There's No Going Back Now
Warnings that Donald Trump was creating an authoritarian movement were dismissed. Now, that movement is holding the nation hostage. We have no choice but to take it on.
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Wednesday morning social media was bustling with pictures taken by the Department of Justice showing, in no uncertain terms, top secret documents pilfered by former president Donald Trump. Seized earlier this month in a search of Trump’s gaudy Palm Beach resort, these materials represent some of the most sensitive intelligence known in the United States, a cache of state secrets so classified the agents investigating them had to be specially cleared.
The seriousness of the situation cannot be disputed. Trump has been caught dead-to-rights committing a federal crime, and his “defense,” if you can call it that, of his actions has ranged from the dangerous (“the FBI planted documents”) to the absurd (“I can declassify whatever I want”). His reaction this morning to the release of the photo was no less head-scratching.
There is no telling where this investigation is heading, or what it might turn up. Already there are questions as to whether Trump or those in his circle might have sold secrets or used them as leverage, and some have already gestured toward a notable uptick compromised Central Intelligence Agency assets as a possible consequence in this worst-case scenario, but the stark and irrefutable nature of the crime is what hangs over the situation now like a dark, foreboding cloud.
If Trump were anyone else - strike that, if he weren’t a wealthy, powerful, white man - the case would be open and shut. Prosecution. Imprisonment. But his status as not just the former president but the head of a massive authoritarian movement that has already shown itself capable of great violence now paralyzes the system.
As the search was still underway, the Republican Party, Fox News, and the entirety of the Right Wing ecosystem was already peddling conspiracy theories and fomenting outrage for electoral and financial capitalization. Since then, the drumbeat has only grown louder. Trump set much of this in motion, warning Attorney General Merrick Garland America was “on fire,” suggesting that further investigation would only lead to an increase in political tensions and, notably, threatening Garland with plausible deniability. South Carolina senator and noted Trump toady Lindsey Graham went even further, predicting “riots in the streets” if the former president was held accountable.
The threats have been more than rhetorical. In the immediate aftermath of the raid, 42-year-old Ricky Shiffer traveled to the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigations in Cincinnati, Ohio and attempted to breach its security in order to kill agents as retribution. Meanwhile, threats against the agency have been skyrocketing.
It would be one thing if this were an isolated incident, but the MAGA Movement has repeatedly carried out violence, from a spate of attempted assassinations to an attempt at a literal overthrow of the government. Garland himself has even gone so far as to leak to the press that, in his wrestling with prosecuting Trump for the January 6th coup attempt, the specter of violence and bloodshed has weighed on his decision.
There is no choice, however. Trump has been caught in multiple crimes. If we are to have a system of law these egregious offenses must be addressed. To do anything else is to merely allow this movement to hold the country hostage, and that will escalate into more crimes, more antidemocratic activities, and, in the long run, more bloodshed and chaos.
Reckoning with this authoritarian movement is inevitable. Our political and media class have ignored it for far too long, dismissed those of us who have sounded the alarms based on evidence and expertise, and have allowed this threat to metastasize and worsen. To hold Trump accountable will doubtlessly lead to violence, but we simply have no choice. We either draw a hard line in the sand now or watch this situation spin more and more out of control.
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In all things Donald Trump it remains absolutely vital to reiterate that this is about more than the man. Trump is a charlatan and avatar for conspicuous consumption, poisonous greed, and the detrimental effects of privilege and hereditary wealth. That he was able to rise to the highest office in the nation is an indictment of our system and political environment. But it is an absolute fiction to pretend that this situation emerged completely out of nowhere and that it was due to the efforts of this flawed, flawed man alone.
We have discussed the collapsing of the Republican Party at length, but time must also be spent focusing on this system’s complicity in creating this situation. Trump was able to ride billions of dollars of free advertising to the White House because our media is wired to capitalize off his special brand of dysfunction and synthesize it into a putrid form of “entertainment.” As he was filling gymnasiums and arenas around the country with newly-converted supporters, the networks aired his rants around the clock as a means of garnering ratings. In my time covering these events and exposing what was happening on the ground, including calls for murder and coups, the warnings I and others sounded were derided, minimized, treated as hysterical hair-pulling.
There was no way Trump could win.
There was no way his supporters could be violent.
There was no way any of this was even remotely possible.
That fantasy crumbled over time as the evidence mounted, but the system that made it possible, the legions of politicians and media members who profited off this madness while underplaying the consequences, continued to live in their delusion. Now, as the nation faces the prospect of more and more violence, many of them are calling for Trump to either be pardoned or for Merrick Garland and the legal system to stand down in order to avoid the consequences they put into motion in the first place.
It is a notable and predictable trend, this slide. Ignore the systemic rot, downplay the threat, and then move on to the next stage in the growing disaster. And, unfortunately, this has played out continually through history, where demagogues and authoritarian movements have been countenanced by those wanting nothing more than to protect the system and their places within it, only to gift the entirety of their culture, chunk by chunk by chunk, over to the threat and watch it become the dominant force.
Again, as I warned back in 2016, we face another test that will define our future.
Root this out now. Before it gets even worse.
Because it will get worse.
If Trump is prosecuted there will be violence. In fact, there will more than likely be lives lost, blood spilled, damage done. The political moment we’re living through is beset with conditions that make this not just likely but assured.
But to move beyond this, to give in to the authoritarian movement’s demands and concede more and more ground, will only lead to more more death and more destruction.
We are being held hostage.
Time and again this movement has embraced threats and violence as a means of disabling opposition or the necessary oversight of a system protecting itself. There is no legitimacy to this body. It cannot win elections. It cannot hold power through these means and can only grow and profit off of the spoils of ransom. The disenfranchisement, the erosion of individual and civil rights, the oppression. It is only possible if people allow it to go forward.
The MAGA Movement, and Trump’s organized crime-like operation, depends on institutions cowing to its wishes and demands. It thrives on denial. It thrives on delusions of normalcy. It thrives on politicians and media refusing to call it what it is and instead gifting it room and space to grow and operate.
There is no lengths to which this movement will stop. Giving in to these demands will only lead to more demands as they grow more and more confident that there are no consequences and that violence and intimidation are effective weapons. If this continues, it will never, ever end.
This is a time for mature and serious conversations. Like a tumor, this authoritarian movement has grown and now threatens the body politic. We must cut it out. We must answer the threat. And to continue yielding ground out of fear and in subservience to intimidation will only result in a furthering of infection and, eventually, the death of the body and liberal democracy itself.
The truth is that there is no choice.
Jesus, listening to Trump is just exhausting. "Yeah, the DEA found a ton of cocaine in my basement, but look at how sloppily they stacked the bricks in their press conference!"
I've seen this a thousand times in any attempt to argue rationally with right-wingers, they always have a comeback, and it's always totally irrelevant to the question and always an obvious attempt at "Hey, look over there!" Like this is all a game, and the only object is to hit the ball back over the net.
That said, I'm actually quite pleased at how, whenever these mooks get into a courtroom, where facts and evidence really do matter and there are penalties for lying, they've suddenly got nothin'. I think our legal system can handle these guys, if given half a chance.
You’re right, Jared, this has been building for a very long time. And yet, you’re wrong. We’re not being held hostage at all.
I was just musing how Charley Manson (1969) and (alleged) recent Buffalo shooter, Payton Gendron, both wanted to start a race war.
But I’m old enough to remember when the shoe was on the other foot. To remember hearing Bernadine Dohrn read The Weather Underground’s recorded “Declaration of a State of War” against the United States Government, broadcast on KPFA here in Berkeley, May of 1970.
Hearing her voice say that I and other long-haired, dope-smoking, freaks were becoming armed radicals, making love and loading guns in our communes and dorm rooms, getting ready for an armed insurrection — was my first clue that the WUO (Weather Underground Organization) was full of shit. Most likely a covertly handled counter-intelligence operation being steered to discredit the Left.
It is actually quite easy to “handle” idealistic firebrands by steering them toward violent actions in line with their agendas that subsequently reap counter-revolutionary social consequences.
YES, that is, indeed, a genuine “conspiracy theory” — lacking any evidence short of the obvious fact that, as reported by mainstream media of the time , everything the Weather Underground succeeded in doing also did just that. All while simultaneously “evading” the FBI for 11 years, and only then turning themselves in after “prosecutorial misconduct” (aka COINTELPRO) insured they would not be held legally accountable for anything more than misdemeanors.
Follow the WUO with Donald DeFreeze’s Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA — motto — “DEATH TO THE FASCIST INSECT THAT PRAYS UPON THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE!”), whose first act of “radicalism” (November 1973) was to murder a black Oakland school superintendent (with cyanide filled hollow-points no less) —— and THEN abduct heiress Patty Hearst (February 1974) from her apartment, about a half block from where I sit today —— and THEN “evade” the FBI till May of 1974 (Hearst captured, September 1975). No wonder everyone voted for Regan in 1980, eh?
Given all that happened one might begin to think the FBI were incompetent!
Or — as I do — that the best way to thwart a revolution is to lead it (clandestinely, of course).
But the whole concept of armed “Revolution” is stupid to begin with — THEN and NOW.
I remember sitting in a coffee house not long after the Hearst abduction, with a red-diaper young man from NYC, telling me how “we” were going to overthrow the government via armed revolution.
I literally laughed in his face. I grew up in the country and learned to shoot before I could ride a two-wheel bike. I doubt this long haired Jewish boy had ever even held a gun, let alone fired one. I said something to the effect, “If you think the US Military is going to let “us” take control of “them” you are totally delusional!”
When Trump lost the election but claimed he’d won, the building manager here where I live (originally from Iraq) asked me what I thought was going to happen.
I said, “There’s going to be blood in the streets, that’s what.” I hadn’t anticipated blood in the Capitol. Like everyone, it never occurred to me they’d even get that far. Malcom Nance is right about their white-skin camouflage.
I went on, “But I’m not too worried. Trump doesn’t have the military on his side. A few within its ranks, perhaps, but mostly not. And his Putin propaganda fed mega-MAGA-moron sleeper cels ain’t no match for them — AK-47s or whatever be damned.”
But are we being held hostage? Or are we just oblivious to what’s actually going on — which is much, much bigger?
For sure most of the Democrats don’t want to see a blood bath, even if most of the Republicans don’t give a shit — hell, would be happy to see it. But fact is, with few exceptions, most of the MAGA-morons are cowards, and stupid to boot. I know, I grew up with them. Shit for brains. Most of ‘em ain’t gonna do shit but a lot of holler’n even if Trump is indicted, arrested, tried, convicted, and incarcerated.
But, you see, what has to happen before any of that is the handled president’s handler has to be handled. — That’s what’s REALLY going on.