I’m no fan of violence but I’m not so averse to it that I spend even one second worrying about this. Some generations are lucky, and others are fated to clean up the mess. We thought we were lucky, but it turns out that we weren’t. It’s not the right time to shrink from duty.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
25 Comments
Recent Posts
- Day 14: Louisiana Senator Approvingly Compares Trump to Stalin
- Day 13: Elon Musk Flexes His Muscles
- Day 12: While Elon Musk Takes Over, We Podcast With Driftglass and Blue Gal
- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
I don’t worry about it either.
I’d just as soon exterminate the brutes.
Big Talk … small action.
Trump unleashed the beast from its chain that the GOP was all too happy to feed, pet, and take for walks around the neighborhood. It’s extremely dangerous, and we might see some violence from citizens that is fairly sporadic. But in general I’m not worried about the citizens writ large. I’m much more worried about the cops.
If it happened I think the situation would more closely resemble Nicaragua. Random acts of violence from MAGA’s mixed with police repression.
That’s the problem, if any, I think. The fat idiots may be able to entice the police to “protect” them from the liptards and thereby free them up for — whatever.
I don’t rule out the possibility of civil war. It’s happened elsewhere and, heck, it’s happened here. Even now people are dying because of the Republican war on America. If the ACA gets knocked to the curb, many more will be right behind. Possibly my three-year old son among them, as he suffers from a lifelong chronic condition. I’d spend every last penny I have for him of course. But I’m not a wealthy man. I’ve worked hard for a decent retirement portfolio, and it could be knocked out in a heartbeat.
When France rid itself of the Bourbons once and for all, it all happened with a whimper, not a bang.
Moot point. He won’t leave. The minute he resigned, he’d be indicted.
The big question is will Democrats pursue charges come 2021 if they win back the presidency or will they let bygones be bygones? Given how cowardly Seattle City Council Democrats are, I have no doubt that DC Democrats would sweep everything under the rug come 2021 if they defeat Trump. And then the worst of the younger Trump Train would resurface the next time the GOP won the presidency. Just like the worst of the C- Augustus crew has resurfaced under Trump.
The bigger question is, will Democrats win back the Presidency in 2020? If the don’t, by 2024 the country will be pretty much unrecognizable.
If they do, the precedents are not strong in our system for the winners in a political contest to be coming after the losers with indictments. On the day after the election, the right wing will start plotting to retake power; they’ll scream bloody murder about how unfair, how illegal, how political it all is. The centrist Democrats, never ones to stand up and fight for a principle in the best of times, will fold quickly. They’ll want to be “reasonable” because that’s what they always want, and it will be hard to deny the “reasonable” argument that prosecutions would take huge amounts of time and resources that could be devoted to other things. Most of which will seem frivolous until we realize that at the end of the day, prosecutions don’t benefit people who fund Democrats. They will have other priorities.
The left, the activists, the people who do want to see someone held accountable for this mess, will be isolated and marginalized even more than they currently are. Mueller will publish a book, which will promptly vanish down the memory hole. And it will be back to business as usual.
Yes.
‘Fraid so…on the evidence of the past.
So it goes.
ASG
None of this is “as usual.”
I disagree, jsrtheta. I believe that it is “business as usual.”
Good cop/bad cop business..
DemRat/RatPub business..
The RatPubs do the dirty work and then the DemRats come in to smooth things over.
Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes and Trump:
Dirty work.
Clinton I and Obama:
Smooooth, but equally murderous.
However, the general tendency of motion remains ever rightward.
This act has continued since at least the assassination years.
Bet on it.
AG
P.S. Read about the plot to take FDR down in 1933 while you’re at it. Corporate interests are almost always rightist. As corporate power grows, the country leans ever further right. The original definition of “fascism” was:
Interestingly enough, Mussolini himself was originally …a leading member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party. So-called “fascism” is an equal opportunity employer/destroyer. It will take over “leftist” movements just as it will ‘rightist” ones.
P.P.S. My favorite line from the above Wikipedia article:
Some things never change.
Sigh…
AG
Now a standalone post.
Business As Usual. Some Things NEVER Change.
Please comment there.
Thank you.
AG
So what are they going to do….blow up Oklahoma City again? Or will the well armed militia march into DC and try to blow up the capitol? I say bring it. Maybe they can keep the doanld off my TV for a few days.
Flip the scenario around
The math doesn’t add up
Joel,
Nice point and to the point and pretty well on the point.
Unfortunately, Trumpistas don’t, as a whole, actually THINK about the future. For them, as for most 10 year old children, the future is next Friday.
Fortunately, I think your end point (No Seriously Sustained Action) is absolutely correct because Trumpistas are (for the most part) cowards and haven’t the balls to back up the brag.
If they did, they already would have.
Math is a rational process. There’s nothing rational about this.
Give me a break. Most of the “deplorables” I know can’t walk from their car to Wal-Mart without stopping to catch their breath.
I love seabe’s phase for this hypothetical scenario: “random acts of violence from MAGAs”. That will likely continue to happen regardless of whether Trumper is our (illegitimate) prez or not. A society that celebrates Rightwing Volkist politics generates some level of political violence no matter what. There are plenty of crazed gun-nut white males (of all ages) out there—they don’t think too well, and never will.
With Der Trumper securely ensconced in his 40% approval rating (which the braindead corporate media’s fawning over the Historic Glory in Singapore will cause to rise), he ain’t going anywhere. It seems highly likely that a criminal prez would have to fall into the teens before actual impeachment could occur. We know from Bushco days that a completely failed, illegal war-losing Repub prez falls only to 28-30% approval. A Dem House should of course impeach our current political criminal simply because the Constitution demands it, whatever the likely outcome in the (anti-democratic) Senate.
But we just had a Repub rep from the SC Mothership (Sanford) who mouthed some mild criticisms of Trumper (while voting wholesale for his policies) lose his primary to a tub-thumping Trumpite lunatic. So that’s where the American right is at, circa June 2018. The fever ain’t breaking, it’s getting worse.
The MAGA’s are not limited to US, notice the hat of the chap in green pants/shorts who was at the Tommy Robinson far right riots in London:
Frankly, I think we are IN a Civil War right now, this very minute. It’s happening as I type.
Sure, it doesn’t look like the one in the 19th C, but then again… that was so 19th C.
Look: the Oligarchs have definitely contrived to pit US citizens against one another so that they can loot, rob, plunder, pillage and steal us blind… which, for them, has been quite successful.
So we’re mostly in a War of Words, and Trump is, for better or worse, a frickin’ MASTER at getting everyone riled up and even more angry and even more pitted against each other.
As far as the Oligarchs are concerned: BRILLIANT!
The old white male Oligarchs world wide (there’s not that many of them) could give a shit about petty trivial things like: countries, borders, patriotism, quality of life, what have you. They’re simply interested in MOAR MONEY!! and MOAR POWER!! And this is all working out stunningly well for them.
So Trump punching down on our now apparently FORMER ALLIES, while kissing up to various Dictators across the globe is just fine and dandy.
I agree with someone above that we’ll continue to see random acts of violence, like all of the various mass murders that happen quite frequently now… which is according to plan, too (just ask the NRA, whose sales ratchet up astronomically after every single mass murder). From the Oligarchs perspective: that’s a win bc less useless mouths to feed.
And so forth.
My story, which I’m sticking to, is that the Civil War began when Trump was elected. He was elected with some kind of help, and we can CLEARLY see who is benefitting. Are those tax cuts REALLY helping YOU?? Do you REALLY believe that they are stimulating our economy?
Good luck to us all.
Agree with everything you wrote but when civil war II started. I believe it started with Reagan demonizing our own democratically elected government. I don’t see this ending peacefully. I wish I did but I dont.
If the rise of fascism was limited to the US, I might be less alarmed. But I can’t see it apart from the global rise in fascism, which is already plunging other nations into conflict and yes civil war.
Just because we ‘defeated’ fascism 75 years ago doesn’t mean it won’t win this time. Judging from the now-decades long failure to meaningfully resist, I don’t see any basis for concluding that we will in fact be able to defeat these people.
Sure hope I’m wrong!
The West is in the grips of rising ethnic nationalism and tribalism. One would like to say brought about by the Great Recession and its rippling effects, but it is curious that the world’s tribalism seems to be rising as the economic effects of 2008-10 wane—see Trumper’s FailedNation, Inc., Brexit, Eastern Europe, etc. Let’s just say the world is moving away from Star Trek, not towards it.
Militarist Expansionist Fascism (Italy, Germany, Japan) was defeated in 1937-45 by an alliance of industrial Western democracies and a Stalinist totalitarian state. The Stalinist state of 1945 has now morphed into a nationalist fascist operation, cleverly exporting its ideals to other states particularly susceptible to ethnic nationalism. It appears that FDR’s America (as a result of decades of internal decay and undermining via the “conservative” movement) is now one of those victims–although obviously our Alt Right see itself as a victor. In any event, Putin is doing a better job exporting New Fascism than Stalin ever did exporting communism, haha!
Quite simply, there aren’t enough great powers left to combat the New Fascism, with FailedNation Inc. now clearly (and happily) in the fascist camp. China has more sympathy with fascism than democracy, as long as its mountains of crap are moved off the docks. As Merkel said with some understatement after Der Trumper’s G-6 clowning, the situation is rather “sad and depressing”. As the putative leader of any possible anti-fascist coalition, this is rather an understatement by her….
MAGA America has two things going for it: It’s Pride and it’s Illusions.
They have always talked tough to their perceived enemies: the media and liberals. BUT from my own interactions since 2016 (they always assume I’m on their side from my gender and skin color), they already have one foot out the door regarding Der Furher.
No, like W, if we hit a such a tipping point they will just burn the hats, insist they never voted for him, and the media will again rebrand them “humble apolitical citizens concerned able deficits” and FoxNews will continue to be a safe space for their Pride and Illusions until their next chance to get another Trump into office.
No, we’ll continue to seen more aggrieved white males committing terrorist acts but getting white washed by the media as “troubled” while anyone with a skin tone a shade or two darker and/or goggles ISIS once will be branded a Sleeper Cell Infiltrator (tacitly Politically Left of course) and used to justify more militarized LAW AND ORDER! in non-white and affluent parts of town.