Trump Is Killing Democracy

It is well established law that you cannot shout fire in a crowded place, but Trump being Trump insists that you can shout “Reichstag fire!” Lets call Trump's law and order ploy what it actually is. It is the worst and most dangerous form of demagoguery – the kind that kills democracy. What Trump calls federal law enforcement personnel have been perverted; wittingly or unwittingly they are now his Brown Shirts, and they are trying to create a Reichstag fire situation in Portland, Oregon in order to help the most corrupt, incompetent, vicious and dangerous despot, Donald Trump, hang on to his power. This is a tactic right out of the NAZI play book, which is rather remarkable considering the fact that Trump is Putin's man ho. Ah, but one has to bear in mind that Putin has morphed from communist thug to kleptocrat just as Trump has morphed from tawdry conman to kleptocrat, and kleptocrats have no ideology other than avarice and a lust for power! It is impossible to overstate how dangerous Trump is to our constitution and our democracy.  Trump's has sent his brown shirts to intimidate the citizenry of Portland and to deprive those citizens of their right to free speech and their right to peacefully assemble. And now Trump is announcing his plan to send his brown shirts to other cities to deprive the citizens there of their rights. He has not said anything about how long he intends to terrorize those cities, or if he intends to keep expanding the scope of this terror.  The greatest fear expressed by several commentators, and it is not an unwarranted fear, is that Trump will use his brown shirts to intimidate voters or otherwise interfere with the 2020 election.


I have always recoiled in disgust when I have heard right wing idiots babble about the “second amendment remedy.” We have a system. The remedy is the vote, or so I thought. But what do you do when one of the major political parties is complicit in an attack on our constitution and our democracy? What do you do when members of that party will not respond to a grave threat to this country and instead they prevent anyone else from legally removing that grave threat? What do you do when the courts cannot or will not defend the people and the constitution of this country from a lawless president who is intent on usurping all power and robbing us blind? What do you do when the system fails, and because of voter suppression, intimidation and/or foreign interference you cannot count on the next election being a legitimate election? This, I am afraid, is what we are facing; this is the very real dilemma Trump poses to those of us who believe in the rule of law. Having to act outside of the law in order to preserve the law sounds like the illogical rationalizations of a despot. But what if there is no legal way to prevent Trump from becoming an autocrat? What if Trump and the Republican Party refuse to acknowledge and abide by the results of a legitimate election? What if the so called second amendment remedy is all that is left?  We have to stop Trump, his morally and intellectually bankrupt party, and his brown shirts before it is too late!