Donald Trump gives every indication that he is plotting the overthrow of this government. He has manipulated the political infrastructure by appointing his own puppets as Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, CIA and FBI Directors, and is now even giving stealth marching orders to well-armed white supremacy groups to “stand by”, and await further instructions after the election. It is not unlike how other dictators grabbed power throughout modern history. Make no mistake, Trump is not a hapless buffoon who makes decisions on the fly and doesn’t know what’s happening around him. “What are the Proud Boys? I’ve never heard of them,” he answered a reporter. According to his former fixer, Michael Cohen, Trump knows everything, for him or against him, at all times. It’s the way he rolls, according to Cohen, his long-time lawyer and confidant. He continually undermines our time-tested electoral procedures, having installed one his major donors as head of the Postal Service. Service has already slowed to the degree that it will affect mail-in ballots, which will not be counted if late. Trump knows quite well that Democrats use mail-in ballots far more than Republicans, and so has strategically attacked the validity of such ballots, planting doubt and suspicion in the minds of voters. He is trying every trick in the book to accomplish his goal: to remain in power for as long as possible.
He is doing this not for the sake of helping our country in any way, but for dodging court actions, and possible heavy fines and even imprisonment if he is not elected. Cohen reports he is terribly afraid of such eventualities. We’ve seen Trump’s constant tendency to deflect onto others his own failings and offenses over the past few years. He’s obsessively compulsive around this behavior of his. His recently revealed tax returns show he is not the wealthy man he portrays himself to be. That portrayal was a scam to convince voters that he was more qualified than most to run this government. He has not done well in that regard, and we now see why on paper. We see now why he was so secretive around hiding those tax returns all these years.
So Trump is motivated to take over the government not so much as Hitler was for a psychotic play for power, but to simply save himself from public embarrassment, and humiliation, and ruin. And, with almost 40 % of the population sticking with him no matter how dysfunctional his behavior, he’s in a good position to pull off this gambit.
How to stop him? A landslide election for Biden and Harris would be a good start. It won’t completely put Trump in his place, for part of his gambit is a strategy for dealing with such a landslide. According to what he himself says, he intends to steal the election legally by having his lawyers contend election results in key battleground states, getting Republican legislatures in those states to choose their own Electoral College appointees and thus swing that vote to Trump. It’s a bold ploy, that some pundits say will never work, but though it’s not probable it will work, it is possible. And there is not a whole lot you or I can do to prevent this, except contact our representatives in Congress and forcefully complain against this scheme.
So, of course, we hope for the best and plan for the worst. Some wise people in Germany and Eastern Europe left in the late 30s while they had the chance. Many who stayed were rounded up and murdered by the Nazi regime. The situation is not as dire here, although white supremacist groups, along with Trump, are determined to make this an all-white, Christian country, and with a Trump in office for another four or more years, they will proceed to try and make that happen through intimidation and fear and even open violence.
My intent here is to sound an alarm bell. Trump is no country bumpkin. He has a plan to save his own skin and he doesn’t care about democracy or American values, or the health and welfare of our residents. He has already shown that via his mismanagement of Covid-19 and the effect it has had on our economy. The most we can do now is to defeat him in November, and return the Senate to Democratic control. After that, let the law of karma, as well as the American legal system, deal with Donald Trump and his corrupt family and supporters.
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