BREAKING NEWS: Leading Republican Candidate for Governor of Virginia Met with Insurrectionists and Discussed Armed Rebellion the Day Before the January 6 InsurrectionHer name is Amanda Chase, she calls herself "Trump in heels," and she's seven points ahead...now. There's a video of her scheming with Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, accused of being part of a plot to gas Congressfolk in the tunnels below the Capitol. (How did he learn where they were? That's the key question.)
Recorded discussion included consideration of Donald Trump raising a personal army of more than a million combat veterans to help him retain control of the White House.
The Deprogramming Dilemma - 13
The battle for democracy is joined. We must not lose.
By D-Jay
Can there be any doubt?
The battle to preserve democracy in the United States is well and truly on. A violent assault on our Capitol – the heart and soul of our representative government – has occurred. People have died.
But the inciter-in-chief remains at large.
Neo-fascist state legislatures are rampaging ahead with plans to disenfranchise millions from their voting rights and ensure a new decade of minority rule.
The most violent elements of the insurrectionist movement are energized and think the January 6th assault was just fine.
Millions remain addicted to the QAnon psyops campaign.
Tens of millions more remain trapped in the right-wing iron bubble of disinformation and seem to have lost all critical thinking ability needed to discern fantasy from reality.
We are not even close to being out of the woods yet.
The battle for democracy is joined.
We must not lose. If we do, the future will be grim.
Texas has shown us what a future under kleptocratic autocracy would look like as global climate change accelerates. And that’s just a small taste of things to come.
If we let American democracy fail, the world fails with it.
The good news, though, is that it doesn’t have to be like that.
This is a battle we can win.
How?
First the good news.
- Joe Biden is in office and off to an
excellent start. We can quibble around
the edges about where the eligibility for $1,400 assistance checks should end,
how quickly the minimum wage should raise to $15 an hour and so on. And sure, there’s a huge backlog of Trumpian
damage that has to be undone. Basically,
however, Joe has a good plan that is gaining broad public support and he’s
putting in a strong team to execute it.
Success in overcoming the worst ravages of Covid-19 and getting the
economy back on track will go a long way towards defusing the fear and despair
upon which right-wing populism depends.
It will help to finally put to bed the libertarian myth that government
is somehow the enemy and that letting the ultra-rich loot our economy will
somehow bring prosperity to the rest of us.
-
The ham-fisted way Trump has handled
everything, especially the attempts to keep himself in office, has exposed just
how awful the right-wing agenda really is.
The violent lengths to which they will go have been exposed. The extent to which its followers have been
brainwashed is, at last, starting to be understood, along with the malignant
effects of social media and the iron bubble of disinformation
infrastructure. The crying need for
deprogramming is starting to be discussed – much as those who need it might be
offended by the term.
- Thanks to completely unignorable events
like the pandemic, the west coast wildfires and the libertarian deep-freeze in
Texas – combined with Biden’s common sense - science is making a comeback. We
can hope that attention will once again be paid to people who might actually
know what they are talking about.
- Democrats now control the presidency and both houses of Congress. Change for the better can be made at the national level for at least the next two years.
These are no small things. All is definitely not lost.
Good as these things might be, however, are they enough?
No.
In the end, all of the “contributing factors to our democratic decline” I have been listing at the end of each article in this series will need to be addressed and overcome.
This isn’t something that can be done in two short years.
It took decades for the American neo-fascist movement to metastasize to this extent. Who knows how long it will take to be completely exterminated – if such a thing is even possible.
The question is, therefore, what can be done – what must be done - before the 2022 mid-terms offer the Republicans the chance to regain the House or Senate and derail our efforts to preserve democracy and, literally, save the world?
As a start, may I humbly suggest the following?
Trump is reported to be deeply concerned that his foes will, “be suing me for the rest of my life.” Let’s make sure this is one prediction he makes that gets fully realized.
The right-wing authoritarian movement in the U.S. has roots in a multitude of places – racism, white nationalism, toxic pseudo-Christianity, libertarianism, conspiracy addiction, the militia movement, the KKK, naked greed and lust for power, to name a few. But all the strands have been accelerated and drawn together by Trump.
The multi-headed hydra of right-wing extremism has somehow morphed into a full-blown cult of personality.
The cult of Trump.
Being the very dictionary definition of narcissistic personality disorder he is, however, Trump has made everything about him.
Supporting a movement means nothing. Supporting him is all Trump cares about, and he has imprinted this single crucial value on his followers.
This gives our side an opening.
Destroy him and the movement will collapse.
For America to succeed, within the next two years, Trump needs to massively fail. He needs to be completely exposed for the greedy fraud he is, and has always been. He needs to be so tied up in court cases – both civil and criminal – that he has no time to deal with anything else. He, his family and his organization all need to be totally bankrupted. They need to learn how to subsist on minimum wage levels of income as every other penny they make goes into restitution for the unspeakable damage he has done. Ideally, he should watch most of this unfold from where he richly deserves to be – a prison cell.
Anybody who has anything on him, now is the time to strike.
*****************************************************************************************
Contributing factors to our democratic decline:
From the Right
Truth Decay – Destruction of the Ability to Distinguish Fantasy from Reality
Ever Worsening Demonization of the Media
Manufactured Distrust of Science and Expertise
The Iron Bubble of Disinformation
The Dark Money Conspiracy
Information Warfare Aimed at Us
Domestic Terrorism
Emergence of a Full-blown Cult of Personality
Ongoing Voter Suppression and Gerrymandering
Election Security
Continued Weaponization of Social Media
Toxic Right-wing Pseudo-Christianity
Racism
Sexism and a Pseudo-Macho Mentality
Putinism and the International Neo-Fascist Movement
Lack of Education in Civics and Critical Thinking Skills
Destruction of Crucial Democratic Norms
The Collapse of Good Manners and Propriety
Radicalization
Sedition
From the Left (and Sometimes the Center)
OTT PC (Over-The-Top Political Correctness)
Inept Messaging
Lack of Media Investment
Arrogance
Surrender of Rural America Without a Fight
Failure to Call Out and Counteract Toxic Right-Wing Christianity
Failure to Call Out Right-Wing Racism, Sexism and Fascism for what it is, and Counteract it in Time
Framing Too Many Issues as Being Rooted in Race Rather than Economics and Class
Failure to Recognize Just How Bad Things Can Really Get
Forever Bringing Beanbags to a Knife Fight
Failure to Protect Critical Norms
I fully expect Donald Trump, his family and his entourage to get away with their crimes, sedition, graft, theft, etc. We would be lucky to nail even one of his accomplices, it sure as hell won't be the Wild Dog himself (Trump). I'm calling him Wild Dog because I grew up playing a series of Japanese arcade games called Time Crisis, Wild Dog is a recurring, ever present villain in that series. I think the name fits, not just because Trump is a villain, but because he is a wild card, he's unstable, he's mentally deranged, psychopathically pathological and extremely dangerous. More dangerous than Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or any other number of American boogeymen. None of those conjured up nightmares could unseat and destroy democracy, Trump can do that. No way in hell Trump ever sees justice. He'll never see justice anymore than Uncle Joe Stalin or Emperor Showa (Hirohito).
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