Article: Welcome to the Trump dictatorship

[bdamomma]

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/welcome-to-the-trump-dictatorship/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1238

snip of article:

Another week of shaking our heads and wondering how much longer we can survive him. Yet again, Donald Trump overwhelmed practically everything with the force of his obscene personality, running his mouth and his thumbs even while he was failing to run the country in any sort of conventional sense. He doesn’t actually do anything, but he dominates everything. Living in America today is like being trapped in a room with him — no doors, no windows, no exits, only Trump and the sound of Trump and the hideous image of Trump, all day, every day, for day after day after day.

Our senses dictate how we experience the world — our hearing and sight and touch and smell, even the ineffable stuff like intuition and belief. But when our senses are overwhelmed by someone like Trump, when our lives seem filled with a man who does nothing but endlessly tweet and lie and hate, it kills us inside. Trump is killing us.

This is what it feels like to live in a dictatorship. Our nation may not actually be a dictatorship, at least not yet, but it feels like we’re living in one. We are dominated by a man who beats us senseless with an everyday drumbeat of horrors.

Like tinpot dictators the world over, Trump thinks of himself as the center of the universe, and everything he does, all day long every single day, seeks to put himself there and keep himself there. All dictators equate their interests with the national interest, and so does Trump. Everything, and I mean everything, is about him. Late on Friday, Trump announced increased tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods. As he departed for the G-7 summit, it was clear that he would crash the world economy before he would admit he was wrong about starting trade wars.


It’s all about Trump, all the time. He’s on our televisions all day long. When he’s not babbling in front of cameras on the White House lawn or in the Oval Office, he’s dominating the news with tweets quoting right-wing lunatics spewing hate and racism. You can’t turn him off. You can’t get away from him. You can’t stop it.


It's a disease that we must eradicate.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. It's like we're surrounded by a huge wall made of shit.

No matter where we are, we can see it and smell it. It looms over us everywhere and we can't get over it or through it. Trump's Great Wall is made of shit and it's himself.

[sandensea]

2. And like all fascist dictatorships, Big Bidness is behind it all

Whether it's Hitler, Mussolini, Suharto, Mobutu, Pinochet, or Videla, all fascist dictators had one thing in commonn with the otherwise very different ways in which they rose to power:

Support from Big Business - both local (big landowners, ruling families, etc.), and international (U.S. and British executives mainly).

[handmade34]

3. it is spot on

posted this yesterday and it is still as powerful!!

[Grasswire2]

4. and we are suffering a sort of PTSD....

.....and our health diminishes accordingly.

Yale holocaust historian Timothy Snyder explains that a rising autocrat will deploy SPECTACLE. Outrage after outrage in order to exhaust the good people of a land.

SPECTACLE.

Name it. Say it.

[smirkymonkey]

14. That is exactly what it feels like - PTSD. This article is so spot-on!

"Living in America today is like being trapped in a room with him — no doors, no windows, no exits, only Trump and the sound of Trump and the hideous image of Trump, all day, every day, for day after day after day."

I feel like we never get a break. We never have any peace. Unless you completely retreat from the world, you are going to see him, hear him, hear about him, read about him, see his tweets somewhere. It really does feel like there is no escape from his awfulness and no hope of relief.

I saw my primary care doctor today for chest pains and high bp, etc. She was asking me about stress and I told her that it sounds like I am just being political, but this man and his nightmare of an administration are really stressing me out. I can feel it in my body. She kind of laughed a little and agreed with me, but took me seriously. I am going to my Cardiologist at MGH on Thursday and have a Stress Echo next Friday. I really think he's driving me into an early grave, and I'm not even that old.

[Grasswire2]

17. yes, I began to have serious BP issues in 2016.

Many trips to ER, and more than one doc there told me that business increased for them since then.

I'm just now getting BP managed with a different med combination (that I found via research) AND a focus on getting endorphins. I figured out the latter from an obscure 2004 clinical study. Treating "paroxysmal" hypertension of unknown cause with beta endorphins.

[smirkymonkey]

20. I will have to look into that. Thanks for the info!

[Grasswire2]

21. happy to PM any time. nt

[bdamomma]

24. smirkymonkey

please take care of yourself, and try to breathe. I almost wish the jerk would have some sort of health issue he deserves it.

[Newest Reality]

29. +1

There are ways to become more resilient and we would be better off employing and deploying them when possible.

That point you made is an excellent start. It behooves us to realize the tactics, name them, and then get past the reactions, (which is what is being appealed to) and move towards insight and a practical, sane response.

I know that sounds like I am might be suggesting a complacency in place of outrage, but that is not the case at all. I am convinced that there is a way to shield ourselves from the insidiousness of the spectacle without having to withdraw from the arena, even though it seems like a political Thunderdome. A detached participation may sound contradictory, but it is actually feasible.

We own our mental real estate and can reclaim it by limiting the outflows and recognizing the stabs and jabs at our "lizard" brain. We can reevaluate our emotions, (which can make us reactive and frustrated) by noting that they are our own emotions; our feelings are natural responses within and do not have to be completely subject to, or projected onto, an external source of blame or cause. It does not have to work like that if we practice a reclamation.

What is the point of that? Well, our own mental health and well being are at stake here and, unless we plan to just dissolve into apathy or come apart at the seams, then the energy and alacrity we collectively require to succeed takes precedence and when we know it is possible, we can take the appropriate measures, individually and collectively.

[Grasswire2]

30. My long-time best friend told me the other day when I suggested a particular act of resistance..

...to him that would suit his skills and his celebrity status that he is "trying to remain positive" because he sees his role as someone who educates others about climate change without political controversy.

And I understand that.

But my nature, as the descendant of multiple American Revolutionary War patriots, is to stand up and holler. Okay, two of my gr gr gr whatever grandparents did flee to Canada in the late 1700s. But others stood and fought and lost blood and treasure in the cause of liberty. I think of them, and of my uncle who was a POW in a Japanese camp in WW2 for nearly four years and it is impossible for me to watch authoritarianism take root here without being deeply and emotionally involved.

[ffr]

5. I'm looking forward to the day of retribution

I have no love loss for fellow Americans who have made it their sole purpose in life to see other Americans suffer under the tRump/McConnell dictatorship. I hope they are stripped of their wealth and are left with nothing after what unpatriotic deeds they have brought upon our nation.

[calimary]

6. And before he metastasizes any further, like the social cancer he is.

Look at the world. Now there’s another trump-wannabe “running” Brazil (into the ground) and allowing the Amazon to burn to the ground. And there’s a wannabe lookalike in the UK now. Ironically named Boris. And the dictators in other countries aren’t being beaten back. They’re solidifying their control and setting a HORRIBLE example.

It’s mighty hard to try to be optimistic these days.

[bdamomma]

8. You know

that pendulum is swinging right but when it begins to swing left again they all better watch out.

[calimary]

10. I hope I live long enough to see that.

The ol’ pendulum better start swinging back the other way SOON, though.

[smirkymonkey]

15. And we will never forgive or forget!

There will be hell to pay!

[bdamomma]

25. there will be

one thing we all know is that Repigs do not give a shit about Americans, they are in it for power and money. I hate McConnell and I hate a few more. They have such a low opinion of Americans and I'm talking about us. It's frustrating and infuriating.

[Initech]

12. England, Brazil, India, the Philippines, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Spain, the US, Italy, France...

All part of an extremely dangerous and scary plan. I'm convinced that if Fox News and social media existed back in WWII, we'd currently be under Nazi rule.

[Grasswire2]

18. And Seth Abramson puts a lot of explanation into the Kushner-MBS-Putin plan to transform the ..

...geopolitical order of the world.

It's not exactly the countries that are all tending right named above, but the same kind of scary.

And the G6 countries (sans U.S.) are moving ahead without us.

[dalton99a]

23. +1

[calimary]

22. Not an unreasonable observation.

[uponit7771]

7. K&R, Trump essentially called off 2020 election by saying he's going to cheat. We're in 1933 Germany

[Perseus]

9. I have a problem with the way we treat everything the creature does

1. Calling the abnormal "the new normal". Well no, if its not normal it is not normal, the abnormal does not ever become normal.
2. the creature dictatorship. No, we cannot allow it and that phrase becomes acceptance, we cannot accept a conman and his enablers to take over the country.
3. The G7 leaders will have to pay next year to stay at the creatures resort. NO THEY WON'T, it cannot be allowed, it cannot be accepted, and the fact that the G7 leaders will not go for it.

Everything the creature does seems to have very little actual rejection, yes a lot of words, toons, pundit criticism, blah, blah, blah, but he continues to do it, and no one does anything about it.

One of the worst news from yesterday was about the Navy closing down their unit of "Climate Change Studies", or something like that, which was, of course, started by Obama. What is going on? Is the military obeying orders they should not be obeying? is the military so brain-washed they will carry out any order because it comes from the creature? What is going on?

I hate it when Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and others laugh at the craziness, we need to take all this in panic mode, it is not a joke. Yes, it is funny how stupid the creature is, how awkward he is and behaves, but lets face it, they guy IS NOT normal, and should not be treated that way, ever.

Tweet Rachel Maddow, make sure she needs to take "the new normal" out of her vocabulary, it doesn't help, it makes people accept that which cannot be accepted, we need to change our rhetoric as well.

[smirkymonkey]

16. +1000

This is what drives me so insane! NOBODY challenges him! NOBODY says no to him! NOBODY tells him what a stupid, lying, grifting POS he is and nobody refuses to indulge his childish, obnoxious behavior.

All we have to do is to start doing it to him first and it will be like exposing the naked emperor. Can you imagine his reaction? Talk about great TV ratings! Soon, it will become easy for others to confront him, deny him, humiliate him and expose him. Why are so many people so afraid of this little man-baby?

[bdamomma]

27. you know

this POS is only one person, we are many that's all I will say.

[Grasswire2]

19. I said last week that we need to STOP assigning a "mad genius" and magical politician ..E

...characterization to Trump.

A rising autocrat deploys SPECTACLE and outrage after outrage in order to exhaust the good people of a land.

Name it.

It's not magic. It's not genius.

[Initech]

11. You know we're near the end of humanity...

When people start preferring fascism and autocratic dictators over freedom and progress. When white supremacism is preferred and those who aren't are triggered snowflakes who can't take a joke. Just end it already, it's the waiting I can't stand!

[lindysalsagal]

13. In The Handmaid's Tale they started with a sneak attack on women's jobs and property.

They also quickly changed all the border laws and refused to let anyone leave, and set military checkpoints everywhere.

They claimed it was a limited "Marshall Law" because of the war and nuclear residue which was rendering everyone infertile.

Honestly, I never thought I'd ever be an end times prepper, but these nutjobs make me wish for a quiet cabin on top of a mountain in montana where no one will find me.....some chickens, a freshwater stream nearby...

I'll paddle to canada if I have to.

[fluffster]

26. "Martial" n/t

[bdamomma]

28. it's not healthy for people

to live like this he and his regime are a threat to us and our way of life. We need to breathe again, no one can live like this. It's them or us. Survival mode.

[Newest Reality]

31. +1

When I first saw the movie version and read the book, the potential of that scenario, even though it was very dark, theocratic and dystopian, was both disturbing and a good warning, on par with both Huxley and Orwell.

Now, it really stands out even more, especially with Theocrat like Pence standing in the wings. Atwood was prescient and hit the button, in many ways, especially when it comes to the increased attack on women's rights.

She has a new book out BTW and I think it is a sequel.