Deep in the heart of every anti-Trump American (and non-American) is the belief/hope/prayer that eventually the laws which will kick in and stop Trump. That’s fine – until he starts changing the laws.
At the rate he is going with his executive orders (not record-setting in number, but certainly in controversy), combined with threats he’s issued via Twitter, it feels like the race is on to the moment he oversteps his authority or the Constitution and puts a crown on his head.
For the moment, the protests, the judiciary, and the media, combined with Trump’s inexperience in politics and his over-attentiveness to his brand, are keeping him in check. All his complaints about the media coverage of terrorist attacks are not just to support his travel ban. He’s got bigger plans. What he needs is a catastrophic game-changing event and he’s salivating for that to happen.
(Laughably, this started as a paragrapgh, but it's easier to read it in bullet points)
*On three different occasions (on MSNBC, Cosmo and TMZ), Trump’s spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway, invoked the manufactured Bowling Green Massacre (and given Trump ends every day reviewing news clips with Sean Spicer, does anyone seriously think Conway did that without his blessing?).
*Trump upgraded the Egyptian armed with a knife and paint bombs at the Louvre to a “new radical Islamic terrorist.” Questions are being asked about Trump’s and Bannon’s peripheral involvement in the violent part of the Berkeley protest.
*Fox News, Trump’s puppy dog news outlet, leapt at the possible Islamic connection of the shooter behind the Quebec Mosque Massacre until it was announced he really was a white Trump supporter. [All other news outlets updated or deleted their reports accordingly, but Fox kept their tweet up for a full day until Prime Minister Trudeau directly and publically challenged them. Even then, Fox took two more hours to remove the tweet.] But the more telling tweet came from Spicer on January 30: "It's [the massacre] a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant and why the president is taking steps to be proactive and not reactive on issues of national security."
*And on Monday, the Republican White House released a list of 78 attacks (dates and countries only) carried out in the US and abroad by "radical Islamic terrorists" since 2014, claiming they were "mostly" underreported. One of these incidences is "Queensland, Australia, August, 2016." The parents of one victim, Mia Ayliffe-Chung, are outraged that Trump would use their daughter to further his cause, given the accused had no Islamic ties and had never set foot in a mosque.
*This week, Spicer referenced another nonexistent attack, this time in Atlanta. He mentioned this one three times. The Daily Beast asked for clarification on it and got nothing. CNN also asked and also got nothing. Only after the story was picked up on various media outlets, did Spicer offer an explanation, saying 'he meant Orlando.'
*Trump upgraded the Egyptian armed with a knife and paint bombs at the Louvre to a “new radical Islamic terrorist.” Questions are being asked about Trump’s and Bannon’s peripheral involvement in the violent part of the Berkeley protest.
*Fox News, Trump’s puppy dog news outlet, leapt at the possible Islamic connection of the shooter behind the Quebec Mosque Massacre until it was announced he really was a white Trump supporter. [All other news outlets updated or deleted their reports accordingly, but Fox kept their tweet up for a full day until Prime Minister Trudeau directly and publically challenged them. Even then, Fox took two more hours to remove the tweet.] But the more telling tweet came from Spicer on January 30: "It's [the massacre] a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant and why the president is taking steps to be proactive and not reactive on issues of national security."
*And on Monday, the Republican White House released a list of 78 attacks (dates and countries only) carried out in the US and abroad by "radical Islamic terrorists" since 2014, claiming they were "mostly" underreported. One of these incidences is "Queensland, Australia, August, 2016." The parents of one victim, Mia Ayliffe-Chung, are outraged that Trump would use their daughter to further his cause, given the accused had no Islamic ties and had never set foot in a mosque.
*This week, Spicer referenced another nonexistent attack, this time in Atlanta. He mentioned this one three times. The Daily Beast asked for clarification on it and got nothing. CNN also asked and also got nothing. Only after the story was picked up on various media outlets, did Spicer offer an explanation, saying 'he meant Orlando.'
It is becoming obvious that Trump’s favourite food isn’t potato chips; it’s violence. When speaking to senior U.S. military commanders and coalition representatives this week, he got up on his hind legs and said, “We are up against an enemy that celebrates death and totally worships destruction.” He babbled on a bit longer, but the irony is spectacular (or as he would say, very, very spectacular).
Trump equally love death and destruction. He’s as specific on how he likes his violence served up as The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon is about his mie krob and chicken satay with extra peanut sauce from Siam Palace.
Did it take place on US soil?
If not, did it take place in a country we have not banned?
Can you tell who the perpetrators were?
If no, but their faces were covered and they were not caught like at Berkeley, get really upset anyway.
Are the perpetrators white?
If yes, ignore it completely.
Are the perpetrators Muslim?
If yes, was there more than one attacker?
If no, can we add a lot of modifiers to make it sound like a group?
Did anyone die?
If not, can we say there were lots of innocent people panicking?
Were the victims Muslim?
If not, like the Berlin Christmas Market event, can we just label all of them Christians?
If yes, and the attacker was a Trump supporter, just ignore it.
This is all very amusing except there is purpose to Trump’s salivation over violence. The big attack, when it finally does happen, either on its own or with Trump’s help, will be the catalyst to turn his presidency into a dictatorship.
And he’s getting ready for it:
January 25: While everyone was focused on Trump’s declaration to build the wall, he hired 5000 new border patrol agents. He did this without a congressional hearing on the matter and any appropriate vote to approve the hiring. No one has argued it.
January 25: Trump drafted a 3-page order to reopen “black site” prisons and undo other restrictions on handling detainees, also restricting access the Red Cross would have to those detainees. On February 4, the Trump administration backed off the executive order draft about “black site” prisons, but the revised version contains parts of the earlier draft including expanding the use of Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
January 26: Steve Bannon said, “... the media should keep its mouth shut.” I don’t know how the public received those words, but the media know a threat when they hear one. And the First Amendment is far from bullet-proof.
January 29: Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox News Sunday during which time she called for commentators to be fired for covering Trump poorly.
January 31- February 4: Trump targets lawyers and judges, laying the groundwork for discrediting them when they disagree with him. After firing acting US Attorney General Sally Yates for not defending his executive order banning travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, he then attacked Judge James Robarts for "halting a Homeland Security travel ban" and blames [in advance]the judiciary if there is an attack on US soil.
While the public is reacting to the individual headlines and tweets, and making significant headway with boycotts, protests and the upcoming February 17 general strike that’s being proposed, a grander pattern has emerged that bears a frightening similarity to events that came before in Germany, 1933.
On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor.
February 22: 40,000 SA and SS men are sworn in as auxiliary police.
February 27: The Reichstag was set ablaze. The arsonist was Marinus van der Lubbe,
a lone Communist, but there is much debate surrounding this including Nazi involvement.
February 28: The Reichstag Fire Decree or the "decree for the protection of people and the state" went into effect. This allowed suspension of civil liberties including habeas corpus, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, the right of association, public assembly, secrecy of correspondence, house searches without court order, and confiscation of property. The decree was used by the Nazis to ban publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause.
March 20, 1933: Dachau, the first German concentration camp opened, located 10 miles northwest of Munich which held mainly Communists, Social Democrats and the first Jewish prisoners, all of whom political opponents of the Nazis.
March 23, 1933: The Enabling Act came into effect, consolidating the Reichstag Fire Decree, and allowed Hitler to enact laws without the participation or involvement of the Reichstag.
The events of 1933 are not exactly the same as 2017, but they are similar enough to be distressing. Maybe it will never come to that. I hope it doesn’t. But the “so called” American president is all dressed and ready to go to the ball. He just needs that one last crucial element, an American public panicked by a specific kind of attack on home turf, to invite him.
