{"id":25712,"date":"2023-03-31T11:43:37","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T18:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=25712"},"modified":"2023-03-31T11:43:39","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T18:43:39","slug":"trump-is-running-to-lead-a-fascist-nation-not-this-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/03\/31\/trump-is-running-to-lead-a-fascist-nation-not-this-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Is Running to Lead a Fascist Nation\u2014Not This One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Former<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Former US President Donald Trump dances off the stage at the conclusion of a 2024 election campaign rally in Waco, Texas, March 25, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by Shelby Tauber \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dirty little secret of Trump’s third campaign for president\u2014one that the media has so far ignored\u2014is that he is not seeking to become president of the United States, at least not the United States as it is now organized.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

ROBERT REICH<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mar 30, 2023 Robertreich.Substack.Com<\/a> (CommonDreams.org)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Saturday, at the first rally of his presidential campaign, in Waco, Texas, Donald Trump talked about the likely criminal cases being prepared against him as if they were being prepared against his supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not coming after me, they\u2019re coming after you,\u201d he said<\/a>, predicting that \u201cyou will be vindicated and proud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wording was no accident. To Trump, there is no difference between himself and his supporters, and no difference between his supporters and the parts of the United States where they\u2019re the majority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is key. Trump views himself, his supporters (whom he calls<\/a> \u201cmy people\u201d), and their domains as one and the same. Anyone who opposes him is \u201cthem\u201d \u2014 outside the universe of his identity, past the places that embrace him, beyond the borders of his pathological ego.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump wants and expects a civil war over himself, a final clash between Americans who love him and Americans who loathe him \u2014 between his egomaniacal views of good and evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s fusion of himself with his supporters galvanizes those who project onto him the power and status they feel they\u2019ve lost in America \u2014 people who are mostly white, rural, and without college degrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Trump is not engaging in this fusion as a means of being reelected president. In fact, even if it helps him win the Republican nomination, it will lose him the general election, because it will turn off all Republicans who are focused on real issues or who worry that he\u2019s nuts, and it will cause independents to flee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dirty little secret of Trump\u2019s third campaign for president \u2014 one that the media has so far ignored \u2014 is that he is not seeking to become president of the United States, at least not the United States as it is now organized. He is seeking to become president of a very different nation \u2014 overwhelmingly white, straight, Christian, and authoritarian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The policies Trump promoted in his speech are designed to change America into that nation \u2014 featuring, for example, the \u201clargest mass deportation in United States history,\u201d along with efforts to reverse \u201cdeclining fertility rates\u201d (white-nationalist code for encouraging white couples to have more babies).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At his rally last Saturday, Trump claimed that the greatest threat to the United States was \u201cnot China or Russia\u201d but the people in the \u201cDepartment of \u2018Injustice,\u2019\u201d and \u201chigh-level politicians that work in the U.S. government, like McConnell, Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he was president, Trump expressed admiration for Putin and Xi. Presumably, the reason he admires them is that both have fused their personal identities with the identities of their countries (and along the way eliminated all opposition). The greatest threats to Trump\u2019s attempt to accomplish the same in the United States are his domestic opponents, along with Republicans (like Mitch McConnell) who fail to give him full-throttled support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, when he spoke last Saturday of \u201cdemonic forces\u201d trying to demolish America, he was referring to demonic forces trying to demolish him <\/em>\u2014 and, by implication, his supporters and their America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Trump, every major challenge facing America is a major challenge to Trump, and vice versa<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Saturday, he called the \u201cweaponization of our justice system\u201d the \u201ccentral issue of our time.\u201d During last year\u2019s midterms, he tried to make his lies about fraud in his 2020 election defeat the most pressing issue facing the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his mind, the two are linked. He is now recasting the January 6 attack on the Capitol as an act of patriotism by those who view the 2020 election as illegitimate. The Waco rally even featured singing by men who were imprisoned for their part in the attack. A massive screen<\/a> flashed images of the January 6 attack while Trump recited the Pledge of Allegiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He still has not accepted the result of the 2020 election, because it was the product of people who voted against him, and Trump never considered himself president of people who reject him. Following the same sociopathic logic, he will not accept the result of the 2024 election if he is not elected. His mind is incapable of accepting it. The fusion of himself, his followers, and America renders such an outcome impossible, just as the 2020 outcome was impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet in fact he will not<\/em> be elected \u2014 unless the U.S. economy is by then in a deep recession, or Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has a serious health problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brace yourselves. We have been here before. It culminated on January 6, 2021. The angry, xenophobic, misogynistic, racist, antisemitic, conspiratorial forces Trump unleashed then are still very much with us. And they are now more entrenched in Congress and state legislatures than they were then. By November 2024, they will be ready for a second attempted coup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump wants and expects a civil war over himself, a final clash between Americans who love him and Americans who loathe him \u2014 between his egomaniacal views of good and evil. A civil war is unlikely, but the next year and a half is likely to be fraught \u2014 another stress test of American democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Saturday was only Trump\u2019s first campaign rally. It will not go up from here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a9 2021 robertreich.substack.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ROBERT REICH<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert Reich, is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former US President Donald Trump dances off the stage at the conclusion of a 2024 election campaign rally in Waco, Texas, March 25, 2023. \u00a0(Photo by Shelby Tauber \/ AFP via Getty Images) The dirty little secret of Trump’s third campaign for president\u2014one that the media has so far ignored\u2014is… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[334],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25712"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25713,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25712\/revisions\/25713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}