BELIEVE THEM WHEN THEY SAY THEY WANT A “RED CAESAR”

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” - Dr. Maya Angelou

Conservative Never-Trumper Damon Linker told the Guardian last week, “Thirty years ago, if I told you that a bunch of billionaires and intellectuals on the right are waiting in the wings to impose a dictatorship on the United States, you would have said that I was insane.”

Linker wrote at his Substack “Notes from the Middleground” this week, “But it’s no longer insane. It’s now real. There are those people out there. The question is: will they get their chance.”

For several years, far right reactionary conservatives have been writing and calling for an end to the Constitution and the installation of a “post-Constitutional” government. Professor Kevin Slack of the ultra-conservative Hillsdale College put it simply: “The New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people.”

Nationwide, a group of powerful American oligarchs have, for years, been funding an effort to re-write our Constitution from scratch, through the use of ALEC, the “American Legislative Exchange Council,” which long advertised itself as “non-partisan” has been exposed as the right wing plot it is.

They call it the “Convention of States” and have held an annual dress rehearsal in Washington, DC for over a decade. They’re just six states away from pulling it off, Common Cause points out.

Such a convention can be called under Article V of the Constitution. If you think a radical transformation cannot happen, you need to go re-read the history of the last “Convention of the States” that was called in 1787 to modify the Articles of Confederation. The result was the Constitution as we know it today, which was as far from the Articles of Confederation as anything produced by an Article V convention today would be from the Constitution we have lived under for 235 years.

Their side has been planning this for 20 years. Should such a convention be called now, in which each state would have a delegation picked by its state legislature - a majority of which are dominated by Republicans - and have one vote, the outcome is guaranteed to not be something the majority of Americans would want.

Robert Reich has written about the anti-democratic actions being taken by Republican leaders and state governments: “They are not the elements of authoritarianism. They are the essential elements of fascism.”

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Readers of TAFM have heard of “Project 2025,” the plan put together at the Heritage Foundation to see a revolutionary transformation of the Federal civil service within six months of Trump taking office in 2025. These people plan to “hit the ground running” this time and overwhelm the opposition in what can only be described as a political blitzkrieg.

Mike Davis, who was formerly Chief Counsel for Senator Chuck Grassley when he chaired the Judiciary Committee, held high position in the Bush DOJ, and was a senior staffer for Newt Gingrich, and Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, recently laid out plans for the Justice Department in a second Trump term. Davis is particularly dangerous, given his background appeal as someone who combines legitimate bona fides as a GOP staffer with the MAGA burn-it-all-down rhetoric that the MAGAts love.

In an interview with far right host Benny Johnson, Davis laid out what he would do if he were “acting attorney general” for a few weeks in a new Trump term:

“But during my three week reign of terror as Trump acting attorney general, before I get chased out of town with my Trump pardon, I will rain hell on Washington, D.C. We’ve talked about this, Ben. I have five lists, ready to go and they’re growing.

“List number one, we’re gonna fire. We’re gonna fire a lot of people in the executive branch, in the deep state.

“Number two, we’re gonna indict. We’re gonna indict Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and James Biden and every other scumball, sleazeball, Biden, except for the five year old granddaughter who they refused to acknowledge for five years until the political pressure got to Joe Biden.

“Number three, we’re gonna deport. We’re gonna deport a lot of people, 10 million people and growing—anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents. We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.

“And list number five, I’m gonna recommend a lot of pardons. Every January 6th defendant is gonna get a pardon, especially my hero Horn Man. He is definitely at the top of the pardon list.”

Mass firings of DOJ, State Department, Defense Department and other career civil service staff and their replacement with people loyal to the new administration.

Indictments of political foes - General Mark Milley has stated several times in recent weeks that he expects to be imprisoned if Donald Trump returns to office. The list of those indicted and imprisoned would include every Democrat who took part in Trump’s two impeachments.

Mass deportations of legal residents.

More kids in cages with family separation at the border a national plan.

Detaining “a lot of people” in Guantanamo Bay.

“FEMA Camps” for dissidents.

Pardons for January 6 insurrectionists.

Going after the broadcast licenses for the mainstream media.

What we are talking about is a revolutionary takeover of the state in the same way Hitler did following the Reichstag Fire, using the Enabling Act passed by a Reichstag cleansed of all political opponents in 1933 - 90 days that solidified 12 years of Nazi rule that was only brought down when the rest of the world allied against the Nazis and fought the bloodiest war in human history.

Later, Davis claimed he was being “intentionally inflammatory.” But the history of Trump and his followers is that every “inflammatory statement” they later walked back was in fact a statement of what they intended to do as seen in their later actions.

He also amended his statement to Johnson, writing, “My 5 lists also include Republicans. We’re going donkey and RINO hunting after November 5, 2024.”

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Davis has shown at other times how dangerous he is:

Most recently, he said that Jamal Bowman should be imprisoned for pulling the fire alarm during the struggle over funding the government this past weekend.

Claimed the “violent black underclass” who are “monsters” and the scourge of “ghetto culture.” His solution to this is “mass incarceration of these thugs” and for the rest of (white) America to “arm up.”

Throughout his campaign since announcing it last November two weeks after the election that saw the “Republican Red Wave” turn out to be a piss puddle, Trump has engaged in racist demagoguery, conspiratorial thinking and promises for retribution against enemies.

What Mike Davis proposes is Trump’s stated agenda for his return to the White House.

The people who will run the government for Trump will be the Mike Davises.

The problem for us all is that the very media whose leading practitioners are said to be on lists for imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, the media Trump calls “treasonous” and threatens to shut down when he returns to power, refuse to see the threat that is in front of their eyes. Trump’s escalating, violent rhetoric and promises are to them merely “Trump being Trump.” Biden’s “faux pas” in wearing tennis shoes to an official event is seen as far more egregious by these unserious, over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable fools.

Media Matters tracked all mentions in the media of Trump’s September 22 death threat against General Milley. Through September 26, nothing was said about this on Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week (ABC); Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation (CBS); and Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press (NBC).

Nothing. Was. Said.

“It can’t happen here”????

IT’S HAPPENING!!!

Last Friday, speaking to the California Republican Convention, Trump said gloated about the attack by a Trump supporter on Paul Pelosi. The remark was answered with cheers and chants by the convention delegates. They cheered when he advocated shooting shoplifters.

Josef Goebbels famously said, if you repeat a lie often enough it will become, to the people listening, a truth. University of Oklahoma Sociology Professor Samuel L. Perry wrote about a survey he did about Republicans, for TIME Magazine:

“In our survey, 76% of Republicans place fascists on the left side of the spectrum, and 44% rate them at 1, as far left as possible. And we see similar numbers for Nazis. Over 68% of Republicans think Nazis are left-of-center and about 43% say Nazis are the pinnacle of leftism.”

That’s because there’s the word “socialist” in “National Socialism.”

Yesterday, CNN reported that General John Kelly confirmed every bad thing Trump said in the White House:

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials.

“A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued.

“A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

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