I’m beginning to see a pattern: from “fine people on both sides…” to retweeting bloodcurdling images and tropes from violently radical right-wing groups—and “protecting 2nd Amendment” Rights.
The original also mentions a “well-ordered militia…” and they need arms, the more lethal the better.
For the takeover. Um, to insure that the falsified re-election of Trump will be adequately defended. Aggressively, if necessary. A match for that part of the military that might not want to go along. Maybe that’s why Trump is commuting the sentences of so many real criminals; he’s recruiting an army of horribles.
IF Trump does get re-elected, (please, whatever power there is have mercy on us!) he’ll likely have strokes and heart attacks and will become an automaton for the VP or, whoever else can maneuver their way to control: maybe a real junta.
This isn’t something you could spread on the internet, is it? A conspiracy of Trump, the gun industry, right wing militia groups and media to arm themselves to quell any military that would dare to defy the, uh, (someone’s elbow) rightfully elected President?
What if it’s true?
With a few, very few, exceptions, leftish groups are not armed. Most of the exceptions are the few arms carried in self-defense.
There has been quite a bit of gun-brandishing in right-wing demonstrations. That’s intentional: it means they’re practicing to take power and overthrow the Constitution for a dictator.
The guns are all quite legal, especially with all the relaxed gun laws all over the country, thanks to the NRA—and others. Also fits the pattern, doesn’t it?
Reagan probably knew he was the smiling face that distracted the people, so his people, with money, could make more and more, meaning: all those others got less and less. So, he kept ‘em happy.
Bush I; was too much of a patrician to think that way.
Bush II deferred that kind of thing to Dick.
Obama was seduced enough by the fat cats, that he moderated whatever progressive impulses he had, especially after he lost Congress.
Trump, of course, is puppet, mouthpiece and participant in the game called, “Rip off the boobs.”
He’s ignorant, by choice, lazy, at least amoral, purposely stupid when it suits him, but also, cunning, underhanded and mean. Think of it: he faces no ethical restraint, especially now that he’s been “acquitted” in the impeachment “trial.”
And, as far as he’s concerned, there is no constitutional restraint, either. He’s President: he can do whatever he wants.
With the election? “‘We’ can massage the results,” he might suggest with a globe-wide grin, “Know what I mean?”
If the election campaign went horribly wrong for Trump by October, if he knew he was going to lose, and badly enough that he couldn’t fudge it, what would he do?
Declare an Emergency! Like Indira Gandhi. Then, cancel elections, and keep canceling them, until he’s built up enough of his fanatically loyal militias, commuted horrors and military units, that he can feel secure enough to declare himself President for Life.
And then he drops dead, or soon thereafter.
Who, or what, follows him, the first American Emperor: Augustus was ponderous, but Nero and Caligula were about as crazy as Trump.
Now follows the worst of the Roman script: battles (literally) over succession—family, Generals, Officials high up fielding armies to combat their opponents.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is more and more terrified and acting more and more irrational: coal, oil, gas, gotta get it up, out of the ground, consumed as fast as possible. However, each fossil fuel user, makes the whole climate infinitesimally more extreme, and all those contributors, aggregated, add quite a substantial increase in critical climate crisis change.
Internecine warfare probably exacerbates the effects of greenhouse gases and poisons already overloading the geosphere.
There is only one way to prevent something like the above scenarios: Win the election for the Anti-Trump, and for his/her party in Congress (both houses) and the States.
How can I help?
Write letters to the Editor(s), promoting our positions and/or Democratic unity. Arguing against the Jill Stein vote model.
Remember Jill Stein? Are you proud, those of who you voted for her and made a “statement?”
In the so-called swing states that gave Trump the Electoral College, Trump’s winning vote margins, for at least some of them, were less than the vote for Jill Stein.
If you lived in one of those states and voted for her, you have something to be proud of, or ashamed of: You helped elect Trump.
We may have a chance to do so, again. I saw a Tulsi for President sign at a cross-roads in my small town, where the “progressives” voted for Jill, in 2016.