isaac_newton wrote:n7axw wrote:I think Puerto Rico and DC will eventually have statehood status. (Tongue in cheek) I will leave it to cthia's niece to decide how the electoral votes are divided up. For my money do away with the whole anachronistic husiness.
Don
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what is Trump up to now [sacking entire civilian defence bods] - it's looking rather scary from the outside?
or are we just panicking?
Yes and no...
First, Trump is an aspiring dictator. ALL of his role models of "strong leadership" are dictators and authoritarian autocrats and he hasn't been shy about letting us know it for the last four years.
Understanding that to be his mindset, his first reaction to his looming removal from office is naturally to try and purge anyone from military leadership he perceives to be insufficiently loyal to him personally.
And yeah, that's scary. And no, it's not wrong to be seriously concerned about it. If Trump COULD pull off a coup backed by military force to keep him in office he would absolutely try to.
But... I see almost zero possibility he could pull it off. No matter who he installs in the Pentagon he just has not had enough time to corrupt the entire military to sufficient extent that they would back his play if he tried to do it. If he had had another four years to work on it who knows, but as things stand today I don't see him doing it. So that's going nowhere.
What I am more worried about is:
1. The constant muttering about trying to get the election overturned legislatively by having Republican controlled state legislatures defy their vote results and appoint "loyal" electoral college electors who will vote for Trump regardless of what the people of their state voted for, based on their claims the elections results were "rigged" and they have to "fix" them to "save" democracy. I don't think this would succeed either but it would cause absolute chaos.
2. The concerted and deliberate propaganda campaign directed at convincing the GOP electorate that the election was fraudulent. Every case brought to a court has been instantly booted back out due to there being absolutely no evidence to back it up but you don't need evidence for the right wing media machine and this bullshit is doing a ton of damage to democratic (small d) institutions in the US long term. Not that Trump cares, he's perfectly willing to burn the country down behind him on the way out the door. He's exactly that kind of petty tantrum throwing narcissistic sociopath.