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SOMETHING EVEN WORSE MAY BE COMING FROM TRUMP UNLESS WE TALK ABOUT IT [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-11-10  

Dozens of articles have discussed destructive policies Trump might push: mass deportations, high tariffs, abandonment of Ukraine, a national abortion ban, axing of climate change regulations and pollution controls, a takeover of the Fed, funding cuts for scientific research, etc. Others have focused on horrifying Project 2025 plans for overhauling the government itself, especially the plan to replace some 50,000 competent civil servants with mostly unqualified Trump toadies and the enthronement of Trump as a “unitary executive” with sweeping power over the whole federal bureaucracy, including Justice.

Those things deserve all the attention they’re getting. But what seems missing so far is discussion of something quite different that may be almost as likely: wholly extra-legal, coup-like tactics designed to set up a dictatorship.

A Russian example will make clear what I’m talking about. There is compelling (though not dispositive) evidence that Putin was responsible for bombing apartment complexes in three Russian cities in 1999, killing >300. Putin promptly blamed Chechen separatists. Voila: not only did Russians now back a new war with Chechnya, which Putin wanted, but they rallied around Putin as their protector. This was the key event emplacing him as dictator.

Does such a thing seem far-fetched in America? It’s true that no governing party here has ever done anything remotely like it. But Trump and his advisers are unprecedented. They’ve demonstrated by word and deed that they don’t care a fig for the law or the Constitution or decency. What they want is absolute power, and they’ve been drawing on dictators’ playbooks for years. Today’s Republican party openly extols Viktor Orbán. Trump quotes Hitler, admires Kim Jong Un for “ruling with an iron fist,” says that the Chinese finally wised up when they brutally put down the protests on Tiananmen Square, and, of course, adores and emulates Putin.

Exactly what the Trump administration might do to justify, say, declaring martial law, and exactly when, are open questions. But the possibility of a false-flag operation like Putin’s, or some similar brutal tactic, can’t be discounted. These people are capable of anything, and the likelihood of their resorting to bloody expedients will rise as their agenda meets with resistance and delays, as it begins to dawn on benighted MAGA voters that things are getting worse, not better, under Trump, and as more and more Trump cronies are put in key defense and law enforcement positions.

Are these concerns paranoid? Please, someone, convince me that they are! Explain to me why a Trump administration never would or could behave as Putin (probably) did.

But if you share my concerns, please air them, especially if you are politically astute and can see exactly what factors might enable or impede an attempt to abruptly overthrow our constitutional democracy. Loudly warning everyone about what Trump might try reduces the odds that he will try it.

The disturbing silence on this subject needs breaking.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/10/2285100/-SOMETHING-EVEN-WORSE-MAY-BE-COMING-FROM-TRUMP-UNLESS-WE-TALK-ABOUT-IT?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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