Everything Trump Does From Here On Will Backfire, As We Watch Him Visibly Fall Apart--
A Dialogue With A Friend Who Dreads What's Coming In His Speech Thursday
[Hi Lance. I have the worst feeling of dread this week. I honestly feel that the speech that is supposed to happen Thursday is going to be declaring an emergency to control the elections. I've certainly done my part to get out and protest and make phone calls, but here we are. I know our country is much larger than European countries, but when I see them out in the hundreds of thousands protesting, I wonder why we don't have that same kind of effect, even when we have 8 million people protesting. First, I think "No Kings" on a sign doesn't really convey the message. Second, these protests need to be happening in DC. Third, how do you really get a solid message across when every day there are new horrors to address? Talk about flooding the zone. The only thing I hope is that if he does pull this s*** out of his hat, that's when all hell finally breaks loose. I know you are not living here and you have a good finger on the pulse, but I swear, it's like a powder keg ready to blow. People are fed up... some of us since 2015!
What are your thoughts on this?]
[First thing, sometimes it helps to have a good cry. You've earned it, we all have, and sometimes we just need to get it all out.
I saw the news coverage of the club fire in Bangkok this morning and it broke me. We have loved ones there, our former homestay students. We were blessed to visit with them eight years ago and fell in love with Thailand, and of course we love our extended family there.
We all get tied up in knots lately, either feeling paralyzed with fear, worry, doubt, and as you said, dread. I deal with it by forcing myself to identify with those who are suffering, and seeing their faces in my mind.
The families of those shot by ICE. The people in ICE concentration camps. The American soldiers on bases being killed, the Ukrainians, the Russian boys being wasted by Putin and his insane eliminationist war. The list of the victimized just grows, and it makes me bleed inside. I remind myself that they all matter, and that they deserve justice. Also that there is always going to be a point in time where they grow tired of being victims and are compelled to take unified actions to resist.
Yeah, I'm stressed out sometimes. But I put myself in their places and realize that I can do a lot more about these injustices than most of them can. I don't have all the answers. I'm not a credentialed expert on anything really. All I have is my voice and I'm determined to use it.
Pretty much every topic I write about is just a pretext to make a subjective intervention, for the purpose of strengthening ourselves for what is ahead. The one thing which is my main talent is having a bit of foresight gained through my experiences, the ability to see ahead what could happen, and I try to prepare people for the moment when it does so they can think about what might be the best course of action.
If we are looking for signs of hope I always tell people that it is right there in the mirror staring back at us. People are much better than they think they are, more able to handle both the truth and greater levels of responsibility than they want to believe. In a crisis they can do great things which they previously thought impossible.
As far as Trump's Thursday night upcoming nationally televised projectile vomit episode, they aren't letting on yet what it's about as far as I know. It will be some new form of recycled insanity meant to throw raw meat to the stupidest of his supporters, and to feed his Fox propaganda network shills some new Stephen Miller talking points. I think it will be a brainsalad of something on Iran to talk up the markets, mashed up with a pile of Fourth Reich law and order horseshit. He might include some new announcement on the Save Act again because he is so desperate, and maybe he'll even try to impose it with an executive order.
Whatever Trump does at this point will backfire, you can be sure of it. He is fueling the opposition to himself now, like a drunken club fighter who is in the boxing ring with a Judo black belt who knows how to use his opponent's strength and body weight against him. Every lunge he makes can be turned against him and he'll wind up on the ground.
The Chinese have an expression for what happens to men like him who abuse their power. They lose "The Mandate Of Heaven." Which means that the person is at odds with the universe itself and is therefore self-doomed.
I start with that, the idea that there is a limit to the tyrants power. Trump is reaching his. Every insane action is a desperation attempt to counteract his own increasing failure, the exposure of his "monumental" impotence. His public audiences are sparse and scattered, the same faces of paid attendees looking at their watches. All of his staged events are fiascos. His renovations, ie: his monuments to himself, are either being blocked or falling apart, because everything he builds is cheap shit, all glitz, veneer, and fake glamor like his bordello-style Casinos and golf clubs. Everywhere he goes he is booed, shunned, ridiculed, and most of the world's leaders disrespect him to his face. His approval ratings are subterranean.
He's got nothing but the threat of violence, persecution, and prosecution. In a way, he is our best recruiter, doing more to get people off of their couches than anyone...except of course for J.D. Vance, who is still busy getting off on his.
I think the big nationwide protests have become a tired tactic. Also, if we do them in DC that is running into a buzzsaw because they will call it an insurrection, and they are massively overdeployed there on security with the National Guard, so it's a kamikaze mission and will not draw many people. Otherwise they are becoming routine, and at this stage I think we need a total organizing focus on our political campaign activity and financial backing for the midterm election mobilization, directed at boosting our candidates and denouncing the GOP opposition's policies, with more of a programmatic approach.
The spontaneous demos are what will move the needle far more in these circumstances, like the big crowd assembled in front of Susan Collins's office in Maine in response to the last shooting. They also catch the Nazi counter-protesters by surprise and it's harder for them to disrupt us and provoke incidents. There was nothing staged about the Maine demos, and the mood was one of barely controlled fury. If you saw the coverage, that is the kind of energy we need, not people out for a day at the parade and taking selfies to share on Instagram.
I think Collins is finished, now that her Orangenführer is sending his rent-a-goons out on the streets of Maine to murder her constituents. In general I see us running the table in November, if he doesn't pull off some Reichstag Fire first. If he tries anything like that then he'll really bury himself.
So, I too get frantic, scared, depressed, just like you. I remind myself to breathe and step back, and look at the big picture, look at history, and remember that every man like him, every movement like his, destroys itself in the end. The question is how much damage will they do, how many will suffer, how we can help them become whole again, and how we go about reconstruction. (With a capital "R")
Don't worry so much about "what to do." We'll think of what to do as various situations unfold, and we will not be alone in doing it. Never allow ourselves to be wedded to a single tactic, we have to be flexible and ready to shift on a dime. But ultimately, the leadership responsibility will be in the hands of the younger people rising from the ranks who believe there is a future worth fighting for.
Young people make their own rules, they bring energy, enthusiasm, they innovate, and we will be seeing them swing into new forms of action when the bloodbath reaches them and their loved ones. Youth in general, with exceptions, won't risk everything, neither their lives or career plans, over issues like climate or their college debt. They will however when their best friends are shot in the face with rubber bullets or real ones.
Trump is like the Japanese fleet that hit Pearl Harbor, he is "awakening a sleeping giant." We need to internalize this in order to overcome the fear, panic, and despair.
At a certain point, people will realize that their fears of getting in trouble are nothing compared to what they'll be going through if they don't make personal decisions that now is the time to get into some "good trouble."
I'm betting the house on a majority Americans recapturing something which they've lost, but still lives in their historical memory. That is, to finally, at long last, find unity against a greater evil. We had that after 9-11. During WW2. That spirit is still alive, and has been hibernating, but not for long. Let's not squander the most important potential which we have.
Now We Know What His Speech Will Be About...It Is More Than It Seems On The Surface--
"OK, now we know. He's been obsessed with that (the fake Georgia election theft conspiracy) for six years. It's a pile of crap of course, but what he is really doing is trying to incite an assassination of Raffensberger, Ossoff and Warnock. I have zero hesitation in writing this and posting it publicly.
Who will he cite as the authority on this, Lindsey Graham? Maybe he'll show an AI video of still very much dead Lindsey detailing all of the "hard evidence" which never existed except in Trump's own decomposing brain. I would give my right arm to see the real videos which the FBI took out of his house this week. (Check that, just hear about, not see.)
He will never get away with unseating these Senators. Remember, he is a career criminal who is losing his mind and his enablers are riding the wave. It is just a new terrorist threat and stunt meant to give himself emergency powers to void elections. He's also scared shitless of being impeached, which is why he's targeting Democratic Senators. It is yet another in a long list of diversions from his failures on every front, as we have witnessed his political, physical, and cognitive collapse.
We need to stay focused and organize to deliver a landslide in November which removes all doubt. Don't get played, don't play his game on his terms.
