The Daily Escape:
Rain, White Sands NP – June 2023 photo by Dawood Afzal
(Wrongo and Ms. Right want to give healing thoughts and condolences to John & Janis S., who have just experienced a terrible loss.)
The NYT reported on Trump’s speech in Columbus, GA, where he was pretty chatty about the US government and the DOJ indictment:
“Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists…”
He was referring to Democrats. He railed against “globalists,” “warmongers” in government and “the sick political class that hates our country.” Trump also described the DOJ as:
“…a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately,”
He called the special counsel, Jack Smith, “deranged” and “openly a Trump hater.” He then went on to say, “This is the final battle”. And by that, he doesn’t mean the final court case against him. All of this was said in a speech to several thousand people and delegates of the Georgia Republican Party who met in a brick building that was once a Civil War ironworks that manufactured mortars, guns and cannons for the Confederate Army.
Trump calling his Democratic opponents “Communists and “Marxists” isn’t connected to today’s politics. the number of either in the US is vanishingly small. It barely makes sense, but in today’s GOP, it really doesn’t have to make sense. Trump and the GOP would never actually articulate what it is they’re opposing. That would make explicit that they’re really against America becoming more of what it is: An increasingly pluralistic and multi-ethnic country.
But many on the Right are deliberately going much further. The NYT reported that in Georgia, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, said:
“I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden….If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA”
Well, that’s a threat. The same NYT article says:
“In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of…Trump…including a member of Congress…have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons.”
And all of these threats against Democrats, LGBTQ+ people, the FBI and the DOJ are more than rhetoric. They’re step one in a process known as stochastic terrorism. The idea is that a person or group are demonized, and violent actions against them are suggested by a leader with a large following:
- The leader doesn’t ask or arrange for a specific person to carry out the violence, but they know in advance that somewhere among their followers are people who will.
- And it only takes one.
- The leader accomplishes their goal of violence without formally arranging for it.
- There isn’t any paper trail, or phone records, or texts, or secret payments that could eventually show up in a court of law.
But the intent is clear even if, by design, there’s no direct accountability.
Wrongo saw a quote attributed to Anand Giridharadas:
“…Donald Trump…has clearly decided that his movement, and the Republican Party that he leads, is going to be the movement of resentment against the future. It is going to be a movement of people who don’t want to live in the future.”
Trump represents people who are in a state of constant rage at the thought that the world is changing in ways they hate and can’t actually stop. The horrible part of their dilemma is that no time that actually existed is a time that they want to live in.
Trump will try to “blanket the zone” with constant misinformation that may make it difficult to empanel a south Florida jury. It will be very difficult to find prospective jurors who say truthfully that they haven’t heard about the indictments and/or formulated an idea about it.
The best way to beat back the misinformation being spread by Republicans and MAGA sympathizers is to televise the trial. Take the trial away from social media pundits and let the MAGAverse see their hero squirm, bluster, and lie with their own eyes. They’ll see his complete lack of a legitimate defense unfolding in real time. Of course, that would take a judge other than Aileen Cannon to preside.
Let’s close with a tune that’s not among the normal music flavor here at the Wrongologist. It makes the point that some Americans don’t want to live in America if it’s going to change. It shows that you don’t have to wear MAGA to be MAGA. It doesn’t mention anything overtly political, but it could be a theme song for Trump’s campaign:
