Past the point where Trump’s tendency to fascism can be ignored
More from Jim Wright on Facebook.
Yesterday, Miami, Florida. Trump interview. Subject: US Navy Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba:
Reporter: “Would you try to get the military commissions, the trial court there, to try U.S. citizens?”
To be clear, the reporter is asking the man who wants to be president of the United States, the man who claims he’s READ THE CONSTITUTION, if he as president would try United States citizens — UNITED STATES CITIZENS, civilians — in a military court.
Repeat, Trump was being asked if he would consider trying US civilians in a military court. That’s what he’s being asked. There is no ambiguity. The question is clear and specific: Should military courts have authority over US citizens?
That’s the question.
Now, as an American, if you don’t already know the correct answer, if you don’t immediately understand why trying a civilian under military authority is 1) unconstitutional, 2) illegal, and 3) unAmerican, then you need to get your ass back to school immediately. Don’t vote. Don’t say another word. Don’t. If that question doesn’t set off every warning bell in your head, then you are not qualified to be a citizen of this republic.
And what did Donald Trump answer?
What indeed.
Trump “Well, I know that they want to try them [American citizens accused of terrorism] in our regular court systems, and I don’t like that at all. I don’t like that at all. I would say they could be tried there [at Guantanamo Bay, under military authority]. That would be fine.”
That would be fine.
That would be fine.
If you can’t see why this man is utterly and completely unqualified to serve in ANY elected position in the United States of America let alone as President, if that answer alone doesn’t prove as much in your mind, then as I said above, you don’t meet the minimum requirements for citizenship.
CNN reports Trump’s breezy indifference to the Constitution and due process:
The Republican presidential nominee told the Miami Herald that he doesn’t “at all” like the idea of trying terrorist suspects in the civilian court system, even though US citizens are constitutionally entitled to due process. He added that he would be “fine” with trying US citizens in military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, the US naval base that is also home to a military prison housing captured terror suspects.
…
President George W. Bush authorized the trial of non-citizens who engage or support acts of terrorism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but a US citizen has never been tried in military courts under that order.
Most constitutional experts and several senior Republican senators — including Sen. John McCain — strongly opposed proposals to try Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers and a naturalized US citizen, in military court.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Trump was concerned about infringing US citizens’ right to due process under the Constitution.
They were too busy frantically googling “due process” and “Constitution” and “military courts.”
Back to Jim Wright:
We have long since passed the point where Trump’s tendency to fascism can be ignored.
We have long since passed the point where the repeated, daily now, multiple warning signs can be dismissed as sarcasm, or jokes, or Trump just being Trump.
In the wreckage following WWII, people asked over and over, and continue to ask up to this very day: How could this have happened? How could you people, you Germans, how could you let that madman destroy your republic, destroy your nation, destroy your people, destroy your civilization? How? How is that possible? Why didn’t you DO SOMETHING?
And the answer was: We didn’t know. We thought he would make Germany great again. We thought he would make Germany for Germans, get rid of the undesirables. We thought he would rebuild our military, make it mighty again. We thought he would make the world fear us, respect us, acknowledge our superiority. He said he’d give us jobs, rebuild our infrastructure, make us all rich. We didn’t know. We didn’t know until it was too late!
Well, America, WE don’t have that excuse.
WE do know.
And you’re looking it. You’re looking at it every single goddamned day. You’re looking at the pinched ugly faces of racists and bigots and haters, the KKK and the Neo-Nazis, Homophobia, Transphobia, Islamophobia, Anti-Semites, violence and fear of every kind touted as American values, jingoism, military fetishism, America for Americans, walls, propaganda sold as truth despite its OBVIOUS AND PROVABLE falsehood, the cult of personality, the fear of the other, the suspicion that our neighbors and our government are plotting against us, the appeal to some supposed lost greatness, the nostalgia for the good old days of glory, and now the suggestion that civilians should be tried by military tribunal — free of the burden of law, the Constitution, appeal, and all the values we Americans hold most dear. The very ideals those like Trump would say make us “exceptional,” that is what we would deny others.
It’s the truth. He’s all too like Hitler, not in a hyperbolic or rhetorical sense, but literally. He doesn’t have to have a stupid little Chaplin-moustache and flattened hair to be all too like Hitler, all he has to do is keep talking monstrous Hitlerian shit the way he does. He’s got it down. Even the fucking mannerisms are similar – the screaming rages are similar.
Hell yes it can happen here.
Frighteningly it can happen anywhere. Democracy is robust only if certain social norms are followed. When those norms are not followed, indeed respected, no laws can save a democracy from collapse. The USA is not the only western democracy teetering. Merely the biggest and most powerful and the most at risk.
And the most dangerous to others is it goes.
If you look at Hitler’s speeches there’s similarities too. That struck me a early in Trumps primaries campaign.
Rambling. Incoherent. Not actually saying anything. Just throwing out some keywords with a rythmn and cadence that appeals to people.
Yes, he is like Hitler. A populist leader with little real to offer who will use the worst aspects of society to gain power, influence and money and allow himself to be used by them to gain public backing for the appalling things they want to do. Hitler didn’t come up with the Final Solution; it was developed by Himmler. Hitler created the social milieu in which it could actually be implemented (OK, he was jumping off the German anger about the results of the Treaty of Versailles as well.)
The thing is… the thing is, Germany in the 1920s was in a genuinely terrible economic state. Massive unemployment and the kind of inflation that today you only see in failing African states (there are stories of restaurants in Berlin where the waiters would hold up price cards throughout the evening to show the change in prices – the economy was falling that fast). In 1923 the dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German Marks compared to c. 90 Marks in early 1921. Many people were starving.
Now things in the US and Europe have certainly been better. Economies are wobbly, some people are suffering financial hardship but even so this is nowhere near the conditions at the end of the Weimar Republic so why are we reacting the same way? You look back at Germany in the twenties and Hitler’s rise to power is perfectly understandable. He took a desperate people and gave them hope. No wonder he was loved. None of Trump’s supporters, however disenfranchised they believe themselves, are that desperate. The same goes for the followers of the fascist politicians in Europe. And yet, terrifyingly, we seem to be walking the same path as Europe in the twenties, especially in the US.
There are two hallmarks of dictatorship: torture — of anyone, convicted or suspected or innocent — and detention without a real trial.
The US has done both for decades. Early on it was shameful enough that they said, no, of course, we would never do that. More recently (Bush, Obama) it was, very regrettable, but, well, we’re at war y’know.
So the ground was prepared before the orange-haired baboon was out and proud about it. At least when they tried to lie, that made it clear it was not acceptable. We’re crossing so many lines so fast I feel like I’m walking on a cattle grid.
Aren’t there like 12 or 14 hallmarks of fascism? All of which check out in the U.S.A nd have done for quite a while.
At least the original Hitler had done military service and actually won an Iron Cross, this one was gifted a medal. Did he order his driving license from Wallmart too, or just found it in a box of serials? (yes, mispelt, so wat?)
I’m not sure Drumpf paid any attention to the “U.S. citizens” part. I think all he heard was the “Guantanamo Bay” part.
#4 Steamshovelmama
Yes America is better financially than 1920s Germany, but remember the support base Trump is appealing to: the aggrieved that believe themselves to be disenfranchised, even though (relatively speaking) they are not. As for why they believe that, look no further than the propaganda machine of conservatism, primarily Fox News but also a host of fringe radio shows and the like. There world of misinformation there, and it has closed itself off to actual information by declaring it ‘liberal lies’ and the like.
American conservatism is all about corporate cronyism and selling the non-wealthy down the river, promising a golden age of education and employment – even fortune – while eroding all of the social infrastructure that enables those things. It is all about appealing to white voters to oppose non-white citizens and immigrants as job stealers despite importing foreigners on special work visas that allow bargain basement wages, it is about decrying the lack of good jobs while eroding worker protection, and decrying the lack of any job at all while exporting as much labour as possible to nations with no worker protections because they are cheap.
The list of contradictions could go on, but it remains clear that American conservatism is all about inflicting and then nurturing aggrievement amongst its constituency. The voting base is better off than Weimar Germany, but don’t feel that they are because of the aggrievement politics they have embraced, and the misinformation that goes along with it.
Holms, spot on. Which is also why right wing governments do all they can to underfund, distract and dumb down education. They want serfs with enough education to perform acceptable work, but no ‘frills’ that might lead to people having the intellectual tools to evaluate they broader world, lest they question their place in it and aspire to more. Or worse, actually want change things.
When you’re at the top of the ladder all change is bad. Funnily enough, when you’re one rung off the bottom all change invariably seems bad too.
@ 6 Rrr
And he wrote his own book!
;-)
@ # 10 Silentbob
Good point! Then again, he had plenty of time while in prison. Hmm … ;-)