- Trump imagines Liz Cheney before a firing squad;
- A history of Trump’s violent remarks;
- And his “enemies list”;
- Trumpists’ playbook for trying to overturn the election — check back next week;
- How Trump appeals to America’s xenophobic history;
- When leopards tell you they will eat your face, believe them;
- Another asking of the question, Who are we, America?;
- Trump doesn’t have the attention span for a coup;
- And consideration of what will actually happen if Trump wins, with my own predictions.
The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 1 Nov 2024: Trump Suggests Training Guns on Liz Cheney’s Face, subtitled “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay?”
\
It’s nothing really new.
The Atlantic, 31 Oct 2024: A Brief History of Trump’s Violent Remarks, subtitled “Here are 40 instances in which the former president incited or praised violence against his fellow citizens.”
Because that’s what the leader of the most powerful, enlightened nation on Earth does, right MAGAites?
\
Long, handy list.
Axios, Zachary Basu, 1 Nov 2024: Trump’s “enemies within” list
From Biden, Harris, and Obama to basically everyone in the current government, who according to Vance would be replaced by “our people.”
\\\
Check back next week!
Media Matters, Matt Gertz, 1 Nov 2024: Here’s the familiar playbook Trumpists will use to try and overturn the election if he loses
Conspiracy theories about who votes; conspiracy theories about how people vote; conspiracy theories about when votes are counted; conspiracy theories about who counts the votes.
(It’s been noted that talk of “conspiracy theories” in popular culture and politics should more properly be called “conspiracy stories” or “conspiracy fantasies,” since generally they’re floated without a particular of evidence. In science, a “theory” is a deep explanation of a variety of actual evidence.)
\\\
As I said yesterday, America has always been like this.
NY Times, Jazmine Ulloa, 1 Nov 2024: The Deep Roots of 4 of Donald Trump’s Nativist Remarks, subtitled “In the former president’s pitch to voters, historians hear echoes of the nation’s inescapable xenophobic history.”
The four remarks, all from the past month or so, concern how illegal aliens must be criminals or insane; how they’re sick and spread diseases; how so many of them are murderers; and how they eat people’s dogs and cats.
\\\
When they tell you what they will do, believe them.
NY Times, Opinion, Paul Krugman, 31 Oct 2024: Leopards Are Telling You That They Will Eat YOUR Face
Do you know this widely cited meme, introduced in a 2015 tweet?
“I never thought leopards would eat MY face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
It’s hard to explain why this is perfect, but it is. If Donald Trump wins, there will eventually be a lot of sobbing among people who voted for him.
\\\
Another asking of this question.
Washington Post, Dana Milbank, 1 Nov 2024: Opinion | Who are we, America?, subtitled “If we choose Trump this time, no one can claim to have been fooled or unaware.”
My issue with formulations like this is that the outcome of an election that is very close does not implicate all those who voted on the losing side. Similarly, even if Trump loses soundly, there will still be a lot of people who were fooled, or unaware (or selfish).
\\\
This is probably true. Just as the accusation of Trump’s collusion with Russia were implausible simply because Trump and his team weren’t smart enough to manage such collusion. (That doesn’t mean Russia didn’t try.)
JMG via Wall Street Journal, 1 Nov 2024: WSJ: Trump Doesn’t Have “Attention Span” For A Coup
\\\
Finally, some consideration of what will actually happen if Trump wins…
NY Times, Michelle Goldberg, 1 Nov 2024: What I Truly Expect if an Unconstrained Trump Retakes Power
She begins:
Lately, I’ve seen conservatives taunting liberals online by asking why, if we really think America could be on the verge of fascism, our bags aren’t packed. “It’s tempting to begin trolling my anti-Trump friends by asking if they are liquefying assets, getting passports in order, etc.?” Scott McConnell, a founding editor of The American Conservative, posted on X. National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty said something similarly snarky: “So fascism is here and you’re not doing what people did when fascism showed up, which is contemplating emigration in terror or joining armed resistance.”
Well, I would say, that would mean surrendering.
My single biggest fear about a Trump restoration is that he keeps his promise to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” As The New York Times has reported, that would mean sending ICE to carry out “workplace raids and other sweeps in public places aimed at arresting scores of unauthorized immigrants at once,” and warehousing them in a network of newly built prison camps.
If this happens, there will almost certainly be large protests. And when they break out, it is not far-fetched to think Trump would order the military to violently suppress them; the generals now warning about a second Trump term say he wanted to do just that in the past. This is what I envision when I think of MAGA fascism: people demonized as “vermin” being dragged off to camps, while dissent is violently crushed by the armed forces. I don’t know how anyone who has listened to Trump and those around him can dismiss this scenario as hysterical.
And so on, with political prosecutions and threats to the Constitution, such as the repeal of the 19th Amendment, “the one giving women the right to vote.” And she ends:
But even if the unthinkable happens, it won’t happen all at once. Hannah Arendt wrote, in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” about how the dislocations of World War I created a mass of stateless people who lived “outside the pale of the law.” Seeing these people deprived of human rights, those secure in their citizenship did not generally worry about their own. “It was precisely the seeming stability of the surrounding world that made each group forced out of its protective boundaries look like an unfortunate exception to an otherwise sane and normal rule,” wrote Arendt.
My kids keep asking anxiously what will happen if Trump wins. I tell them that their lives won’t change, that we’ll have to try to stand up for others who are more vulnerable, but that we ourselves will be fine. The last two words I only say in my head: “For now.”
My own prediction: the more extreme Trump becomes or tries to be, there will be push-back, there will be condemnation from all quarters, including from the rest of the world. He will not succeed in implementing his Project 2025 or any similar plan. He will not successfully conclude his term. It will be a horror show. America will be embarrassed before the world.
