We are not surprised---Expecting it !!!!!!!!

Yes, Trump Really is Going to Try to Steal the Election

And If He Succeeds, American Democracy Will Cease to Exist

umair haque

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Jun 20 · 7 min read 2020

I’m here to tell you something that you already know, but might not want to admit. Trump is going to try to steal the next election. Yes, really. No, it’s not some kind of paranoid fantasy.

There is now every reasonable possibility that American democracy comes to an end in a matter of months.

Yes, Trump is a narcissist, who craves power. Sure, there’s nothing he fears more than being a loser.

But we don’t have to resort to psychology to explain it.

The evidence that Trump is going to try to steal the next election is hiding in plain sight. That evidence is his very own actions.

If you were Trump, and you really expected to lose power over the next months, what would you do? Well, you’d probably fill your coffers. Begin to walk away. Whistle and shrug. Give up on any of the larger projects that are so obviously authoritarian fascist, like building a paramilitarized state where the rule of law has broken down, cleansing a nation of the impure, and so on.

You’d say to yourself something like: “Well, that was fun. But now it’s coming to an end. Let me at least get rich, and put all these bigger agendas aside now. Why bother with them? My Presidency’s coming to an end.”

Only Trump isn’t acting like that. At all.

What is he doing?

While no one much has noticed, Trump has gone right on doubling down on making America an authoritarian-fascist state. He is more committed to that project than ever. He isn’t acting like someone who’s about to give up power. His behavior is that of someone who’s consolidating power. Who’s amassing it. Who’s doubling down on long-term, generational projects, to reshape a society along authoritarian lines.

To those, like me, who’ve survived authoritarianism before, this is an alarm, blinking red, blaring at top volume. People who expect to lose power, to cede it peacefully, to give up office…don’t behave like Trump is now.

Let me give you a few examples.

Take Coronavirus. Trump is…totally indifferent. Have you noticed how strange that is? Why would a President not care about mass death, when it’s beginning to tank him in the polls? The reason he doesn’t care is that…what Americans think doesn’t really matter to him much anymore. It is a clear and dead giveaway that he is not planning to contest an election in a fair or democratic way. Instead, Trump’s indifference to America’s greatest catastrophe in generations couldn’t be a clearer sign that he intends to thwart, forestall, cancel, or poison the next election.

Figures who intend to simply give up power don’t act indifferent to tragedies. They know they can be held accountable, that a reckoning will shortly be had. Only figures who expect to keep power, and remain above the law, who think they have all the branches of government, from the Senate to the Judiciary, in their pocket act this way — with shrugging indifference.

One of the major authoritarian-fascist projects is always ethnic cleansing. If Trump were getting ready to give up power, he’d also be letting things like bans go. What do they benefit him, really? He’d just be cashing it at this point. But he isn’t letting this cherished supremacist goal go — not one bit. While nobody much was paying attention, Trump banned whole categories of visa holders from legitimately re-entering the country. That’s thrown whole sectors into chaos, who depend on such employment — this is skilled employment, by the way. But that’s almost besides the point. Trump hasn’t given up one bit on his dream of a pure ethno-state: he’s pursuing as vehemently as ever. That’s not the behaviour of someone who expects to give up power.

Just last week, Trump purged the Voice of America. If you’re American, you might not know it — it broadcasts around the world, its mission to spread peace and democracy. It is a major and crucial global American institution. And yet Trump purged its leadership — who were decent and sane people — and replaced them with a coterie of Bannonite neo-fascists, the goal being, to build something like a state-run Breitbart. Trump is building a global propaganda wing for American authoritarian-fascism — one to last for a generation or more. That’s not something you do if you expect to give up power — it’s something you do if you expect to keep power for a long, long time.

Then there’s the purge at the Justice Department. Trump fired his own investigators. If you really thought you were going to lose power, you wouldn’t do that: you’d only make the situation worse, because the next President would obviously just appoint new ones, who’d add this new charge of obstruction to your sheet. Again — that’s not the behavior of someone who hopes to give up power. But someone who expects to keep it.

Everywhere you look, every time you look, Trump is behaving in a way that those of us who’ve lived through authoritarianism know all too well. Like a dictator who knows that he can seize power, with impunity. No one will ever hold him accountable for his actions. And so no longer-term goals of transforming a society have been ceded, not one bit. The grand projects of authoritarian-fascism haven’t decelerated one bit — they’ve accelerated: from ethnic cleansing to purges to destroying the last few remaining functioning institutions in government, so as to consolidate power, and accomplish the task of building a new society, led by an all-powerful demagogue.

I want to warn you as strongly as I can.

When authoritarians make moves like these, they are sending a clear signal — to those who know to listen. They are telling you that they don’t expect to lose power. That they don’t intend to give to up peacefully. That they will not go without a fight. That they will use every means at their disposal not just to thwart democracy — but to prevent it from even fully having a next election.

Leaders who intend to accede to a peaceful, smooth transfer of power do not behave like Trump is behaving right now. Their behaviour is just the opposite. They act conciliatory, regretful, they try to make amends — if only to forestall the inevitable reckoning, and minimize the personal fallout and consequences they face. Trump is doing none of that. Instead, he is doubling down, every single day, on power and control, through destruction and chaos.

I want to put that in a broader context for a moment, to really drive the point home.

Americans have undergone what’s obviously — to the rest of the world — an authoritarian implosion over the last five years. Yet at every step of the way, they’ve been behind the curve, perpetually surprised, bewildered, shocked. “It can’t be happening here!!” cries the good, sensible American. But isn’t it? It did happen in America. All that’s left now is the last step — for Trump to steal the next election, and democracy to die. Because we all know that if that happens — there isn’t going to be a next next election.

But Americans are cautious, hesitant, conservative people. Culturally, though, that makes them sitting ducks for authoritarians like Trump. Because such people will ignore every warning, and act surprised, instead, by authoritarians doing the things they usually do, whether bans, raids, purges, camps, or hatred. For the last several years, Americans dismissed the warnings as “alarmism” or “hyperbole” and so forth. When I predicted all that’s come true now, sadly, with eerie precision, I was told things like I was “causing panic” or I was “being irresponsible.”

And yet here America is. On the brink of the final implosion of a free and democratic society.

The game of self-deceit Americans have been playing with themselves is now coming to an end — whether they want it to, or not. This is it, the last chance. There is only more time left to be shocked and surprised, and this time, if Americans are still shocked and surprised, it’s going to be too late. Trump will have stolen the Presidency, and this time, all bets are off. Any pretense of being a functioning democracy will die, probably for good, at least for a generation, as Trump builds a dynasty to rule America. He will finish the job of building the institutions of a fascist-authoritarian society — camps, bans, raids, purges, Gestapos, paramilitaries on the streets — and Americans will have to live under their thumb, for a generation or more, subjugated, abused, and cowed into submission, by the man who, improbably enough, became their sneering, hateful dictator, in just four short years.

Yes, Trump is going to try to steal the next election. Few things are as obvious to see in the world today. And if he gets away with it, America is never going to be the same again. Those are the stakes, my friends. But do Americans really understand them yet?

Umair
June 2020