longer.blue

If the Republicans prevail in the next election, Democracy is doomed. The path to tyranny is not an arbitrary route. It is not happenstance, it is not coincidence, a chance occurrence nor serendipity. It is a well-planned and well-executed scheme to destroy all aspects of true democracy by eliminating dissenting voices no matter what the Constitution guarantees. The first step is a simple one and Trump and the Republicans have employed this tactic to the fullest. Wherever there was an honest and patriotic member of the government, one who would follow the law no matter the dictates of his superiors, that official would become the target of relentless attacks on his character until he either resigned in protest, or was summarily fired under false pretense. Members of the Justice Department, federal prosecutors, law enforcement personnel from the entire spectrum of the federal government, military leaders and even duly elected congresspeople who dare to resist have continually been replaced by lackeys, ass kissers, and totally incompetent toadies or sycophants and with each employment our civil rights go down the drain because there is no one left to defend them; does the name Kash Patel ring a bell? But this is only page one of Martinet’s playbook. The next page is far more insidious. Private citizens are now the primary target and will continue to be so as long as MAGA and their proponents have any influence over the matter. Any citizen who even so much as speaks out against the administration is now open to vicious attacks for whom, for the most part there is no defense, or recourse. Without so much as an iota of evidence of wrongdoing, the federal government can, and will, issue a plethora of subpoenas and deploy a virtual army of FBI, Homeland security, or murderous ICE agents to intimidate any citizen into submission – how many of us can afford the lawyers necessary to fight back? This is their scheme and there has never been a filthier one whereby the government attacked their own citizens. Well, Russia does come to mind, as does China, North Korea, Iran and handful of other states ruled by despots. We will join that list if Trumpism. MAGAism, and Republicanism prevail in the upcoming election. See this – Boldface mine: The behind-the-scenes strategy Trump is using to silence his loudest critics | Opinion Opinion by Thom Hartmann • 1h • 9 min read REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo © provided by AlterNet When we think of strongman dictatorships we often imagine tanks in the streets, but those usually come in the later stages of repression (think Tienanmen Square) and often are never even needed (think today’s Russia). Instead, as every dictator on Earth can tell you, you don’t have to silence the entire country; all you have to do is shut up a few strategically selected people visibly and publicly enough and the rest of the country will get the message and back away. That’s the message of this week’s raid on Ilhan Omar’s home, and so many other atrocities committed by Trump’s eager fascist lickspittles over the past 21 months. He and his advisors are simply repeating a long and well-trod history. On the morning of March 14, 1757, King George II ordered Admiral John Byng executed by firing squad on the quarterdeck of the HMS Monarch in Portsmouth harbor. His crime? He’d just lost a battle off the coast of Minorca. Two years later, Voltaire wrote the event into his novella Candide, having the hero of his story watch the execution from the deck of a nearby ship. When a sailor standing with him asks why Byng was killed, his hero replied “In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. Pour encourager les autres.” The phrase has been foundational to the rise of every tyrant in history since. Pick a few people, make an example of them, and the fear will spread across the population in a way that’s just as effective as an army of secret police. The genius, as Voltaire pointed out, is that it costs almost nothing yet, when done right, can have enormous impact on public behavior. Trump has been running this play since the day he took office, and this week he ran it again, this time on a member of Congress just three weeks before an election. Reports suggest that Homeland Security Investigations — a division of ICE — raided Ilhan Omar’s house in Washington looking for paperwork her late father filled out when she was a child refugee. She has not been charged with a crime and, as is so common, ICE isn’t explaining what they’re up to here. That same afternoon Trump called her “totally crooked” and went off on her that night in Youngstown, Ohio calling the country she came from “one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet” while the crowd chanted “deport.” Ever since March, this administration has apparently been looking for ways to take down this high-profile and unapologetic critic of Trump and his many criminal and authoritarian acts. Back in March, JD Vance told a rightwing podcaster that Omar had “definitely committed immigration fraud” and that Stephen Miller was working out “how do you go after her, how do you investigate her, how do you build a case.” As former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor told me on my radio/TV program when Trump went after him, Comey, and others, the raid itself is the punishment. To destroy a person financially, to traumatize them emotionally, and to scare the hell out of their colleagues in a way that will make them shut up you don’t need a conviction. Hell, you don’t even need a trial. Just a subpoena, a lawyer letter filled with threats, or a raid can lead to hundreds of thousands in lawyer bills and months of sleepless nights. This has now — like in Russia — become standard operating practice. And it reaches all the way down to a single mother of two in New Jersey; Joanne Carducci, who posts as JoJoFromJerz on Substack, revealed last month that lawyers for the president and first lady spent the first half of this year sending her letters demanding a retraction, an apology, and money over her online criticism of Melania Trump. She bravely describes in detail how threats left her worrying about her children, her home, and her livelihood. And that’s one of the low-profile of the cases; we never would have known if she hadn’t spoken up. How many other authors and commentators have been similarly threatened? Odds are 99% will never write about it, particularly if the threats also contain demands for confidentiality like hers apparently did. See more here: https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-retribution-omar/