What was it like living in Germany in 1933? Maybe it was a little bit like living in America in 2023, 90 years later. What happened when enough of the voters were Nazis? What could happen if enough voters in America are MAGA extremists? What could go wrong?
Why don’t we look at what Trump says he will do if re-elected? Here is a good list from Chauncey DeVega of Salon:
- “Donald Trump told Glenn Beck during an interview last week that he is going to put President Biden and other "enemies" in prison when he takes by the White House in 2025”…the ex-president's desires to imprison his "enemies" are not new: The "enemies" that Trump and his next regime want to put in prison or worse, include not just:
- President Biden,
- the Democratic Party's leadership, and
- the members of law enforcement who are prosecuting Trump for his crimes,
- but all people who he and the Republican fascists and MAGA movement deem to be "the enemy" and "un-American…
- If you are a black or brown person,
- a Muslim,
- Jewish,
- an atheist,
- not a White Christian,
- a members of the LGBTQI community,
- believe in women's reproductive rights and freedoms,
- are deemed to be "Woke"
- or tainted by the "Critical Race Theory Mind Virus"
- or otherwise deemed to be the Other
- you will also be targeted by Trump's next regime and movement.
But is Trump just blowing steam? Getting headlines? Or does he have an actual plan? Oops, there is a plan:
“Trump's Agenda 47 is a plan to radically remake the presidency and American government (and American society) in service to his neofascist vision that includes such goals as:
- ending birthright citizenship,
- criminalizing migrants and refugees,
- putting homeless people in camps,
- instituting national stop and frisk laws,
- restricting freedom of the press,
- ending academic freedom at the country's universities and colleges and other institutions of higher education,
- replacing quality public education that teaches critical thinking and the country's real history with a form of fascist "patriotic" indoctrination,
- ending environmental regulations,
- more gangster capitalism and power for the richest Americans and corporations,
- reversing the progress of the civil rights movement and the Black Freedom Struggle,
- taking away the rights of gays and lesbians and other queer people,
- further restricting women's civil and human rights,
- and ending US support for Ukraine.
And, oh yes, helping Putin and Russia take Ukraine, the Balkans, and destroying NATO.
How about the rest of the authoritarian party that still calls itself the Republican Party? Do other authoritarian leaders have any plans? Yup:
“Project 2025 is a strategy that has been developed by right-wing think tanks and interest groups such as the Heritage Foundation. The main focus of Project 2025 is to launch a blitzkrieg assault on the American government by
- ending career civil service and replacing it with Trump loyalists with the goal of eliminating any internal opposition to the Trump dictatorship.
- In essence, these Trump loyalists will place his vision above the Constitution and the rule of law
Organized by the Heritage Foundation, the sweeping new initiative called Project 2025, offers a policy agenda, transition plan, a
- playbook for the first 180 days and a personnel database for the next GOP president to access from the very beginning to
- take control, reform, and eliminate what Republicans criticize as the "deep state" bureaucracy.
- Their plan includes the possibility of firing as many as 50,000 federal employees.
When a psychopath tells you who he is and what he will do, believe him, please.
And when a political party, the Republican Party, knows it can no longer win popular elections except in highly concentrated red areas, believe that they will enact their plans to get by force what they can’t win by persuasion.
Trump is a vengeful child who wants to hurt all who do not submit to him. I think he may be more Henry VIII than Hitler. But remember that he will have nukes
But the Republican Party has a couple of very dedicated groups - white Supremacist extremist Christians bent on enforcing a Christian Taliban rule, and Plutocrats who want a weak, impoverished, submissive work force desperate for jobs.
If Trump is re-elected he will never leave office. Elections will be as they are in Russia, Cuba, dictatorships everywhere, and the dictator will always be elected in a "landslide". And many mini-Trumps will follow.
If they get their way.
But they won’t.
Because America is better than that.
America has an unique magic, it embodies a hope not just of Americans but of people all over the world. It has always been the place to look to for a better life, and the world will not let that dream be squashed by an orange pig of a man and his wannabe autocrats. The world needs and demands that America be a force for good.
And America is going to say yes.
