Even if Trump Doesn’t Run, the Threat of Fascism Remains
Let’s start acting like we recognize the threat of a competent Trump acolyte gearing up to take up the fascist mantle, and get active to prevent it instead of waiting to exhale.
After eight January 6th Commission hearings, it is irrefutable Donald Trump not only knew about the planned siege on the U.S. Capitol, but was intimately involved in the machinations behind it intended to install him as dictator for life.
Now all the talk coming out of the corporate media is “will he or won’t he” run again for the 2024 nomination.
Trump already admitted recently he intends to run because “it is tough for politically motivated prosecutors to ‘get to you’.”
Some GOP operatives are already working with Trump to form a “shadow government.”
Yet not all republicans are on board.
At least that’s the official story (nod, nod, wink, wink).
Despite the Biden administration’s successes, it’s no surprise the same corporate media salivating over a potential second Trump presidency is feeding into the republican narrative about Biden’s “dismal poll numbers,” inflation fears, a struggling economy, and, of course, the president’s recent COVID-19 diagnosis after “admitting” he “has cancer.”
Declaring he is running for the 2024 nomination now instead of before midterm elections will quell this narrative republicans are banking will regain them the congressional majority in November and ultimately the White House.
It will suddenly be all about him again, just as he would like it.
None other than reputed republican pollster Frank Luntz said so:
“Trump never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He has the chance to participate in an amazing, historic Republican resurgence, and instead he’s making everything all about him. That could cost Republicans the majorities.”
Luntz claimed GOP leaders informed Trump “in no uncertain terms that anything that takes attention away from inflation and Biden’s failures could hand the election to the Democrats. But they know there is nothing they can do to influence him, and that he doesn’t really care.”
Announcing now will rob Trump of the tranche of cash he has grifted off his gullible sycophants because is will impose legal limits on how certain monies are utilized.
Besides, as long he isn’t running, he can keep playing the cat-and-mouse routine in which the media can’t seem to resist getting caught up.
But Trump supporters don’t need Trump.
Neither does the republican party.
What they need is a strongman, and it makes no difference who that strongman is so long as he (because it is always a he) continues sucking up to the economic royalists who don’t want to pay three percent more in taxes, playing the middle class and poor against each other as foot soldiers in an oligarchic race-fueled class conflict.
So let’s start acting like we recognize the threat of a competent Trump acolyte gearing up to take up the fascist mantle, and get active to prevent it instead of waiting to exhale.
That means the Dept. of Justice (DOJ) needs to prosecute Donald Trump.
The good news is, his henchmen, like Steve Bannon, are already starting to fall.
If Trump skates, though, we can say goodbye to any semblance of the traditional peaceful transfer of power. We will have officially devolved into the type of banana republic we decry.
While a joyous day Trump’s prosecution would be, it still wouldn’t be time to celebrate.
The would-be fascists will still be out there, infiltrating the republican party, working the levers of power.
Over the past year, we have seen more evidence America is closer to fascism than ever.
Jason Stanley, writing for The Guardian, stated:
“The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump.”
Even Canadians fear the American experiment is on the precipice of ending.
In his new book, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, Canadian author Stephen Marche warns:
“The United States is coming to an end. The question is how.”
He isn’t alone.
Cascade Institute executive director Thomas Homer-Dixon begins a Globe & Mail piece titled “ The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare” with a harrowing assertion:
“By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.”
Former president Jimmy Carter penned a New York Times guest essay in January in which he warned:
“One year ago, a violent mob, guided by unscrupulous politicians, stormed the Capitol and almost succeeded in preventing the democratic transfer of power. One year on, promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral system. These forces exert power and influence through relentless disinformation, which continues to turn Americans against Americans.”
America has traditionally regarded itself immune to the fissures that condemn weaker democracies.
We hail ourselves as the exemplar of elections, peaceful transitions of power, and civilized political discourse.
We understand intellectually we are imperfect and have done things for which we should not be proud and for which we must atone, like slavery, segregation, and the genocide of Indigenous Americans.
We have supervised elections in other countries to ensure honesty and transparency.
While economic interests and hubris have too frequently been behind our decisions more than good intentions, we want democracy to grow across the globe.
Yet here we are, beginning to look more like Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Mauritius, Namibia, Slovenia, and Poland, countries the Global State of Democracy (GSoD Indices) report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance states the United States’ “backsliding” democracy is beginning to resemble.
Over the past forty years, we have been in the midst of a slow-moving coup that got accelerated five years after Donald Trump’s election.
Trump wasn’t the cause, but he is the metaphorical gasoline people like Bannon, Michael Flynn and his brother Charles, and congressional lawmakers and governors afraid to stand up to Trump throw into the fire.
As Chauncey DeVega wrote in the Salon piece, “ With fascism coming, America responds: LOL who cares? Let’s Netflix and chill”:
“Military leaders were seriously concerned that Trump might order the National Guard to intervene on his behalf on or around Jan. 6 by invoking the Insurrection Act. If he had given such an order, the country would have come dangerously closer to an authoritarian takeover and perhaps widespread violence, with elements of the military battling one another. Experts on civil war have warned that the U.S. is well along such a path.
“Domestic terrorism experts have also warned that right-wing extremists and paramilitary groups are organizing on the local and state level to intimidate, harass and target ‘liberals,’ Black and brown people, Muslims, Jews, immigrant communities and others deemed to be their enemies. This is part of a nationwide campaign by Republican fascists and the larger white right to attack American democracy on the local and state level in order to facilitate Trump’s return to power (or the ‘election’ of his designated successor).”
If we abdicate that responsibility, if we leave it to those in power, we could very easily and quickly wind up with a “macho American” version of Vladimir Putin.
That’s what Donald Trump aspired to be and his acolytes do today.
Authoritarianism is simple.
It requires no effort on people’s part.
Just install a strongman who promises to take care of everything.
Remember when Donald Trump told us, “I alone can fix it”?
That wasn’t just bluster from an incompetent clod.
It was a familiar echo from despots time out of mind.
If Trump had managed to steal another term, we would be in or entering the very dark place wanna-be Trumps gleefully wish to take us for their own power and influence, not for what’s best for the country.
There’s historical precedent for this.
There is cause for optimism.
According to an encouraging Daily Kos piece published this week, “Republicans are faltering as the months tick down toward November.”
Still, if the Democratic party does not confront republican lies about “out-of-control crime rates”, it may suffer the same fate it did in the 1970s and 80s, when both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan successfully scared the daylights out of voters enough to get themselves into the White House.
Republicans know their policies are odious to most people and that when Democrats vote, they win. That’s why they are working night and day to prevent Democratic victories.
So we need to turn out in even greater numbers than in 2020.
Now would be a good time to check your voter registration status.