Weekend again and on this early-evening Saturday here in California’s Central Valley there’s a sense of the horror that would come from a second trip to the White Houe next year for the T-Rump — a lot of media attention has been paid the last few weeks on how horrid-shitty would the re-election of the Orange Turd with a lot of variations on a single theme — T-Rump as crazy-ass ‘dictator.’
Just how shitty a scenario? Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine last week: ‘As it turns out, pretty bad! Trump has been releasing policy papers and videos on what he calls “Agenda 47” for months, and he and his advisers are openly bragging about their radical plans for a second term. Some of the worst elements of Trump’s first-term agenda were thwarted by scrupulous government officials, legal challenges, and the Trump team’s general ineptitude. But the former president and his well-funded allies in the conservative movement are already working to make sure they’ll be more successful if he winds up back in the White House.‘
Plus an added ingredient — crime as way-of-life as dictator:
Trump plots his return: Pardons, payoffs and paybackhttps://t.co/D80SoQUUW4
— Salon (@Salon) December 16, 2023
Chauncey Devega at Salon this morning with an interesting, nuanced view of a second round of the T-Rump as POTUS:
For all of the talk about a “democracy crisis” and American neofascism, Trumpism as a form of “legal” crime and how it will negatively impact the country is one of the most important aspects of the crisis while simultaneously being among the least discussed by the mainstream news media, pundits and larger political class. The country’s elites have committed many extreme errors and failures in the Age of Trump, with the above being one of the most serious and worrisome. If the Fourth Estate as a whole was engaging in pro-democracy journalism, it would clearly communicate to the American people the following information about Trumpism and fascism as a form of crime, and what it will mean for them and the country.
Fascism is first and foremost a form of corrupt power that is not held accountable by the law, “the institutions,” or the public through voting or other means of oversight or accountability. Trump’s repeated threats of violence and intimidation against the judges, court officers, prosecutors, attorneys general, witnesses, jurors, the Department of Justice, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Special Counsel Jack Smith, President Biden, and the rule of law more broadly are just one of many such examples of antisocial and pathological behavior.
Public opinion and other research show that Donald Trump’s “populist” appeal and criminal behavior reflects how his followers support him precisely because he is willing to “break the rules” to “get things done” for “people like them” while engaging in revenge against their shared “enemies.” Fascism as a form of criminal politics is based upon a crude understanding of power and its limits, where friends and followers are to be rewarded and “the enemy” (however defined) is to be targeted for violence, harassment, and other cruelty because they have little to no protection from the state.
In all, if Dictator Trump, his MAGA people, and the Republican fascists and their forces take power this will mean that the American government and society will be ruled by the equivalent of a de facto crime family and elevated street gang. In the Age of Trump, the Republican Party and larger “conservative” movement and right-wing are, in many ways, already structured and are behaving in such a manner.
The organization and movement are hierarchical with Trump serving as the Big Boss. The Trump MAGA crime organization is large, very well-funded, and powerful with its own institutions and a wide sphere of influence across American society and internationally.
[…]
There is an additional aspect of the extreme dangers embodied by Trumpism and fascism as “legal crime” that the mainstream news media and commentariot have largely either ignored or been willfully blind to.
For several years, Donald Trump and his campaign have been issuing membership cards to the MAGA followers in exchange for their money. Trump has also created his “President’s Trust”, an even more “exclusive” group of supporters who he has tasked with “peacefully” defending “our movement no matter how vicious the endless witch hunts became.”
If Trump the dictator mob boss takes power, these membership cards and other such proof of loyalty will basically grant his followers the permission and power to engage in all manner of violence and harm and mayhem with the not unreasonable understanding that by being an official member of the MAGA movement they will be able to operate outside of the law as it applies to other people.
The dangers will be especially great for those people who are members of a community targeted as “the enemy” because of their race, ethnicity, religion, immigration status, sexual orientation and gender or some other marginalized identity.
Go read the whole piece with other notions displayed/additional background added, all to the end result of shit for this country.
Now let Fiona Apple close out this miserable future shit:
Ugly criminal insurrection, or not, yet here we are once again…
(Creepy, vile, and dangerous image out front found here — sorry for the two repulsive featured mugs in close proximity, yeah, I know, does kind of make you want to blow chunks.)