How scared should we be of Trump's authoritarian tendencies?

[spidermike007]

Is Trump a Fascist, or Marxist? Does Trump want to become a dictator as he has so often said in the past? How worried should we be? 

 

However scared you might be for our democracy, you are not scared enough.

 

The president of the United States, from the moment he regained the office, has been step-by-step following the autocrat’s playbook. He has gone after universities for not obeying his decrees. He has extorted law firms for having on staff, or just once-upon-a-time having had on staff, people who crossed him. He has targeted for prosecution former aides who challenged him. He has arrested a local judge for not helping him round up migrants for deportation. He has attacked the free press for not bending to his will. On his very first day in office, he released from prison hundreds of domestic terrorists, effectively a personal militia, who assaulted police officers in his name.

 

And now, not 100 days into his term, he has done what so many democracy advocates have feared he would eventually do, something that no president has dared try in the more than two centuries since Marbury v. Madison’s precedent that the judiciary would be the ultimate authority on what is and what is not legal: He is straight-up defying the United States Supreme Court.

 

For three years, Trump and his apologist echo chamber repeated, over and over, that the flood of migrants coming over the southern border without authorization constituted an “invasion.”

Of course, it was no such thing. However much a person chooses to hate illegal immigration, whether based on a strict, rules-are-rules belief system or a pragmatic concern for the effect on border communities or even straight-up racism, the migrants coming here these past several years did not represent an invading army, regardless of how frequently Stephen Miller and his allies tossed around the phrase “military-aged men.”

 

The overwhelming majority of migrants come to this country for the same reason all of our ancestors came here: To make a better life for themselves and their children. For generations now, those entering from Mexico have picked our vegetables, made the beds and cleaned the toilets in our hotels, and laid shingles on our roofs under a scorching summer sun. In short, they’ve been doing the work that native-born Americans have been unwilling to do.

 

To contrast that against an actual invasion, check out what’s happening in Eastern Europe right now. Notice that the Russians aren’t trying to get jobs and make new lives in Ukraine. They’re trying to kill the people who already live there and steal their land.

In executive order after executive order, public statement after public statement, Trump has cited the presence of migrants in the country illegally as an “emergency” to justify sweeping powers that allow him to round up people and ship them to a foreign prison where torture is routine where they will remain, possibly forever.

 

And that’s not the only emergency. There’s an energy “emergency” that allows Trump to trample environmental laws to bring about an infinite amount of oil-drilling. There’s an economic “emergency” that lets him impose tariffs on whatever countries’ imports he wants, notwithstanding the Constitution that specifically grants the power of taxation to Congress.

 

The dangers in those emergency authorities, though, pale before the ones given to a U.S. president facing a literal invasion, which is why the confrontation between Trump and the U.S. Supreme Court over purported members of criminal gangs has such high stakes.

 

Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to many, maybe even most, Americans, that the Chief Justice of the United States commands no army, can summon no police force. Nor, for that matter, does Congress. They, and all of us, are dependent on Donald Trump and the police and military under his control to honor the Constitution and the rule of law.

 

What’s to stop him from declaring that those who protest against him are agents of a foreign power and need to be rounded up and imprisoned? What prevents him from declaring that news media are “enemies of the people” and jailing them, as well? And what about all those disloyal judges who are trying to prevent him from “saving our country” — shouldn’t they be sent to El Salvador’s torture prison, too?

 

Yes, absolutely, this sounds alarmist, because we have a normalcy bias in this country. Nothing this bad has ever happened here, and therefore it cannot. And it is this failure of imagination, the same failure that refused to foresee Jan. 6 before Trump had unleashed his armed mob on the Capitol, that is again endangering the republic.

 

“If today the executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?”

 

 

 

 

[worgeordie]

Trump would love to be a dictator , all his best friends are dictators,

Xi,Putin,Kim,Orban and that dictator running his gulags in San Salvador,

he is going to have a military parade on his birthday ,just like other dictators.

 

regards Worgeordie

[Will B Good]

In a word, very.....he has nothing to lose, won't see a third term, not bothered about a dynasty and has immunity courtesy of the SCOTUS.

[blaze master]

2 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

Is Trump a Fascist, or Marxist

 

Marxist is generally reserved for the left. If Trump was a fascist dissenters would start to disappear. A few on here would be taken very quickly....if he was a true fascist.

 

But they aren't. They they are able to log in daily and say whatever they want about him. 

 

I have seen repeated calls on this forum for the death of Trump. Again something a fascist dictator would stomp out very quickly.

 

 

[spidermike007]

16 minutes ago, blaze master said:

 

Marxist is generally reserved for the left. If Trump was a fascist dissenters would start to disappear. A few on here would be taken very quickly....if he was a true fascist.

 

But they aren't. They they are able to log in daily and say whatever they want about him. 

 

I have seen repeated calls on this forum for the death of Trump. Again something a fascist dictator would stomp out very quickly.

 

 

Just give him some time, he appears to just be warming up. If given enough power I suspect he would be way out of control. 

[blaze master]

17 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

Just give him some time, he appears to just be warming up. If given enough power I suspect he would be way out of control. 

 

I give it till Jan 2029. Then this will all finally be over. 

[Nick Carter icp]

7 minutes ago, blaze master said:

 

I give it till Jan 2029. Then this will all finally be over. 

 

  No, you will never be able to stop talking about Trump .

Trump will be here for the rest of your life 

[blaze master]

2 minutes ago, Nick Carter icp said:

 

  No, you will never be able to stop talking about Trump .

Trump will be here for the rest of your life 

 

Nope. I'm quite young. Trump will be pushing up daisies and I'll have decades to go. 

[Nick Carter icp]

2 minutes ago, blaze master said:

 

Nope. I'm quite young. Trump will be pushing up daisies and I'll have decades to go. 

 

   You will still be talking about him when hes gone .

Death wont be an escape 

 

[blaze master]

6 minutes ago, Nick Carter icp said:

 

   You will still be talking about him when hes gone .

Death wont be an escape 

 

 

Negative but thanks for the laugh. 

[theshu25]

There is no way the orange idiot will do the full term. Has not got the brains o rfreinds to last. It is slowly but surely digging itself into a hole.

[hotsun]

14 minutes ago, Nick Carter icp said:

 

   You will still be talking about him when hes gone .

Death wont be an escape 

 

Trumps death is the only escape for people with the syndrome. Until then they are trapped in their own mind

[spidermike007]

1 hour ago, blaze master said:

 

I give it till Jan 2029. Then this will all finally be over. 

 

1 hour ago, blaze master said:

 

I give it till Jan 2029. Then this will all finally be over. 

One can only hope so, but I also wonder what the world's going to look like at that moment in time. 

[hotsun]

37 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

 

One can only hope so, but I also wonder what the world's going to look like at that moment in time. 

You will still have the syndrome, therefore there is no escape from your suffering

[Tug]

2 hours ago, blaze master said:

 

Nope. I'm quite young. Trump will be pushing up daisies and I'll have decades to go. 

Yup a younger non American who constantly posts against the democratic norms of my government……hummm……anyway on topic as Mr Mike pointed out trump is indeed checking all the boxes of a wannabe dictator he’s following the playbook to a tee with the help of the project 2025 folks and I personally suspect with the help of Putin.good thread Mr Mike thanks for getting it out there.

[blaze master]

6 minutes ago, Tug said:

Yup a younger non American who constantly posts against the democratic norms of my government……hummm……anyway on topic as Mr Mike pointed out trump is indeed checking all the boxes of a wannabe dictator he’s following the playbook to a tee with the help of the project 2025 folks and I personally suspect with the help of Putin.good thread Mr Mike thanks for getting it out there.

 

Ok.

[Jim Blue]

You start with NY  low ball housing ...then you own the world .Seems its the new American way ....

[blaze master]

3 minutes ago, Jim Blue said:

You start with NY  low ball housing ...then you own the world .Seems its the new American way ....

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6bbzwJ0Sx48&pp=ygUNR3JlZWQgaXMuZ29vZA%3D%3D

[bkk6060]

If a person is weak minded and their whole world is obsessively fixated on a world leader who has much more power then you, then you should be very concerned. 

And,  probably concerned about your own mental health.

[dinsdale]

I think a better question is how bored should we be with these continuous anti-Trump threads that just repeat over and over the same attack points from the woke progressive left. Like it or not for now he is the POTUS and IMHO doing a better job than the last one who was unfit to be POTUS and his VP who is an idiot.

[Tug]

1 hour ago, dinsdale said:

I think a better question is how bored should we be with these continuous anti-Trump threads that just repeat over and over the same attack points from the woke progressive left. Like it or not for now he is the POTUS and IMHO doing a better job than the last one who was unfit to be POTUS and his VP who is an idiot.

Or if you are seeing these continuous anti I trump comments perhaps the light bulb should go off.they aren’t by accident they are a reflection of his actions.they are expressing genuine concern and are based on one’s love of country democracy and rule of law.

[JimHuaHin]

Look at Hungry, Israel, Russia, Turkiye and the USA, to name but a few countries which have politically changed in recent decades - democracies in name by authoritarian in nature.  Italy next?

 

Globally, we are witnessing the slow rise of far right authoritarian political parties, all supported by big business and large multinational corporations.  Marx briefly wrote about this issue, but it was Lenin who refined Marx's arguments and highlighted the threat to humanity.

 

The worst is yet to come, unless one is super rich, and thankfully I shall not be alive to see it.  AI use by authoritarian states will only hasten this rise, as have seen in the USA.

[Tug]

2 minutes ago, JimHuaHin said:

Look at Hungry, Israel, Russia, Turkiye and the USA, to name but a few countries which have politically changed in recent decades - democracies in name by authoritarian in nature.  Italy next?

 

Globally, we are witnessing the slow rise of far right authoritarian political parties, all supported by big business and large multinational corporations.  Marx briefly wrote about this issue, but it was Lenin who refined Marx's arguments and highlighted the threat to humanity.

 

The worst is yet to come, unless one is super rich, and thankfully I shall not be alive to see it.  AI use by authoritarian states will only hasten this rise, as have seen in the USA.

Scary stuff indeed!