h*h
发帖数: 27852 | 1 Take Trump's coup seriously. It's no joke — and Biden's win was just a
sugar high
There's nothing "normal" about this moment. Even if Trump reluctantly leaves
office, immense damage has been done
By Chauncey DeVega
November 27, 2020 1:00PM (UTC)
U.S. President Donald Trump gives thumbs up to supporters from this
motorcade after he golfed at Trump National Golf Club on November 22, 2020
in Sterling, Virginia. The previous day President Donald Trump left the G20
summit virtual event “Pandemic Preparedness” to visit one of his golf
clubs as the virus has now killed more than 250,000 Americans.
Is Donald Trump still attempting a coup with the intention of remaining in
power indefinitely?
Yes. "I quit" is a phrase that does not appear in the authoritarian's
handbook.
Trump has announced his coup in public, which is a major reason why most
people are not taking it seriously.
Advertisement:
The president has repeatedly stated that the 2020 presidential election is
illegitimate, and should be disregarded because he is not the winner. Given
that he is a compulsive liar, on that one matter Trump has been remarkably
consistent. Moreover, he signaled as early as 2016 his intent to engage in a
coup, and other extralegal or illegal efforts to subvert any election where
he does not win.
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by more than 6 million votes, and has also
received 306 votes to Trump's 232 in the Electoral College. Both outcomes
are a mandate from the American people that the Age of Trump is over and its
leader should be left on the ash-heap of history, a nightmare to be
awakened from.
Advertisement:
In response, Trump's agents and followers are staging public protests,
filing lawsuits on Trump's behalf claiming that he lost because of "voter
fraud," "fake ballots" and other conspiracies, They have threatened violence
and an "uprising" against Biden and the Democrats. Trump has not conceded
defeat and under legal pressure is now only begrudgingly offering assistance
in the transition of power. He is creating an overall environment of
political instability, putting his most stalwart loyalists in key national
security positions. As befits a political strongman and neofascist, Trump
continues punishing the American people by further damaging the nation's
economy and literally killing thousands of people each day through a
campaign of negligence and sabotage in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
As the Age of Trump shambles toward its conclusion, the United States has
again shown itself to be far from exceptional. Trump's coup attempt has put
the country and its democracy in a state of limbo and "zombie politics."
In a new essay at the New York Review of Books, Fintan O'Toole explains:
Advertisement:
It is impossible not to think, in this in-between moment, of Antonio Gramsci
new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms
appear." Something is dying, but we do not yet know what. Is it the basic
idea of majority rule or is it the most coherent attempt to destroy that
idea since the secession of the Confederacy? Something is trying to be born,
but we cannot yet say what it is either. Is it an American version of the "
managed democracy" or "electoral autocracy" that is the most rapidly
expanding political form around the world? Or is it a radically renewed
republic that can finally deal with the unfinished business of its history?
The old is in a state of suspended animation; the new stands at a threshold
it cannot yet cross. …
If Trump is eventually removed from the Oval Office, the study of revenge
and immortal hate, not sober self-criticism, will be the response in
Trumpworld. There will be no chastening, just a further injection of
resentment and conspiracy-mongering.
This is zombie politics — the life-after-death of a former conservative
party. And as Gothic stories tell us, it is very hard to kill the undead.
One half of a two-party system has passed over into a post-democratic state.
In response to these events, the American mainstream news media and the
commentariat, for the most part, are continuing with the same errors in
analysis and narrative that helped to elect Trump in 2016 and then
normalized his assaults on democracy and the rule of law for the next four
years.
They are mocking Trump's defeats in the courts and describing them as though
they are sporting events with a running tally of wins and losses. It is
assumed to be a fait accompli that Biden is taking office in January. Trump
is said to be "flailing" and "throwing tantrums"; and his behavior is "
pathetic" and "embarrassing." Trump's coup attempt is "disorganized," as are
his supporters with their supposed "low morale."
Advertisement:
The possibility that Trump and his agents could find some way to alter the
vote count and the assigned electors in key states such as Pennsylvania and
Michigan is treated as an absurdity: "The law" and "the courts" would never
allow such an outcome.
This is a form of political comfort food or sugar high, feeding a desperate
hunger from the mainstream news media, the political class and the American
people for a return to normalcy. But on some basic level they must know that
Trump's attacks on democracy are abnormal and very dangerous.
Denial helped to birth Trumpism; failure to confront that denial means
Trumpism will continue in America long after the man himself is gone.
Advertisement:
In reality, Donald Trump, his Republican Party and their allies are playing
a different game, one entirely outside of "normal politics" and the "folk
theories of democracy" that the Fourth Estate and many other political
elites worship like a religion.
Donald Trump and his movement's real goal is to make invalid any future
election where Republicans do not win.
The attacks on the 2020 election are also part of a strategy which has shown
itself to be successful in the extreme. Republican voters are being
conditioned to view the Biden administration as having no legal authority
because Trump was "betrayed." The net effect will be to encourage political
violence and other acts of resistance by Trump's supporters and other
Republican voters.
Advertisement:
In a new essay for Medium, Indi Samarajiva reflects on his experience with
the attempted coup in Sri Lanka in 2018 and issues a warning:
The tragic thing which you do not understand — which you cannot understand
— is that you've already lost. You cannot know exactly what — that's the
nature of chaos — but know this. You will lose more than you can bear.
We lost our children, playing at church. We lost our friends, sitting down
to brunch. Muslims lost their dignity and rights. Your Republicans have set
forces into play they cannot possibly understand and certainly cannot
control. And they don't even want to. To them, chaos is a ladder. …
What I can tell you — what anyone who's experienced this can tell you — is
that it's going to be bad. I didn't know that churches and hotels would
blow up on Easter Sunday, but I know now. I'm trying to tell you in advance.
You've opened up a Pandora's box of instability. All kinds of demons come
out.
I have lived through a coup. It felt like what you're feeling now. Like
watching something stupid and just waiting for it to go away. But it doesn't
go away. You can forget about it, but it doesn't go away.
There's a ticking bomb at the heart of your democracy now. Your government,
the very idea of governance is fatally wounded. Chaos has been planted at
its heart. I don't know what this chaos will grow into, but I can promise
you this. It won't be good.
American democracy is very sick. The jubilance and celebration at Trump's
apparent defeat on Election Day were highly premature. Biden's victory was a
drug that temporarily masked the pain of a democracy in critical condition.
The patient can live "normally" until the high of the drug wears off. The
crash will be extreme and horrible, almost beyond imagination, because the
underlying disease has not been addressed.
The truth of what Trump and his neofascist movement have revealed about
America's failures and vulnerabilities must be confronted if that civic
disease is to be purged from the country's body politic. The reckoning must
also include an assessment of the character and behavior of the tens of
millions of Americans who voted for Trump and continue to support him.
On these questions of healing and what comes next after the Age of Trump,
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a leading historian of fascism, had this to say in a recent
phone conversation:
Advertisement:
We are going to need a lot of grassroots education to help people understand
what nefarious influence they were under with Trump. One of the saddest
truths is that these men despise the people who love them. They disdain them
for giving them their power. Many of us have been amazed that with the
pandemic it's been very obvious he doesn't care if they die. He truly doesn'
t care if you live or die. Helping people to see that will be important to
getting them back to the cause of good government, government that cares
about public welfare. That's very different than building bridges to forgive
people and saying, "OK, well we'll just put your racism behind us." That's
not at all what I advocate.
Ultimately, American neofascism as mainstreamed by Donald Trump and his
followers is a slow-acting poison. Trump's coup attempt is one more sign
that it is working. | F********r
发帖数: 878 | 2 I only know, if Trump succeeds, future elections will be jokes. | i********r
发帖数: 139 | |
|
