Failure to blog. Since I started campaigning I’ve done very little blogging. My thoughts and energies have gone instead to TikTok of all things. At another time I will talk about that; it was a grand ride.
However, we are at the point of no return: it’s either Trump or Harris. It seems every third article and book is titled “How Did We Get Here?” I’ve tried to answer that in numerous entries here. So what should I write on this momentous day?
How about “What Do We Do If Trump Wins?” Well, I have a plan. I just came back from the small Italian mountain village my grandparents came from and we loved it even though we spent only four days there. One way or the other we’ll go back but Trump could provide more than a nudge. I qualify for Italian citizenship. That will allow us to direct as much money as possible to the resistance. But can we “take our country back?” Therein lies an echo of what got us here.
Let’s drop it down a notch: what if Harris wins? We still have chaos and disillusionment along with the resentment, hatred, rage, bigotry, and immense ignorance as well as perfidy to contend with. Most Trumpers are possessed of the first seven elements but a small set is perfidious: they are the supremecists so well described in Nancy MacLean’s 2023 book Democracy in Chains. She traces them back to the Libertarians of the fifties and even beyond that to the interpositionists and nullifactionists of the pre-Civil War era like John C. Calhoun. Since I flirted very briefly with Libertarians of the old stripe in the 60s I recognized the outlines but then saw how their heirs in the Reagan era and past that have been recast as conservatives, which they are not; they are authoritarians pure and simple. This is a gaslighting operation. In this way, Libertarian authoritarians put on the cloak of a legitimate approach to governance and the public sphere in order to evade the revelation of their true, authoritarian goals. Here is an AI set of examples of gaslighting with specific examples from the Libertarian/MAGA movement:
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- Lying: Gaslighters may lie about big and small things to throw the victim off.
Need I say more? Just today a Trump spokesperson said Trump was not saying it was OK for an assassin’s bullet to pass through the press pool but just showing his concern for their safety when he clearly said he was OK with that happening. He said Biden called Trump supporters garbage when he called the joke told about Puerto Ricans at the rally garbage.
- Belittling: Gaslighters may constantly bring attention to and belittle a victim for their weaknesses.
John McCain getting captured; imitating a handicapped reporter; Vance callin Harris garbage.
- Lying: Gaslighters may lie about big and small things to throw the victim off.
- Withholding: Gaslighters may withhold affection, attention, or information to make it difficult for the victim to solve problems.
Threatening to withhold federal aid from states and countries that do not kowtow to him.
- Projection: Gaslighters may project their own negative actions, faults, and/or shortcomings onto the victim.
Citing others as weak, overweight, cowardly, ‘suckers and losers’ (what he actually thinks about his followers), stupid, and on and on endlessly.
- Accusation: Gaslighters may accuse the victim of being mentally ill or crazy.
Threats of retribution, calling opponents enemies, calling journalists enemies of the people and the lying press echoing Stalin and Hitler. A stream of demeaning nicknames characterized as jocular or teasing
- Toxic phrases: Gaslighters may use phrases like “You’re being crazy,” “You’re overreacting,” or “I was just joking”.
- Trump was just joking is a constant refrain.
The true enemy of the people is the Libertarians descended from von Mises and Friedman and Rand, supremacists.
It’s election night and the razor thin margins, due IMHO to Harris’ sex and race, could have been erased by Biden were it not for his lack of vigor. Americans elected a Black man, but Black and female were a bridge too far. She still may pull off the trifecta up north but if she faces a united and victorious Trumpist party in Congress plus the Supreme Court, she won’t accomplish much because they will not support the economic program of either her or Biden. They have to destroy the country in order to save it.
My task right now is to peel my wife off the ceiling. We still have our friends and the Democratic Party that has learned a lot. Counting on the Hispanic vote was a losing proposition considering their unreflective conservatism: religion, patriotism, family and the military, exactly why we never understood why Republicans didn’t go after them. It took Trump with his phony masculinity and absurd America first blather to hook them in. Harris lost some rural Black voters and my wife and I think her “Indianess” threw them off.
Nov. 7………. and now it’s Nov. 8. I’ll put something into my health category but overall I’m doing well. A lot of energy goes into keeping my wife healthy. I really want to blog on our trip to Europe but I’m still trying to make contact with the Dems I worked with. I am trying to keep up with my daily life and still read some of the “what’s next” articles from The Atlantic, The Bulwark, and to get on Tiktok to see comments people made on my videos to see if it’s worth continuing those as part of The Resistance. I do meet Thanksgiving with my circle of friends, all of whom are on board to be part of it.
Just a side note: I’m having trouble writing here because I get confused between what I was writing on Slack and what I’m writing here.
A very serious note: we’re planning on downsizing and as part of that I was culling my books because I hope to box them in categories, leaving out only a hundred or so for immediate consulting. However, I just thought this morning about how many of them contain ideas and information that could possibly be purged from the Internet, Wiki, and any non-Trumpy-conformist web sites.
A usage note: after reading Democracy in Chains and pushing through The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, I would like to get real and stop using the word Trump and switch to what we have here: Libertarianism. Those bastards have finally arrived and I would like to use this space to not so much predict as surmise, i.e. say what may happen without evidence to support the suppositions. So what factor was race/sex? How many people voted for a felon/rapist over the price of eggs? Did the Hispanics really not notice the deportation comments among MAGA that clearly included those of the third generation American variety? (Hey! I’m third generation immigrant but don’t feel like that, but…..)
A lot of the stuff I’m reading (and have been reading for weeks, months, years and decades) sheds light on all this but that’s just the start. We use it to make policy and let policy dictate action, monitor and adjust then, and keep moving. About half the American people are either all in with authoritarian rule that George III was providing and people were happy with or they see opportunity to get the price of eggs lowered. Am I being condescending? Yes, because I sit fairly high on the food chain and don’t worry at all about paying a premium for my comfort. But I worked 20 years with people who were not high on that chain and came from the working-class myself. Large numbers of Americans responded with belt tightening and hard work after Pearl Harbor; why not now? Trump is a lot closer than the Japanese Empire was.
My little prediction: Trump cuts aid to Ukraine, Putin takes it over and moves on to the Baltic States and maybe even Poland, Europe invokes Article 5 since they are NATO countries, Trump says fuck you and the American polity blows up, esp the military.