I’ve been thinking about Trump’s attempt to blackmail the voters. He intimates that he might not accept the election results unless he wins. The word goes around that his followers will go to the streets and carry out acts of violence if Trump does not win. It is a bully tactic by a bully’s bully.
But I have been having thought about this, about how it is actually likely to go down. I mentioned this already. Some of his supporters will go and take over a wildlife reserve somewhere, for a few weeks. A few others will carry out acts of violence here and there, but by count, not much. Mostly, Trump will fade away from the political scene.
And, I was heading towards articulate thoughts perhaps worthy of writing them down when I ran in to Lawrence O’Donnell’s commentary, and he said pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Look especially for the part about the granite walls.
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Trump and conservatives don’t use blackmail to manipulate their base into voting against their own self-interest and for the conservative agendas… They use fear.
(Unless, of course, you’re referring to fear-mongering as a form of blackmail. Maybe more like meta-blackmail?)
When will Trump go to prison so he can write his Mein Kampf?
He’ll need to write it while wearing a straightjacket.
In a rubber room at an institution for the criminally insane.
Maybe he’s lucky high tech can help with that…
Mr. Trump uses the anger he first helped to raise by his exploitation of people. May his victims understand his methods and this process. Laren NH, Dutch time, 2.53 AM.
I’m going to disagree, but only slightly.
The vast majority of Trump’s supporters will go quietly into the dark night of 8 November, after the last vote totals are posted and their loss is clear.
A small number will take to the streets and make noise.
A much smaller number will riot.
And a tiny number will attempt or commit various serious crimes.
There is probably a mathematical function that could describe these numbers, perhaps an inverse exponential curve. But keep in mind the numbers we already know, about people who are in roughly the same part of the ideological spectrum.
A few dozen of them were involved in Cliven Bundy’s Nevada siege, snipers and all, from which the feds decided to make a strategic retreat and wait for the right opportunity to scoop them up.
A couple dozen were involved in Ammon Bundy’s Malheur occupation.
A few commit hate crimes. And there was only one Timothy McVeigh.
All of them, almost without exception, were caught and prosecuted. McVeigh got the death penalty, and hate crime murderers have gotten life sentences. The two batches of Bundy Gang members are presently working their way through the courts, toward modest but sufficient sentences for the little fish who were basically harmless, and toward stiff sentences for the leaders and those who had more active roles such as the Nevada snipers. As convicted felons, they will lose their 2nd Amendment rights, ensuring they will be de-fanged after their release.
The moral of the story here is, even if some small number of hard core Trumpists seek to go rogue and engage in violent or terrorist acts, they will be caught, prosecuted, and convicted. Since 9/11, FBI, ATF, and other agencies, have upped their game substantially, and gotten incredibly good at interdicting terrorist plots and catching the ones they couldn’t interdict.
The guy who planted bombs in New York and New Jersey, lasted less than 48 hours before he was scooped up.
So the message Trumpists should take home is, peaceful protests and more election campaigns are always welcome in this free country of ours, but if they plan or commit violent acts, they _will_ be caught, and they _will_ go to prison.
G, I agree completely. As I note, I expect a handful to be in some wildlife sanctuary somewhere!
We already had a suspicious white powder sent to a Clinton office.
In order to predict what tRump supporters are going to do on November 9th, I suppose that it would be necessary to know what motivates them. And I for one am at a loss on that. I have lots of conjecture, lots of suppositions, lots of hypotheses. But I just don’t know. On the one hand, I consider myself fortunate in that my small circle of friends,acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors and relatives does not contain any vocal trump supporters. But on the other hand, it makes it difficult to form a good working hypothesis about what motivates the tRump mob. Once again I see a group of people whom I , perhaps rather arrogantly, perhaps rather grandiosely, consider low information, irrational, hyper emotional, low culture pea-brains. Or maybe I am dead on in my assessment of them.. I’m supposing that maybe the tRumpsters have spent too much of their lives in front of mind damaging “reality” TV shows instead of actually living in reality.
When I put on my tinfoil hat and visor I see Vladimir Putin beaming a constant stream of misinformation [ not sure how…RT Television? Eastern European spouse transmitters? ] that tRump repeats like a parroting idiot, a useful fool, a willing or unwilling puppet. And all the low info tRumpers have somehow been primed to be perfect receptors for all this crap. And tRump raises his little right hand with his index finger pointing up like some hypnotic savior and the crowd hypnotically responds.
So what happens on November 9th, IMO, will depend on what tRump’s handler Vlad decides to do. Does he want to do some immediate short term destruction in the US? Or does he want to plan longer range, and sow the seeds for the RT=TRump television franchise, from whence he can beam poison into the US 24 x seven x 365?
Before I put my tinfoil helmet back on the shelf, I would like to point out that it is absolutely effing astounding that tRump has been able to assemble and hang on to so many right wing followers despite being on the opposite end of the behavior spectrum that the religious right considers laudable; despite being on the opposite end of the hyper-patriot spectrum that considers Russia an enemy; despite shafting small business owners and off shoring the manufacture of his products; Just absolutely effing astounding.
Incredible. Someone he has successfully appealed to pre-civilized cave man values. Kill the other tribe. Subjugate women. And his supporters still wear crucifixes and flag pins but somehow support an unrepentant, anti-American, un Christ like sinner and thug who doesn’t resonate with any but their most primal values. Weird.
November 9th would result in an automatic loss of testosterone for tRump if he were only invested in the election results, so it is clear to me that he will have some way to save male Simian face. Maybe he will announce RT=TRump TV. Maybe he will simply never concede, and just try to tie the election results up in court as long as possible.
What secret Ovaltine message will he send to his legions of pithed followers on November 9th ? I sure don’t know.
Stay tuned.
I think the Trump movement is based more of figurative than literal bomb throwers. They fundamentally distrust government and it’s good enough to leave it paralyzed into inaction. I expect we’ll see “the election was rigged” in much the same way that we’ve seen “Obama wasn’t born in the US and/or is a Muslim” as a rationalization for believing the likes of Ted Cruz and James Inhofe are acting the best interest of the country.
I really, really hope you are right about this Greg Laden.
To state the obvious, things have gotten exceptionally ugly in this election & the global mood and the blatant racism & bigotries that it’s unleashed. The Trump effect, the “permission” Trump’s rise to(o) close to power has given the worst views and people to express the worst of what they think and seek to do is disturbing to say the least.
I don’t know that it will end as well as you suggest but I sure hope so. Wish i had your confidence here.
I hope Trump’s defeat and rejection as repellent by a vast overwhelming majority of good people might mark a turning point away from the sort of vileness and
alt-rightneo-nazi ideology towards its opposite and that maybe following a big enough landslide a cultural shift and anti-Trump opposite effect may occur. Do you think there’s a good chance of that?When I look at the motivation of tRump and his supporters, I don’t see how we can expect there to not to be some serious backlash from his loss. How severe will it be? How much damage does Putin want to inflict on the US? The Grope O Party had better get somebody to stuff a sock in donny’s little pie hole if he doesn’t make a nice, gentlemanly concession speech.
While looking for evidence of what motivates tRump followers, I found this. David French, a conservative writer, in a new article, claims that he and his family have been severely harassed by the Alt Right for not being loyal to the Trump cause. This harassment has extended to having a private phone conversation hacked and disrupted by an Alt Right tormentor. That is a chilling level of technical ability for a group that we want to think of as just a bunch of ignorant hill billies expressing a few aberrant Neanderthal genes. The implications of this incident are beyond chilling.
The parallels between tRump and Germany in the 1930’s are far too close for us to be complacent. An insular homogeneous group, feeling abused and threatened by outsiders, whipped into a frenzy by a skilled manipulator and a despot…. that is not a good situation for our country to be faced with, but that is where we are today.
Donald tRump is a sociopath, a megalomaniac who wants to have the codes for the Armageddon football , and he has made it very clear that he would like to use it. What, at this point, would prevent him from trying to provoke massive civil unrest in a bid to gain power? Human decency? Morality? Restraint? Discipline? Love of country? Please. Perhaps fear of losing would keep this narcissistic monster from trying to start a civil war, but at this point, he may not even be able to stop the fuse that he has lit among his weak minded supporters. How bad will it get? Pick a multi-verse.I don’t know.
Worse: Trump is a narcissist; you cannot successfully advise a narcissist, as they think they know best.
As POTUS and Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces and nuclear arsenal, there would be no one who could override his launch order. And he is not inclined to listen to any advice — look at the frustrations of his campaign advisers…
If he loses, there will be a little random violence by individual thumb-sucking whiners. If he wins, there will be a Kristallnacht, because his deplorables will feel empowered.
The Nazi Party: Spiffed up with an orange glow and ready for the U.S. of A.!!!
Didn’t the Brown Shirts firebomb some of their own offices back when? One wonders!
That wouldn’t surprise me at all. No arrests equals no evidence that it wasn’t a Reichstag Fire.