“If only all of Rome had just one neck.”[i]– Caligula, Caligula
“He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.”[ii]– F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
In his platitudinous and forgettable inaugural address, Joe Biden declared that ‘democracy had prevailed’, and that to overcome the many challenges that he faced immediately as he took office, “It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity. Unity.”.[iii] Since taking office, Biden has repeatedly given divisive speeches and continues to slander his opposition as akin to Jim Crow racists and domestic terrorists. He said recently that the GOP is the most extremist organization in American history.[iv] This is absurd and deranged. So, the GOP is more extreme than the Ku Klux Klan? David Duke’s movement? Biden promised unity and profound change. He instead furthers division and the status quo. His plummeting approval ratings show not just the disappointment of those on the right who would inevitably be hyper-critical from the outset of Biden’s presidency, but the disappointment of young voters, left leaning voters who hoped for the changes Barack Obama failed to enact, and those who voted against Trump in hopes that Biden would bring back a sense of normalcy. This was false hope from the start. Biden’s rhetoric is more irresponsible than Trump’s ever was, as bombast and asinine statements and tweets were expected from Trump, not from Biden and his A-team of dignified experts. Michael Steele, formerly of the RNC and Republican endorser of Biden’s presidency in 2020, said on a panel that the GOP has been “overtaken by extremists”, referring to both Republican voters and politicians.[v] This extreme rhetoric from the Biden administration and their media lackeys is being ramped up before the midterms, where the Democratic party is bracing for a wave of revolt. This is the rhetoric of the new war, the war on Trump.
The war on Trump is a total war against him, his supporters, and anyone who does not have the correct opinion of him, that he is a monstrous threat to democracy. The dehumanization of half of America is dangerous and reveals the insidiousness and cynicism in Washington, no matter the party. Biden proclaimed in his inaugural address, “Democracy is fragile”.[vi] It is not fragile, it is illusory. Trump is not a threat to it. Trump is the enemy not of the Democratic party or even the Republican party, but of the Washington establishment. The idea that millions of Americans voted for him is a threat to the flailing vestiges of a political class, a geriatric, apathetic, and soulless coterie of elites embodied by Biden. The way debate has been controlled and stifled on the spending on the war in Ukraine captures this perfectly. Rand Paul, Senator of Kentucky, broke with Mitch McConnell and asked that oversight go into the spending, and he is roundly mocked as a ‘Putin puppet’ and other nonsensical epithets.[vii] It should bother people that on some topics, there is no debate, there is only the narrative conveyed by Washington.
The war on Trump justifies the mobilization of the security state against Trump supporters, Trump, and his acolytes, on right leaning media, and even left-wing commentators who criticize the Democratic party, notably Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, and journalists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald are deemed “right wing” for questioning the CIA and FBI, a task that was once taken up by many journalists during the Bush years. A bill is being held up in the Senate by Republicans that would bolster the already bloated security apparatus in Washington, with special attention paid to monitoring right-wing terrorists and white supremacists.[viii] Those in Congress who passed this and those in the media who decry its being held up know the real targets, Trump supporters. They may be the targets now, but new targets will be conjured up.
Journalists have gone from questioning the government to parroting its lies. Figures like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann were wrecked by Trump. Olbermann waged his own war on Trump, dedicating hours to crazed rants about Trump’s antics and tweets. Maddow for years spread fear about Russia’s ‘Manchurian candidate’ Trump, and how Vladimir Putin was controlling every aspect of Trump’s foreign policy, even proclaiming one night, in tears, that American gas was going to be cut off any moment. These insipid ‘journalists’ put their performative activism above any journalistic ethic. Hate for Trump is more important than resistance against corporate power structures that have taken over America. When Trump said to his supporters that they were trying to get to them, and that he was in the way. He was right. It is not disdain for Trump; it is disdain for people Clinton dismissed as the ‘deplorables’. The idiots who voted for Trump are the true targets, proven by the overly long sentences doled out too many people who simply walked around the capitol building, the use of FBI informants in right wing groups, like in the Gretchen Whitmer plot, and the censoring of dissenting views about the 2020 election. Tweets and posts questioning the results of the 2016 election are still up and Clinton herself still claims her victory was stolen from her by Russia. An interview that Trump did with famous Youtubers the Nelk Boys was taken down because Trump spoke about voter fraud for a few minutes out of an almost hour-long interview.[ix]
This week the January 6th Committee is beginning their hearings in prime time. A writer has been hired to put together a multi-media narrative.[x] It is obvious why such an extravagant show is being prepared for a prosecution whose main goal is to lock up Trump, they have nothing else. The purpose of this circus act is to jail Trump, and this will not happen. The charge being brought forth is that Trump defrauded the American people through his and his acolytes’ systematic effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.[xi] The committee can present whatever they want, footage of the Capitol riot has been promised, maybe a dramatic score from John Williams will accompany it, this will only boost Trump. All the resources being wasted on this farce could be better spent on issues like the Opioid Crisis or the flooding at the Southern Border. If Trump defrauded the American people, then Hilary Clinton and her botched 2016 campaign should be charged with the same. Just like Trump, they called for electors to vote for Clinton instead of Trump.[xii] Hypocrisy reigns in Washington, no matter who is in power.
The war on Trump distracts from the real conflict, it is a theatrical war that fuels hate between two groups of people who have more in common then they are allowed to know. Biden’s vile rhetoric enforces division and keeps Trump alive in people’s minds. The fear built up around him is designed to push you to the polls to vote for the Democratic party. Rather than give you something to vote for, the Biden administration is giving you something to vote against. Frank Furedi captures the desperation and anxiety of elites and the media around Trump and his movement when he writes that “Indeed, in the 21st-century, this anxiety has become pathological – it has become demosphobia.”[xiii] People, if they cannot vote correctly, must be punished, and the label domestic terrorist is one such punishment. Trump supporters are dehumanized daily still. This keeps the country divided and inadvertently keeps Trump popular. The people who oppose democracy are the elites in Washington, not Trump’s voters. As Furedi notes, “This is how we should understand the elites’ civil-war narrative-cum-fantasy – as a sublimated expression of their ongoing culture war against democracy.”[xiv] Biden, at his pompous Democracy Summit, said that democracy can be challenged “By voices that seek to fan the flames of societal division and political polarization.”[xv] Where he thinks he is talking about Trump and his supporters, he is talking about himself. The demos are dissatisfied across the spectrum and the world. In a Pew Research Poll, 58% of Americans responded to whether elected officials care what ordinary people think with ‘not well’.[xvi] This is a growing trend across the world as well, and the common cry is that democracy is receding, however, the reality is that democracy died a long time ago, and we are participating in elaborate theater. The war on Trump is the Washington establishment’s latest act.
The war on Trump will boost him and his movement back into the White House. Instead of 6 months of pointless research, ultimately coming up with campaign promotion for Trump 2024, Anita Dunn might as well have hired people to lift Trump, or the Great Maga King as Biden referred to him, back into the White House on a red carpet, completing the ceremony with a crowning by Nancy Pelosi and a performance by the court jesters in the Senate and Congress.[xvii]
The war on Trump is the latest attack being carried out by a flailing and desperate establishment. Corporate media cheers the security state being bolstered to take on Trump and his supporters. A scene that shows the inanity and cynicism rife in Washington was former Vice President Dick Cheney being applauded on the floor of Congress.[xviii] What earned him this praise is hate for Trump, the correct opinion. It doesn’t matter that Cheney was once reviled as one of the architects of the lies that led to America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, the greatest mistake the US made in recent memory. Cheney has the right view of Trump, the number one threat to all of humanity. This goes for anyone who opposes Trump. Being sufficiently anti-Trump earns you endless praise and celebration. Neoconservative maniacs like Max Boot and David Frum now enjoy spots on liberal media networks and magazines. People who yesterday were rabidly opposed have been allowed back into polite society so long as they share extreme animus for Trump.
The Biden administration realizes that it is losing narrative control. Gone are the days when they and their media lapdogs were taken seriously about threats to democracy coming exclusively from one man, Trump, as they push censorship of dissent, favor equity over equality, and wage a war on their opposition, who have been labelled domestic terrorists. This is the logical endpoint of years of dehumanizing and alienating Trump supporters. Once dehumanized, any action is justified to rid the nation of these terrorists. If your only opposition is a terrorist organization, then the ends, the Democratic party remaining in power, justify the means, weaponizing security and media apparatuses to target one political side. This will not cease when Trump and his movement are extinguished, new targets are found, or if they cannot be, are created, and are erased. As the Jacobins showed in their ceaseless purge and eventual cannibalization, those within the circle are eventually targeted. The nature of totalitarian movements is that they are constantly in action, always combing through and purging the slightest dissent. In the end, we are one and the same, shuffling along in unison. Biden and his coterie of oligarchic, authoritarian dullards represent a zombified, apathetic state, clunking along and fumbling about for any means to squelch dissenters. The lengths the FBI, CIA, and Washington insiders went to sabotage Trump and his movement should serve as a lesson to anyone who hopes to wrest power from these soulless elites, left or right. Broad disdain for Trump aided Washington in its sabotaging of him. When the same apparatus begins to target left wing causes and movements, which it will, the precedent will have long been set and the security structure long consolidated. The next domestic terrorists could be anyone. By then it will be too late.
The war on Trump is a means for the Washington establishment to, in its throes of desperation following Trump’s presidency and the Capitol riot on January 6th, to mobilize its power against half of the US, rather than the people mobilize against the corporate state. The Washington narrative is asserted through coercion and total domination. As Hannah Arendt writes on the nature of totalitarian movements, “The struggle for total domination of the total population of the earth, the elimination of every competing nontotalitarian reality, is inherent in the totalitarian regimes themselves; if they do not pursue global rule as their ultimate goal, they are only too likely to lose whatever power they have already seized.”[xix] Stopping the Trump movement is just the beginning. Trump’s competing reality, a fiction itself, characterized by lazy and pathological lies, is a convenient tool for the ruling class, as it is easy to deem illegitimate. Once the Washington narrative totally supplants and dominates the narrative pushed by Trump and his loyalists, other alternative narratives will be, and already are, targeted and silenced. As Arendt notes, the “trouble with totalitarian regimes is not that they play power politics in an especially ruthless way, but that behind their politics is hidden an entirely new and unprecedented concept of power”.[xx] A totalizing view of power and reality is being foisted on not just Americans, but on the world. Biden and his ilk are ruthless in their calls for censorship and persecution of truth. The prime example of this ruthlessness is the persecution of Julian Assange, who exposed lies about US wars, like Afghanistan, and about the deep corruption and depravity of the Clinton dynasty.
Myth making in Washington is ongoing and any who pierce it with truth are to be erased, literally. As Sheldon Wolin notes, as myth takes over government “the result is a disconnect between the actors and reality.”, and they are an exceptional state and the enemy a foe of darkness, and outside this storied conflict “A grim but joyous few see portents of a world that is living out “the last days.”[xxi] Trump did not distort reality or the facts-based order, he disrupted a fiction constructed by the Washington establishment that revels in the rewards reaped by endless wars. The new forces of darkness are Trump and his supporters. For the ruling class to legitimize their reign they must be dehumanized and wiped from the country, as the existence of millions of people tossed aside like refuse by their policies like NAFTA and TPP, that they laud among each other, are a threat to their rule. Out of demosphobia the war on Trump is waged with great support from the liberal media and Democratic voters. People suffering need help, and those who consider themselves the most compassionate and enlightened among us have only disgust and hatred to give them.
The attempts to get rid of Trump and block him from retaking the presidency are back firing. The label Ultra-Maga is the latest proof of this, as is the collapse of the disinformation board. A noteworthy example of Trump and his loyalists in government appealing to people is their response to the passing the Ukraine defense bill. Trump said it was a mistake and that such sums should first be used on domestic problems.[xxii] Ceding the anti-war platform to Trump and his luminaries in Congress and the Senate will assist him in 2024. The media avoids all talk of Biden’s failing faculties. Propping up a near corpse is deceitful and after repeated talk of Trump being unfit for office during his entire presidency, people see this and feel resentment, and they are justified in this feeling. Trump, for all his railing against the stolen election, which continues in the recent primaries in Georgia, where he claims that voter fraud decided the outcome that saw David Perdue, who he endorsed over Brian Kemp, will present himself as an alternative to whoever runs as the Democratic nominee.[xxiii] It does not matter who it is, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, or Gavin Newsom, the candidate will be seen as a new face on a faltering system, nothing more than a shiny decal on a rusty car. People are desperate and killing themselves, and most are still blissfully unaware of this, and they wonder why Trump is still popular. A day of reckoning is coming. That day is election day 2024.
[i] Brass, Tinto. Caligula. Erotic Historical Drama. Analysis Film Releasing Corporation, 1979.
[ii] Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender Is the Night. Collins Classics. London: HarperPress, 2011.
[iii] The White House. “Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.,” January 20, 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/01/20/inaugural-address-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr/.
[iv] Forgey, Quint. “Biden: MAGA Is the ‘Most Extreme Political Organization’ in Recent U.S. History.” POLITICO. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/04/biden-maga-extreme-political-organization-00029969.
[v] MSNBC. Extremists Have Taken Over the Republican Party, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulCnngiy5-M.
[vi] The White House. “Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.,”
[vii] CBS. “Rand Paul Stalls Senate Passage of $40 Billion in Ukraine Aid,” May 13, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rand-paul-ukraine-aid-senate-unanimous-consent/.
[viii] Levine, Marianne, and Andrew Desiderio. “Senate GOP Blocks Domestic Terrorism Bill as Gun Debate Heats Up.” POLITICO, May 26, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/26/senate-gop-domestic-terrorism-bill-00035240, and Schneider, Bradley Scott. “H.R.350 – 117th Congress (2021-2022): Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022.” Legislation, May 26, 2022. 2021/2022.
[ix] Patteson, Callie. “Trump Rages against YouTube after Video of Podcast Appearance Yanked.” New York Post. New York Post, March 11, 2022. https://nypost.com/2022/03/11/trump-rages-against-youtube-after-video-pulled-of-nelk-boys-podcast/.
[x] CNN, Annie Grayer, Ryan Nobles, Gloria Borger, Paula Reid and Jamie Gangel. “Jan. 6 Committee Plans to Use Key Video Evidence and Hire a Writer to Build a Compelling Narrative for the Public.” CNN. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/18/politics/january-6-committee-writer-multi-media-presentation-compelling-narrative/index.html.
[xi] Broadwater, Luke, and Alan Feuer. 2022. “Jan. 6 Committee Lays out Potential Criminal Charges against Trump.” The New York Times, March 3, 2022, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/politics/trump-criminal-charges-jan-6.html.
[xii] C. Timm, Jane. “Drama-Filled Electoral College Vote a Fitting Ending to 2016 Election.” NBC News, December 19, 2016. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/drama-filled-electoral-college-vote-fitting-ending-2016-election-n697521.
[xiii] Furedi, Frank. “The Hysterical Fantasy of an Impending Civil War.” Magazine. Spiked Online, January 12, 2022. https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/12/the-hysterical-fantasy-of-an-impending-civil-war/.
[xiv] Furedi, “The Hysterical Fantasy of an Impending Civil War.”
[xv] The White House. “Remarks By President Biden at The Summit For Democracy Opening Session,” December 9, 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/12/09/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-summit-for-democracy-opening-session/.
[xvi] Wike, Richard, Laura Silver, and Alexandra Castillo. “Many Across the Globe Are Dissatisfied With How Democracy Is Working.” Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project (blog), April 29, 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/29/many-across-the-globe-are-dissatisfied-with-how-democracy-is-working/.
[xvii] Ward, Myah. “‘The Great MAGA King’: Biden Sharpens Midterm Attacks.” POLITICO. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/11/great-maga-king-president-joe-biden-midterm-00031981.
[xviii] News, A. B. C. n.d. “Dick Cheney Comes to Capitol on Jan. 6, Says He’s ‘Deeply Disappointed’ in GOP Leadership.” ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dick-cheney-capitol-jan-deeply-disappointed-gop-leadership/story?id=82112349.
[xix] Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966. Pg. 392
[xx] Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Pg. 417
[xxi] Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: University Press, 2010. Pg. 14
[xxii] Mascaro, Lisa. “With Echoes of Trump, GOP Splinters over $40B for Ukraine.” AP NEWS, May 16, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-biden-congress-nato-831234781045c74a855945d2847f4849.
[xxiii] Bredemeier, Ken. “Trump’s Election Fraud Claims Face a Test in Georgia.” VOA. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-s-election-fraud-claims-face-a-test-in-georgia-/6586084.html.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966.
Brass, Tinto. Caligula. Erotic Historical Drama. Analysis Film Releasing Corporation, 1979.
Bredemeier, Ken. “Trump’s Election Fraud Claims Face a Test in Georgia.” VOA. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-s-election-fraud-claims-face-a-test-in-georgia-/6586084.html.
Broadwater, Luke, and Alan Feuer. 2022. “Jan. 6 Committee Lays out Potential Criminal Charges against Trump.” The New York Times, March 3, 2022, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/politics/trump-criminal-charges-jan-6.html.
C. Timm, Jane. “Drama-Filled Electoral College Vote a Fitting Ending to 2016 Election.” NBC News, December 19, 2016. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/drama-filled-electoral-college-vote-fitting-ending-2016-election-n697521.
CBS. “Rand Paul Stalls Senate Passage of $40 Billion in Ukraine Aid,” May 13, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rand-paul-ukraine-aid-senate-unanimous-consent/.
CNN, Annie Grayer, Ryan Nobles, Gloria Borger, Paula Reid and Jamie Gangel. “Jan. 6 Committee Plans to Use Key Video Evidence and Hire a Writer to Build a Compelling Narrative for the Public.” CNN. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/18/politics/january-6-committee-writer-multi-media-presentation-compelling-narrative/index.html.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender Is the Night. Collins Classics. London: Harper Press, 2011.
Forgey, Quint. “Biden: MAGA Is the ‘Most Extreme Political Organization’ in Recent U.S. History.” POLITICO. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/04/biden-maga-extreme-political-organization-00029969.
Furedi, Frank. “The Hysterical Fantasy of an Impending Civil War.” Magazine. Spiked Online, January 12, 2022. https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/12/the-hysterical-fantasy-of-an-impending-civil-war/.
Levine, Marianne, and Andrew Desiderio. “Senate GOP Blocks Domestic Terrorism Bill as Gun Debate Heats Up.” POLITICO, May 26, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/26/senate-gop-domestic-terrorism-bill-00035240
Mascaro, Lisa. “With Echoes of Trump, GOP Splinters over $40B for Ukraine.” AP NEWS, May 16, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-biden-congress-nato-831234781045c74a855945d2847f4849.
MSNBC. Extremists Have Taken Over the Republican Party, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulCnngiy5-M.
News, A. B. C. n.d. “Dick Cheney Comes to Capitol on Jan. 6, Says He’s ‘Deeply Disappointed’ in GOP Leadership.” ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dick-cheney-capitol-jan-deeply-disappointed-gop-leadership/story?id=82112349.
Patteson, Callie. “Trump Rages against YouTube after Video of Podcast Appearance Yanked.” New York Post. New York Post, March 11, 2022. https://nypost.com/2022/03/11/trump-rages-against-youtube-after-video-pulled-of-nelk-boys-podcast/.
Schneider, Bradley Scott. “H.R.350 – 117th Congress (2021-2022): Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022.” Legislation, May 26, 2022. 2021/2022. http://www.congress.gov/.
The White House. “Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.,” January 20, 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/01/20/inaugural-address-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr/.
The White House. “Remarks By President Biden at The Summit for Democracy Opening Session,” December 9, 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/12/09/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-summit-for-democracy-opening-session/.
Ward, Myah. “‘The Great MAGA King’: Biden Sharpens Midterm Attacks.” POLITICO. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/11/great-maga-king-president-joe-biden-midterm-00031981.
Wike, Richard, Laura Silver, and Alexandra Castillo. “Many Across the Globe Are Dissatisfied With How Democracy Is Working.” Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project (blog), April 29, 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/29/many-across-the-globe-are-dissatisfied-with-how-democracy-is-working/.
Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes 
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