Clinging to the wreckage
Trump's fresh rampage ... Taking the USA beyond proto-authoritarianism ... A chaotic post-election scenario ... Cheating might save the day ... Flouting the Supreme Court's rulings ... The odour of corruption ... Reichstag fires and the president's brown shirts ... Absentee voting and the postal system ... Our Man in Washington Roger Fitch reports
" ... [W]hat can you say about a person who, before speaking before an adoring crowd, raises his eyes to heaven and calls himself the chosen one? What can you say about an administration where the secretary of state says, 'Perhaps Trump has been sent by the good lord to save Israel from Iran'? The country is being run by madmen ... [but] I don't think it is fascism. It is essentially tin-pot dictatorship."
Noam Chomsky
"Be wary of paramilitaries ... When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come."
Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century
"Throughout his time in office, he [did] everything possible to drive people away ... not a single thing that he has done as president ... would make anyone who voted against him in 2016 want to vote for him in 2020 ... he ha[s] done everything imaginable to animate people who had not voted in 2016 (or who voted for a third party candidate) to turn out and vote for his opponent this year ... Democrats were choosing among ... people who would all surely beat Trump at the polls"
Neil Buchanan
People used to joke about Donald Trump's emotional pathology. Was he, perhaps, a menstruating man?
Since the president's impeachment, no one's laughing. The senate's failure to convict and remove Trump when they had the chance has clearly emboldened the president, who has been on a fresh rampage of impeachable acts. One legal writer posited what the Spanish call an autogolpe: self-coup.
There is now fear that a bad-faith president, one of low intelligence, supported by dishonest state officials and partisan media, might claim victory while losing; it's happened before, although Donald Trump won't have a first cousin calling the election early, as Fox News' John Ellis did for George Bush in 2000.
The Pentagon is being urged to complete contingency planning for Trump's expected malefactions; in any case, there will be chaos on election day; post-election "Trump amendments" to the constitution have been proposed.
Trump's (diminishing) support never quite reached Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism; even so, after Trump, people may well speak of a time when some Americans "flirted" with fascism. The f-word is already in use, as the president ventures beyond proto-authoritarianism and incipient fascism.
Umberto Eco: listed 14 properties of fascist ideology
Some observers wrongly assume Republicans have a future, let alone a majority, in America: the party in fact is in a demographic death spiral; only cheating can save them. Most of the major cities in the US are Democratic; it is only through diabolical gerrymanders and vote suppression (e.g. Florida's unconstitutional poll tax) that Republicans cling to office.
• • •
Aside from Trump's sententious and often false tweets, Americans are increasingly subjected to his executive orders, the incoherent, often-lawless edicts of an erratic leader in his final months of mischief. Such a purported order was used to justify the roll-out of federal heavies in Democratic cities (see below), ostensibly to counter urban crime.
There is an unprecedented crime wave underway: at the top, where Donald Trump is flouting the supreme court's recent decisions on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and transgender rights.
After losing the supreme court cases on gender equality, in one of which the White House filed briefs opposing the pleadings of the government's own Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Trump pushed ahead with regulations licensing continued discrimination - even against the homeless.
The president is also fighting subpoenas for his tax returns in New York State's criminal investigation, after losing the supreme court case on that very matter; perhaps he expected New York State to pursue the hands-off approach to white-collar crime currently offered at the Justice Department.
Stonewalling Cyrus Vance Jr turned out to be a legal blunder: the Manhattan DA's memorandum of law supporting dismissal of Trump's claims revealed that the Trump Organisation was under investigation for bank and insurance fraud. Deutsche Bank - almost the only bank lending money to the serial bankrupt Trump - has already responded to the DA's criminal subpoenas for his financial records. The Post has more.
Manhattan DA Vance: Trump Organisation under investigation for bank and insurance fraud
Deutsche Bank is meanwhile investigating questionable transactions between the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Deutsche employees.
The president's personal pecuniary interests trump everything. The FBI, now on Pennsylvania Avenue, has congressional support to build a new headquarters outside downtown DC, but Trump opposes the move: it would make the Bureau's headquarters across the street from Trump International Hotel available for redevelopment and possible commercial competition. Even Republicans can smell this corruption.
• • •
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, congress explicitly rejected a federal police force in the US, but Donald Trump, aided by his servile (Acting) Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Attorney Gerneral William Barr, is busy using a back door to create one.
Trump established the first beachhead in Portland, Oregon, with heavily armed, unidentified and camouflaged federal agents "stretching the limits of their authority", as the New York Times delicately put it.
It was a manufactured crisis, quickly seen by some as "made-for-TV fascism" and "performative authoritarianism".
With electoral doom increasingly likely, Donald Trump has ignited multiple Reichstag Fires (perhaps literally, in the case of the Democratic headquarters in Arizona) in Democratic-governed cities, with Portland the first regional sortie, following his unsuccessful assault on Washington, DC.
Unmarked federal agents in Portland
Chicago and Philadelphia remain particular targets of Mr Trump. Just as Herr Hitler must have cracked down first on unreliable cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, Mr Trump has in his sights every city and state with elected Democrat leadership. Some Democratic officials are calling him out on "fascist tactics".
Portland reminded Michael Dorf of Putin's Crimean manoeuvres, while Steve Vladeck pointed out the likely illegality and Neil Buchanan feared Chilean-style desaparecidos.
After extensive litigation and bad publicity (war-zone surveillance aircraft circulating overhead), the Trump incursion backfired spectacularly, and a withdrawal of federal forces from Portland was negotiated.
• • •
How low are the Republicans prepared to go, to steal the 2020 elections? Most states (not Texas) offer "no-excuse" absentee ballots. With absentee voting beginning as soon as September, Republicans are desperate to limit its use; there's even speculation they'd be willing to see the US postal service fail, in order to prevent absentee ballots being timely counted.
Paxton, Texas AG: no absentee voting on Covid grounds
In Texas, AG Ken Paxton successfully appealed a state judge's decision allowing voters afraid of Covid-19 to use the disability provisions of the law and vote absentee. Paxton threatened to bring felony charges against groups who promoted such voting.
The irony? Paxton has himself been awaiting trial since 2015 on three counts of felony securities fraud.
He was re-elected for another four years in 2018.
Only in Texas.
