For a convicted criminal and violence-pushing fascist to escape disqualification – that is the elevation of the wrong “enemy within.”
Ponder all that no longer matter to the MAGA crowd – law, order, fair elections, election fraud, respect for others, civility, empathy, procreative rights, peaceful transfer of power, double impeachments, Congressional authority, bipartisanship, blackmail of top state voter counters, blackmail of the Ukrainian president, endorsing enemy tyrants and dictatorship, backing white supremacists, rank incompetence during a once-a-century health emergency, malicious demonization of opponents, and even the glimmer of truth-telling. Whew! Oh yeah, personally inciting an armed, violent crowd to attack the Capitol and overturn a legitimate election. Oh yeah II: overtly threatening the life of the dutiful, sitting VP. Oh yeah III, threatening the illegal outrage of ordering the U.S. military to quell dissent or punish political opposition.
Even after Trump loses, the contagion of Trumpism represents multiple, malignant cancers that must be excoriated and amputated if our body politic wants to restore civic health. It’s not only the perverse inversion of rock-bottom American values but pulling morality inside out, then reveling in cruelty that demands ultimate power (thanks. Supreme Court). Say what? Say what? By what moral legacy can we justify elevating a true “enemy within” to the national CEO role – whose first and last task is to enforce obedience to law?
I don’t know a more dramatic bottom point than making a virtue of corrupting courts of law, mass deaths by Covid negligence, then pledging to weaponize government troops into a steel-booted autocratic gestapo. Democratic suicide is not painless. So much for our quaint, outdated belief that qualified leaders should be morally superior citizens, the outdated notion called “character.” A reckless Criminal-in-chief will by definition advance criminality and violent disruption, not justice or peaceful, orderly elections but vindictive revenge—as promised in advance.
What decent country tolerates treating infamous acts as “virtue signaling”? That turns the tables on sane campaigning, legitimate elections, even that seemingly obsolete idealistic vision—equal justice for all. What manic national fit, grievances or not, hands the head crook the keys to the power center (without immunity)? As Obama aptly ridiculed Trump, “When did it become okay to normalize” vicious, unacceptable behavior?
Knowing he’ll never rule as a majority figure with a true mandate, the Deceiver-in-chief, like every other autocrat, demands minority cult rule, then suspension of law by military force. That’s what lawless mass deportation means – or nasty calls to throttle small-time shop-lifting on the spot if caught red-handed. Is it possible that moral military refusals to illegal orders will manage what voters did not– stop an empowered dictator from running amok?
We’ve always had devious, criminal politicians, but they were aptly dumped after exposure or conviction. Never before was a conspicuous, outrageous outlaw prized for criminality. Behold the bizarre, conquering hero, not only boasting about contempt for justice but exhibiting creepy misogyny, sexual abuse and business/campaign fraud.
Here’s a preliminary list of major laws, norms, and values Trump has already violated:
1) War against majority rule by sabotaging democracy, elections, government, and the Constitution. Because MAGA cannot win fair and square, Trump forces are merciless in defying legal elections. Because the Constitution is such an annoying, restrictive obstacle to tyranny, just trash it as obsolete and irrelevant.
2) Attacks on the media using “ends justify corrupt means” defense—with lies, deception, subterfuge and infamous assaults against “fake news,” defined as whatever doesn’t endorse Trump.
3) Attacks on the campaign legitimacy—dragging in every dirty trick, outlandish conspiracy, foul, vulgar language, and vile demonization—the result turns everything into a vicious joke that denies the sovereignty of the people to self-determine their fate. Enough sabotage means lack of confidence in democratic institutions, ripe for contempt and conspiracies, as in
4) Attacks on election integrity, illegal manipulations, and traitorous rejection of peaceful transfers of power – akin to unilaterally quashing majority rule. Trump can’t win a fair election so he wars against all those he lost. What a farce! Thus, while decrying fraud, Trump is the great fraud hypocrite treacherously trying to steal elections. The ever-repeated Big Lie is the cancerous Epic Lie, ignition for all mendacity since 2020.
5) Defiance of civilization-protecting law and order by a multiply convicted criminal whose scorn of courts, judges, prosecutors, witnesses, evidence, and verdicts is unprecedented and unspeakable. If justice becomes just another sound-bite football, forget the difference between tyrannical governments and ours.
6) Glorification of lying and disinformation as daily deception levers, undermining functional, systemic equilibrium—legislative, administrative and Constitutional, even to emergency responses to crises. If truth has no currency, reality, expertise and evidence are prey for greed and power-mongering. If lying is both commonplace and un-refuted, then charades and pantomimes displace citizen self-rule.
7) Glorification of violence, might-makes-right vengeance, and abuse of dissenters, non-whites, and immigrants speaks to brutal immorality. No democratic ideals stand against enough massive force, the violation of all basic rights, and the betrayal of two centuries of tested statutes and moral norms.
8) Uncivil attacks on the Bill of Rights and Constitutional amendments, jeopardizing protests, free speech, press and assembly rights, even “radical, enemy” criticism. Only CIVIC law and order stand between citizen rights and the chaos, violence, and fascist oppressors who rule by threat, fear, and control.
9) Demonized, vindictive name-calling of opponents. What just system tolerates impugning your opponents as not just wrong but “sick and evil,” nefarious schemers out for blood. Using slanderous (never corrected) lies to turn foes into devils knives the heart of civilized forums. You don’t have to disprove, refute, or debate a falsely evil, devious, discredited opponent—you just turn campaigns into predatory crusades.
10) Betrayal of national security thresholds via the overt theft and inept storage of top-secret documents. What ex-president needs to steal privileged paperwork unless he plans to commit treason or to sell to an enemy party? Trump doesn’t read anything longer than a paragraph but he knows how to commit treason.
11) Sabotage of paramount foreign alliances, by threat, non-support, or palling around with enemies. To shred key national security and commercial alliances for absurd causes (treaties but also NATO) is a suicidal bunker-buster to our international prestige and reliability. To arbitrarily nix hard-won treaties because of partisan bad faith is rank disloyalty to citizens, industries, and workers injured by trade disruptions. To misuse tariffs and isolate America are more stakes in the heart of our prosperity and status.
12) Collusion with and support of undeniable foreign enemies, worsened by illegal, unethical contact on foreign affairs with heads of hostile states. Identification with and support of entrenched, brutal dictators. Sharing top secrets with foreign agents visiting the White House. Demands that Russia interfere in our elections (print emails). Acceptance of vast, diverse payola that violate the Emoluments Clause (like from Egypt).
In sum, not all this transparent, pernicious wickedness is open to direct indictment. All, however, are blatant ways that Trump and enablers have blasted values, agreements (formal and otherwise), plus rights of sovereign citizens and historic allies. Most voters no longer worry about the why, but the inexhaustible, unprotected compounding of damage were DT re-elected. Any disqualified outlaw who gratuitously, selfishly contradicts so many basic values is, to echo firm judgments from two generals who know Trump cold, an unfit, dishonest, immoral “fascist to the core.” Would the American electorate be dumb enough to elect a conspicuous, anti-democratic bomb-thrower to our top office? Hard to imagine a more pitiful outcome done by electoral choice.
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