as she can and I bet it isn't just because she loathes him. She's from Slovenia, separated from Romania by a stretch of southern Hungary. In 1989, she was just 19 years old, a model and prostitute in her hometown and in nearby Ljubljana and she remembers well when Romanian president Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled their palace and were arrested and summarily executed in Târgoviște, a small town in the southern part of the country. Elena shrieked, "You sons of bitches!" as she was being dragged to a wall to be shot. (120 bullets were found in the couple's bodies. The following year, the revolutionary government responsible for the execution, abolished capital punishment.)

Anyway... Melania doesn't want to wind up against a wall and shot just because she's married to a fascist pig. And yesterday The Atlantic published a piece by Franklin Foer, The Trump Regime Is Beginning To Topple. No doubt Melania hopes when they come and drag Trump out of the White House, they overlook her and grab Ivanka instead. "Over the course of his presidency," wrote Foer, "Donald Trump has indulged his authoritarian instincts-- and now he’s meeting the common fate of autocrats whose people turn against them. What the United States is witnessing is less like the chaos of 1968, which further divided a nation, and more like the nonviolent movements that earned broad societal support in places such as Serbia, Ukraine, and Tunisia, and swept away the dictatorial likes of Milošević, Yanukovych, and Ben Ali."

No doubt Melania likes that "non-violent" description but I'm sure she's thinking of the horrifying photos she saw-- an impressionable a 19 yearly hooker-- of First Lady Elena Ceaușescu, being dragged out of a kangaroo court kicking and screaming

to a wall to be shot like a dog

Foer though predicts that "Trump’s time in office will end with an election and not an ouster, it is only possible to grasp the magnitude of what we’re seeing and to map what comes next by looking to these antecedents from abroad. As in the case of many such revolutions, two battles are being waged in America. One is a long struggle against a brutal and repressive ideology. The other is a narrower fight over the fate of a particular leader. The president rose to power by inflaming racial tensions. He now finds his own fate enmeshed in the struggle against police brutality and racism.

The most important theorist of nonviolent revolutions is the late political scientist Gene Sharp. A conscientious objector during the Korean War who spent nine months in prison, Sharp became a close student of Mahatma Gandhi’s struggles. His work set out to extract the lessons of the Indian revolt against the British. He wanted to understand the weaknesses of authoritarian regimes-- and how nonviolent movements could exploit them. Sharp distilled what he learned into a 93-page handbook, From Dictatorship to Democracy, a how-to guide for toppling autocracy.

Sharp’s foundational insight is embedded in an aphorism: “Obedience is at the heart of political power.” A dictator doesn’t maintain power on his own; he relies on individuals and institutions to carry out his orders. A successful democratic revolution prods these enablers to stop obeying. It makes them ashamed of their complicity and fearful of the social and economic costs of continued collaboration.

Sharp posited that revolutionaries should focus first on the regime’s softest underbelly: the media, the business elites, and the police. The allegiance of individuals in the outer circle of power is thin and rooted in fear. By standing strong in the face of armed suppression, protesters can supply examples of courage that inspire functionaries to stop carrying out orders, or as Sharp put it, to “withhold cooperation.” Each instance of resistance provides the model for further resistance. As the isolation of the dictators grows-- as the inner circles of power join the outer circle in withholding cooperation-- the regime crumbles.

This is essentially what transpired in Ukraine in 2014. When the country’s president backed away from plans to join the European Union, a crowd amassed in Kyiv’s central square, the Maidan. The throngs initially had no avowed intention or realistic hope of overthrowing the kleptocratic president, Viktor Yanukovych. But instead of letting the demonstrators shout themselves hoarse in the thick of subfreezing winter, Yanukovych set about violently confronting them. This tactic backfired horribly. A movement with limited aims became a full-blown revolution. Oligarchs quietly slunk away from a leader they had long subsidized. Lackeys who had faithfully served the regime resigned, for fear of attracting the public’s ire. In the bitter end, Yanukovych found himself isolated, alone with his own family and his Russian advisers, destined for exile.

It is astonishing how events in the U.S., despite all the obvious imperfections of the analogy, have traced the early phases of this history. This is observable in the images of the crowds on successive nights, as Trump’s violent suppression of the protests in Lafayette Square has only caused their ranks to swell. And it’s possible to see how elites, in the course of just a few days, have begun to withhold cooperation, starting with the outer circles of power and quickly turning inward.

Twitter’s decision to label Trump’s posts as misleading was a hinge moment. For years, the company had provided the president with a platform for propaganda and a mechanism for cowing his enemies, a fact that long irked both critics outside Twitter and employees within. Only when Trump used Twitter to threaten violence against the protests did the company finally limit the ability of users to see or share a tweet.

Once Twitter applied its rules to Trump-- and received accolades for its decision-- it inadvertently set a precedent. The company had stood strong against the bully, and showed that there was little price to pay for the choice. A large swath of S&P 500 companies soon calculated that it was better to stand in solidarity with the protests, rather than wait for their employees to angrily pressure them to act.

A cycle of noncooperation was set in motion. Local governments were the next layer of the elite to buck Trump’s commands. After the president insisted that governors “dominate” the streets on his behalf, they roundly refused to escalate their response. Indeed, New York and Virginia rebuffed a federal request to send National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. Even the suburb of Arlington, Virginia, pulled its police that had been loaned to control the crowd in Lafayette Square.

As each group of elites refused Trump, it became harder for the next to comply in good conscience. In Sharp’s taxonomy, the autocrat’s grasp on power depends entirely on the allegiance of the armed forces. When the armed forces withhold cooperation, the dictator is finished. Of course, the U.S. is far more democratic than the regimes Sharp studied and doesn’t fit his taxonomy neatly. But on Wednesday, the president’s very own secretary of defense explicitly rejected Trump’s threat to deploy active-duty military officers to American streets. It’s among the most striking instances of an official bucking a president in recent decades.

The examples of Serbia, Ukraine, and Tunisia show how even the subservient unexpectedly break from a leader once that leader is doomed to illegitimacy. And to an extent, the cycle of abandonment has already begun. Jim Mattis’s excoriation of his old boss prodded Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to echo his condemnation of the president. As each defector wins praise for moral courage, it incentivizes the next batch of defectors.

Even if the protests fizzle-- and the parade of denunciations comes to an end-- it’s worth pausing to marvel at the moment. Despite the divisions of the country, a majority of its people joined together in shared abhorrence of the president, at least for an instant. Sectors of society that studiously avoid politics broke with their reticence. In a dark era, when it seemed beyond the moral capacities of the nation, it mustered the will to disobey.

And what about Trump's henchmen in Congress, who have legitimized his regime and give it the patina of legitimacy? The anti-Trump wave is getting stronger by the day. Yesterday, George W. Bush, Colin Powell and Mitt Romney all said they would not support Trump's reelection and would not vote for him. Will other senators join Murkowski and Romney? What about Susan Collins (R-ME)? Cory Gardner (R-CO) is a lost cause. So are Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Martha McSally (R-AZ), Thom Tillis (R-NC), David Perdue (R-GA), #LadyG (R-SC), Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Steve Daines (R-MT). They've all worked to look like they're connected to Trump at the hip. That will come back to bite each of them in November-- as well as Mitch McConnell (R-KY). And now... the exciting new Lincoln Project add that was just released. 

More Voters Are Catching On-- Trump's Overall Job Approval: 38%

A new poll of registered voters helps explain why we're seeing more dangerously psychotic manifestations from Trump lately. His approval has sunk to 38%. And all the national polls show Trump losing-- including, but not pictured below-- the private polls from Trump's own campaign. The 5 polls, on average, show him losing by a tad over 8%. It's a Trump referendum... and voters don't want him in office again:

The state polls are also miserable for Trump. The only swing state he's leading in is Iowa-- with an average over 3 polls of 3.5%. In blue states like California (down 23 points), Connecticut (down 23 points), New Jersey (down 19 points) and New York (down 25.6 points). At least he's ahead in Texas-- if only by 1 point in the most recent poll.

• Arizona- minus 3+
• Florida- minus 3+
• Michigan- minus 4+
• Nevada- minus 7.5
• New Hampshire- minus 6
• North Carolina- minus 4
• Ohio- minus 3
• Pennsylvania- minus 6+
• Virginia- minus 3.8
• Wisconsin- minus 1.6

CNN reported that the survey found that "a growing majority of Americans feel racism is a big problem in the country today and that the criminal justice system in America favors whites over blacks. More than 8 in 10 also say that the peaceful protests that have spread throughout the nation following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers are justified. Americans now consider race relations as important a campaign issue as the economy and health care, according to the survey." Less than a third of the country thinks Trump us doing a good job in regard to race relations.

And back to those manifestations of psychosis I mentioned above. Prominent psychiatrist Dr. Lance Dodes warned that "as Trump sinks into 'paranoid rage,' he will likely seek to cancel or overturn the 2020 election. This could be quite a challenge. Chauncey DeVega, who interviewed Dodes, noted that "Donald Trump is a destroyer, not a healer. Given his tendencies toward authoritarianism, even fascism, Trump is only capable of sowing more division in a nation convulsing in pain and anger over the murder of George Floyd, the resulting explosion of police violence and what that reveals about our extreme levels of social inequality and broader culture of cruelty... Considered in total, Donald Trump's threats against the American people, and the choices he has made that have inflamed the country's pain and grievances and anger, are part of a much larger pattern of behavior. Trump is addicted to violence. He encourages and revels in police brutality and thuggery-- the police officer who murdered George Floyd by crushing his neck was in the most basic way just following Trump's orders. As a function of his addiction to violence, Donald Trump uses stochastic terrorism to command his followers to attack various perceived enemies: nonwhite people, liberals and progressives, Latin American migrants and refugees, Muslims, Jews, so-called anarchists and antifa members and so on... Dodes warned that Donald Trump is a sociopath (defined as psychopathic personality type) who will do anything to stay in power." Here's Dodes:

When Donald Trump took office there was a lot of talk about how he would "become presidential" and grow into the office and its responsibilities.

But he could not change his behavior because, as a sociopath or psychopath, he has a severe personality disorder. People with personality disorders don't change depending on the job they hold. The hope that Donald Trump would stop being sadistic, that he would develop the human quality of empathy for others, that he would value the rights and feelings of others, was never realistic. I think people keep pleading with him to be someone he is not because we all wish to have a president who is mature and compassionate rather than someone who is, in his essence, cruel.

  ...When mental health professionals warned that he has an antisocial personality disorder, that he is a sociopath or psychopath, they were communicating that there is something fundamentally wrong with him. He is expert at conning people, pretending to care about them, lying to get what he wants. But this ability to fool and cheat people falls apart when he is forced to be real, as when he's confronted with his lies or indeed any disagreement. Then the façade of the con man disappears and we see the uncaring and violent man underneath. He is unable to hide this true self when cornered.

...[M]orality means nothing to him. Therefore, Donald Trump does whatever he wants. He does not care if his behavior is moral or not. If Trump's behavior is immoral, or otherwise wrong and antisocial, that means nothing to him.

By comparison, If Barack Obama were the president right now with the protests, the virus, the economy in crisis and all the other great problems, the whole country would feel different. The United States would be like a family that has challenges, sometimes great ones. But that family also has a father or a mother who can rise above the situation and act with maturity and perspective.

Donald Trump cannot do that. Because he has no morality, his idea about solving the country's problems is to shoot people who are protesting and looting. When he said "looting means shooting" that reflects his inability to see the world through any perspective other than his own. ...Trump's behavior is deeply pathological, consistent with his antisocial personality disorder. Indifference to the death of others is a characteristic of psychopaths.

Active Shooter by Nancy Ohanian

...If you are an honest person, lying thousands of times is a lot of work. It is not work for Donald Trump. Again, even though it's often hard for folks to grasp, Donald Trump is different from normal human beings. We've all seen his utterly false statements, which he insists are facts. The degree of his insistence, regardless of the evidence, is essentially delusional.  It's one factor that makes him so very dangerous.

Trump is much more dangerous right now, and he will become increasingly dangerous as the 2020 election approaches if he's losing. Criticism, disagreement or opposition means to him that he is being attacked by evil people. This capacity to sink into paranoid rage is another aspect of his disorder. We should expect that he will try to turn America into a police state, or declare martial law and suspend the Constitution. He will likely try to prevent or overturn the 2020 election if he loses. In order to have an excuse for ending democracy, he is likely to have his own "Reichstag fire" incident, perhaps via starting a war with China or Iran. Like Hitler, he can then announce, "You must turn to me as your leader. I'm the only one who can save us in the time of this disaster."

...His response is completely consistent with his disorder, and to that extent was predictable, just as many mental health professionals have been able to predict his actions for years now.

  Donald Trump is incapable of properly leading the country because leadership requires attention, empathy and concern for the people who are following you. Trump is incapable of that behavior. Donald Trump is not able to do the right thing because he does not care about doing what is right. Donald Trump is the weakest of men. The bully is always the weakest person.

How Sure Are You Trump Is A Fascist-- And Is That News To You Or Have You Known All Along?

With the exception of Putin-puppet Michael Flynn, Trump has now publicly denounced all of "his" generals. Thursday night, in a typically school yard insulting way, he went after his former Chief of Staff, General John Kelly.

Friday morning Kelly slammed back in an interview with former White House communications director and ex-Trump crony, who Kelly had fired. He told the Mooch he agrees with Jim Mattis' assessment that Trump is "the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people."

"There is a concern" Kelly said, "I think an awful big concern, that the partisanship has gotten out of hand, the tribal thing has gotten out of hand. He's quite a man, Jim Mattis, and for him to do that tells you where he is relative to the concern he has for our country."

If that won't get Trump running back to his Twitter account, Kelly clearly seemed to be urging people to vote against him in November. "I think we need to look harder at who we elect. I think we should look at people that are running for office and put them through the filter: What is their character like? What are their ethics?"

Trump always polls very poorly on character issues. Last week's YouGov poll, for example, asked respondents if they believe Trump's tweets. 7% said all the time and 17% said most of the time-- that adds up to 24%. On the other hand, 38% said they don't believe anything Trump tweets and 16% said they believe some of it (but less than half), which adds up to 54%.

Later in the survey, respondents were asked if they think Trump is honest and trustworthy. Only 31% responded affirmatively. A majority of Americans say he is neither honest nor trustworthy-- including people in every region of the country.

YouGov never asks people if they think Trump is a fascist. This week, Pulitzer Prize winner James Risen asserted that Trump is an autocrat and that it's up to the rest of us to stop him. He started with 4 questions, each aimed at a different group:

• I have a question for American leftists: Do you finally see the difference between the Democrats and Donald Trump?
• I have a question for American right-wingers: Do you finally see that it is Trump who will take your guns?
• I have a question for American evangelicals: Do you finally see that Trump is the one who will close your churches?
• I have a question for Republican members of Congress: Do you finally see that you will be in the camps too?

I doubt there are any leftists-- not even Democratic Party haters like myself-- who ever missed seeing the difference between the Democrats and Trump, but the other questions make some sense. "Dictatorships," he wrote, "are built on denial. Dictators take over gradually; each incremental step that erodes civil liberties and the rule of law can be justified and explained away. Sometimes a would-be dictator is laughed off as a political buffoon who shouldn’t be taken seriously. While it is happening, no one can quite believe that they are on the road to serfdom. Autocrats often enjoy broad public support for their crackdowns. Initially, they target the 'others,' while the majority cheers. The public doesn’t recognize the threat until it is too late. The supporters who cheered the loudest are often caught up in ideological purges and become some of the regime’s earliest victims. After nearly four years in office, it is impossible to miss what Trump truly is. He is a psychopath who lusts for dictatorial powers. He has jettisoned everyone from the government who might get in his way. He is now surrounded by enablers in jackboots like Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo."

Gen. Mark Milley, a lickspittle who claims to be an American military officer, strolled through the streets of Washington, D.C. on Monday night with Trump and Barr while U.S. military personnel were illegally being used to attack protesters and shove them out of the way so that Trump could pose for a photo holding a Bible in front of graffiti-covered St. John’s Episcopal Church. The men had the look of coup plotters bent on seizing the government in the dark of night.

That same evening, military helicopters hovered low over Washington, just over the heads of demonstrators who were protesting the May 25 murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. The noise and downward air blasts from the helicopters were used to disperse crowds. (Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said that the Pentagon asked Maryland and Virginia for troops without the knowledge of the D.C. government.) It was one of the most shameful episodes involving the use of the U.S. military in the nation’s capital since 1932, when the Army infamously used tanks and tear gas to attack protesters known as the “Bonus Army,” World War I veterans camped out to demand long-promised bonuses.

Trump gave away his game Monday night. A scheming man of no moral convictions, he figured that holding a Bible would be enough to rally his white evangelical base.

He said nothing as he stood, Bible in hand, for the photographers in front of the church, but it was easy to guess what he was thinking. He was probably thinking that evangelicals are chumps, morons who always fall for his cheap tricks. It’s not hard to discern that Trump looks down on evangelicals, resents them for how easy it is to manipulate them, and will turn on them as soon as he no longer needs them.

Washington Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde readily saw through Trump after his photo-op in front at St. John’s. “The president just used the Bible, our sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus,” she said.

The next day, Trump stood for photos at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, doubling down on his shabby game of exploiting religious iconography. This time, he was going for conservative Catholics, rather than evangelicals, but the act was the same. The Catholic archbishop of Washington quickly attacked Trump’s visit to the shrine, just as Budde had attacked his photo-op in front of St. John’s the day before.

Meanwhile, in the White House Rose Garden on Monday, the president vowed to protect “Second Amendment rights.” Once again, Trump proved that he thinks his supporters are idiots who can be exploited with simple, coded phrases. The gun rights activists who rave enthusiastically about giving Trump expansive powers may soon have troops knocking at their doors as helicopters hover overhead. When that happens, they may feel, too late, an unexpected kinship with the protesters they now disparage.

Trump bared his authoritarian intentions in a conference call with state governors Monday, in which he berated them for being weak in the face of protests, demanding that they “dominate” the demonstrators, while threatening to send troops to their states if they didn’t accede to his demands. Trump also talked that day by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin; maybe he was getting pointers on how to crush dissent.

Trump is speeding down the path toward dictatorship because what remains of the Republican Party is eager for him to grab power. It is now a white identity party, filled with aging white people who fear the demographic trends of increasing diversity. They don’t like America as it now exists, and they want Trump to destroy the rules and laws that protect minorities, the poor, and the disadvantaged.

On Monday, Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and Trump acolyte, offered a typical Republican response to the protests when he called for all the lethal tools of the global war on terror to be brought home and turned on American protesters. “Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” Gaetz tweeted Monday. Twitter restricted access to the Gaetz tweet, labeling it a glorification of violence.

By advocating for an end to the rule of law, Republicans like Gaetz will find themselves surviving at the whim of Trump. That’s when the jokes about drones and Gitmo won’t seem so funny to them.

Did Senior Military Officers Just Thwart Trump's Attempted Coup? Mad Dog Bites Trumpanzee

Trump never gave Roger Stone a cabinet position but Stone was more influential than most of Trump's cabinet. And now he's signaling he's about to pardon him for his criminal activities. This should come as no surprise to anyone since Stone held fats to the code of omertà Trump so admires. Stone's supposed to show up to begin his 3 year prison sentence this month. Trump's gaslighting tweet yesterday makes it pretty clear Stone won't be serving any time:

Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Bernstein noted how excruciatingly bad Donald "always hires the best people" Trump has consistently been in his hiring choices. As he's demonstrated since the earliest days of his campaign, he always hires the worst people. And not just in the eyes of rational people-- also in the eyes of Trump himself! "[T]he list of Donald Trump’s terrible personnel choices according to Donald Trump gets one name longer, as the president reacted predictably by bashing Mattis. That list now includes a defense secretary, a secretary of state, an attorney general, at least one national security adviser and at least two White House chiefs of staff. Again, there are very few people who are otherwise undecided about Trump who would be swayed by what an awful job-- according to Trump himself-- he has done appointing people for the most important positions in government. But it’s a remarkable record nonetheless."

Voters should make it clear that any senator who votes to confirm any Trump nominee for anything from now until he's driven from office will also be voted out of office, especially rubberstampers up for reelection in November, like Martha McSally (R-AZ), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Steve Daines (R-MT), Susan Collins (R-ME), David Perdue (R-GA), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Joni Ernst (R-IA) and, of course, the architects of Trump's hiring practices, John Cornyn (R-TX) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

And now Trump wants to fire another Defense Secretary, reflexive lackey Mark Esper, who-- embarrassed by the fascism displayed this week-- strayed from Trump's plans to send in the troops. Jennifer Jacobs reported Trump confronted him over his anti-authoritarian comments and then started the process of finding a replacement.

In a separate Bloomberg piece she did with Josh Wingrove, Jacobs wrote that between Esper and Mattis, Trump is in a position no other presidents have even faced before. As Bernstein made clear, "It's hard to get across what a big deal it is that former Defense Secretary James Mattis has not only publicly criticized President Donald Trump, but done so in extremely strong terms. In a statement issued Wednesday, Mattis talked about 'those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution,' and said that 'We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.' He added that Trump was engaged in a 'deliberate attempt' to 'divide us,' something he says no other president in his lifetime has done. (For the record, Mattis is 69, so he’s talking about everyone since Harry Truman.)" Jacobs and Wingrove called it "a direct challenge to his leadership... The double-barreled rebuke from his current and former defense chiefs elevates the pressure on Trump as he falters in handling a pair of crises: a raging pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 Americans, and protests over a painful legacy of racial inequality, injustice and police brutality... Mattis’s criticism echoed attacks leveled on Trump by Biden, but the former defense chief’s key role in the president’s original national security cabinet gives him a standing few outsiders could ever claim... Trump lashed out in a pair of tweets mocking Mattis’s military service and his nicknames, calling him “the world’s most overrated General."

Mattis stepped down 18 months ago after Trump abruptly announced on Twitter that he wanted to pull troops from Syria, but he was a hugely influential member of the president’s first national security cabinet.

Trump was so eager to unveil his nomination of Mattis after the 2016 election that he announced the plans at a campaign-style rally. He introduced the former head of U.S. Central Command by a moniker-- “Mad Dog”-- and called him “one of the most effective generals that we’ve had in many, many decades.”

It remains to be seen if Mattis’s rebuke will have lasting political repercussions, but it strikes at the heart of what the president has pitched as one of his strengths: his fulsome praise of the military as part of his “America First” approach to the world, even while he frequently criticizes the national security establishment for allegedly trying to undermine his administration.

Despite Trump’s praise of Mattis when he took office, by the end of the defense chief’s tenure their relationship was shattered. Upon his departure, Mattis issued a blunt resignation letter that amounted to a rebuke of Trump’s “America First” mantra.

“We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances,” Mattis wrote at the time. “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”

Days later, Trump lashed out at Mattis, saying “What’s he done for me?” Singling out the U.S. quagmire in Afghanistan, Trump added, “How has he done in Afghanistan? Not too good.”

Wednesday’s events unfolded in rapid fashion. Mattis’s scathing statement landed as Trump renewed his threat to send in the military to quash protests during an interview with Spicer, now a host for NewsMax TV, a conservative outlet. Trump called ongoing protests in New York a “disaster.”

“And we could help them a lot, they have to ask,” Trump told Spicer. “If they don’t get it straightened out soon, I’ll take care of it.”

For another generation of Americans K-Pop is a much bigger deal than James Mattis. And according to a report from the L.A. Times, Trump has lost the K-Pop community. "K-pop fans are famous for their persistent and creative ways to make online life miserable for people who demean their favorite artists and groups. But on Wednesday, the genre’s sometimes-toxic community harnessed its digital savvy and mercilessness for more noble causes: shutting down white supremacist social media and overwhelming police tip lines meant to identify Black Lives Matter protesters.

A planned day of social media action from white supremacists, which was being promoted with the hashtag #whitelivesmatter, quickly went sideways. K-pop fans, who on any given day control a meaningful percentage of the trending topics across social media, decided to flood the tag with “fancam” footage of beloved acts like BTS and Blackpink. They also threw in memes ripping anyone earnestly using the tag to search for white-nationalist news.

They took aim at several pro-Trump and police hashtags too, renderingmuch of #MAGA and #BlueLivesMatter Twitter useless for the day.

  K-pop fans also found ways to steer their ire toward police efforts to identify Black Lives Matter protesters. Several police departments, including those in Dallas and Grand Rapids, Mich., had established public digital tip lines where residents could send footage of protesters, which cops could then investigate.

“If you have video of illegal activity from the protests and are trying to share it with @DallasPD, you can download it to our iWatch Dallas app. You can remain anonymous,” the Dallas department wrote on Saturday.

Over the weekend, jokes about K-pop fandom’s capacity to flood the app with fancam footage quickly became a genuine direct action, as fans filed reams of “tips” that were really footage of Korean groups performing. The Dallas PD quickly pulled back its efforts: “Due to technical difficulties iWatch Dallas app will be down temporarily,” the department announced.

  A number of K-pop artists have been more plainly supportive of Black Lives Matter protests sparked by George Floyd’s killing, including Got7, Jay Park, Amber Liu, CL and others. They’ve acknowledged the debt that their music owes to black artists and advocated for protests that have swept much of the globe.

NBC News may be ignoring the K-pop generation, but they made sure Americans are aware Trump has been losing support from the officer corp, which seems to have nixed his attempted coup.

But here are three reasons why Mattis’ takedown of Trump matters.

One, Mattis was an eyewitness to Trump’s presidency. “In addition to the authority he’s earned over a long and distinguished career, he speaks as one of a handful of high-ranking officials who have been firsthand witnesses to the way Donald Trump has operated as president,” The Dispatch writes of Mattis.

Two, he was seen as one of the early guardrails/validators early in Trump’s administration.

And three, Mattis isn’t alone in respected military voices speaking out against Trump and his actions, joining former Joints Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and Martin Dempsey, as well as retired Marine General John Allen.

“The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020. Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment,” Allen writes.

It’s hard to say we’re at an inflection point, because public opinion of Trump rarely changes-- except at the margins.

But these are significant breaks with a president who routinely finds himself fighting unpopular battles.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

They can't do anything without the approval of the President Of The United States.

- Herr Trumpanzee, in reference to the rights of the individual states, 4/13/20.

Happy Monday everybody! What's that? You don't like Mondays? Well, in White House Land, it's a real special special day today, very special. It's April 20th, aka the birthday of a certain Trumpian role model from Austria, born on this day in 1889.

How far will Trump get? That's up to each and every one of us. He's certainly made it clear what he wants to be and where he wants to take this country. So have all of those Republican $enators who voted not to remove him from office when the chance was presented. There was no surprise in that, just as there can be no surprise when one puts Trump in the context of the persistent rightward drift of both major political parties over the last 50+ years and more. In that light, Trump not only has a goal, he is a goal. But, a goal for actual patriotic Americans? Choose. Voice your choice, one way and/or the other. Personally, I wouldn't leave it to just voting with a hackable voting machine on 11/3. It's 11:58 and we're 120 seconds away from Trump demanding to be called Chancellor or President For Life, to the cheering of the 62,000,000, or more.

Total, as in totalitarian. Trump gets more bold about his intentions every day, especially during his recent rallies disguised as briefings, not that we didn't already see his intentions during the 2016 campaign or when he called his fellow Nazis in Charlottesville "very fine people" or when he proudly presented Stephen Miller to America as one of his top aides and speech writers. Never mind that amendment 10 of the American Constitution says:

The powers not delegated to the Untied States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Remember when Republicans used to claim state rights on just about everything?

Señor Trumpanzee Threatened To Adjourn Both Chambers Of Congress

The Trumpists want to flex their authoritarianism and just flat out take over the government. Who didn't see this coming? The pandemic is the perfect excuse for him to try to do whatever it takes to seize extra-constitutional power. Yesterday, at his daily televised shit-show he threatened to force Congress to adjourn so he can appoint all the neo-Nazis it wants to put into position:

We have a tremendous number of people that have to come into government and now more so than ever before because of the virus and the problem. We have to do it and we have to do whatever we have to do... If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro-forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam what they do. It's a scam and everybody knows it, and it's been that way for a long time.

To Trump, the normal functioning of government is obstructionism. He insists his sub-par nominations should have been approved without hearing and in just one hour because... um... they left law firms and jobs to come work for him. Fact is, the 47 Senate Democrats are, unfortunately, not blocking his putrid nominees. The GOP makes every single decision about how the Senate runs and all the Democrats can do to protect the country is stall-- for a couple of hours... literally TWO hours. That's what he's whining about? Two hours? Or is he trying to deceived manipulate people? Trump? Deceive and manipulate?

Brett Samuels and Jordain Carney, writing for The Hill, noted that "Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution grants Trump the power to 'on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper.' That means that in order for the president to step in and dismiss both, the GOP-controlled Senate would have to adjourn while the Democrat-held House objected. Senate Democrats also have procedural tools to prevent the Senate from adjourning. The National Constitution Center noted that 'no President has ever exercised' the authority."

Senate Republicans were expected to set up another three weeks of pro forma session on Thursday afternoon to last through the chamber's new May 4 return date, after the recess was extended because of the coronavirus. Spokesmen for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about if they would now try to pass a resolution by unanimous consent.

The Trump administration has long been plagued by vacancies across the government. Trump has declined to nominate full-time appointees to key positions, instead relying officials in acting capacities.

One hundred and fifty of 749 "key positions" tracked by The Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service do not have nominees, while another 15 are awaiting nomination.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a key agency in guarding against the coronavirus and other national security threats, has not had a full-time secretary in over a year. A number of other top positions in the department remain unfilled.

Trump cited the director of national intelligence, two members of the Federal Reserve Board, the undersecretary of agriculture responsible for administering food security programs and the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media as nominees he has put forward who are awaiting confirmation amid the pandemic.

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) nominated to be the director of national intelligence has not yet received a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Judy Shelton, one of Trump's Federal Reserve Board nominees, has not yet received a vote before the Senate Banking Committee, after hitting early skepticism from GOP members of the panel.

Trump's comments are likely to pour new fuel into the fight over nominations, which have emerged as a lightning rod in recent years. Senate Republicans went "nuclear" in 2019 to change the Senate's rules and cut down on the amount of time it takes to confirm most executive nominees and district judges. But Democrats are still able to force McConnell to eat up days of floor time for a single nomination under the chamber's rules.

Trump touted the number of judicial nominations, a top priority for McConnell, confirmed by the Senate: 193. But he argued that nominees for the executive branch were stuck in limbo for up to years because Democrats were "holding this up."

"It's a very unfair system," Trump said. "There's no time for anybody else and many of these people have been waiting for two and a half years... We can't get them approved by the Democrats... It's just a concerted effort to make life difficult." 

February 24 wasn't that long ago, was it? Should this man really be making any decisions in the middle of an existential, worldwide crisis like this, a crisis he only exacerbated every single time he involved himself in it in any way? If his followers keep taking his stock tips, much of the rest of America is going to get rich.

Trump’s “Perfect Plan” To Become Dictator In November Runs Through 12-18 Swing State Legislatures

by Bob Fitrakis, Joel Segal and Harvey Wasserman

Donald Trump’s “Perfect Plan” to become dictator in November now runs through 30 Republican-controlled state legislatures, with the pivot in 12-18 swing states.

Anyone hoping for any remnant shreds of human rights and personal freedom has just seven months to stop the terminal destruction of what’s left of American democracy. Nothing is hidden or a surprise. There are no excuses.

Trump’s path to dictatorship is simple…and no secret.

Its primary foundation is the stripping from the voter rolls some 17 million American citizens. Using a wide range of pretexts, the Republicans have made it clear that “voter fraud” means any ballot cast by anyone who is not rich, white, old or a member of the Republican Party.

There has been no effort to hide this. Trump has worried in public that if all eligible voters get a ballot in a Vote by Mail system, the Republicans “will never win another election.”

The Electoral College means, in effect, that we no longer have national elections. The presidency this fall will essentially be decided in 12-18 states. In many of them, GOP legislators have proudly proclaimed that they’ll do everything they can to restrict the vote.

We have already seen in Wisconsin (and now in Ohio) the definitive GOP model for November. It’s based on stripped voter rolls, withheld ballots, dysfunctional polling stations and rigged vote counts.

Thirty states have Republican legislatures. A dozen of them could swing the Electoral College to Trump. Six more may be in play.

Despite its Democrat governor, Wisconsin’s gerrymandered state legislature (as certified by the US Supreme Court) trashed the April 6 primary. It stripped voter rolls, sabotaged Wisconsin’s vote by mail system and forced countless non-millionaires of youth and color to stand in line for hours, exposing themselves to the rain and Coronavirus.

In 2019 alone, Ohio's GOP Secretary of State stripped 485,000 citizens from the Ohio voter rolls. This spring, Ohio’s primary was rightfully postponed until April 28 by its Republican Governor Mike DeWine. But in the interim, the gerrymandered Legislature has duplicated Wisconsin’s age/race/class-based disenfranchisement by making it virtually impossible for non-millionaires to get vote-by-mail ballots.

Unless somehow stopped, Republican legislatures will do the same in November, guaranteeing Trump’s coronation. The key states include Alabama (which has a critical US Senate race), Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin. Minnesota has a split legislature, as does Alaska.

The twelve most critical swing states are MN, WI, MI, OH, PA, NH, NC, FL, NM, AZ, NV, IA. They are almost certain to decide the election.

Six states where the Democrats have an outside chance are Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, Montana and Kentucky. Georgia and Texas have strongly shifting demographics. Louisiana, Kansas, Montana and Kentucky are also generally considered blood red, but all four have Democrat governors. Kentucky is especially key because its senior Senator Mitch McConnell is running for re-election.

Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Nevada also have Democrat governors. In many, Democrat popular majorities in 2018 (55% in Wisconsin) were overridden by gerrymandering that gave the legislatures to the Republicans, sometimes with 2/3 margins or more.

And as in Wisconsin and Ohio, come November the GOP plan will be to shred the Vote by Mail systems, making it impossible for suspected Democrats to get ballots.

The situation is complicated by the Trump assault on the U.S. Postal Service. The Republicans have long wanted to destroy the USPS, mostly because it is a largely functional, heavily unionized public institution that could be privatized for the immense personal profit of their corporate cronies. The Trumpites now have the added incentive of destroying the most effective way to distribute ballots in a Vote by Mail scenario.

We can also expect Republican legislatures to guarantee that polling stations in areas of youth and color will be reduced in number, short-changed on ballots and supplied with hackable voting machines all set to flip the vote. The polling stations will also be riddled with irregularities, making millions stand in line for hours…then trashing their mostly “provisional” ballots anyway. Vote by Mail has many respected opponents for a wide range of very good reasons. Establishing a functional, reliable VBM system will be a monumental task.

But it’s also important to remember how incredibly complex, thoroughly corrupted and easily hacked our traditional ways of voting have been, and would be again in 2020.

As with Al Gore in Florida 2000, John Kerry in Ohio 2004 and Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin-Michigan-Pennsylvania 2016, we can expect the Democratic Party to say and do little that’s effective about any of this.

In all three of those elections, Green/election protection journalists and activists showed clearly how the deciding votes were stolen. The Republicans generally don’t bother to deny it.

But in all three, charges of “conspiracy theory” are still being spewed by corporate Democrats and “progressive” media. They cannot be counted on to do the nitty-gritty work it will take to install, operate and monitor a reliable VBM system. That will have to come from a powerful, focused grassroots movement.

If Biden is the 2020 nominee, it’s likely he’ll win a legitimate popular majority, watch the Electoral vote stolen in the states with GOP legislatures, do and say nothing about it, give everyone a big smile and quietly concede. Trump will then be dictator... for life.

So what are you going to do about it?

Me The People by Nancy Ohanian