Then-Senator John F. Kennedy gave a speech in 1959 in which he said:
“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters — one represents danger and one represents opportunity.”
While Kennedy’s generalization about Chinese calligraphy was slightly off, his description of “crisis” perfectly represents where we are right now:
— Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who’s studied strongmen her entire career and wrote a brilliant book about them, calls this “late-stage radicalization,” the dangerous phase when a weakened autocrat purges wafflers from his regime, strengthens his loyalists, and lashes out at anybody who may oppose him.
— Obama advisor Robert Pape, who runs the University of Chicago’s project on political violence, just said that the next eight weeks until Democrats are sworn will be the most dangerous weeks of our entire lives.
— Dr. Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist who’s a regular guest on my program, made a similar warning based on Trump’s twisted psychology, telling The Independent newspaper about Trump’s affection for talking about using nuclear weapons:
“[Trump] is extremely attracted to them without understanding their ramifications: for him, they are just bigger bombs. However, there is no scenario in which the use of nuclear weapons would not lead to a catastrophic end to life as we know it. Unless he is contained, he could be driven to use them now, rageful as he is about his defeat against Iran, and desperate as he will be to salvage his image from being a ‘loser’.”
She added:
“We have a truly narrow window between his defenses being low and his ‘recovering’ himself to attack even more vehemently.”
She said that just before Trump had appointed Stephen Miller to be his Chief of Staff, the guy who essentially runs the presidency, indicating that Trump is now in the “recovery” mode of moving toward full-on tyranny.
I’m familiar with Dr. Lee’s “window” — when Louise and I started and ran a community and school for severely abused children in the late 1970s, we worked with numerous abusive families. The most deadly moment in the relationship is when the abused spouse (typically the wife) finally decides to leave; that’s when most spousal and even whole-family murders happen, and is why shelters go to such lengths to remain anonymous.
Perhaps most ominously, this weekend Trump posted on his Nazi-infested social media site that Democratic members of Congress “are extortionists and they should be imprisoned” and ordered the Justice Department to investigate them. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked Blanche flat out if he’d go after members of Congress, he said, “It depends on what’s said, so yes, there could be [pursuit of criminal investigations].”