Saturday Report 11/9/24 — Is this really who we are?

The Best of the Rest of the News

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— Will Trump satisfy his voters? How quickly will he fail them? If Trump follows through with his promises for radical tariffs and mass deportations, while both may be emotionally satisfying for his voters, both will also take a big bite out of the economy, probably provoking a recession. That will be a real test of his and Rupert Murdoch’s ability to gaslight Americans. The majority of his voters believe that the country is ravaged with crime (our violent crime numbers are the lowest in decades), in the midst of a recession (we have the best economy since the 1960s), and our border is daily overwhelmed (crossings are at a multi-decade low). So his and Murdoch’s power to make people believe things that aren’t true is considerable (remember that roughly a half-million Americans died unnecessarily because they believed Trump and Murdoch on Covid and masks). But, still, there are limits to people’s credulity, particularly when it comes to losing their jobs to a recession. This point when he’s screwed things up and doesn’t have a solution will be a crucial moment; it’s the time he’d most likely try to go full fascist authoritarian to shut down truth-tellers and his political opposition. As Duke University political scientist Herbert Kitschelt told The New York Times’ Thomas Edsall: “The hour of political authoritarianism arrives, when the new wagers to create economic affluence among the less well-off and to resurrect the old kinship relations of industrial society turn sour and generate disenchantment among Trump’s own following. Trump then may well want to make sure that his disenchanted supporters — as well as those who always opposed Trumpism — will not get another chance to express their opinions.” If Kitschelt is right and Trump turns on his own base, it’ll be a critical moment in American history. Frankly, I’m more inclined to believe he’ll do what Reagan did when the economy was in the tank and he was being criticized for not responding to the Beirut Marine barracks bombing: he invaded Grenada. Starting a “little war” is a time-tested technique, first used by Margaret Thatcher, then Reagan, then both Bushs to divert the public’s attention from domestic crises. If he chooses his war stupidly, he could trigger WWIII. Keep an eye on this.

—The extreme hateful Trump supporters are out calling for “rape squads” and violence...we all need to be careful. As we saw with Trump’s embrace of the violent “Jews will not replace us” Nazis in Charlottesville during his first term, the former president has again given license to the most depraved, hateful, and disgusting impulses of America’s young men. Black people across the country got text messages this week telling them to report to the plantation for their turn at slavery:

Open Nazi Nick Fuentes tweeted to America’s girls and women, “Your body, my choice. Forever.” and his followers are using that slogan to troll and harass women across social media, telling them they’ll soon be raped or kidnapped; many are now deleting their social media accounts. Another viral meme reads: “RELEASE THE PROJECT 2025 HANDMAIDS TALE RAPE SQUADS.” Mike Davis, one of Trump’s top two candidates for US Attorney General (our nation’s top law enforcement position) put his misogyny on display by posting a message to New York AG Leticia James that said: “Let me just say this to ‘Big Tish’ James, the New York attorney general: I dare you. I dare you to try to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term because listen here, sweetheart, we’re not messing around this time.” Davis added on a podcast show, “We will put your fat ass in prison for conspiracy against rights.” This may well be where Trump will happily commit crimes — like imprisoning people without cause — using the immunity the six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court gave him earlier this year. Again, keep your eyes open. We’re now about to enter uncharted territory.

— Where will Trump begin his mass deportations? Who will push back and how? My bet is that since he got considerable support form Hispanic men in the election he’ll instead first go for mostly Black refugees and immigrants, like the legal Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio who he and JD Vance have been vilifying for the past year. However it plays out, though, multiple Democratic mayors and governors have made it publicly clear that they’re not going along. Denver’s mayor Mike Johnson told a reporter he’d refuse to cooperate with demands that are “immoral, unethical, or unfair.” California Governor Gavin Newsom has called an emergency meeting of the California legislature to consider how to resist unlawful demands from Trump, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said, “You come for my people, you come through me.” Time will tell, of course, how much resistance there will be, how effective it will be, and how needed it will be.

— Some rays of light through the darkness. Judd Legum and his colleagues at popular.info published a great summary of positive things that came out of this week’s elections. They include seven states enshrining abortion rights in the face of Republican abortion bans, three red states voting for paid sick leave, two embracing higher minimum wages, three protecting public school funding, the election of two Black women to the US Senate, and the nation’s first transgender member of the US House. Even though they voted to put Trump in charge of the country, America’s voters are still largely progressive when it comes to policy.  

—Is this really who we are? The Nation’s Elie Mystal thinks so, writing, “A country that allows its environment to be ravaged, its children to be shot, its wealth to be hoarded, its workers to be exploited, its poor to starve, its cops to murder, and its minorities to be hunted doesn’t really deserve to be ‘saved.’ It deserves to fail. … Trump is not our ‘retribution.’ He is our reckoning.” I’m not quite ready to blame American voters when literally billions were spent by rightwing media and rightwing billionaires to sell Trump; we have a deep problem with our media landscape, as Michael Tomasky pointed out at The New Republic this week. Still, Mystal isn’t wrong and Trump reflects a deep, centuries-long sickness in American society. Will we be able to rise above the hatred and racism, or will it consume us? Let me know your thoughts.

— The Green Party screws it up again. Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senator John Fetterman is spitting nails at the Green Party candidate who ran against his colleague, Democratic Senator Bob Casey. Green Party candidate Leila Hazou got about 64,000 votes in that senate race, while Casey appears to have lost to a Republican by a mere 34,000. Fetterman was blunt over on Xitter: “Green dipshits’ votes helping elect the GOP.”

— Crazy Alert! Ted Cruz’s daughter winces big time… Cruz was on stage with his wife, Heidi, and their two daughters. When he started rambling on about how wonderful it was that Trump was re-elected, one of his daughters leaned over to her mother and apparently said, “Mom, don’t clap for that.” I can’t imagine what kind of hell it must be to be Ted Cruz’s kid…

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