It’s not alarmist: A second Trump term really is an extinction-level threat to democracy https://www.vox.com/policy/381636/trump-2024-democracy-threat-orban-second-term
New York Times Editorial Board Rips Apart Donald Trump in Single Paragraph https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-y...-rips-apart-donald-trump-in-single-paragraph/ “You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit. If he’s re-elected, the G.O.P. won’t restrain him. Mr. Trump will use the government to go after opponents. He will pursue a cruel policy of mass deportations. He will wreak havoc on the poor, the middle class and employers. Another Trump term will damage the climate, shatter alliances and strengthen autocrats. Americans should demand better. Vote.”
The election is very simple. All the crap that Trump says he will do to America (e.g. Tariffs, mass deportations, go after his political opponents, firing the FED chairman, continuing selling the Trump bible/made in China, promoting his stock, Just a few days before the November 5th Presidential elections...my Republican party is filing litigation to disenfranchise the almost 2 million absentee voters of American citizens living abroad in other countries during this election year...including targeting our military active-duty, U.S. government employees, contract workers, students studying abroad, et cetera. So far, the GOP has been targeting Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina because they believe the absentee voters from those states are at higher risk of fraud. After all, absentee voters do not face the same voter ID requirements in those three states as other absentee voters do from other states. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...-overseas-ballots-key-swing-states-rcna174934 The GOP is trying hard to do the same in Georgia too. https://www.ajc.com/politics/republ...lots-over-weekend/AXIXFC3PGNBUDEHKI2363OOQRM/ In reality, the U.S. Armed Forces abroad use more stringent vote ID requirements for all states regardless if a soldier is from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, or any other state (e.g. Real ID driver's license, U.S. passport, U.S. military driver's license, USOS identity card et cetera) that correlate with your state's income tax records or states direct deposit records that maintains your digital signature. Why would my GOP be doing this ??? They're doing it because they know these absentee voters tend to vote Democrat. That's a lot of swing state voters although there are some Republican voters living abroad too during the election year. wrbtrader
That line by Trump reminds me about his actions toward Nikki Haley (R) and so many other of his one-liners should haunt the GOP because it tells America he is in it to protect his ass with those remaining criminal trials coming fast around the corner... I don't care about you, I just want your vote. I feel sorry for Republicans like Nikki Haley (R) who abandoned her never-trumper supporters to endorse Trump after he trashed her military husband, daughter's interracial marriage, and then Trump said her supporters should not be allowed to vote. RFK Jr. and Musk (a globalist) are given the front seat instead of her. Hopefully, she has learned that you do not need to get down on your knees in front of a 34x convicted felon for hush money that helped him win the 2016 Presidential election, found liable for rape, and found guilty of defaming his rape victim...America's greatest political liar. She decided that she didn't have the patriotic courage like other Republicans who have decided to not put Trump above Democracy, the U.S. Constitution and America after his dereliction of duty on January 6th, 2021. wrbtrader
Remember that dictators like Trump eventually come eat their own supporters. 'Big mistake': Columnist warns Trump's comeback may threaten even MAGA supporters https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2669587432/
What Trump’s Victory Means for Democracy https://sendaylinleach.medium.com/what-trumps-victory-means-for-democracy-f322b7d4722e There is an old adage in political science: Dictators always lie about the past, but they always tell the truth about the future. It sounds strange, but spiring authoritarians are usually quite open about the horrific things they plan to do. I know there has been what I’m going to call…an “unusual” volume of Hitler talk this campaign. But just once more, for the sake of nostalgia, Hitler was quite open about his plans for what became the Holocaust. Hell, he wrote an entire book about it, with, funnily enough, Mein Kampf being the only book Donald Trump’s first wife recalls him ever reading. Others, such as Lenin and Stalin and Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey, Duterte in the Philippines, etc. were also quite candid about their disdain for democracy and the rule of law. This all seems very counter-intuitive. Why would you actually tell people you were going to take away their rights, their voice and control of their own lives? That would seem to make Dukakis’s decision to wear a giant army helmet while riding a tank look like a stroke of genius. But here is the ugly truth. While there are a few exceptions involving special circumstances, generally speaking, these autocrats and dictators are popular. Many of them, including Hitler, were democratically elected, AFTER promising all the violence and oppression they eventually brought with them. While liberal Democrats like me find the idea of bending society to the capricious whim of one individual to be odious, human history suggests that I am not in the majority. Kings and sultans and emperors and Fuhrers are far more numerous and long-lasting than Presidents or Prime-Ministers. I don’t pretend to understand all of the psychology behind this. But I think it has to do with safety and predictability. Dictators promise to keep you safe, not only from foreign enemies, that’s a given. But more importantly, from domestic adversaries. At the end of the day, you are far more likely to feel threatened by those who want you to pay different tax rates, or send your kids to different kinds of schools, or those you see on the street who don’t look or talk or act like you, than by the abstraction of a foreign invasion. Democracy has had a good run in America. But recently, I think we can all admit that it’s become extremely messy, contentious and paralysed. Almost nothing gets done anymore and the daily on-line and in-person vitriol seems a high price to pay for such puny progress. I mean, we can’t even decide what dead general should be sitting on a bronze horse in front of the local government building anymore, let alone solve big problems like stagnant wages, lack of opportunity or dangerous schools. And of course, the worst part of democracy for many people is that sometimes, you lose. This means that someone who the TV commercials tell you is a lazy, stupid, corrupt Communist who hates America and is coming for your kids gets to make decisions about your life. Who needs that? That’s why I think that this election was, at it’s core, an embrace of a more ordered system where “shit gets done and people I don’t like get fucked with. And what do I care about the niceties of democracy? What good has all of that done me? I’m living in a shithole, I can’t pay my bills, and I can’t understand the cashier at the grocery store because she doesn’t speak English. And if I don’t refer to the lunch lady as “they”, I might lose my job”. I don’t see the world this way. But maybe that’s why people I vote for keep losing elections. Without re-litigating everything, Donald Trump has made no secret about what he’s all about. He sent a violent mob to the capitol to overturn the last presidential election. He has openly called for using the military to go after his enemies, he said he wants to shut down newspapers and news networks that print stories he finds unflattering. He plans to be a dictator on day one and warns (promises?) that it’s going to be “nasty” and “bloody”. You can’t accuse Trump of sugar-coating it. And the fact is that Trump comes into office with far fewer constraints than most democratically-elected wanna-be autocrats do. Our institutions are already weakened to the point of near collapse. The Supreme Court has said he can never be punished for any crime he commits “in his role as President”. Some talk about the theoretical checks and balances of our system, but those are largely a mirage. When Trump orders Hillary arrested or Saturday Night Live taken off the air, who is going to stand up to him? Lindsey Graham? Josh Hawley? Speaker Johnson? Sam Alito? Who is going to resign rather than implement an illegal order? Steve Bannon? Steven Miller? General Flynn? JD Vance? Is there any line that can’t be crossed? Will anything be more sacred than Donald Trump’s latest wish? Since this is the day after the election, I haven’t had the luxury of time to reflect deeply. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that things are going to get very dark, very fast. And we can’t say that Donald Trump is breaking his promises when this happens. It is exactly what the voters asked for.