The groundwork is being laid for a political coup against our country the likes of which we have never seen before. It is being led by one man: Donald J. Trump. He is operating like a mob boss, gathering allegiances, threatening his supposed opponents, cajoling his former supporters who now defame and turn against him, signaling his mob to take up arms and “fight like hell” (his words) to “save the country.” Trump is like any two-bit authoritarian who aims to take control of a gullible and vulnerable country and not let go. He is plotting, as I write, to systematically embed within our government conservatives who will support him totally. We have very few resources to combat such an attack, and Trump knows it. He has stacked the key courts with ultra conservative judges, formerly the only defenses with any teeth. So he knows any challenges to his plans will be for naught. Trump has an overwhelmed, deflated, misinformed, angry, grieving public under his thumb, so he continues pounding away with his big lies, knowing that eventually he will wear down any resistance to his coup.
Trump is the master of delay, instructing his heretofore incompetent lawyers to do so at any cost. He knows that all the lawsuits, civil and criminal, will fall by the wayside the more he delays legal proceedings by manipulating that legal system, along with Congressional hearings, to his advantage.
Trump’s plan for a takeover is obvious. Encourage and institutionalize voter suppression to make it harder for Democrats to vote. Install his political operatives in key state election departments, operatives who would have the power to change a vote they didn’t like based on such flimsy claims as suspicion of voter fraud. Gerrymander as many districts as possible to favor Republican voters, which is currently underway in at least 19 Republican controlled states. And put Trump Republicans into a kind of forever control of Congress and the presidency with him or his designated family members in charge. His models are North Korea, Belarus, Turkey, Russia, Brazil, Myanmar, Hamas,and Hungary.
How do I know this? It’s in the news every day, only camoflagued with all sorts of other opiates that have the public mesmerized and numbed–distractions such as stories about missing persons, mass killings, anti-vaxers/maskers, snakes on planes, and migrants “massing at the border.”
And why should we be concerned? Won’t our democracy continue despite Trump? Won’t we still be the “land of the free and home of the brave?” The simple answer (and it’s not a particularly simple answer) is no, things won’t be the same. There will be crackdowns on freedom of the press and freedom of speech. There will be more persecutions of minorities and calls for them to “go back to where you came from,” even though where they came from was here in America. There will be much less tolerance of religions other than a certain type of Christianity, a single state religion as Michael Flynn put it. There will be more neighbors spying on their neighbors, reporting to “the authorities” everything percieved as a threat to national security, which translates as anything said or perceived as against the reign of Chancellor Trump. And there will no longer be due process, where a person must be read his rights, duly charged of a crime and permitted his or her day in court in a trial decided by a jury of their peers. Trials will be sham trials, leading eventually to people completely losing faith in the judicial system. And efforts to combat climate change? Forget about it!
That’s a key part of Trump’s menu for absolute control. Methodically erode the citizen’s faith in government, in fair elections, accepting that decisions will be made by a small cadre of elites, military and corporate, all completely loyal to Donald Trump and his dictatorial regime. Democracy may still be referred to but only as window dressing, part of the NewSpeak formulated by the government.
So where does that leave us? Midterm elections will be here as quick as the swish of a horse’s tail. I suspect, with voter restrictions and vote result manipulations already in place, Republicans will take back control of Congress (unless Democrats can pass key voter’s rights bills that will reverse many of the Republican states’ anti-voter bills, which seems more and more unlikely, given the obstructionist policies of the Republican bloc in Congress, along with Democratic Senators Sinema and Manchin who oppose any modification of the filibuster.)
To put it mildly, we are in quite a pickle indeed. Even if Democrats come out and vote in record numbers in ’22, gerrymandering will likely defeat them, thus paving the way for Donald Trump to be elected president in ’24.
I don’t have a clear solution to the predicament our country is in, I’m sorry to say. The only effective route would be to change the filibuster to allow the voter’s rights bills to pass. But it doesn’t look like Manchin, in particular, will budge on a stance that seems more racist the more I hear him rationalize it. But perhaps a massive letter writing and phone in campaign to Manchin’s office in West Virginia might help. So here’s his contact info:
Sen. Joe Manchin
Charleston, West Virginia: located on 900 Pennsylvania Ave., Ste. 629 Charleston, WV 25302, Phone Number: 304-342-5855, Fax: 304-343-7144
Washington, DC: located on 306 Hart Senate Office Building Washington D.C. 20510, Phone Number: 202-224-3954, Fax: 202-228-0002
Call, mail, email (if you can find that address), all of the above, express your opinions and sense of urgency. Please do not issue death threats! That’s another Trump Republican tactic to put the populace in fear of their lives, much like Hitler did in Germany. Have you ever heard Trump, or any of his cronies, try to deter people from issuing death threats? Neither have I.
Be well. Stay safe. Get vaccinated.
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