From the election until today, we’ve watched Trump strutting and fretting in Trump Tower. We’ve listened to tales told by an idiot, full of tweets and fury, signifying nothing. Until today. Today Trump is President. Today he matters. And so T.H.R.E.A.T. Watch—Trump Human Rights Erosion and Termination Watch—begins in earnest.
Trump knows nothing about governing, but he knows how to wield personal and financial power. Driven by unbridled egomania and paranoia, he lives in a binary world; you’re either for him, which makes you a “terrific person,” or you’re against him, which makes you an enemy. The way he treated people, organizations and businesses when he was a business man and the way he’s written and talked about his rolling enemies list since his political career began are cause for alarm. Trump and his entourage could savage the institutions of a free press, free public speech and free assembly, and they could rob targeted groups of people living in this country of their basic rights, causing the country irreparable harm.
Sitting on one of Trump’s shoulders whispering in his ear is a man who has aided and abetted the white supremacist movement and has a frightening global, nationalist vision of what the country should become. At Trump’s other ear is a retired general and conspiracy theorist who was fired from his job in intelligence for his erratic behavior. As his megaphones, Trump has two Houdini-level verbal escape artists who lie, deflect, distract and threaten when they’re confronted by an uncomfortable truth.
What could possibly go wrong?
My fears may be overblown—if so, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief the day Trump leaves the White House—but I don’t think so. It is imperative that members of the press and other concerned citizens remain on the alert. Erosions of our rights can occur slowly, bit by bit, and once we realize things are bad enough to speak up, it may already be too late. We’re a nation of frogs in a pot of water, a lit burner beneath us. We need to keep our thermometers at the ready to sense when the water temperature begins creeping upwards. If our own thermometers don’t register a change but those of our neighbors do, we discount what they have noticed at our peril. It’s possible they have detected something others of us haven’t felt in our safe, privileged enclaves.
Stay vigilant. Stay tuned.
This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2017.
“Houdini-level verbal escape artists who lie, deflect, distract”…what does that remind me of, locally?
Oh yeah:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2016/07/18/another-look-at-tusd-salary-hikes-and-prop-123
http://www.buckmastershow.com/2016/07/21/buckmaster-show-7212016-post-proposition-123-fallout/
(In the Buckmaster program, the lies, deflections and distractions start at about minute 33, when David Safier first opens his mouth and starts doing his SPIN on Prop 123 spending in TUSD.)
FYI, David, the frog has already boiled and he is long since dead. The turning point may have come in 2008, when it became clear that the financial industry in this country would be allowed to get away with anything, like a naughty child whose mommy excuses his destructive bad behavior and makes the servants (in the US, the work-for-a-living, taxpaying, gullible middle class) clean up his messes for him. At this point both sides, Republican & Democrat, are fully immersed in lies, deflections, distractions, spin, all masking the fact that Wall Street and / or the billionaire class owns both major parties. Different party, different set of hedge fund managers or industrialists. “Would you like the vanilla or rainblow flavor of neo-liberal capitalist exploitation?” That’s the “choice” the American political system offers us at this point.
The NYTimes has this THREAT watch beat well covered, so you can leave the national scene to them and go back to defending the Grijalva network in Tucson. From the looks of recent TUSD Board meetings, they have their own set of THREATs to deal with, and they will no doubt continue to need a lap dog to yip at their enemies for them.
(Nintzel has already been at it, with Rachael Sedgwick:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/the-skinny/Content?oid=7371725
I’m surprised you haven’t joined him yet.)
8 great years. Get ready you cupcakes.
Maybe some of Hillary’s people will chalk up some sidewalks and make everyone feel better.
Run, run, the sky is falling!
David. I suggest you get a deck of cards and deal with it.
I’m such a fucking idiot. Someone just informed me that a presidential term only lasts 4 years. Not to mention I was also informed that these next 4 years will not necessarily be great, in fact they may suck a boatload of ass. Hold on to your seat and get ready for the deathride!
Yeah. just think. People may have to get off their asses and get back to work. Pity that.
Yes Ac/dc, you are a fuc??ng idiot. Enjoy your Trump orange excrement on your toast each & every morning. Just think of it as marmalade and it will be Grrrreat!
Why do I keep addressing a rock group that is never here?
Why do I think orange marmalade excrement toast is so Grrrreat that I’ll want it every morning?
Why do I put ?? in a word to seem polite when I’m actually the furthest thing from politeness?
Why do I feel the need to troll around on a site which I so obviously despise?
Why do I keep responding to my own messages?
Why am I not residing belly deep in my own customized padded cell at the Funny Farm?
These are the challenges I face with every moment of my agonizing existence. I’ll have to excuse myself now, my incontinence has got the best of me again.
Nice try ac/dc. Everybody has caught on to your tricks.
Who’s AC/DC?
You.
Yes, I am AZ/DC or AZ/DC!, but not AC/DC.
AC/DC is a hard blues rock act from Australia that exploded internationally anywhere between 35-40 years ago, depending on how you view their history. I definitely don’t fit into that category.
Thanks for playing! DC
Moronic exchanges such as this explain how Chump got elected.
Watch all you want Trump has a pen and knows how to use. The communest orginization ACLU cannot help you now.
“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it…..” Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address March 4, 1861
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main representations of the New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969.
Just imagine if these folks aged and became university professors. Could it be that they would train future students to overthrow the established government?
In the academic year 19621963, the President was Tom Hayden…
Why that was Jane Fonda’s husband. Can you imagine that? Hanoi Jane, referred to as a traitor by Americans.
Is there a plot by academia that just can’t seem to get off the ground?
Wait until Trump has the economy moving and he has some time to expose what has been going on. This is going to get interesting.