Friday, November 18, 2016

The Cult of Trump part 6 The Con


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I am going to quote an article from NBC news on a recent development regarding Donald Trump.

Trump Supporter: Internment 'Precedent' for Muslim Registry to 'Protect America'


by 

A former Navy SEAL and supporter of President-elect Donald Trump cited World War II internment camps as a precedent for Trump's proposed Muslim registry during an interview Wednesday night on Fox News.
Speaking to host Megyn Kelly, Carl Higbie, a spokesman for the pro-Trump Great America PAC, argued that a proposed registry would be legal. "I know the ACLU is going to challenge it, but I think it will pass. We've done it with Iran back a while ago. We did it during World War II with Japanese. Call it what you will, maybe wrong," Higbie said.
"You're not proposing we go back to the days of internment camps, I hope," Kelly responded, adding, "You can't be citing Japanese internment camps as precedent for anything the President-elect is going to do."
Higbie pushed back. "Look, the president needs to protect America first and if that means having people that are not protected under our constitution have some sort of registry so we can understand...until we can identify the true threat and where it's coming from, I support it."

The article goes on to say:

The last and most controversial of the 10 WWII internment camps, the Tule Lake Segregation Center, closed 70 years ago. By March 1946, when Tule Lake was shuttered, approximately 120,000 Japanese — more than two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens — had been incarcerated during the six years of the war.
The U.S. formally apologized for Japanese internment in 1988 when President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which granted reparations of $20,000 to each surviving victim of the camps. End quote by 
Trump has called for the imprisonment of immigrants (meaning Latino or Latino looking immigrants or possibly citizens that look Latino, after all with indefinite detention and no right to a trial or legal representation how could a person prove they are American or not a criminal ? They CAN'T).


On his first interview on 60 Minutes since he won the election Trump said the following:

The following script is from “The 45th President,” which aired on Nov. 13, 2016. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Rich Bonin and Ruth Streeter, producers.

Lesley Stahl: What about the pledge to deport millions and millions of undocumented immigrants?

Donald Trump:  What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we’re getting them out of our country, they’re here illegally. After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that you’re talking about who are terrific people, they’re terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that-- But before we make that determination-- Lesley, it’s very important, we want to secure our border.  End quote

He has opened up the idea of indefinite detention for an UNLIMITED number of people with no rights or recourse. He can detain them until the border is straightened out, which is forever.

The targeted group for this action is immigrants that are or look Latino. American citizens that appear Latino ? They can be rounded up too and under indefinite detention have no rights to hearings or defense or contacting their families. That's how indefinite detention works. If Trump has involuntary labor imposed on the detainees they can comply or be tortured, starved or killed. 

He can effectively enslave ANYONE. He cleverly used the more innocent ideas of building a wall and deportation. Being deported is still a terrible and difficult experience BUT indefinite detention and involuntary labor for being an immigrant or looking like you might be is far, far worse. A deported person can possibly somehow build a life in another country or even legally travel and possibly return to the US in the future. A person rotting in prison or working on a chain gang has far fewer prospects. 

That's one group Trump despises and called rapists, killers and drug dealers. He has no love or compassion for them. None. 

He went on to say the following regarding the Supreme Court and abortion:

Lesley Stahl: One of the things you’re going to obviously get an opportunity to do, is name someone to the Supreme Court. And I assume you’ll do that quickly?
Donald Trump: Yes. Very important.
Lesley Stahl: During the campaign, you said that you would appoint justices who were against abortion rights. Will you appoint-- are you looking to appoint a justice who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade?
Donald Trump: So look, here’s what’s going to happen-- I’m going to-- I’m pro-life. The judges will be pro-life. They’ll be very—
Lesley Stahl: But what about overturning this law--
Donald Trump: Well, there are a couple of things. They’ll be pro-life, they’ll be-- in terms of the whole gun situation, we know the Second Amendment and everybody’s talking about the Second Amendment and they’re trying to dice it up and change it, they’re going to be very pro-Second Amendment. But having to do with abortion if it ever were overturned, it would go back to the states. So it would go back to the states and--
 Lesley Stahl: Yeah, but then some women won’t be able to get an abortion?
 Donald Trump: No, it’ll go back to the states.
Lesley Stahl: By state—no some --
 Donald Trump: Yeah.
 Donald Trump: Yeah, well, they’ll perhaps have to go, they’ll have to go to another state.
 Lesley Stahl: And that’s OK?
Donald Trump: Well, we’ll see what happens. It’s got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go. End quote

He is playing the country. He has selected Mike Pence as his Vice President and will only appoint the most extreme pro life judges possible for the Supreme Court. If any outcome that outlaws abortions for all Americans is possible Trump will require that. No doubt about it. 
Mike Pence has a long, long, long history of opposing women's rights on abortion and many other issues. His history was ignored during the campaign because Trump wanted it that way and manipulated the media with his actions. 

Women will be so worried about their diminishing rights that Trump will hope to divide them off any groups they might otherwise support. They will feel defeated and powerless. 

Trump has spoken in the past on being law and order and supporting stop and frisk racial profiling and racial discrimination in policing. Tough policing. He has retweeted racist false statistics on black crime. He has repeatedly made racist comments on black people and sought their execution in the case of the central park five. 

He plans to pack for profit prisons with black folks. Saying anything else is simply ignorance, false information or wishful thinking aka denial of reality.

He has an overarching value. He wants to diminish or eliminate the power of Muslims, Latinos, Black folks, and control women, additionally he has some of the fiercest opponents of gay rights in his hand picked group of friends and potential judges fir the Supreme Court. He wants to control women in a way that echoes of misogyny in a Christian identity form.

He is simply a white supremacist. He envisions using aspects of a tweaked version of Nazism to make America a white supremacy utopia where whites come first, and everyone else comes last, if they are even allowed or alive.

Now Godwin's Law is a nice meme, but not applicable to someone who goes this far down the path Hitler chose. The parallels are far too many to ignore.

Trump has been called a fool or flip flopper. I believe he has conned everyone. His supporters, his opponents politically, the voters and president Barack Obama.

Everyone underestimated him. Because the reality of a conman that acts foolish to earn support from the masses and to sucker his opponents into a sense of overconfidence is astounding.

I think he has long admired Hitler and realized open antisemitism against Jewish people is still a step too far for even the republican party. He knew he wouldn't gain power as an open antisemite.

He instead picked other vulnerable and unsupported people to scapegoat. Muslims have been demonized by Fox news for decades. Ever since 911 and the more recent terrorist attacks anti Muslim rhetoric and discrimination have risen to extreme levels. And Mexican immigrants are blamed by some people for the diminishing of jobs in certain US states.

So both non white groups are looked down on by white supremacists and used to excuse fear and anxiety by whites. Fear of crime by Mexican immigrants and fear of terrorist attacks by Muslims.

Despite numerous sources reporting that Muslims in the United States commit very, very, very few crimes and very few terrorist attacks. Several hundred sources of death are more likely to take your life than Muslims. It's been reported that more Americans get killed in the United States by sources like bee stings, car accidents, Americans with guns, accidents with furniture and falls in the home than terrorists. In one year more Americans were reportedly shot by TODDLERS than terrorists in the US !

Despite recent reports showing immigrants commit far, far, fewer crimes on average than native born Americans. Immigrants are not looking to get deported and so stay out of trouble to avoid deportation. Despite recent research showing that in recent years more people are actually going from America to Mexico than coming to America.

The facts don't support Trump's claims at all. But he isn't looking for facts. He is looking for an excuse to take something from non whites and to demonize them.

Similarly with black folks and women facts don't support his racist policies but he doesn't care. Trump in my opinion has long held deeply racist and misogynistic values. Numerous incidents like his housing discrimination cases, and racist remarks he admitted then denied regarding "blacks" and his many unsubtle antisemitic and misogynistic remarks over the years long before he ran for president lead me to believe his feelings on many of these issues are genuine. He may use Jewish or black folks and gay people as opportunities present themselves, but lots of people do that too. It's not a proof of a lack of racism. 

Ultimately it's hard for people to understand a man that's always conning everyone. I believe he deep down holds a very narcissistic view of himself and others and that forms much of his identity. 

Here's a quote from Daily Kos:

PBS and The Huffington Post have uncovered video evidence of Donald Trump’s long-held beliefs that he (and people like him) are genetically superior: 
The Frontline documentary “The Choice,” which premiered this week on PBS, reveals that Trump agrees with the dangerous and abusive theory of eugenics.
Trump’s father instilled in him the idea that their family’s success was genetic, according to Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio.
“The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development,” D’Antonio says in the documentary. “They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.” End quote
I watched the video from Frontline and it's obvious Trump believes his genes are superior and give him superior intelligence and many good qualities. He boasts about his German blood and being proud of it as good stuff. 

It's so clear that he has white supremacist values in the tradition of neo Nazis. Now some people act like no one can be compared to Hitler EVER because of Godwin's law. Well the problem with that is some people actually like or deeply admire Hitler and try to emulate him. Those people actually are entirely appropriate to compare to Hitler. 

And there's a lot of evidence that Trump is using tweaked Nazism in many ways. That's the con: be a slightly altered Nazi and Hitler imitation and simply act like being called out is outrageous and preposterous. That's his defense. Many racists dislike any reference to racism as they don't see themselves as wrong and believe being labeled racist is the ultimate unfair criticism. So to see Trump called Hitler just gets him more solidarity with many of his supporters. 

And I will cover more aspects of how Trump has taken pages from Hitler's writing and literally studied them in future blog posts.  











Tuesday, November 15, 2016

The Cult of Trump 5 Most Likely Scenario

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Within the last week Donald Trump was interviewed on 60 Minutes for the first  time since winning the presidency.

He gave several statements on various issues and tried to come across as humbled by the immensity  of the responsibility before him. He said he wants  to take two to three million immigrants and round them up. He said he could imprison them and wait until the border situation is straightened out and then work out deporting them.

Under current law thanks to the Patriot act and the NDAA 2012 Trump can indefinitely detain people with no charges filed, no legal counsel, no right to a speedy trial or trial at  all.

Right  now we  have had several days straight of protests  against Donald Trump.  Over fifty US cities have had protests. They  are likely to increase.

In my  opinion Trump saw this.  He doesn't gain power for about a month. He  has claimed gay marriage is settled law, but intends to appoint supreme court judges that will overturn that.

He  has promised to keep many aspects of the ACA which he previously promised to abolish.  He  has walked back many policy proposals.

In my opinion he  is trying to seem reasonable, to seem moderate and like he won't come after people as a dictator.

He wants the  protests to stop. He wants each group to  be isolated and pacified if they  are not losing everything.

In my  opinion Trump is trying to con EVERYONE. I don't mean everyone except his  supporters, or everyone except his close advisors, or everyone except his family. I think he is conning every single person he deals  with.

I saw a story in which someone warned us to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

I thought okay, what if every reassuring assumption about Trump is false ?

Then he  is not the erratic idiot millions assume he is. Then he is playing dumb and making people think he understands less  than he actually does.

He then is far more dangerous than previously thought to be.  He may know that if he acts like a reasonable moderate and acts like he wants to work within the limits the constitution sets and respect the political process and the various branches of government it establishes that will calm people. That will be an attempt to end any mass  movements that are forming in unity against Trump.

He wants to seem either normal or incompetent. That's odd but we have had incompetent but well intended presidents before. People will endure that.

Trump in my  opinion wants to divide  and conquer his scapegoats. The groups he has attacked that are most vulnerable are two. Immigrants and anyone he calls terrorists.

By picking up people and using a few examples of real criminals to stir emotions Trump will get people to accept the rounding up of immigrants. Many  people already consider them criminals.

That will expand. People will not be able to reject it if they accept it incrementally.  At first Trump will claim to be after gang members, rapists, murderers and drug dealers. After  all, who can say locking them up is bad ?

But Trump won't have any accountability to give people trials or legal representation or prove to anyone that he is actually arresting criminals.

If we allow this then we are done. Trump can pick us off at his leisure if we allow him this first step.  It's not hyperbole.

Trump may not even intend to build the border wall. That may be surprising. Newt Gingrich admitted the wall may have been a campaign device.  Meaning a lie.

Trump's real intent may have been a misdirection all along.  He didn't say I want to round up millions and  millions of people then use indefinite detention on them. And if Trump has them provide involuntarily labor then he can effectively enslave people that aren't given any opportunity to have a trial. An unlimited number of people.

He can imprison ANYONE. Because with no charges, no trial and no legal representation how can someone show they were improperly detained ? Indefinite detention has no accountability. It has no standard to meet.

I frankly believe Trump wants to do things he spoke of in his campaign. He said he would bring back waterboarding and a lot worse. No one ever got Trump to describe this in detail.


I think the details are much  worse than almost anyone dared imagine. Newt  Gingrich has already mentioned bringing back the Unamerican Activities Committee to investigate Americans.

With our current surveillance state and the authoritarian tendencies of  Trump that is horrifying.

I cannot stress strongly enough that Trump must not be accepted as president. I cannot stress strongly enough that he must be protested and we cannot accept him restricting the rights  of ANYONE. IF we all unite and reject every single action that he uses to gain more power or oppress anyone then we have a slim chance.

I need to stress something about this. Chris Matthews from Hardball on MSNBC right after Donald Trump win the election was shocked, tried to right himself and said Trump had talent to win the election so he MUST be able to use that talent as president.

I  think I know what happened to Chris. He KNEW Trump is profoundly unfit and unqualified to be president. Chris knew Hillary Clinton is far more suitable in temperament and far, far, far more qualified than Trump for being president.

But Chris experienced severe cognitive dissonance and confusion and anxiety when Trump actually won. Chris has several assumptions he has expressed.  He assumes the political process in America rewards the better candidate and American democracy is fundamentally fair.

He knows the president is a very  important person in the system and since the system is fair it's only natural that it selects a good or at least decent person to be president. But he KNEW Trump isn't good, qualified or decent. So what did Chris do when Trump actually won ? Chris had a cognitive distortion and shifted his opinion of Trump to fit his ideology that the American political process gets it right.

I believe millions of people have had similar cognitive distortions. Donald Trump is taking advantage of that.

It's deadly for you to assume Trump is normal, moderate or decent.  He has proven he isn't. Believe him.


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Sunday, November 13, 2016

The Cult of Trump 4 Reason and Resistance

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 Image result for donald trump calls for tortureImage result for donald trump calls for tortureImage result for donald trump calls for torture waterboarding worse
 This is the fourth installment in the series the Cult of Trump. The posts are intended to be read in order.

There are people that are saying we need to be calm, passive and let President Trump have a chance to be president before judging him.

I think that is as wrong as you can possibly be.

I keep going back to key moments in Trump's presidential campaign.

When he was asked about two of his supporters that ruthlessly beat a homeless man and he responded by saying they are passionate. That's a good moment at revealing his character. He has extreme sociopathic tendencies. That's been shown time and again. When he called for the good old days when a protester would be taken out of here on a stretcher.

When he called for torture in the form of bringing back waterboarding and a lot worse. When he said we should kill the family members of terrorists. When he said we have to punish women for getting abortions. When he said that he would put Hillary Clinton in prison. When he said Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama are the founders of ISIS. When he said we have to do racial and religious profiling and monitor Mosques. When he heard of the white supremacists threatening a Jewish reporter with rape, murder and sent photos of her in a concentration camp and he said I have nothing to say. It spoke volumes.

Get this straight as a reality and not a possibility. Trump has no compassion or empathy for human beings. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

He could have realized that violence was being inspired by his words and completely rebuked it very early in his campaign. He could've spoken about Mexican immigrants and black folks and poor people and Muslims in very different terms but NEVER changed his rhetoric. No actions by white supremacists or his supporters have discouraged him in the slightest degree.

He has to be taken as an existential threat to millions of Americans and citizens of the world. He is that dangerous and proven it over and over.

He joked about not killing the press. He acted like the press should be sued even if it required removing the first amendment to US constitution.

He has no loyalty to any religion or group. The white supremacists don't get this as he will cater to them one day and meet with Jewish Americans another day. He has no contradictions because he is conning and using everyone that he can.

But now that he has won the election he sees many, many people as expendable and they are in danger of being discarded.

The tendency to think life is fair, America has checks and balances, this too shall pass, and somehow Trump must be happy he won and care about the country or his legacy and therefore will be reasonable is entirely a denial of reality.

The press that had ridiculed Trump as a fool, narcissist, pathological liar and racist suddenly was stunned when he won. They said he MUST be a bearable president BECAUSE he won.

That's a pure fallacy. A president doesn't have to be sane, decent or reasonable. He is just a president.

The press has members that are having cognitive distortions. They believe in the democratic process and that the United States is a good country that must have a good leader and policies that progress for the American people.

It's pure wishful thinking. But people get used to it. Imagine you are a reporter or host in the media and make between a quarter million and ten million dollars a year on CNN, MSNBC, NBC or another major network. You think you worked hard and deserve the wealth and game you have.

You think America is pretty good and might think it needs a little improvement if exceedingly liberal or may think it's just fine if moderately liberal or think it needs some tweaking if conservative, but overall think it's pretty good since it's rewarded you personally in a way that seems acceptable.

The press has members on TV that are millionaires and frankly that makes understanding that life is inherently unfair and no good force is watching over us quite difficult. They just don't get what life is like for middle class and certainly poor people. And vulnerable people like the disabled, minorities, gay people and many others. Even gay and minority TV hosts have had a degree of security most people don't have due to their wealth and tendency to stay in more liberal cities.

They underestimated Trump as a candidate but more importantly they underestimated him as a threat. If you don't understand narcissists and sociopaths as fundamentally different from normal human beings then you can't and won't ever understand Donald Trump.

Trump has had thousands and thousands and thousands of people protest his election. For several days since the election in New York city and Los Angeles ten thousand or so protesters have come out each day. Thousands of students walked out the day after the election. A march on Washington is planned for the inauguration day and possibly a million or several million people will protest the election.

Trump at first called the protesters paid professionals and said it was unfair. He or an advisor later communicated that there were small groups of protesters, which is an outright lie.

He reportedly has said he won't cancel the ACA, may not deport eleven million people and might not undo the Iran deal President Barack Obama negotiated. He has also given signs several other promised abuses and oppressive policies won't be fulfilled or will be extremely moderated.


The obvious interpretation of that is that Trump wants to calm the protesters and get them to disperse and wait passively for his inauguration.

He doesn't want people to protect and get united and connected and build loyalty to each other for several months before he seizes power.

If gay people and black people and Latinos and immigrants and Muslims and women get solidarity with each other they together will be too much even for a president to abuse and oppress at will. He can't govern a country if he doesn't have a country left to govern.

If ten or twenty million people unite and march and refuse to accept his rule then he is done. He can't get the military to blindly kill twenty million Americans and expect the country to survive. The military is known for being extraordinarily obedient but would they kill their countrymen and their own relatives and neighbors ?

I think it's highly unlikely. At some point the rest of the political class will realize they have to stop Trump because they can't kill everyone else.

Some would be opportunistic and thinking of keeping power or saving their own skins. I frankly don't care if they want power or have sincere concerns.

If they stop the threat from Trump and don't become tyrants themselves I am perfectly happy either way.

I don't want people to get pacified by anything Trump says now. He's unsuitable for president and that won't change. He's a threat to millions and millions of the most vulnerable Americans and doesn't care a bit about them.

We should organize and protest and most of all unite as one no matter what he says or does. That way we might have a chance. Any other way and we live and die at Trump's mercy. Last time I checked he had none.


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