Aspiring Dictator Donald Trump Continues to Escalate His Threats of Violence....And As Usual the Mainstream News Media Looks Away

Donald Trump is continuing his campaign of public threats to injure, imprison or kill his perceived personal enemies, and other foes of the MAGA movement, if and when he takes power a year from now. The most recent example came in a series of posts on Truth Social last Thursday morning. Although certain aspects of these posts made headlines with respect to Trump's preposterous claims of immunity, the full context is important.

In his trademark all-caps prose, Trump proposed that any U.S president "MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY, WITHOUT WHICH IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM/HER TO PROPERLY FUNCTION." It's unusually generous, by Trump's standards, even to consider other actual or hypothetical presidents. Then he continued:

ANY MISTAKE, EVEN IF WELL INTENDED, WOULD BE MET WITH ALMOST CERTAIN INDICTMENT BY THE OPPOSING PARTY AT TERM END. EVEN EVENTS THAT “CROSS THE LINE” MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY, OR IT WILL BE YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD. THERE MUST BE CERTAINTY. EXAMPLE: YOU CAN’T STOP POLICE FROM DOING THE JOB OF STRONG & EFFECTIVE CRIME PREVENTION BECAUSE YOU WANT TO GUARD AGAINST THE OCCASIONAL “ROGUE COP” OR “BAD APPLE.” SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH “GREAT BUT SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT.” ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, OR THE AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS OF A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER. HOPEFULLY THIS WILL BE AN EASY DECISION. GOD BLESS THE SUPREME COURT! [Emphasis added.]

For Trump to claim that police must be allowed free rein to commit acts of violence with impunity was not a random "example." Its implications should be obvious. This from the same man whose attorney recently argued in federal court that Trump, as president, could have ordered political rivals executed and accepted bribes without being held accountable before the law. (Under this ludicrous theory, impeachment is the only recourse against a criminal or corrupt president.) 

This also from the same man who publicly threatened the life of Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for alleged disloyalty because Milley refused to support a coup attempt against American democracy and the Constitution. And from the same man who has repeatedly threatened to have President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, special counsel Jack Smith, the judges and prosecutors in his various trials and virtually anyone else (including journalists) who attempts to hold him responsible for his crimes prosecuted for “treason.” As Trump is well aware, the traditional punishment for treason is execution.

Trump no longer bothers to conceal his desire to rule as dictator of a virtual police state, and to claim the right and power to imprison, torture and execute any and all who oppose him.

NYU historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a leading expert on fascism, discussed Trump’s murderous intent in a Thursday social media post:

Trump is telling Americans very clearly that he will be jailing and killing Americans. Anyone who votes for him is complicit with these future crimes because of this transparency & these threats. Americans cannot say they did not know ahead of time.

Journalist Luke Zaleski echoed that warning:

Trump is telling you he’s gonna send his hessians to abuse you without due process. He’s a dictator emerging to take revenge on US citizens. Trump wants revenge. He’s a sick puppy, folks — and he’ll sic his dogs on anyone who fights to save America from him.

This “right” of the leader and ruling party to kill or abuse members of the public with impunity, and to reshape the law to their purposes, is a defining feature of dictatorships and autocracies.

Trump’s most recent threats against the American people (and, by implication, against democracy and civil society) attracted some mainstream news coverage for a day or so before disappearing down the memory hole. (Zeeshan Aleem’s essay at MSNBC was a notable exception).

Even so, there was little discussion of Trump’s specific threat or his self-comparison to a violent "rogue cop," licensed to beat, torture, abduct or murder citizens with "total immunity" from prosecution. At this point, some of the most stalwart and reliable voices in the mainstream media have fallen into the trap of normalizing Trump’s deviant behavior. One prominent commentator, for example, wrote about Trump’s most recent threats while entirely ignoring his "bad apple" analogy. That commentator also never offered any clear statement or interpretation of what Trump's promises of violent revenge will mean for the American people in practice. Instead, this journalist relied on quoting someone else, in rather too oblique a fashion, to get nearer the point. 

That kind of political ventriloquism is utterly inadequate to the task of defeating Trumpism and the larger neofascist movement. Those people with a public platform who claim to defend democracy have a responsibility to be direct, bold and consistent in their truth-telling.

Why do we still face this problem? Why has the mainstream news media as an institution so consistently failed to focus on the MAGA movement’s promises, threats and acts of political violence and thuggery?

It is Not a "Culture War": The Republicans and "Conservatives" are Actually Waging a Fascist War on Multiracial Democracy

America is not mired in a culture war. In reality, today's Republican Party and larger "conservative" movement are waging a fascist war against multiracial pluralist democracy and human freedom. Ultimately, to not understand how the so-called culture war is actually a fascist war against American democracy is to almost ensure being rolled over by those evil forces.

Many political observers point to Pat Buchanan's infamous 1992 speech at the GOP national convention as the beginning of the so-called culture war in America. However, the roots of this fascist and authoritarian campaign are much older: Jim and Jane Crow and white-on-black chattel slavery, genocide against First Nations peoples and white settler colonialism are America's native forms of fascism. When located in the proper historical context, neofascism and the Age of Trump are properly understood as being but the most current manifestation of much older birth defects in American democracy and society.

In a very important recent essay in the Guardian, Yale University philosophy professor Jason Stanley highlights how the Republican fascist thought crime laws in Florida and other parts of the country targeting the teaching of African-American history (and the country's real history more generally) are examples of a much larger Orwellian project:

These laws have been represented by many as a "culture war". This framing is a dangerous falsification of reality. A culture war is a conflict of values between different groups. In a diverse, pluralistic democracy, one should expect frequent conflicts. Yet laws criminalizing educators' speech are no such thing – unlike a culture war, the GOP's recent turn has no place in a democracy. To understand why, consider their consequences.

Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis and the other Republican-fascists are using the myth of American Exceptionalism and what sociologists describe as "the white racial frame" to erase the country's real history and its challenges and complexities to advance an anti-democracy project that eliminates critical thinking and free speech.

Stanley continues:

It is frequently claimed by proponents of such laws that banning discussion of structural racism and intersectionality is freeing schools of indoctrination. And yet indoctrination rarely takes place by allowing the free flow of ideas. Indoctrination instead rather takes places by banning ideas. Celebrating the banning of authors and concepts as "freedom from indoctrination" is as Orwellian as politics gets.….

Most frighteningly, these laws are meant to intimidate educators, to punish them for speaking freely by threatening their jobs, their teaching licenses, and more. The passing of these laws signals the dawn of a new authoritarian age in the United States, where the state uses laws restricting speech to intimidate, bully and punish educators, forcing them to submit to the ideology of the dominant majority or lose their livelihoods, and even their freedom.

So why have the mainstream news media and political class been so wrong in their understanding of this true nature of the "culture war"?

The American political class and mainstream news media — even seven years into the Age of Trump and a coup attempt on Jan. 6 — still have a normalcy bias. As institutions and individuals, they have convinced themselves that American neofascism is a blip on the radar, an aberration, that will inevitably be replaced by a return to "normal" and "the good old days." The American news media and political class are psychologically, emotionally, and financially committed to that narrative even if the facts do not support it.

Moreover, the idea that America is experiencing a culture war instead of a fascist war on democracy and freedom fits neatly into a narrative framework of momentary troubles that will soon pass and not an existential crisis that will fundamentally change the order of things in the country.

The American political class and mainstream news media are self-limiting: they enforce their own formal and informal rules and norms about how they conceptualize and work through political questions and what are considered "realistic" and "reasonable" answers. Admitting that the Republican Party and "conservative" movement are neofascists who reject multiracial democracy would involve a type of paradigm shift that the news media and political class would a priori reject. Careerists and others who are successful in those spheres of influence know what the rules are and adhere to them closely lest they be punished or perhaps even exiled.

In total, the American mainstream news media and political class are possessed by a type of inertia, intellectual laziness and incurious behavior where it is easier to go along with the herd and hive mind about America's democratic institutions and culture as being enduring and permanent than to confront the epistemic crisis that ascendant neofascism represents.

The American mainstream news media and political class are also limited in their ability to properly respond to the country's democracy crisis because of a failure of imagination. It is a type of common sense among the Democrats and mainstream centrist liberals and progressives that "real politics" (economic and other material concerns about the country's "institutions" and society more broadly) are somehow separate and distinct from "culture war" issues.

By comparison, and like other more sophisticated thinkers on the left, the Republican fascists and other members of the global right correctly understand that culture, emotions, material concerns and "serious politics" are all part of a larger struggle to win and keep political power across society. In this framework, culture, emotions and material realities are all interconnected. While too many Democrats and mainstream liberals and progressives (and others committed to the liberal democratic project in America) tend to silo off questions of politics and culture, the neofascists are engaged in a revolutionary project that does not make that error in thinking.

The fascist project is fundamentally a cultural project. As a first step in adapting to the reality that the culture war is actually a fascist war on democracy and freedom, the news media and political class need to change their language and political grammar. As commonly used, "culture war" is empty language. It is vague and imprecise.

A war is waged by one group of people against another. In the context of "the culture wars," this means war by the Republican fascists and their forces against Black and brown people, women, the LGBTQ community, and other disadvantaged and marginalized groups. What are the lived consequences of this fascist "culture war"? People's lives are literally being imperiled, be it from direct violence such as hate crimes or taking away civil and human rights and bodily autonomy. In the example of how gun rights are now treated as a culture war issue, this translates into how gun violence is a public health crisis that needlessly kills tens of thousands of people each year in the United States.

Channeling the literary theorist and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the American mainstream news media and political class cannot understand the true nature and scope of the country's democracy crisis because "culture war" is language that limits their capacity to fully understand political reality.

On this, Stanley concludes and warns in his Guardian essay that:

It is clear that the chief agenda of the GOP is to advance a set of speech laws that criminalize discussion in schools of anything but the white heterosexual majority's perspective. The media's portrayal of these laws as moves in the "culture wars" is an unconscionable misrepresentation of fascism.

The American mainstream news media and political class must recalibrate and rethink their approach to conceptualizing, theorizing, communicating, and responding to the country's democracy crisis and its deep origins. The crisis is widespread and cultural, as opposed to something temporary and caused by one person or a party that has temporarily lost its way.

But that will take hard work and require jettisoning obsolete norms and beliefs about American politics and society. There are few material incentives in terms of one's career or prestige for doing that type of difficult and risky work. Confronting a democracy crisis (or other such serious troubles) demands boldness but the institutions, almost by definition, are created and maintained by professional centrists and wish-casters who cling to "the normal" and a lost past when the latter are mostly poisonous lies — and even more so — in the Age of Trump and ascendant neofascism.

Donald Trump and His Neofascist MAGA Movement Are Our National Malady -- Indicting and Imprisoning Trump For His Many Crimes Will Not Cure the Deep Sickness

Last Thursday, Donald Trump, the twice impeached president and coup leader, a man who has engaged in a decades-long crime spree, was indicted in Manhattan for alleged crimes connected to hush money payments and other offenses during his 2016 presidential campaign. Of his many historic "distinctions," Trump is now the first former president to ever be indicted in criminal court. 

On Monday, Trump was arraigned in Manhattan on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump was then released. 

He would travel to his Mar-a-Lago redoubt and headquarters where that night he attempted to recharge himself with narcissistic energy he sucked from his cult members during a rage-filled yet quite flaccid speech where he listed his grievances and threatened "justice".

I was half asleep and somewhat medicated when Trump's indictment was announced on the television news. When I heard the voices on the television talking about "Trump" and "New York" and "indictment," I opened my eyes, allowed myself a small smile, and went soundly back to sleep on the couch.

Why didn't I rush to my computer to write a too-fast immediate response to the "breaking news" as so many of the other people with a public platform and voice did? Well, late Wednesday night I did something quite careless and stupid. I was working on a project at home and let my mind wander for a second. In that briefest of moments, I cut myself with a very sharp knife. I heard myself say aloud, "You big dummy! You are going to the hospital. That is lots of blood. And yes, that is a bone. And no, you most certainly cannot use crazy glue to fix it."

For the next four hours, I sat in the emergency room with my hand wrapped in gauze and bleeding inside a plastic ziplock bag. I watched all of the other people piled inside the emergency room. They sat on chairs. Others were laying on the ground. Some were slumped over in wheelchairs. There were a few people who found a way to sleep while standing up against a wall. 

There were dozens of homeless people in the emergency room as well. It was cold outside, and the hospital was a type of temporary safe harbor. I counted at least three people who were visibly covered in their own filth. One man was laid out on the ground, rolling around in his own waste. Was he high? Drunk? Exhausted? Mentally ill? All or none of these things? I do not know. The nurses and security guards knew that poor soul by name. They were frustrated with him because he was "noncompliant." The police were called and they carried the poor man outside and dumped him on the sidewalk. 

A team of janitors swooped in. They quickly cleaned up the carpet and floor while not uttering a grumble or any other audible sound of disgust. They didn't even make an obvious gesture of frustration or annoyance. The three janitors were stoic and dutiful. When those men finally get home, they will take off all their clothes and put them all in a garbage bag outside the front door. I watched my father do that same thing many times.

There were other people in the emergency room too, most of them like the woman who would be my "neighbor" in the examination room. She used the emergency room as her regular physician. I counted ten problems in need of care. The doctors would give her prescriptions for eight different medicines.

Too many Americans want a miracle cure for Trumpism.

"Do you have a regular physician?" the doctor asked her. "No."

"How long have you had these symptoms?" She replied: "More than a month."

"When was the last time you had a physical?"

"Years."

"What do you do for a living?" She said, "I am outside most of the time, I deliver food."

My "neighbor" carried an insulated cube-shaped bag with her to the emergency room. She clung to it. She told the doctor that she was going right back to work after she leaves the emergency room and fills the prescriptions. The company she works for pays her less than the minimum wage, which translates into a few dollars an hour.

In its own perverse way, the emergency room is a radically "democratic" space. Of course, here in America wealth and income determine both access to and the quality of healthcare. Race even more so. How gender and sexuality and citizenship status and all the other markers that deem some more privileged and advantaged in American society, and others less so, most certainly matter in terms of health care. Public health and other experts have shown that, by many measures, black women (regardless of income and wealth) suffer the most from America's health inequities.

America's healthcare system is most certainly not "the best in the world". In reality, it is very sick and broken. All of the people in the emergency room need help; acute need is a type of immediate social leveler.

There is a strange intimacy that comes with sickness and emergency rooms as well, where people are pretending to ignore each another while simultaneously being keenly aware of each other. After waiting for several hours, I was tempted to use the tiny amount of social capital I had accrued over these years to cut ahead in line. I ultimately decided not to. I am a Black working-class person who does not possess the arrogance and class entitlement and racial privilege to do such a thing unnecessarily for reasons of mere convenience.

As I sat in the emergency room I tried to stay calm. I meditated. I made up stories about the people around me based on the shoes they were wearing (or not). My mind wandered back to Donald Trump. Would he be indicted? What happens next? What if he wins back the White House? Do the American people realize how much trouble they are already in? Do they have any idea of how much more trouble and pain awaits them?

"This indictment will not succeed in repairing our democracy. But not indicting him would make it that much harder to ever repair our democracy."

Then I thought to myself, "You are in the hospital emergency room bleeding into a ziplock bag, waiting to get a bunch of stitches, trying to not get COVID, and you can't get that man out of your head. You are not well."

I rebutted my own inner dialogue.

"We are not well. None of us are anymore. It is better and more healthy to acknowledge that reality than to pretend otherwise. Any reasonably honest and observant person who has lived in America can tell you that this country is sick and has gone somewhat mad. Hell, almost every week there are Americans who sacrifice children to the Gun God Moloch in the name of 'freedom' and 'rights'. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel told us that 'In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible'. He is, of course, correct."

Several years ago, one of Donald Trump's biographers warned me that spending so much time thinking about Trump (or even worse being in his company) is not healthy; Trump has a dark energy about him that can get inside of your head if you are not careful. Trump's biographer, too, was correct.

Trump and his neofascist movement are our national malady. We, the Americans, need serious help and healing.

Yet because of, and not despite, all the harm Trump and his neofascist movement and their allies have caused to the country, its democracy, its people, and future, there are many tens of millions of Americans who want him back in the White House. In total, this is all much more than a severe political malady. It is a type of moral and ethical sickness.

Here is an even more frightening reality about Trump, neofascism, and our other national maladies: there are tens of millions of Americans who want to be sick. Or alternatively, they have lost the ability to discern what is healthy from what is unhealthy and see Trumpism as a cure instead of poison. And among both groups, a type of collective sociopathy and sadism has taken hold in the form of the many Americans who don't care how sick they are as long as they can make other people sicker than them. In his very personal and intimate book Our Malady, historian Timothy Snyder explains:

Everyone is drawn into a politics of pain that leads to mass death. Opposing health care because you suspect it helps the underserving is like pushing someone off a cliff and then jumping yourself, thinking that your fall with be cushioned by the corpse of the person you murdered. It is like playing a round of Russian roulette in which you load one bullet in the cylinder of your revolver and two in the other fellow's. But how about not jumping off cliffs; how about not playing Russian roulette? How about we live and let live, and all live longer and better?

At its core, Trump and our nation's many maladies are a painful reminder of the inherent connection between the health of a democracy and the health of its members. On this, Snyder also writes:

America is supposed to be about freedom, but illness and fear render us less free. To be free is to become ourselves, to move through the world following our values and desires. Each of us has a right to pursue happiness and to leave a trace. Freedom is impossible when we are too ill to conceive of happiness and too weak to pursue it. It is unattainable when we lack the knowledge we need to make meaningful choice, especially about health.

Whatever the verdict is in the Stormy Daniels case, Donald Trump will, in almost all likelihood, not go to jail. There is one system of justice rich white men; there is another one for everybody else.

Nonetheless, the historic indictment and trial of Trump is an important step towards some type of national healing. Moreover, District Attorney Bragg's case against Trump may be part of a larger coordination game where other indictments will quickly follow now that the supposed taboo against indicting a former president has been broken.

I remain deeply concerned that too many Americans want a miracle cure for Trumpism and American neofascism. To that end, they have convinced themselves that putting Donald Trump on trial for his many obvious crimes, and then convicting him, will heal the nation. Such an outcome will do no such thing by itself.

In a recent essay, journalist and author Steven Beschloss echoes my concerns:

1. Donald Trump was a known criminal long before nearly 63 million Americans voted for him to control the levers of power. As much as he is responsible for his criminal exploitation of that power, we must understand and fix the sickness in the body politic that enabled him to take office.

2. This indictment will not succeed in repairing our democracy. But not indicting him would make it that much harder to ever repair our democracy.

A permanent cure for America's many national maladies will require much hard work. The malady is far greater than one man. As I have warned before, Trumpism and American neofascism are a sickness that is down in the bones, and which has had years to spread to the brain and other major organs. The maladies are spiritual as well.

Do the American people want to be well, or do they want to be sick? And do they even know the difference anymore?

I ended up in the emergency room because of a stupid mistake that I will do my best to never repeat. My hand and fingers hurt as I write this because of that same stupid mistake. Tens of millions of Americans are waiting to put Trump back in the White House. That is no stupid mistake. It's an act of self-inflicted harm — and wholly preventable.