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You would be mistaken to expect Trump will successfully become a dictator [1]
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Date: 2025-01-28
I said in my last piece (www.dailykos.com/...) that
“the war for freedom would not be won in a decisive battle, but rather be a long grueling campaign of attrition.”
This is not fatalistic, it is the reality of our history — not just as a nation, but as a species.
Since our evolution as a species, we have existed in an endless fight between those who “have” and those who do not “have.” Whether it’s access to a bone club and a fire or the wealth of billions of dollars, humanity has always struggled to fight against the existentially lethal presence of one sin:
Greed.
Greed won the 2025 election, but anyone who thinks our side is down and out is not only gravely mistaken but has also learned nothing from the lessons of history.
People have whined, moaned, and cried in terror, “THERE’S NO OPPOSITION!!!! NO ONE IS RESISTING!!!!”
Please, do tell me where you are getting this information? CNN, ABC, the New York Times perhaps? The same corporate media outlets that orchestrated Trump’s return to the Presidency? Resistance is occurring, and in many ways more forcefully than it did when Trump was President in 2016.
Forget about the establishment wing of the DNC for one moment, we all know about their shortcomings and back stabbings — many of them being supported and paid off by the same billionaires that have supported the RNC. I am talking about the rest of the nation as a whole — the rest of us.
Too many of us get preoccupied and paralyzed with fear. We are shown MAGA death-cultists marching down streets. We shown militias all over the place. We see Trump doing whatever the hell he wants. What few seem to consider, however, is that this is exactly the point. We are meant to see all of this — we are meant to see this “show of strength” and be made exhausted. Fewer still seem to take into account that the legacy media has been expressly restructured to be a propaganda arm for the billionaire oligarchy that Trump represents. No kidding it looks like there’s no resistance — it is being hidden from your very eyes!
Just in Illinois alone, JB Pritzker is all but laughing to Trump’s face, and he is vowing to stand in Trump’s path:
“We’re going to stand in the way of an unconstitutional order. We’ll also stand in the way of them breaking the law in Illinois.”
And, as has been pointed out after the assassination of the United Health CEO, Trump is only going to exacerbate internal tensions within the country — between the “haves” and the “have nots.” The oligarchs and the wealthy know that the nation is reaching a boiling point, and they are frightened.
“These individuals have weaponized government, and we risk revolution. Whether it’s CEOs being murdered in the streets, whether it’s a Me2 movement that had righteous components, or Black Lives Matter, what are these movements? They are targeting the wealthy. We are in the midst of a series of small revolutions to correct income inequality, and the reason we put an insurrectionist and a rapist in office is because, for the first time in our nation’s history, a 30 year old man or woman isn’t doing as well as their parents were at 30. Why? Because the majority of households are having the oxygen sucked out of the rooms that a small number of individuals and a small number of companies can be worth more than nation-states. Income equality is out of control, our tax policy has gone full oligarch.”
That was from Scott Galloway, a New York University Marketing Professor — a man worth over $100 million.
The rage is palpable, and as Kyle Kulanski pointed out in the above video, it is not over a desire to become fascist. No, it is because Americans realize they are being screwed. The issue, as it has been since Reagan, is that ¼ of Americans have not figured out that it is the wealthy that have been screwing them over. Between rising inflation and the fact that Trump will actively make things worse, we are looking at “class consciousness.” Google it. It is not a good thing for the wealthy elites (Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, et al).
This is why the wealthy have been so forcefully trying to take over and steal away as much power as possible.
And for all the people that are scared of Jan 6’ers and Far-Right violence, there are a lot of people that are sprouting up on the Left at the same time.
And if anyone wants to start crying “oh but Trump has the military!!!” — he “had” the military in 2020 too. I know personally, from many friends, that the military wants no part in Trump’s autocratic dreams. If we really are talking about things getting to “that point,” the military is going to be on our side. Period. Just look at the man from the above video (in the SonsofLiberty YouTube channel) — he’s a combat veteran and is “organizing” with other military personnel. Every video he posts starts with “Fuck Donald Trump, and fuck the Neo-Nazi Fascists around him.” Think it over.
I do not encourage violence, nor am I eager for it, but if we really are talking about Trump and the RNC trying to install authoritarianism, I am not exactly pessimistic about our odds.
Never forget that pre-war Germany was 99% white, Christian, and less than 1% Jewish. MAGA is less than ¼ of the United States’ population — the most diverse population of any country in the world. Good luck trying to force everyone to go in one direction.
Trump is making things worse.
Trump is doing everything he can to become dictator.
Trump is as Trump does.
But Trump is not immortal.
The RNC and MAGA are a fractured coalition at best (www.dailykos.com/...).
We still hold the cards and the power to determine our destiny.
I do not believe things will come to dictatorship, revolution, and violence — at least not to the extent that people are terrified of. What I see more likely to happen is an awakening of, not all, but enough people to the truth of conservatist oligarchy in the United States and rising to eliminate the oligarchy from political power.
Trump hoodwinked average working Americans into believing he’s on their side, and convinced enough voters that Kamala Harris and Democrats were on the side of cultural elites (as exemplified by Trump bogeymen the “deep state”, “wokeism”, and “coastal elites”). But his hoax will not work for long, given the oligarchy’s conspicuous takeover of America under Trump’s second regime. That regime has barely begun but it’s already exposing a reality that has been hidden from most Americans for decades: the raw, stinking power of the American oligarchy, and its use of obscene wealth to gain and increase this power… Not since the gilded age of the late 19th century has such vast wealth turned itself into such conspicuous displays of political power. Unapologetically, unashamedly, defiantly. This flagrancy makes me hopeful. Why? Because Americans don’t abide aristocracy. We were founded in revolt against unaccountable power and wealth. We will not tolerate this barefaced takeover. The backlash will be stunning… And just as we did at the end of the first gilded age of the late 19th century when the oligarchy revealed its hubris and grandiosity, we will demand and get fundamental reforms. We will force big money out of our politics. We will raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for what most Americans need. We will bust up giant corporations so they cannot exercise untrammeled economic or political power and regulate big finance so it cannot hold the economy hostage to its wanton gambling. And we will hold huge social media platforms accountable to the public rather than to a handful of multibillionaires… It’s unfortunate that America has come to this point. But, as a friend put it, the authoritarian forces that have been building for years are like the pus in an ugly boil. The only way we work up enough outrage to lance it, she said, is for the boil to get so big and ugly that it disgusts all of us.
The 2024 Election was just one battle, not the war itself. The next battle is already underway.
Mine eyes have seen the glory in our coming Liberty;
We shall trample out the vintage where the sins of wealth are stored;
We shall loose the righteous fury with the passion of our hearts;
Our truth is marching on.
Glory. Glory. Hallelujah.
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