Tag: Trump is a Ding-Dong

Is Trump An ‘American Hitler?’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The short answer, is, surprisingly, no.

The long answer is…oh boy. The thing about Trump is he shares a huge number of qualities that Hitler had but — at least to date — one: he’s all talk. He talks and talks about very Hitler-like in 1933 type things…but so far a combination of his laziness and the strength of our democratic institutions have managed to keep him check.

Me, 2025?

In fact, that’s the thing I — and a lot of other people in the anti-MAGA movement got wrong about Trump. We were so busy being hysterical about how much Trump in the 2015 – 2017 timeframe was similar to Hitler that we were oblivious to the crucial ways Trump was NOT like Hitler. Hitler had an organic bloodthirsty quality that popped out early with how he got rid of the more radical SA soon after he gained power in Germany.

Meanwhile, Trump often says violent things out of frustration or ignorance, but his actual violent actions have — again, to date — been few and far between. What’s more, while Hitler in 1933 was actively knocking heads in his quest to gain power….in 2020 Trump sat on his hands for months. He wasted a huge window of opportunity between Biden was the nominee to when the election was called by FOX.

So, like I said, Trump isn’t an American Hitler.

But, he is kind of the bridge to an autocratic America that if it went off the rails could lead to very Nazi-like crimes against humanity — especially in the South. It may not be Trump who sets up the conditions for America’s “Final Solution” for black and brown people, but it damn well is going to be a MAGA New Right Republican.

Or, put another way, our current liberal democracy is so fucking hanging on that the moment we get a MAGA New Right president it’s over. All the conditions and all the metrics are there for American democracy to be snuffed out for good. The whole system is so fragile that a President Pompeo or Hawley or Cotton or DeSantis could easily establish themselves an autocrat without blinking an eye.

Probably via some sort of Koch Brother inspired Constitutional Convention.

So, like I said, Trump hasn’t proven to be the American Hitler I, and others, feared.

But the danger of the Untied States slipping into a Nazi-like autocracy is a clear and present danger.

A Second American Civil War Is Coming…But….


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States politically is running on fumes. And, all things being equal, we’re on the cusp of a civil war. But. There’s a big difference between MAGA wanting to murder liberals in cold blood in the abstract and actually doing it. And, now that Trump blew his golden opportunity to drive Blue States out of the Union, we’re in a very murky situation indeed.

Several different things are happening at the same time. Time is running out for Trump to such an extent that even if he started to actively goad Blue States to secede in some way, all Blue States have to do is wait out the clock. On January 20th, that’s it — Biden becomes POTUS and Trump’s best case is to fly to Alabama and try to get Red States to leave the Union en mass.

Now, I’m aware of the Jan 6th shenanigans that Republicans want to pull, but that gambit is extremely quixotic. Republicans don’t control the House and the Senate leadership has made it clear they’re not interested in anyone voting to replace Electors.

As such, again, in the abstract MAGA really wants to start killing liberals on the field of battle….but a civil war doesn’t just happen magically. You would need troops, a government, you name it. As it stands, MAGA are just sore losers who are triggered because they got their fee-fees hurt.

So, in that sense, the case could be made that we’re on the very edge of the beginning of a process that will ultimately lead to some sort of secession crisis. What MAGA is doing is significantly more serious than what happened in 2016 and we can only assume that the 2024 election situation will be even MORE serious than this 2020.

The crux of the issue is that because of existential problems in our political system, the United States is two different nations that are receding from each other at an alarming rate. On an abstract level, MAGA’s dream of America is my nightmare and vis-versa. MAGA wants a fascist white ethno state that is pretty much a clone of Russia. Or, to put it another, more poetic way, to “make America great again,” they want 1950s America with wifi and Disney+.

It’s still very possible that if there was some sort of political 9/11 that a civil war would break out in the United States sooner rather than later, and, yet, as I keep writing — Blue States are in a far better position than Red States to the point that Red States wanting a civil war is rather foolish in the extreme.

All I can figure out is Red State MAGA people are looking at what’s going on politically and assuming they could make short work of Blue State people for various reasons — including MAGA is a bunch of racist, misogynistic cocksucking fuck who are so wrapped up in their love of the Dear Leader that they have deluded themselves into thinking they can somehow just leave the Union without African Americans picking up arms to destroy them.

When it comes to a near-term civil war in the United States, it will be because Trump snaps at some point and goes transactional Twitter. But even then, it might be rolling political violence instead of an actual civil war. And, remember, Biden is going to become POTUS on January 20th, so, again, it grows very difficult for Trump to push Blue States out of the Union then turn around and take them over via some sort of MAGA Reconstruction.

Again — one can only conclude that while a Second American Civil War is likely to happen between now and, say, 2025-ish, for the time being we’ve been spared that tragedy. And if we aren’t, it will be specifically because Trump finally loses his fucking mind.

Second American Civil War: Could Trump Start It from Mar-a-Lago?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There’s talk that Trump will leave the White House for Christmas at Mar-a-Lago and…just never come back. This makes you wonder if he’s drifting towards stumbling into some sort of effort to destroy the United States by actively taking up arms against its government…while he’s still the government.

Can’t go to prison in NYS if it’s a foreign country.

I could see ding-dong wanting to hunker down in Mar-a-Lago because he would have a lot more ability to cause trouble there than at the White House. If he really wanted to destroy the USA — which I think he does — then once the Electors vote and his options at staying in power grow even more limited, he could go transactional on Twitter from Mar-a-Lago.

He could declare himself the president of Trumplandia — or whatever — and begin to rant that “real” America needs to leave the Union: all while still president of the USA. The more I think about it, the more this scenario makes a huge amount of sense, especially if you think that it would be done in the context of Trump both going insane and having an intense desire not to go to jail in NYS.

Can’t go to prison in NYS if NYS is no longer in the same country you are.

So, at the behest of Trump on Twitter, I could see Red States begin to leave the Union beginning between when the Electors vote and Jan. 20th. Trump would, at last, be number 1 in something — at being the worst president in US history.

But, let me be clear — to date, Trump has proven to be a very lazy opportunist. It’s a testament to what a ding-dong he is that I keep thinking up all these different ways he could fuck things up…and he doesn’t do anything. He hasn’t even, to date, fired Bill Barr.

Which, if he was some sort of autocrat, he would have done a long time ago. He might very well still do it, but every day he doesn’t Trump’s ability to fuck things up thankfully dwindles.

We’ll know soon enough, I guess. Time is running out for House Trump.

Trump Isn’t An Autocrat, He’s a Craven Ding-Dong


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I could still be proven wrong by events, but it’s starting to look like Trump going to lose, lose. And since autocrats never lose, I can only begin to believe that while Trump has plenty — and I mean PLENTY — of autocratic impulses and inclinations, in reality he’s just a craven ding-dong.

In other words, he just doesn’t have the backbone — or intelligence — to do even the bare minimum of skullduggery necessary to end our democracy which is on life support anyway. And, so in the end, Republicans get their young hack MAGA judges and their huge taxcut for plutocrats….and that’s it. Otherwise the Trump Era will be completely value free. In a sense, it, in itself, will be looked upon as the civil war we’ve all been afraid of.

But instead of a hot war, we had a cold civil culture war. Instead of bullets, we had tweets.

And, yet, we’re one explosion away from everything I just wrote being seen as quaint. And that, really, is the point. People like me assumed Trump would pull a false flag — or something — sized “total control” and that would be that. And, really, if we box Iran or the DPRK into a war, then that could still very well happen.

Or, say, a for real for real false flag happens when one of Trump’s SUPPORTERS blows something important to MAGA people up in an effort to give Trump the power to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Regardless, from now until about mid-2021 we are in a very, very tense and volatile situation.