Trump Pushing U.S. Toward Authoritarianism
D. S. Mitchell
I was having coffee with a friend the other day and I was chattering about Calamity Politics, my beloved progressive political blog, telling her about a new line of ‘Resistance’ apparel, and some great “Resist’ and ‘Persist’ jewelry created by an Astoria, Oregon artist. I was adding both the apparel and the jewelry to the Calamity Politics. com site.
Out of the blue, she reached out putting her hand on my arm, and said with a crinkled brow, “Aren’t you worried?”
“What? Worried about what?” I said sensing real concern in her voice.
“I don’t know, I’m worried that Trump or his crew might try to strong arm you, or sue you; anything to shut you up.”
“Well, I appreciate your concern,” I said with a barely concealed smirk.
“I can see that you think I’ve slipped the tracks,” she said looking into her espresso cup.
“I’m pretty sure I’m safe from lawsuit,” I said watching her face closely, “Or what? Assault? Blackmail? A Twitter attack?”
“I don’t know, I’ve read some scary stuff about Trump’s mob connections. New York construction means mob entanglements. Plus, he was in the those Atlantic City, New Jersey casinos. Mobsters and thugs love construction, trucking, drugs, prostitution and gambling.”
“I stopped watching ‘House of Cards’ at the end of season four,” I said with a giggle.
“There’s only been four seasons,” Mandy said, serious as hell, “Netflix will release season five next week. Isn’t it a great show?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, “I don’t like shows when they get too dark,” I volunteered.
“I know you liked ’50 First Dates,” she mocked.
“Ha, ha,” I pouted.
“I’m worried, I think Trump is an evil man. I think you need to be really careful. I just read an article in Salon.com by a Yale professor and he thinks that Trump is a menace to our democracy.”
“Well, I agree that Trump is a danger to our democracy, but I don’t think he’s got an army of brown shirts running loose, terrorizing and killing journalists, yet.”
“That’s my point. He has the mob to do his dirty work, they are his brown shirts.”
“Wow,” I said, looking her in the eye, “I need to go home and get my daily post published,” the hair on my arms standing erect.
We paid the bill and hugged, before we each headed in opposite directions toward our individual cars.
I went to the office and did a political comment on a news story and looked up both Ross Douthat and Timothy Snyder.
If you go to the right side of this blog you can go directly to the Timothy Snyder article. Just drop down until you see the title, “Historian Believes Trump Will Stage a Coup”. It’s interesting and worth reading.
The Ross Douthat article is available on line. To read that article it will be necessary for you to go to the N.Y. Times website and locate the article.
Both Douthat and Snyder paint a dark and dangerous image of Donald Trump. Both historians warn of a potential overthrow of the government by Trump.
The first part of the plan is to declare war on the mainstream media. Constant references to the “fake news” and calling out particular journalists for insult. Second, on the list of Trump targets is the independent judiciary. Trump routinely diminishes the importance of judges and threatens to break up the Federal Court system.
Such predictions by two noted historians sends shivers up my spine. Seeing Trump write Executive Order after Executive Order, threaten and demean the press, insult members of Congress, badger the judiciary, insult world leaders via Twitter, makes me wonder if Trump has any boundaries or limits. I have serious concerns about the future of the United States with Trump at the helm.
Mandy indicated during our morning coffee klatch, that Donald Trump believes himself to be above the law. I must admit, Trump has over the years had dealings with some pretty unscrupulous people. You don’t run casinos and do construction without paying some bribes and hush money.
Regarding Trump’s friendly calls to blood thirsty would be dictator Rodrigo Duterte in Manila and Recep Erdogan in Turkey raised both my eyebrows. After a couple minutes of thought I decided the reason for Trump’s outreach to these two men is that he has big financial investments both in the Philippines and Turkey. If nothing else he knows where the hotels are and he’d rather have a good relationship with these creeps than a bad one. It’s all about money. Unfortunately for the United States Trump is making foreign policy decisions based on financial considerations. That is really scary.
My conversation with Mandy should not to be taken as anything more than a woman with an overactive imagination innocently warning a friend, of what she considered a dangerous situation. I have to admit, it gave me a really good feeling, that just possibly, I might be saying something important enough to get people’s attention. What an ego boost.
I do know that there are lots of unorthodox things about our new president and most of them are not good. There do seem to be connections with a variety of unsavory characters, both on this side of the Atlantic and overseas. It seems to me the connections to Russia need to be exposed soon. I have checked out Trump’s background and he owes plenty of money to overseas banks, and as his son Eric claims the Trump Organization has lots of Russian associations. Follow the money and we will find Trump’s loyalty.
Trump has plenty of investigations on the burner. Allegations of Trump and possible money laundering through fraudulent real estate sales, 2016 election collusion with the Russian government, mob connections, sexual harassment and fraud cases opened by the FBI and two Congressional Committees are likely to keep Trump and his associates too busy to bother with a small liberal blog on the West Coast. LOL.
I went on line to Amazon and ordered Mandy a couple spy thrillers and sent them to her with a funny card. That should keep her busy for a couple days, and her mind off of Trump and his mob connections.
Join the Resistance
Dar
