“American Carnage,” alright
….this time, for real
Imagine an America in which…
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gather to oppose the inauguration of Herr Trump, and hundreds of them are beaten by US Army troops aided by a phalanx of Proud Boys as Trump invokes the Insurrection Act…
A total immigration ban is declared, and judges who rule it unconstitutional are ignored…
You risk being targeted for an IRS audit for writing a letter-to-the-editor – or even a Facebook post – critical of the President…
The construction workers or lawn maintenance workers building or tending to your neighborhood are suddenly put into a van and whisked away to a “camp” in the Texas borderlands…
Or the dishwasher you employ in your restaurant – or the housekeeper who has faithfully served your ailing mother disappeared…Some of your neighbors…disappear…
An America in which the nightly news reports that…
Dr. Fauci is being investigated as a purported Chinese operative…
James Comey has been “detained” on his way to a book tour…
Mark Milley is facing jail pending a court martial…
Former Chief of Staff John Kelly is being investigated for…something…and James Mattis stripped of his pension for…something else…
Career civil servants are fired, replaced with Trump sycophants and loyalists…
An America that watches as…
The New York Times and The Washington Post and Boston Globe are slapped with IRS audits..
CNN and MSNBC are stripped of their broadcasting privileges by FCC Commissioner Marjorie Taylor Greene…
Fox “News” is declared “State Television” by the same MTG…
Facebook is fined for even feeble attempts to monitor rampant misinformation…
And an America with a government led by
Secretary of State Tucker Carlson, whose first act is to visit Vladimir Putin in Moscow and announce America’s withdrawal from NATO…
Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, who appoints Jim Jordan as Special Counsel, charging him with prosecuting Bill Barr for refusing to call the 2020 election rigged…
Secretary of Education Ron DeSantis who arrives with a mandate to further whitewash our already whitewashed history books, and burn all existing copies of “Killers of the Flower Moon”…
Minister of Propaganda Steve Bannon and his deputies, Steven Miller and Sean Hannity, who are charged with creating the “message of the day” for State Television…
Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, who was nowhere to be seen when mobs overran the Capitol on January 6…
The newly created Pastor-in-Chief Jerry Falwell, Jr. declares America “ a Christian nation” and institutes a national abortion ban…
This scenario is only a slight exaggeration, should Trump manage to gain election, an eventuality that will be made more likely if third party and fringe candidates like Robert Kennedy, Jill Stein siphon off votes (are they actually being funded by right wingers for exactly this purpose?). If you doubt its probability, I implore you to read this article by the great reporters Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and Charlie Savage: How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025.
What can you do? Pay attention. Don’t avoid political discussions, be informed, be vocal. AND VOTE, always.1
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You will likely recall Trump’s Inauguration day speech – dubbed “American Carnage” – for its dark and dystopian tone, one described by former President George W. Bush as “some weird shit.” https://www.vox.com/a/president-trump-inauguration-speech-transcript-annotations