Trump's authoritarian regime

Trump has been putting gag orders on government scientists, ordering them not to use social media, talk to reporters, or talk to members of Congress.

Lamar Alexander has just opined that it's better to get your news directly from Donald Trump than from the (haha) "liberal media."

They are locking the country down as fast as they can.

Once upon a time, Republican "intellectuals" wrote op-eds explaining the difference between totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. Yeah, that was a thing back when communism was a threat. What it boiled down to was that, regardless of the brutality of a given country's regime, as long as it wasn't a communist government, it was merely authoritarian, and we could work with that government as allies.

I used to think that this stance was adopted reluctantly, as a reality of getting things accomplished in an imperfect world. I realize that I seriously overestimated the Republican Party. They do not hold their noses while dealing with authoritarians. Authoritarianism is what Republicans have aspired to for a long, long time. Now they are achieving it.

Dear Republican leadership: Impeach your President

I know that we entered the post-fact era years ago, but here are a few facts, Republican Congresspersons:

You've got the power; everything you want is in your grasp.

Owning both the branches of the legislature and the presidency, you don't really need Donald Trump now.

Mike Pence is in total agreement with your program.

President Trump is insane. He has antagonized the military and all of our intelligence services. The Israelis have been advised by our intelligence services not to give Trump any information because he is not trustworthy.

President Trump is already in violation of the Constitution because of the Emoluments Clause, and he is and will be in legal trouble on many fronts, including his relationship with Russia.

President Trump is a danger to the United States, and even if you won't say so publicly, I'm sure you know it's true.

Even though Donald Trump won the presidency fair and square according to the rules, the majority of the American populace is deeply afraid of what he might do. Look at the difference between the number of citizens who showed up in Washington DC on January 20 and January 21. No matter how red your district, your constituents are terrified of losing their insurance coverage, and they are besieging your offices with telephone calls saying so.

Impeaching this dangerous man would give the Republican legislature the chance to say that you have put the security of your country above party politics. It would be your Profiles in Courage moment.

You would be the heroes who saved our Republic. I would drink to that.

Think about it. It's win-win.

Just nine more days...

The President-elect is as crazy as a loon, and his transition team would seem to be a bunch of rank amateurs, and yet they have done some chilling things to consolidate power. Ordering our diplomats to come home by Inauguration Day is just one of those things.

We are in one of those fixes. Trump, although he lost the popular vote by three million, won according to the rules, strange as those rules are. We are hurtling toward the swearing-in of a president who has shown his dictatorial nature in a recent press conference (only the most recent example), who really does not know what he is doing, who is obviously mentally unbalanced.

Now, in deference to Trump's legal election win, we all seem to be in a trance, going through the motions as though this were a normal election transition. We are performing the duties assigned to us as citizens of a republic. The process has a momentum that carries the country along because interrupting the process would amount to a violation of the democratic process.

But allowing Trump to assume office will result in severe damage to democracy. It cannot be allowed to happen. This is all complicated by the fact that Trump's party has majorities in both houses of Congress. Can one even imagine the House of Representatives impeaching the man? I can't imagine it. There are some Republicans in the Senate who want to investigate Russia's role in influencing the 2016 election, but Senate Republican leadership -- Mitch McConnell -- seems determined to keep any meaningful investigation from happening.

I have no idea what sorts of back room plots, if any, are being hatched to stop this fascist. I don't know how he can be prevented from taking office. All of the fantasies I have entertained since November 8 -- Electoral College revolt, Senate confirmation of President Obama's Supreme Court pick -- have failed to come true.

All citizens and politicians who see the danger for what it is must resist with all our might every step of the way.

Trump voters' self-hatred, and other things

I have been posting about the glee of the far-right Republicans' plans to tear out all of America's safety nets. I have not connected this phenomenon with Republican self-hatred, although that is often revealed in individual cases. I have spoken before about cases of an individual conservative's preaching "family values," and legislating against homosexuals, and subsequently being caught in compromising positions with other men in bathroom stalls. The theory is that, believing that homosexuality to be a great sin, while experiencing his own sexual attraction to men, he tries in vain to suppress his natural urges, while directing his self-hatred towards homosexuals in general.

In any case, self-hatred in one area is not the end of the story. The fundamentalist Christian, especially if brought up by an authoritarian patriarch, seems likely, to me, to have many reasons to hate himself, and many reasons for personal misery. He can't please his father. He can't hide from his Father in Heaven. He worries that even passing sinful thoughts are the same thing as actually committing those sins. I think this goes a good way towards explaining why these miserable people want everyone else to be miserable.

There seems to be an idea abroad that, at least in selected cases, humans should suffer in the ways that God intended. The religious person is taught that, for example, women have been punished by painful childbirth for Eve's sins, as indeed it says in the Bible. In certain cases, religious people believe that humans are letting themselves off the hook when they figure out how to make their lives happier, contrary to some religious commandment. The rejection of birth control is one obvious example. Most Christians do not condemn other man-made improvements in the human condition, although some extremists do not condone modern medicine (preferring to suffer and even to make their sick children suffer) or modern transportation (the Amish, primarily).

So, today's Republicans are eager to strip away anything that brings comfort, especially to the poor, who they think are poor because God ordained it.

Sorry for taking the long way around to the case of Donald Trump voters. I had entertained a number of theories as to why so many of the down-and-out voted for Donald Trump against their own interests. I had not thought of the self-hatred connection expressed by a Kentucky schoolteacher in this article from Daily Kos. Why, indeed, should a "dysfunctional community" be expected to make rational choices? It's an excellent read, full of deep insight.