ROBERT REICH<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n AUG 14, 2023 (robertreich.substack.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The biggest story about Trump\u2019s indictments (including the one expected this week from Georgia) is that Trump is centering his entire presidential campaign on them \u2014 and along the way is seeking to meld his identity with those of his supporters, so they feel personally attacked by the prosecutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Trump supporters, this is not rallying-around-the-flag. It\u2019s not even rallying-around-a-former-president. It\u2019s rallying-around-themselves \u2014 aligning their personal identities with Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than half of Republicans \u2014 including 77 percent of self-identified MAGA Republicans \u2014 say the indictments and investigations against Trump are an attack on people like them, according to a CBS News\/YouGov poll<\/a> taken soon after the most recent indictment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think of it this way: The indictments, Trump\u2019s 2024 campaign, the grievances of millions of Americans against a system that has bullied them for years, and Trump\u2019s pathological narcissism are all fusing into a single, unalterable, irrational mass movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI am your justice, I am your retribution,\u201d Trump said when announcing his campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m being indicted for you,\u201d he said in June, after being charged with retaining government secrets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI AM BEING ARRESTED FOR YOU,\u201d he posted in all caps on August 3, the day of his indictment for seeking to overthrow the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At a campaign event in New Hampshire last week, he claimed, \u201cThey want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The philosopher Hannah Arendt has pointed out that the fascist leader fuses his identity with his followers, so that followers lose their capacities for independent thought.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As the fascist leader takes over the factual, psychological, and moral premises of the world his followers inhabit, the followers relinquish their freedoms. They suspend critical judgment. They become automatons.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Be warned. What Trump and much of the Republican Party have embarked upon is as dangerous to the future of our democracy, and to the rest of the world that looks to America for leadership, as was Trump\u2019s attempted coup leading up to January 6, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We need to get the word out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n