Washington Post analysis of post-Jan. 6 Trump shows that he's become even more radical

Originally published at: Washington Post analysis of post-Jan. 6 Trump shows that he's become even more radical | Boing Boing

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When authoritarian leaders lose office, they come back, like, 10 times worse — they never get less extreme, they always get more extreme

As both a grifter and a demagogue, von Clownstick is condemned to running a Red Queen’s Race. The alternative for scumbags like this is prison or death.

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Wouldn’t a better word than “radical” be, you know, “fascist”?

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I mean, the entire republican party and rightwing media went through this “transformation.” They started out on Jan 7th with their “this time was too far! toooo far!” speeches, but once they got the response from their voters and saw that it ranged from “meh” to “no, we like it! more please!” they all turned on a dime.

I’d actually be interested to see a timeline of which voices started first changing the narrative and how early. Was it Trump first? That seems likely, since he’s the one who can’t help but back his own plays even when everyone else is cringing and squinting.

In general, I think the right just needs to believe in themselves more, they just couldn’t believe how effective their disgusting anti-democratic propaganda had been.

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Probably the best thing for the world (if not justice) would be for TFG to die of natural causes (e.g. choking on a hamberder, hit by golf ball at LIV event, etc.) before he actually gets on the ballot.

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Glad that the WP is noting this, and it was entirely expected. There’s a good video out there on YT that discusses the characteristics of fascists and how things go, from beginning to (the inevitable) end. It always escalates, with one example coming to mind is that they go after the marginalized, then the slight less marginalized, all the way until there is nobody left to go after, getting uglier and uglier all the time, until the ultimate end.

I find it kind of harsh to say these things out loud, but given the road that the GQP (and the US) is on right now, I have to agree. If that were to happen, I’m convinced that even Moscow Mitch and Little Lindsey from Carolina would breathe a sigh of relief.

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At this point I’d rather he stuck around just long enough to keep throwing a wrench into DeSantis’s chances. He’s actually performing a valuable service at the moment by splitting the Republican vote. Much as many of us thought George W. Bush was as bad as it could get, only for Trump to prove us dead wrong, I believe DeSantis has the potential to be even worse than Trump. Less charismatic but also less moronic and more straight-up evil.

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Shouldn’t that be ‘criminal’…?

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If anything of the kind happened, we will have to endure decades of conspiracy theories about how the hamberder was actually a deep-state Antifa agent. Mind you, if Trump runs and doesn’t win, we’ll get another dose of “the election was STOLEN” silliness, but this time 10x louder and even more unfounded/unhinged. And if he runs and does win, well, the US will be on the fast-track toward becoming the world’s dumbest autocracy.

What I want is for the Republican establishment to rally dutifully behind Trump, and choose the MAGA’est candidates they can find. And then have the whole slate lose catastrophically, as even conservative voters go “Fuck this noise,” and turn their backs on them en masse. I’d rather have Trump, untouched by golf ball or vengeful hamberder, spend the rest of his life rotting away in Florida, knowing that no one wants any part of his idiocy and that he LOST.

Not optimistic that it will happen that way, though.

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If we have the kind of economic trouble it looks like it is possible that we might have a real fascist dictatorship.

I dislike any idea that increases that risk.

My ideal case: republican party splits, holds members accountable, accepts responsibility. They do not back trump at the last minute and throw an unknown non maga affiliated member into the ring as a hail Mary. Voter name recognition and the nature of fear prompt a Biden win as multiple fascists vie for increasingly rigged election wins. Nobody rejoices.

Bets?

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I disagree. The best thing for the world is to prove that our justice systems still work as intended. He can die the day after he arrives at the federal penitentary, that’s fine, but first he needs to be tried and convicted of at least some of his many serious crimes.

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It is not. At the rate we’re going, things are going to get bloody really soon and many people are going to die, or more accurately, many people have already died, but mostly without much public attention.

As one of the people directly in the crosshairs of the American Nazis, I would much rather see a rash of calm natural deaths clean up the GOP and bring it back to the merely reprehensible days of say, the 1980’s.

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Agree… but they’d better hurry up! At the current glacial rates, justice is trailing actuarial tables of life expectancy for obese, angry 76 year-old males with terrible diets.

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Our justice system absolutely works as intended most of the time. It gives the wealthy and powerful the ability to carry out the most heinous of deeds with impunity, all the while delivering harsh punishments to everyone else – the more marginalized you are, the more severe the sentence.

That said, were Trump convicted and sentenced to federal prison, would a secret service detail have to be locked up with him?

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Trump could be distracted if he started talking about genocide, until he forgot about it. Ron DeSastre is already attempting one.

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With no diminishment to what DeSantis is doing, I am pretty sure that Trump’s policy of ripping Hispanic children away from their parents and throwing them in concentration camps and adoption mills was plenty genocidal on its own.

Being stupid doesn’t make fascists less dangerous – I would argue it’s not a coincidence that stupid ones like Trump have been so successful at harming democracy. The whole ideology is about power and being willing to hurt, and there both him and DeSantis have shown terrible dedication.

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True. I guess when the anger turns into fear and wondering if we’ll get out of this alive, it is easy to forget about who was there before. It wasn’t intentional.

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He’s objectively awful, but more than that he’s a narcissist who got the world’s biggest slug of Narcissistic Supply when he was President and while he hasn’t been cut off, exactly – the press and a big chunk of the GOP still feeds it – but he certainly gets less of it post-White House. And there’s nothing quite so awful as a narcissist whose had their supply curtailed, as anyone who has ever set boundaries with a narcissistic relative can attest.

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