Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

WOW Mary Trump nails it. Huge read, excerpt

"It’s impossible to understand the appeal Donald has for his followers if we try to do so from the perspective of people who value honor, decency, empathy, and kindness in their leaders. It isn’t that they see things in Donald that aren’t there. They identify with what is—the brazenness of his lies, his ability to commit crimes with impunity, his bottomless sense of grievance, his monumental insecurity, his bullying, and, perhaps most intriguing, the fact that he is an inveterate failure who keeps being allowed to succeed. Donald is their proxy and their representative. And their ardor has only seemed to grow since his loss. We need only look at data from North Carolina Senate candidate Ted Budd’s campaign to see how complete this identification is. When Republican primary voters were told that Budd had been endorsed by Donald, there was a 45-point net swing in his favor, skyrocketing him to a 19-point lead over his primary opponent. The idea that any other one-term president (George H.W. Bush or Jimmy Carter) would have had the same kind of influence is laughable. On the other hand, though, neither one of them would have tried.

By the same token, elected Republicans, Donald’s chief enablers, see Donald as a means of perpetuating their own power. But they aren’t just putting up with the worst of him simply because they see him as a means to an end. He is them. They value his mendacity and his name-calling and his autocracy because these work for them as well.

Republicans counter truth with absurdity, rendering the truth inoperable. Now a party of fascists, they call Democrats socialist communist Marxists, which is effective in part because it is so nonsensical and in part because they are never asked to define the terms. They cover up their massive (and successful) efforts at voter suppression with wild claims of widespread voter fraud, which essentially doesn’t exist—31 incidents in over a billion votes cast, a number so vanishingly small as to have no meaning.

The main mechanism by which they can successfully carry out these sleights of hand is fear. Whether it’s drug dealers from Mexico or caravans from Central America or Democratic presidents coming for your guns, abolishing religion, or letting gay people get married, they need to keep their voters afraid."

Your link - https://newrepublic.com/article/163115/donald-trump-plot-against-america

We've noted and covered most all of her points there, now Mary has packaged it expertly. And the bit from Democracy Now

Mary Trump: the most cogent description ever of our current peril as a democracy

The most dangerous Republican enabler by far is, of course, Mitch McConnell, who saw an opportunity that even he probably never dared hope for: The guy in the Oval Office wouldn’t just sign off on every aspect of the Republicans’ agenda, he would push the envelope—of decorum, of autocracy—so far that the system itself could be used to create permanent minority rule. Donald showed his party (and yes, it is his party) the limits of pretending to care about good governance or play by the rules. He also showed them the utility of not just stoking racism and hatred of the Other—in the form of immigrants, Democrats, and even epidemiologists—but championing those who espoused them.

McConnell is the greatest traitor to this country since Robert E. Lee (with the difference that McConnell has been trying to take our country down from within). He has always been expert at using existing rules and procedures in ways they weren’t intended to be used, and yet—whether it was denying Merrick Garland a hearing, pushing through Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation, or ending the filibuster as it applied to Supreme Court nominees but employing it to block legislation that would expand voting rights—his anti-democratic maneuvers have been performed within the bounds of the system. The fact that he’s misusingthe system outlined in the Constitution isn’t an exoneration of him, however; it’s a condemnation of the Constitution’s limitations. The definition of treason in the Constitution is so narrow (levying war against the country or giving aid and comfort to the enemy) that a case could never be made against him. It would be difficult, however, to find anybody in modern times who has so undermined our democracy.

This destruction of norms by Donald and other Republicans in the executive and legislative branches has happened so quickly, and has been so thorough, that it’s clear the seeds of it must have been planted a long time ago. It was possible for Donald, the weakest man I have ever known, to exploit the weaknesses in the system not because he introduced them, but because they were there for him to exploit in the first place.

These situations are not the result of four years or even four decades of poor governance—although the worsening of the problem has certainly accelerated since Ronald Reagan’s disastrous presidency. The combination of “trickle-down” economics, his devastating handling of the AIDS crisis, and the intensification of the “War on Drugs,” with all of its racist implications, accelerated the divide between Americans along economic, cultural, and racial dimensions. But we really need to go back to this country’s inception to understand how we got here and to assess how we can possibly repair the extensive damage. With Joe Biden’s election, we did indeed snatch democracy from the jaws of autocracy—a rarity in human history. But as the insurrection of January 6 made clear, we are not out of the woods yet—far from it.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215737120