A Most Uncivil War A-Brewing?

“Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it.” 

Trump Rally in Vandalia, Ohio, March 16th.

"My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!" 

Trump on his social media platform Truth Social, March 11th.

“We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021

January 6th Capitol attackers were “ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.” Official GOP description, February 4, 2022 “Accelerationism” — the apocalyptic belief that modern society is irredeemable and that its end must be hastened, so that a new order can be brought into being.

Trump followers have many militias to choose from should they wish to mount a powerful, violent attack across the land, the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, the Bugaloo Boys, Proud Boys, Texas Freedom Fighters, etc. Each with many chapters, training facilities and exceptionally well-armed. With significantly more firearms among our civilian population than there are people, including tens of millions of military grade assault weapons, there is an abundance of Trump partisans more than happy to use such weapons against “radical liberals,” immigrants whom they dismiss as sub-human, and racial/religious/ethnic/gender minorities. Several red state governors are more than willing to deploy their national guard units to support extreme rightwing vectors, even in defiance of court orders to the contrary.

And if you read the above Trump quotes, he appears more than ready to rely on violent insurrection, with a powerful backing of MAGA GOP elected representatives, who have dismissed the death, destruction and violence in the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021 as American “patriots” visiting their Capitol as an act of “tourism.” At this point, one would have to be naïve to believe that the MAGA GOP is anything but a white Christian nationalist political movement that views representational democracy as an obstacle to their retaining control of the country. As Democrats are aghast at reports from Trump insiders that the former President was an admirer of Hitler’s Nazi platform, MAGAns openly agree with his position. To make blue staters more uncomfortable are the constant reports of the embrace of Trump’s white Christian nationalism by so many police officers and members of the US military.

Writing an OpEd for CNN.com, March16th, Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council of Foreign Relations and a professor at Georgetown University and Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and DeSales University, ask the question: Is the US on the brink of another civil war? “Three months into 2024, it seems dire predictions of political violence are now commonly issued both by the country’s extreme fringes as well as from the mainstream. Former President Donald Trump has been perhaps the most vociferous prognosticator, warning that there would be ‘bedlam in the country’ should the criminal charges against him lead to a 2024 election loss. Nowadays, even seemingly mundane political procedures can also result in promises of violence. When the US Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in January, allowing federal border agents to remove concertina wire put in place by the state of Texas, some in elected office said it was a sign of civil war. In its threat assessment for 2024, the Department of Homeland Security forecast that, among other threats, the 2024 election cycle would be a ‘key event for possible violence…’

“In her 2022 book, ‘How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,’ renowned political scientist Barbara F. Walter argues that “we are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe” because of a toxic mix of political extremism and polarization, social and cultural tribalism, the popular embrace of conspiracy theories, proliferation of guns and well-armed militias and the erosion of faith in government and the liberal, Western democratic state. Among the key factors she cites is accelerationism…

“Accelerationism is embraced by a spectrum of white supremacists, white nationalists, racists, antisemites, xenophobes and anti-government militants as a clarion call to revolution. They fervently believe that the modern Western, liberal state is so corrupt and inept that it is beyond redemption and must be destroyed in order to create a new society and way of governance.

“With the West supposedly on the precipice of collapse, accelerationism’s adherents maintain that violent insurrection is required to push democracy over the edge and into oblivion. Only by hastening its destruction can a White-dominated society and new order emerge, the thinking goes. Fomenting divisiveness and polarization through violent attacks on racial minorities, Jews, liberals, foreign interlopers and power elites, and thus producing a cataclysmic collapse of the existing order and provoking a second civil war, accordingly, is accelerationism’s stock-in-trade.

“But this terrorist strategy is in fact part of a long tradition of extreme, destabilizing far-right violence. To understand why, and to put those events in broader context, one has to view January 6, 2021, as another milestone in a trajectory that commenced in the late 1970s and gathered momentum throughout the 1980s. Its evolution slowed following the nationwide law enforcement crackdown after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but was infused with new purpose after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and the Great Recession stunned the country that same year. And, it was subsequently weaponized in the 2010s by social media and further empowered by the febrile rhetoric and polarization of politics that continued to divide America.”

In short, after a period of expanded liberalism in the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, the United States has witnessed the steady growth of rightwing radicalism, where people no longer accept the definition of being American without a blue or red qualification. Donald Trump did not create this movement; he capitalized on it by giving rightwing radicals a voice and legitimizing their cause. Where communities were not already congealed around white Christian nationalism, mass and social media gave a new rallying point for those disaffected segments in our society. Like it or not, there are no longer any “lone wolves”; the Internet has connected them in new and powerful ways. Terrorist disruption and defiance has replaced the traditional blue vs gray civil war with two clearly defined militaries facing each other.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I believe that we do in fact face a 50/50 chance of de facto civil war within the next two or three years.

The Mega-Democratically Elected Trumpian Dictator We Choose to Ignore

There are close to 200 million Muslims in India (between 14% and 15% of the total population, which has now passed China as the most populous nation on earth), but Muslims represent only 5% of India’s parliament. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (a deeply Hindu nationalist party) has steadily denigrated and eroded Muslims, representing the country’s second largest religious population (behind the Hindu faith which represents 80% of the approximately 1.4 billion people), demoting them to second class citizenship. Backed by conspiracy theories and viral rumors, fundamentalist Hindus are easily brought to murderous violence against Muslims, labeled as the butchers of Hindu sacred cows. Indian authorities often look the other way as Muslim women have been raped, and Hindu-on-Muslim killings somehow get ignored.

Modi is wildly popular among Hindus. He authorized a major Hindu temple to be constructed in in northern Ayodhya city, where a major mosque once stood. He’s purged Muslims from government and gerrymandered their political influence effectively into meaninglessness. With a national election looming this May, Modi and his controlled parliament have recently addressed the acceptance of major refugees, as this March 12th article in the Associated Press points out: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on Monday [3/11] announced rules to implement a 2019 citizenship law that excludes Muslims, weeks before the Hindu nationalist leader seeks a third term in office.

“The Citizenship Amendment Act provides a fast track to naturalization for Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before Dec. 31, 2014. The law excludes Muslims, who are a majority in all three nations.

“The law was approved by the Indian Parliament in 2019, but Modi’s government had held off with its implementation after deadly protests broke out in the capital, New Delhi, and elsewhere. Scores were killed during days of clashes.” [Pictured above]

This deep animosity has endured since the British relinquishment over control of India in 1947, but instead of holding territorial integrity, the Subcontinent fractured along religious lines in a gruesome divide. “Partition of India, division of British India into the independent countries of India and Pakistan according to the Indian Independence Act passed by the British Parliament on July 18, 1947. Set to take effect on August 15, the rapid partition led to a population transfer of unprecedented magnitude, accompanied by devastating communal violence, as some 15,000,000 Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims rushed to cross the hastily demarcated borders before the partition would be complete. Estimates of the number of people who died during the partition range from 200,000 to 2,000,000. The partition left an indelible mark on the national consciousness of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and its legacy continues to influence the countries’ citizens to this day.” Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Indeed, Pakistan and India have fought wars since. When India became a nuclear power in 1974, Pakistan prioritized getting nuclear weapons, which was successful in 1998. Kashmir (along with Jammu), a northern Indian province with a majority Muslim population, has been claimed by Pakistan since inception. This religious difference has resulted in numerous border conflicts, but a basic statutory grant of relative autonomy to Kashmir and Muslim Jammu (Article 370) salved some of the wounds between Hindu India and these provinces.

Still, conflict and hatred seethed between these nuclear powers. In 2008, Muslim terrorists attacked targets in Mumbai, killing an estimated 174 and wounding a further 300. A bad situation got a whole lot worse. In 2014, Modi and his BJP were voted into control of the entire country. Modi’s anti-Muslim proclivities have amplified ever since. In 2019, India’s Hindu dominated parliament scrapped Article 370 and relegated Kashmir and Jammu to control by the BJP.

In a rare visit to Srinagar in the disputed Kashmir and Jammu region, Modi told a large crowd, “I am working hard to win your hearts, and my attempt to keep winning your hearts will continue.” But that entire region had been placed under a security blanket, with thousands of soldiers and paramilitary forces deployed with new checkpoints set up.

Modi is an elected autocrat, often seen as having created a mockery of the notion that India is the largest “representational democracy” on Earth. Needless to say, Modi is deeply admired by Donald Trump, who openly praises how the Indian Prime Minister controls his opposition, his critics and how he has marginalized his Muslim population.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the notion of a profoundly insecure master “I am a victim” strongman wannabe Trump resuming the US presidency is terrifying… and Modi is just one example of what such a presidency might look like.

The Primary Reasons Congress Is So Extreme

vs 

The Primary Reasons Congress Is So Extreme

How Extreme Fringes Came to Control Congress

Lost decorum, religious “my path is the only path” zeal, billionaires using their cash to keep taxes low while promoting pet but extreme positions, the anonymity of the Internet, the ability to avoid unpleasant truths with severe media filtration, the search for simple solutions to complex solutions (lots of outsourcing of personal opinions to passionate zealots) and a whole lot of “the ends justify the means” justification. Change is threatening, especially where there is a perception that “you” are being left behind or replaced.

The recent flood of lifetime appointed federal judges who simply have elevated extreme personal beliefs, often anchored in the rationale of deep-felt religious convictions that even overrule constitutional restrictions, has not helped. Courts have been particularly instrumental in making sure extremists with rightwing beliefs are well-armed with few restrictions. The litany of Supreme Court cases reinterpreting a very old Second Amendment have certainly given even the most extreme factions access to military-grade assault weapons. The sustaining of voter restrictions and gerrymandering, a boon almost exclusively to Republican candidates, and their according of virtually unrestricted flows of money into campaign issues has literally shifted the red states into MAGA-only representation. Is the MAGA GOP the true RINO faction?

Why? Extreme and uncompromising candidates seldom had access to the donations they would need to mount a credible primary campaign. When the Supreme Court issued Citizens United vs FEC in 2010, extremist candidates simply followed billionaires espousing extreme causes to find their sponsors. That wealth has pretty much erased the power of traditional fiscal and social conservative Republicans, replacing their political power with pure MAGA conspiracy theories and white Chistian nationalists.

Indeed, as Will Carless, writing for USA-Today (March 7th) notes: “Trump has ramped up his spiritual imagery. He told a convention of religious broadcasters last week that he was ‘taking bullets’ for Christians. ‘They want to tear down crosses where they can,’ Trump said of his opponents. ‘But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you.’…The concept of Christian nationalism — technically, the belief that the secular government should favor Christianity or even be replaced by it — existed long before Trump’s rise to power. But experts said the former president’s embrace of the movement and his increasing use of Christian nationalist language is something altogether new.

“The fervor for Christian nationalist ideology has catalyzed an active political movement, experts in both religion and extremism told USA TODAY. So while they have long been alarmed about Christian nationalist ideas, they see the new movement as an army of sorts, ready for a mission, with Trump as its general. They’re worried about what action the most extreme members could be directed to take if he wins – or loses – in November.

“The contemporary movement has created its own doctrines, including one known as the ‘Seven Mountain Mandate.’… This concept – which followers believe originated with a message from God to a trio of evangelists in 1975, and which became popular in the early 2000s – proposes that American Christians should seek to dominate seven ‘mountains’ of modern society: religion, education, family, media, entertainment, business, and government…

“At the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference, referring to Trump, far-right influencer Charlie Kirk declared: ‘Finally we have a president that understands the seven mountains of cultural influence’… ‘God created government,’ Parke said on the show, which the host also often uses to promote QAnon conspiracy theories, ‘And that's why he is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now.’ And experts agree that the recent leap from fringe idea to fundamental motivator comes from the popularity of a single person – Donald Trump.” Trump’s character is hardly representative of Christian values. But this is a “Christian movement in name only.” This is bad enough, but the very notion of partisan primaries has added fuel to this extremist “use any means necessary to take over” mission statement.

Writing for the March 3rd New York Times, Nick Toriano explains how this works: “The average U.S. House district encompasses about 590,000 people of voting age. How many of them would you expect to cast a ballot for their representative in Congress? Half? A quarter?

“In 2020, the representative for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District was effectively chosen by 43,813 people who voted for the winner of the Republican primary — just 8% of eligible voters. In 2018, the representative for New York’s 14th District was chosen by 16,898 people who voted for the winner of the Democratic primary — just 5% of eligible voters. In these districts, one deep red and the other deep blue, the dominant party’s primary was the only election that mattered.

“Since their initial victories with those slim totals, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have significantly affected the priorities and direction of their parties, pushing them toward ideological extremes. And both MTG and AOC are beneficiaries of the prevailing partisan primary system, which strongly favors candidates who can appeal to a paltry yet passionate base in a lopsided district.

Nonpartisan primaries like the one California holds Tuesday are a rare exception — one that can show us the way to national political reform… Greene and Ocasio-Cortez are far from alone. “Research by Unite America found that only 8% of voters nationwide cast ballots in the primaries that determined 83% of House contests… How? First, 83% of congressional districts are, like AOC’s and MTG’s, considered “safe” for one party or the other. While some of this has to do with gerrymandering, most districts are uncompetitive because of the increasing partisan divide between urban areas (which lean Democratic) and rural areas (which lean Republican)… You might think we have a two-party system in America, but in most parts of the country, we really have two one-party systems. In these places, primaries are the only elections of consequence.

“Second, very few voters participate in primaries. That’s because 22 states prevent independents from voting in primaries, according to a recent Unite America Institute report, disenfranchising 23.5 million registered independents. And this problem is only getting worse: The share of voters not registered with a major political party has increased nearly 20% since 2010… Primaries not only determine the winners of most elections but also give disproportionate power to tiny, fringe factions. The result: More of our elected officials are less representative of America and less willing to work with the other party to solve problems.”

All of these distortions are built into the system without taking into account the manipulative mendacity of malign artificial intelligence audio-visual political productions or the targeted and often automated election interference of nations like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. We did all of this to ourselves where even the prestigious UK The Economist labels the United States as an unrepresentative “flawed democracy.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is clear that a rather large segment of Americans are fighting for a clear white Christian nationalist theocracy to replace democracy, and if the rest of us do not react against this powerful trend, American democracy will be relegated to the history books…which will undoubtedly be censored.

Last Chance Tourism – As Climate Change Reconfigures the Earth

On average, each year appears to be hotter than the last. According to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), last month was the hottest February on record, as temperatures reached 1.77°C (3.2°F) hotter than “pre-industrial" times. Every month since June 2023 has become the hottest ever for that time of year. There are, indeed, consequences. I’ve blogged about many, including our raging wildfires, drought in some areas and elsewhere horrendous flooding, devastating tropical storms and tornados, coastal loss, glacial and polar ice melting, extinction of species, migration of everything from disease carrying insects into areas unprepared for their arrival to migration of people from now desertified farms, conflicts over vaporizing resources, decimated coral reefs and sea life, intolerable summer heat… and the battles between greedy or ignorant climate change deniers/marginalizers and those who understand how dangerous our future is… much sooner than many expected.

Yet people still clearcut or burn off carbon dioxide-absorbing forests or the leavings from a harvest, burn coal for fuel, buy gas guzzling trucks, cars, ships and planes, burn trash and use fossil fuel energy like there’s no tomorrow. The world doesn’t even look the same anymore. Oh, we’ve dealt with losing extraordinary ancient architectural ruins, like when China dammed up the Yangtze River – the Three Gorges Dam displaced almost two million people, and over 1,200 ancient statues, buildings and other structures and was completed over several decades. It was fully operational by 2012, but history was lost.

We’ve lost other “wonders of the world” before. The lighthouse at Alexandria Egypt, the Colossus at Rhodes, the Hanging Garden at Babylon were gone a long time ago. The natural wonders of the world also are now fading fast, and that at spurred a new form of high-end travel: Last Chance Tourism, as people want to see natural beauty and species that are rapidly disappearing. We’re told that summer ice will be mostly gone within a decade. That Northwest Passage will be open for predictable sea traffic, already setting off claims from Russia challenging US, Canadian, Finnish and Dutch (via Greenland) claims to some of that waterway.

Around the world, tourists are signing on for tours across mountain ranges and fjords where glaciers are disappearing, rainforests to visit disappearing foliage and the wildlife that has depended on these masses of trees, coral reefs slowly being bleached into oblivion, Arctic and Antarctic regions that are rapidly contracting and island nations disappearing into the sea. This new “last chance travel” is also heightening awareness of exactly how pronounced changes to Earth have become from accelerating climate change. How much has changed… permanently? New York Times writer Paige McClanahan, on March 3rd, notes: “It’s a question that many travelers are asking themselves, as climate change threatens a growing number of tourist destinations — from glaciers to coral reefs, ski slopes to low-lying islands. For thousands of years, humans have raced to be the first to scale a peak, cross a frontier, or document a new species or landscape… Now, in some cases, we’re racing to be the last.

“The term last-chance tourism, which has gained traction in the past two decades, describes the impulse to visit threatened places before they disappear. Studies have found that the appeal of the disappearing can be a powerful motivator. But in many cases, the presence of tourists at a fragile site can accelerate the place’s demise.

“There is some evidence that a visit to a threatened place can inspire meaningful behavioral change in visitors, potentially helping to offset the negative impacts of a trip. But research is still in its early stages, and results are mixed.

“In a place like Chamonix (a French mountain town with a once massive glacier) — where tourism is the mainstay of the economy, and where climate change is already having palpable effects on tourist offerings — such tensions are playing out in real time. The shift to a new way of interacting with the landscape may be slow to come, as many jobs — as well as tourist habits — are built into the old way of doing things. But some are already pioneering a new approach, and with the effects of global warming accelerating, change will have to come quickly.”

Those who take that last chance travel understand the scope and intensity of the changes. Those do not have enough money for such journeys at least know the truth from their revised daily lives … to witness, perhaps not as clearly as these world travelers. But some will continue to deny, ignore or marginalize climate change… but Mother Nature, deploying the immutable laws of physics, doesn’t care. It may be harsh, expensive to counter, but it will not stop itself.

I’m Peter Dekom, and even if some want to keep government climate change related spending down so that rich can maintain their luxurious lifestyles, can they really be that callous toward their own children and grandchildren?

As MAGA Slowly Repeals the Reagan Legacy

Berlin, June 12, 1987

“I don’t think he would address his party’s front-runner at all. I think he would focus on the people who cheer at that candidate’s rallies. He would point out to them that dictatorships aren’t created by one person; they’re created by all the people who fall in line and say yes.” 

Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, in a February 11th essay in the New York Times entitled, 

“My father would weep for America.”

Let’s start with President Ronald Reagan’s understanding that labor from undocumented workers was an essential component of our nation’s economy. Yet, during his tenure, Reagan did not even face the current contraction of birth rates in the United States, today effectively resulting in restraints on growth, a reduction in our incumbent population, a contraction of the labor pool and a surge in pay for a huge segment of lower paid agricultural, construction, factory and hospitality workers… a major component in our inflationary increases. Immigration would counter that trend.

Early in Reagan’s presidency, he issued his “Statement on United States Immigration and Refugee Policy,” which praised the continued American tradition of welcoming immigration and suggested offering a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented workers who were the part of our labor force. That statement is the exact opposite of the Trump/MAGA effort to remove and displace this undocumented labor force, denying any possibility of citizenship (even for the DACA children who have never really lived overseas), instead blaming this hardworking cadre of undocumented workers for most of America’s ills, including obviously our self-inflicted harms. For an example of such self-infected harm, see my recent The State Most Behind the Massive Influx of Desperate Immigrants on Our Southern Border: Texas blog.

As recited in boundless.com, “On Nov. 6, 1986 Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the most far-reaching immigration law passed during his presidency. The Act’s most significant effect was that it allowed immigrants who had entered the U.S. illegally before Jan. 1, 1982 to apply for legal status, provided they paid fines and back taxes. This provision — which Reagan himself referred to as ‘amnesty,’ allowed around 3 million immigrants to secure legal status after paying $185, demonstrating ‘good moral character’ and learning to speak English.

“Although the bill was supposed to toughen sanctions against employers who hired undocumented immigrants, a provision exempting employers from penalties if their workers had presented relatively convincing fake documents meant that the sanctions were ineffective… Between 1980 and 1990 — a span that included the eight-year Reagan administration— the foreign-born population of the U.S. increased from 14.1 million to 19.8 million. This change included 4 million more Latin American-born residents and 2.4 million more Asian-born residents — and nearly 800,000 fewer European-born residents.” Next: our massive international misstep.

Since the end of WWII, the core of American foreign policy was the containment of communism, but more particularly the litany of Russian dictators, armed with nuclear missiles as then the second most modern military on earth and as the de facto shot-caller for all of Eastern Europe, enlisting other nations – from Cuba to Vietnam, from Nicaragua to Angola, from Egypt to North Korea – to join its opposition to all things American or Western European. While communism collapsed, eventually Russia’s replacement dictator, Vladimir Putin, continued, even accelerated, Russia’s commitment to contain and destroy the United States, both internationally and even within its own borders. Nothing has changed except the increasingly brazen attempts of Putin to deploy his military in a program of territorial expansion, regardless of the cost.

That American effort to contain a Russian dictator came to an abrupt halt, even a total reversal, under the autocrat-loving Donald Trump. He thoroughly eviscerated the Republican Party replacing it with a MAGA agenda, which not only embraced foreign dictators but sought to replace our own representative form of government, which Reagan worked so hard to preserve, with a Trumpian dictatorship (“I just want to be a dictator for one day”). Knowing that a withdrawal of American support for Ukraine, a Western European nation fighting a Russian invasion with annexation as the goal, would be the most profound gift to dictator Putin, MAGA is pulling that support as a their policy platform.

The results of a MAGA-controlled House of Representatives have been horrific: “For two years, Ukraine has relied on American weapons to fight Russian invaders. It has bombarded Russian lines with U.S. artillery, destroyed tanks with Javelin missiles and stopped aerial attacks with Patriot launchers… But American support has sharply declined. House Republicans have blocked additional aid to Ukraine, and the Biden administration cannot send many more weapons. (The $300 million package announced this week will likely help Ukraine for only a few weeks.)

“Ukraine has already felt the consequences. Over the past month, Russia made some gains after it took the eastern city of Avdiivka, once a Ukrainian stronghold. Intelligence officials warned Congress this week that Ukraine’s losses signal what is to come from an undersupplied war effort.

“Ukraine retreated because it ran out of artillery shells, the Biden administration said. These weapons have played a major role in the war; Ukraine has used them to deter and weaken Russian attacks before close combat. But with limited supplies, Ukraine’s leaders sacrificed Avdiivka to save munitions for more strategic territory, such as the Black Sea coastline and the country’s northeast. The chaotic retreat that followed left Ukrainian troops and civilians vulnerable.” German Lopez writing for March 14th The Morning (NY Times).

It is small wonder that clandestine Russian operatives are working overtime, using social media and robotic communications to tilt the upcoming US election in favor of their ally, Donald Trump. Trump’s victory, which would profoundly undermine NATO itself, would be a de facto invitation to Russia to continue its goal of territorial expansion and for China to feel free to occupy Taiwan. MAGA has become a rather pure white Christian nationalist party, looking a whole lot more like the Nazi party of WWII than Reagan’s Republican Party.

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps we should stop calling this MAGA takeover as the “Republican Party,” since it appears that they are the real RINOs (Republicans in name only).

The State Most Behind the Massive Influx of Desperate Immigrants on Our Southern Border: Texas

  

Why are there so many desperate asylum seekers on our southern border? Many cannot find a way to make a living in their native homelands. Most fear they cannot survive the cartel-induced violence and the accompanying political corruption that decimates justice… and hope. In neighboring Mexico, for example, cartels have “convinced” local farmers to “transfer” their avocado and citrus orchards to these criminal organizations… either for free or for chump change. It’s a great money laundering opportunity and an asset base for cartel faithful.

Most probably, if you’ve eaten an avocado from Mexico (most are) recently, you have paid a cartel for that delicious moment. Try getting a reasonable job or farming a productive plot (forget about climate change!) in this environment. How much protection must you pay if you can even keep your farm? Are your sons being force-recruited by local gangs? What exactly gives these cartels and their supporting gangs so much power? Ask Texas Governor Greg Abbott; he actually knows.

“Every year, half a million weapons enter Mexico [and points south] illegally from the U.S., and many of them are military-style weapons that end up in the hands of drug cartels and other violent criminals, said Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, legal adviser of the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“‘In addition to prosecuting criminals and seizing guns that are illegally in Mexico, we decided to go to the source of the problem. Like if this were a toxic river, in addition to cleaning the river, we need to go to the source and stop the toxic waste from being dumped at the river,” said … Alcántara, referring to the landmark lawsuit the Mexican government filed against 10 U.S. gun manufacturers in U.S. federal court last summer [in 2021]. It is the first time that a foreign government has sued American gunmakers.

“Mexican officials have said that a significant part of the epidemic of violence and crime that has plagued their nation in recent decades is driven by the illicit traffic of weapons from the U.S. Mexico has restrictive firearms laws, with one gun store in the entire nation and only about 50 permits issued per year. Between 70 to 90 percent of guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico can be traced back to the U.S. Drug cartels, in particular, buy those weapons in the U.S., mostly in Texas or Arizona, and smuggle them across the border.” The Harvard Gazette 2/18/22. By sheer volume, Texas is the main and most obvious source of those smuggled weapons.

Getting a legal gun in Mexico, a constitutionally protected right, requires a background check, proficiency with the selected gun and a psychological profile test… all of which can take well over a year. The owner is retested upon renewal. There is only one legal (and government owned) gun store in the country, in Mexico City. The millions of guns in the hands of cartels and their supporting gangs definitely are not legal.

Even if we could immediately stop the flow of guns (especially the military assault rifles), properly maintained guns can last for decades. The funds that bought all those illegal guns came from drug users, mostly in the United States. With exceptionally lax gun laws, especially in Texas, and a vastly lower level of border inspection for trucks moving south across the border, the supply of guns, from dealers, private owners and gun shows, has been a flood for a very long time.

Writing for the March 10th Los Angeles Times, Ieva Jusionyte, associate professor of international security and anthropology at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, adds: “When President Biden and former President Trump visited Texas at the end of February, each spoke about migration and border security. Biden called for restricting asylum. Trump engaged in fear-mongering, blaming migrants for crime. But neither mentioned one of the main reasons the border has drawn so many migrants and asylum seekers — the flow of guns from the U.S. into Mexico.

“This link between our guns and the people who seek safety at the border is particularly clear in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott’s hard-line approach to stopping migrants from crossing completely ignores the state’s role as a main source of weapons for criminal groups and violence in Mexico, which is a result of its loose gun regulations. It’s no wonder that Mexicans are the largest national group among the hundreds of thousands who try to cross the U.S. southern border each year.

“Since I began volunteering in 2015 at a migrant aid clinic in Nogales, Mexico, I have met the men, women and children who make up these statistics. Various presidents and Congresses have handed down a hodgepodge of policies intended to solve the perpetual crisis on the border, but the reasons people try to escape Mexico and the difficulties they encounter on their journeys have not changed in any meaningful way.

“At the clinic, mothers and fathers told us why they had to flee. Somebody’s brother was murdered. Somebody’s cousin was kidnapped. Somebody else could no longer pay extortion fees. These migrants were fleeing insecurity rather than poverty, although the two often overlapped. Criminal violence is a problem throughout Mexico. In 2023, more than 110,000 Mexicans were officially listed as disappeared. Close to 90% of all crimes are never reported and 9 in 10 homicides go unpunished. In some parts of the country, law enforcement works with organized crime groups. The families I met did not have an option to go to the police. They packed what they could carry, hoping to find safety once they crossed the border.

“It’s not only people that are affected by the proliferation of guns. The criminal organizations forcing families to flee are often also running the Mexican drug trade. When fentanyl is smuggled across the border, usually through ports of entry and often by U.S. citizens, it wreaks havoc in our communities. But the drugs would not be coming north in such large numbers if not for our guns flowing south.”

In a nation where the average voter in 2024 prefers to lay blame rather than take responsibility for obvious serious problems, it’s major advantage to MAGA and the blame-meister, Donald Trump. Truth can be hard to take, but problems do not get solved without it. Gregg Abbott. a callous, heartless, irresponsible MAGA-in-Chief, deserves massive blame, not asylum seekers.

I’m Peter Dekom, and from a state that exonerated the 2022 Texas police who sat on their hands as an angry and deranged killer used an AR-15 to kill 19 students and two teachers, while 17 others were injured but survived, the unwillingness to apply reasonable gun control and take responsibility for mounting gun-related homicide from Texas sourced guns is no surprise.

The Rise of the Democratic Repeal of Democracy – Illiberalism

To Donald Trump, Democracy simply doesn’t work, because too many of “them” can vote. Generally, “them” is mostly people who disagree with him, but it includes Democrats, African Americans, younger Hispanics, LGBTQ+, college educated folks (especially with advanced degrees), scientists/doctors/”elites”, foreigners of non-Christian faith or with darker skin. But Trump is one of a number of “illiberal” autocrats who were elected to the highest leadership positions in their countries. Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan, Nicholas Maduro, Victor Orban, etc. – all leaders who, unlike Trump, managed to stay in office a very long time. Their method. Change the rules once elected so you cannot lose in a subsequent election.

Donald Trump was unable to do that during his presidency, and his efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election after the fact turned out to be an autocratic “too little, too late.” But with a massive cadre of “populist replacements” being enlisted by the Heritage Foundation (who gave us all of Trump’s rightwing Supreme Court appointees) to take over the “deep state” federal bureaucracy, installing a very toxic, conspiracy theory “alternative” Trumpian deep state, Trump promises if elected (or if anointed) as president, the United States can expect a massive rule change. Trump will assure himself and his nominees of perpetual control at the top.

So how does that happen? Perhaps the best recent example is the MAGA darling and Trump buddy (see above picture), Hungary’s elected autocrat, Victor Orban. Although he lost his first reelection bid, Orban started with an advantage, because Hungary is a very difficult country to live in if you were not born there. With a vague and less than meaningful connection to Finnish, Hungarian is both a difficult language to learn and is not materially based on any other language. Immigrants have never really been welcomed there. So, Hungary is massively defined by its cultural and linguistic and very unique homogeneity. Still, MAGAns love him. Their Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has traveled to Budapest for one recent meeting in 2022, and Orban is always honored at CPAC meetings in this country. He paid an early March visit to Mar-a-Lago as a very personal guest of an admiring Donald Trump.

Orban’s the longest serving leader of any EU nation (and NATO member), is close to Putin and is not a fan of the EU and US support for Ukraine. He started with a standard “elected autocrat” ploy: shutting down or taking over all mainstream media. That approach was not available to Trump during his term, but he consistently called mainstream media – mostly not rightwing conspiracy rags and channels – “truly the enemy of the people,” “The press is doing everything within their power to fight the magnificence of the phrase, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” and labeling accurate but negative reports on his statements as “fake news.” Let’s hope Trump still cannot go as far as did Orban. Oh and Orban over-regulated “disloyal” businesses until they were forced to sell to Orban’s buddies; Trump has openly promised to follow that path if elected again.

Back in April of 2022, the New York Times wrote: “In more than a decade in power, Mr. Orban has not hesitated to use the levers of government power to erode democratic norms and cement one-party rule. He has rewritten the Constitution, remade the courts and used state-run and privately owned television stations — even school textbooks [where have we seen that in the US recently?]— to advance his agenda or push misinformation about his rivals.

“He has unleashed a fresh round of election law changes that benefit his party. He put an inflammatory but ultimately symbolic L.G.B.T. referendum up for a vote, a move that is likely to rally his most strident supporters. And he legalized the registration of voters outside of their home districts — a common practice, until now criminal, that is known as ‘voter tourism.’

“All of that is playing out in a media echo chamber, since Mr. Orban has cemented control of public television to the point where stories, photos and guests are handpicked to align with his talking points. Many of the largest independent news outlets have been taken over by Mr. Orban’s supporters.

“The situation is considered so extraordinary that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an intergovernmental organization, is sending observers to monitor the elections. It is only the second time in the European Union’s history that the group has started a full-scale monitoring operation on an E.U. member.” But Orban has eschewed the brutality of other autocracies; unlike Trump, he has never pledged a government based on retribution. The March 7th The Morning in the NY Times explains:

“Orban does not jail his opponents or have them beaten up the way Vladimir Putin does, but he has relentlessly squeezed the space available for critical voices by getting business cronies to buy up independent media and starving the few others of advertising revenue. Fidesz-controlled outlets treat critics as traitors and deviants. He has also funded a raft of friendly research institutes and a university that help flood the zone with pro-government views.

“When speaking at a 2022 gathering of American conservatives in Budapest, Orban hailed Tucker Carlson as a model of how media should work: ‘There should be shows like his day and night — or, as you say, 24/7.’ In Hungary, that goal has been achieved… Orban’s party, Fidesz, has gerrymandered. It has allowed voters to register in districts where they don’t live. It spies on government critics.

“Fidesz also uses the government to shape and skew public opinion. One example: ‘national consultations,’ pseudo-democratic exercises in which citizens are sent questionnaires with loaded questions. The government recently announced that 99 percent of Hungarians rejected the E.U.’s policy on immigration. The question, however, asked people whether they wanted ‘migrant ghettos’ in Hungary. Most people didn’t return the questionnaire, but Fidesz has trumpeted the result on billboards… The message is that the government represents the will of all but a tiny minority of the people — and which side do you want to be on?”

But with a lot of help from judges he appointed (who seem to toe the MAGA line in way too many cases) and the rightwing appointee screening Heritage Foundation, Trump threatens to remake the United States very much in the fold of Victor Orban’s Hungary… PLUS making room to use the DOJ and the US military to jail his opponents, in his own words.

I’m Peter Dekom, and still the majority of Americans see the 2024 presidential race as a traditional battle of issues… rather than what it really is: a referendum on democracy itself.

Tik’d Off!

 

House of Representatives bill 7521 (“Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”) was fast-tracked to the House after it was approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week by a unanimous vote of 50-0 and passed by the House on March 13th, 352 to 65. It is off to the Senate where its future is not certain, particularly after Donald Trump, following a conversation with a major shareholder/personal buddy in TikTok, seems to have reversed his personal stance that otherwise would have forced the social media company to be banned unless it completely divests from its Chinese parent, ByteDance. According to Theodore Schleifer, writing in the March 13th Puck.com, “Meanwhile, there has been no shortage of media attention lavished this week on Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, and the alleged role he’s played in convincing Donald Trump, among others, to oppose any legislation that would imperil his sizable stake in TikTok.” Autocrats do that with their cronies.

The official House legislative summary of the bill reads in part: “This bill prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok). However, the prohibition does not apply to a covered application that executes a qualified divestiture as determined by the President… The bill gives the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia exclusive jurisdiction over any challenge to the bill. Further, a challenge to the bill must be brought within 165 days after the bill's enactment date. A challenge to any action, finding, or determination under the bill must be brought with 90 days of the action, finding, or determination.”

If the bill passes the Senate and is signed by Joe Biden, it may face judicial scrutiny since it rather directly targets TikTok as opposed to a more generic ban on adversarial ownership of media companies operating in the United States. That targeting may be a fatal flaw, easily fixed with generic standards to be enforced against any entity meeting the relevant criteria. But TikTok has evolved as a social platform as the primary source of news for millions of Americans, an effective “how to” search engine, a marketing machine for a lot of small businesses and start-up entrepreneurs and one of the greatest sources of user-generate content, from photogenic cats to dancing teens to joyful spreaders of conspiracy theories.

To legislators, it is also a mega-source of metadata on tens of millions of Americans, with tons of information on some very private consumer habits, also identifying political and personal biases and predispositions, all exceptionally valuable for anyone mounting an election mis- and dis-information campaign. It is also a front door delivery platform for the mis- and dis-information itself. We have some pretty clearly defined international enemies – Russia and China as the mega-powers and Iran and North Korea as menacing US-destroyer wannabes – who often take advantage of our first amendment right of open communication.

The issue is thoroughly unpleasant as the David Leonhardt, writing for the March 13th The Morning by the New York Times, reports: “Despite low unemployment and falling inflation, TikTok is full of viral videos bemoaning the U.S. economy. One popular group of posts uses the term ‘Silent Depression.’ The posts falsely suggest that the country is in worse shape today than it was in 1930. (My colleagues Jeanna Smialek and Jim Tankersley reported on the posts late last year.)

“”After Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, TikTok flooded users with videos expressing extreme positions from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tilted toward the Palestinian side, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. ‘Many stoked fear,’ The Journal reported. In November, videos praising an old Osama bin Laden letter also went viral.

“In December, a Rutgers University research group concluded that videos about topics the Chinese government dislikes — including Tibet, Uyghurs, Hong Kong protests and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown — were strangely hard to find on TikTok. All were more prominent on Instagram. ‘It’s not believable that this could happen organically,’ a Rutgers expert told my colleague Sapna Maheshwari.

“On Monday [3/11], the top U.S. intelligence official released a report saying that the Chinese government had used TikTok to promote its propaganda to Americans and to influence the 2022 midterm elections. This year, the report warned, China’s ruling Communist Party may try to influence the presidential election and ‘magnify U.S. societal divisions.’

“There does not seem to be any historical precedent for TikTok’s role in the United States today. The platform has become one of the country’s biggest news sources, especially for people younger than 30, and has collected vast amounts of information about Americans.” It has also sparked biased users to stoop to fake AI generated or doctored images and sounds to present “alternative facts” as truth. There’s no question that malign superpowers have clear agenda in manipulating American elections (the focus, but they are messing with elections worldwide), but there is a big question over “censorship” in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

“President Biden has said he will sign the bill if Congress passes it. Already, many federal workers are not allowed to use the TikTok app on government phones… There are still big hurdles to the bill’s becoming law. [In addition to Trump mega-donor Yass, O]thers object to the bill because it would interfere so aggressively in the private sector. This opposition could complicate passage in the Senate or lead to later legal challenges… It’s not clear what will happen. But the chances of the U.S. government acting against TikTok have risen significantly in recent months.” NYT. TikTok has so woven itself into the fabric of everyday living for millions of Americans, but it is equally clear that Chinese ownership is more than mildly troublesome.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Western democracies and the resulting open societies are woefully unprepared for and are constitutionally impaired against malign actors using cutting edge technology that is often simply not understood by the vast majority of those elected to Congress… from either party.

The Replacement Killers

 

“They shall not replace us…” 

The 2017 chant of the torch/cross-bearing white Christian nationalists in Charlottesville, VA.

There is a cold determined wind filling the sails of the Christian Nationalist movement behind the evangelical support of the MAGA GOP and the canonization of Donald John Trump as the permanent leader of the United States of America. It is incredibly white. It’s not subtle, tolerant or remotely consistent with democracy or our Constitution. It replaces that foundational document with the severe reading of the Gospel; the Bible is the supreme reference point for all laws, superior to all other doctrines, constitutional provisions and policies of governance at the state and federal level. Here is a draft of the relevant manifest, a work in progress:

They’re not stupid; they have some very clever conservative, populist thinkers behind them. But they are heavily committed to governmental control (er… fundamental Christian values control) over personal choice and permitted cultural expressions. They have successfully obliterated a woman’s right to an abortion, a right recognized in almost all other developed nations, and are fighting hard for a national abortion ban. But to move the entire nation into supporting their values, they are clever enough to hit on primary and secondary classrooms and libraries – under the seemingly reasonable notion of parental rights to control their children’s lessons (oh, and to control everyone else’s child as well) – and controversial demographic segments like the LGBTQIA+ communities. In their fundamental and judgmental doctrine, these individuals are not so much categorized by innate status (as the vast majority of medical professionals state) as by their own choice, often by reason of external adult “grooming” into sexual depravity.

Thus, but using this rubric, as Andrew DeMillo and John Hanna point out in the March 10th Los Angeles Times, increasing numbers of red state are defining genders as only binary. Male and female. “Kansas enacted a law last year that ended legal recognition of transgender identities. The measure says that there are only two sexes, male and female, and that they’re based on a person’s ‘biological reproductive system’ at birth… That law, and proposals introduced around the nation this year — often labeled as ‘bills of rights’ for women — are part of a push by conservatives who say states have a legitimate interest in restricting transgender people from sports competitions or from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity… Critics say the proposals to legally define sex as binary are essentially erasing transgender and nonbinary people’s existences by making it as difficult as possible for them to update documents, use facilities and participate authentically in public life…

“Measures have been proposed this year in at least 13 states — Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming — and advocates expect that number to grow… The bills follow Republican lawmakers’ push last year for restrictions on transgender people, especially youths. At least 23 states have banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and some are now trying to restrict such care for adults. Others are focusing on restroom and sports restrictions… Many political observers say the GOP focus on transgender people is an attempt to rally a voting base with a ‘wedge issue’ to replace abortion rights, which the public has largely favored. Transgender people and their allies worry that the efforts further stigmatize and threaten a community already at high risk of stress, depression and suicidal behavior.”

Indeed, the ramming white Christian nationalism into our system of governance is a carefully orchestrated and exceptionally well-funded effort. This includes powerful groups like the very religious The Center for Renewing America and the Heritage Foundation, the latter of which has become the ultra-rightwing self-appointed vetter of GOP presidential appointments, now completely MAGA dominated. The takeover of the federal bureaucracy if Trump prevails in November, will be almost instantaneous; legions of preselected prospective nominees with receive immediate appointments.

He’s already done that with the Republican National Committee, after appointing an insider and his daughter-in-law to the top positions: “The RNC is expected to cull about 60 people across the political, data and communications departments. At least five members of the senior staff will be let go and some third-party contracts may also be cancelled. One source familiar with the situation described it as an ‘absolute bloodbath’.” Guardian UK, March 11th. See also my March 1st The New, Malign and Vastly Deeper State blog for about Trump’s vast cadre of federal bureaucrat-appointees in waiting, another “bloodbath” in the making.

Writing for the February 20th Politico, Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybyla drill down as Trump allies prepare to infuse “Christian nationalism” into second administration: “Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and “Budget during his first term and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.

“Christian nationalists in America believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life. As the country has become less religious and more diverse, Vought has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.

“One document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. ‘Christian nationalism’ is one of the bullet points. Others include invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era.

“CRA’s work fits into a broader effort by conservative, MAGA-leaning organizations to influence a future Trump White House. Two people familiar with the plans, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, said that Vought hopes his proximity and regular contact with the former president — he and Trump speak at least once a month, according to one of the people — will elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term.”

Trump’s pledge of “retribution” rather openly intends to enlist the DOJ and the military, under the Insurrection Act, to arrest his critics, prosecutors and judges who have charged tried (or are about to try ) him, eliminating entire media channels (e.g., CNN and MSNBC). Using the regulatory agencies to drive any businesses which are not supportive of him to go out of business and be sold to Trump cronies, he will follow the same model successfully used by Hungary’s autocrat P.M., Viktor Orban.

I’m Peter Dekom, and understand that this sizeable cadre of well-armed religious zealots – where the ends justifies the means – believe that God has directed them to install Donald Trump as America’s leader and that any other result is simply the devil’s work, which must be stopped at all costs.