The Witness Chronicles Wednesday November 15, 2023
The Witness Chronicles Wednesday November 15, 2023
A Trump presidency will come after you, what positive thing do the Republicans want?, and a good day for Democrats, finally
Well, we are seeing the former president’s true colors this week and they are as ugly as any since the rise of Hitler and Mussolini before WWII. He clearly stated that any American who disagrees with him is ‘vermin’, relegating most of us to the garbage heap. His words directly channel those of murderous dictators.
And he no longer hides his desire for a complete takeover of the US government and his detailed plans for doing so. This used to be called sedition before the media decided they had to balance stories even when the reality is wildly out of wack.
For the record, and balance, these are not conspiracy theories. They are spelled out in detail in on-the-record interviews with Trump himself, not surprising considering he has given up on any charade of being a law abiding citizen.
I’d be angry about this stuff except, I think the constant stream of it will gradually wear away at his non-MAGA supporters as he appears to get crazier by the day.
Changing the subject, my life is interesting these days outside of the political world and I’m writing about a more personal journey in The Remarkable, my other newsletter. It’s a good break from the crazy, though not always easy.
Surprisingly, an opinion piece I shared last week about the Israeli/Hamas conflict was Boosted by curators at Medium, meaning more readers are seeing it. Given the level of division here around the topic, I see this move as a verification I found the balance I was seeking in the piece.
Small wins.
Trump Has a Plan: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
His intentions are very clear: the end of democracy
We know the man is a narcissist but the extent of that self-worship is now completely out in the open, and he is the one telling us what he wants.
As many writers have pointed out, his primary policy will be personal revenge on a scale never seen before. He is recruiting an army of lawyers who do not believe in the Constitution of the United States or the rule of law, the primary responsibilities of being an attorney at law in America.
But that is only part of the plan. Before we get into the bigger picture, let’s look at what he clearly states he will use those lawyers for. Their job is to use the law to attack anyone Trump perceives as a threat of any kind. There will be no due process or evidence required.
If Trump says destroy them, they will go after his target.
That’s just the beginning. He intends to fill thousands of civil service positions with his people, regardless of competency, across the entire government. His biggest target will be a takeover of the Department of Justice turning it into the ultimate instrument of revenge and control.
It sounds like a wacko conspiracy theory, right? It would if I were making it up but this comes directly from Trump's own words in multiple interviews on video. He is very clear on his objectives: Complete control and the use of the law to punish and destroy.
It is important to remember that this man is a former president of the United States. He has real power. And he will do anything to realize his vision of complete control and worship, including immediately claiming another stolen election if he is losing, throwing our country into a kind of civil war far beyond the January Sixth insurrection he organized after his last loss.
Adding to this strange and frightening scenario is the man’s apparently failing memory and incoherent rambling whenever he speaks in public. And the increasing desperation as his indictments and their trials take up all his time.
He faces jail time and while he may see that as a way to increase his popularity with his followers, it is still a reality he cannot comprehend. He cannot stand even a modicum of oversight or restrictions in anything he does. Prison is the most extreme form of oversight and it has to scare the crap out of him on a primal level.
We have to remember is a coddled rich boy, never denied anything.
The only way he truly evades these charges is to take over the government and that is his plan.
This is the ultimate delusion of grandeur, to imagine changing our entire political system to protect one man, a man who seems to be cracking up on multiple levels.
The interesting thing here is that he has taken that craziness and turned it into something his rabid followers find entertaining. He knows entertainment well and he knows the truth is completely unnecessary when it comes to his base. They like to hear him lie blatantly. It’s fun.
A police state run by a mentally ill leader with a small army of unthinking supporters does not sound like fun.
His plans are not limited to taking over the legal system. He will deport virtually every non-white, non-Christian immigrant, legally here under the law, or not. That law will be meaningless by that point.
That’s the whole idea.
Political candidates used to campaign on ideas and a vision for the country, regardless of party affiliation. Those ideals have been formally rejected by the Republican Party, starting during the first Trump administration, when they eliminated even having a policy platform.
They decided that telling the American public what they stood for was unnecessary in a party where one man determines their every belief system and the only criteria for election is loyalty to him.
We used to worry that Trump seemed to want to be a dictator. We now know from his own words that total unrestrained power is his only goal.
The fact that this man may be leading in election polls says something truly awful is wrong with America. Hate wins in Trump World.
Trump had setbacks this past week. His chosen candidate for the Republican governor of Kentucky lost to a Democrat in a red state. He immediately reversed course and went after his guy, declaring a man he endorsed as being a failure and loser.
We know from his history that he really doesn’t care about abortion as an issue though he took credit for the reversal of Roe v Wade this week, an issue that is proving very bad for his party.
Trump’s utter domination of the House of Representatives is backfiring badly as his guy, Speaker Mike Johnson, cannot seem to understand that his ideas are going nowhere except downhill as his party is incapable of keeping the government open.
Johnson flies a flag outside his office that is used by a group that wants to overthrow the government and replace it with an evangelical Christian theocracy. This from a man in a serious leadership position at the top of our government.
A shutdown is never good news for the party in charge of the House and that party is now effectively the Trump party. They may want chaos but chaos can backfire and that seems to be taking place.
I am not a fan of polls this early in an election cycle and in general. They have not proven useful in recent years as they missed the call on a number of voter issues. Trump loves the numbers but only if they swing his way.
I’m sticking to my prediction that we will see a complete mental breakdown by the former president in the next year. But will that change anything? Probably not.
What Good Thing Do the Republicans Want?
Seriously, no is easy, when do they say yes?
The government is going to shut down next week. House Republican leader Mike Johnson sent them home to rest for a three day weekend (Veterans Day) rest after they spent this week cutting various Democrats’ pay to one dollar and failing to even vote on any bills to keep things open.
Those pay cuts are meaningless grandstanding, they won’t go anywhere, and they are the new way the GOP will govern the most prosperous country in the world. Which brings me, and a lot of people, to the question: what are they for?
Obviously it is not forward progress. Progress is a dirty word associated with ‘progressive’. But it appears that the hard core right, the MAGA brains, want to freeze everything in its tracks. Don’t limit government, stop government entirely.
Then what, you might ask. Then, nothing.
That’s next week and it is brought to you by a small group of Republican House members, mostly from small districts, who simply hate government.
Ok, they hate government. They hate a lot of things. What do they like that the rest of us might like too?
Not women’s rights. We told them this week that was important to most of us but that doesn’t matter. Not gay people, even though the rest of us really aren’t bothered by them either. Not democracy, according to one North Dakota guy who wants a Constitutional amendment declaring Christ is king.
I’m not kidding, he thinks democracy is a bad thing, even though it got him elected with his weird ideas about everything. Nice job North Dakota voters, you really stuck it to the rest of us, your fellow Americans.
That guy has a vote. So does Matt Gaetz of Florida, a guy you know you hated in grade school who is just the same. I really don’t want to run into him at my high school reunion. He learned early on that nasty can get you laughs.
These guys are running our country right now. Actually, running it into the ground, intentionally. For example, they are not going to pass the farm bill because it includes what we used to call food stamps.
Food stamps were the terrible child of the welfare state, even though the majority went to rural white Americans trying to feed their children. Still do but they are called SNAP now. Bad to feed children, right?
It should be pointed out that the farm bill mainly supports big business farming and farming in places known as ‘red states’, the places that elected a lot of those blocking the bill.
They know better than the clowns who elected them. And that’s the problem, and it is a big one. We have enough congresspeople who don’t give a damn about what Americans want or need, to shut down the government next week.
A handful by the way, but their fellow party members are frozen in fear of a guy who can barely string together a coherent sentence under oath in court.
This week two things happened. We held elections and they did not go well for the Trump agenda or the Republican Party. That same Party sent five would-be Presidential hopefuls to a debate so they could have an argument on national tv.
I didn’t watch it. Well, I turned it on in time to hear one sentence. Nikki Haley said she was wearing 5” heels, could run in them (audience cheers), and they weren’t shoes, they were ammunition.
Then I changed channels. In hindsight, after reading about the debate, I guess I caught a high point. At least she was joking, I hope.
These guys in the House of Representatives are not joking, they are dead serious. They really don’t like most of us and if they can’t play, nobody can.
Something really terrible is going to happen in the world in the next month. I don’t know what it will be- maybe Miami will get crushed by a hurricane like Acapulco was a few weeks ago. Maybe we will get a new pandemic.
How do I know this? Because terrible things happen every month. Last month a war started in Israel and even they did not see it coming. Right now the full force of our government is there trying to keep that war from turning into a much larger regional war.
That’s one of the things the US government does. But not after next week. The thousands of sailors and war fighters on our carriers over there will stop getting paid for risking their lives.
So will air traffic controllers already forced to work ten hour days, six days a week. I’m glad I don’t have any big travel plans coming up. Do you?
Wear your seatbelt.
It’s too late to stop these clowns. Even as voters told them we are not happy with a lot of their ideas, they are doubling down and it is going to suck.
And while it sucks, something terrible in the world will happen.
Seriously, this is a shameful time to be an American. Our system has failed because of a handful of selfish people with power. Republican people, every one.
Good Morning Democracy, It’s Nice To Know You’re Still Here
Another midterm election goes for freedom and equality
Women’s right to choose their own medical destiny had a big night as election returns were tallied across the country. Abortion was the big issue with conservative Ohio voting decisively (57% majority) to enshrine a woman’s right to choose in their constitution.
The same issue helped the Republicans’ great white hope, Glenn Youngkin, Governor of Virginia, watch Democrats take his state government. He had hoped for a sweep based on his proposed 15 week imposition of abortion, a supposedly acceptable bipartisan plan.
Only, apparently, among old white guys who don’t listen to their wives. Guys, they got the vote over a hundred years ago, remember?
In good ole Kentucky the Democratic Governor won another term, defeating Mitch McConnell’s cherry picked successor, a black prosecutor who gave white cops a pass after they ‘accidentally’ killed Breonna Taylor, a black woman, during a botched raid.
There were Republican wins, if you count the corrupt Governor of Mississippi who beat Elvis Presley’s nephew, in a win for the good ole boys in the poorest state in the union. I wish I cared about that one.
None of this is good news for Trump, who has been basking in the recent poll numbers while making an idiot of himself in a court of law this week. He has tried to capitalize on anti-abortion sentiment, unsuccessfully, after noting early on that the topic was not a great one for Republicans.
I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on polls at this point in an election year (yes, we officially start one this morning) as crazy as this one. The Hamas terror atrocity last month, and Israel’s brutal response, are just contributing to skew polling as sentiment for both sides (Israel and Palestine, not Hamas) divides us further.
We really didn’t need that right now, but neither does the Middle East.
On this first day of election year 2024, it’s really hard to say what the American people want, likely because we don’t know. Lower prices would be great but no one, Biden included, can pull a lever and make that happen.
As Trump raves on in court and at rallies, his allies in the House seem likely to let the government default, while they pass bills that are meaningless, and fight amongst themselves under a Christian guy who needs software to monitor his porn consumption.
So, our government is held hostage by a bunch of crazies. That can’t really help Trump or his party, The Trump Cartel, once known as the Republican Party. Government shutdowns always look bad for those who let them happen, especially when they brag about it (looking at you, Matt Gaetz).
It was nice, as a Democrat, to wake up to some good news. And to top it off, Ivanka Trump will be testifying in court today about her family’s business dealings, which she has desperately tried to distance herself from. That should be semi-interesting.
My prediction? Maybe a giant hurricane will blow Mar A Lago off the face of the earth and Trump will try to claim on his insurance that it was worth $1.5 billion, then find out his homeowner’s insurance was canceled like the rest of Floridians.
Or not. But that might be fun to watch. Stay tuned, you never know what will happen next.
Believe it or not, I don’t always write about doom and gloom, though if you only read the Witness Chronicles, you might think so.
These days I am fascinated by the idea of enchantment. I found myself becoming disenchanted by a lot of things, some self-inflicted and others from the bigger world, which can be a dark place these days.
In fairy stories being enchanted is seen as a negative thing, but I like to think we’d all do better finding ourselves succumbing to the enchantment life offers. Especially when many cannot imagine a good life beyond the unrelenting horrors they are living through.
As fellow humans, we need to help them find their way back to a world with a glimmer of enchantment. And we need to help them begin to live without fear, even as some of our politicians promote fear and hatred in our beautiful country.
I’m opting for enchantment when and where I can find it. And I’m hoping to write about a more positive world in the near future. That’s not going to be easy but you have to try.
Did you write today?
Thanks, Martin
2911 words
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