Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

A revolution or overthrow of the current order is imminent, in the US and across the West. Whether it comes from white collar or far right populists, it will be violent and chaotic. For now, we will be stuck in the seemingly endless Trump show. Unlike the Truman show, there’s no escape.

“It’s hard to imagine what would become of our legal system if Trump became president again.”[i] Donald Ayer

“Even if Trump doesn’t end up the GOP’s nominee, it’s important to put this ban into place in multiple states to lay down a marker against future MAGA-type Republican demagogues who would similarly seek to overturn a fair and free election and thus end democracy in America.”[ii]– Thom Hartmann

With four indictments and upcoming trials, Donald Trump is under siege from the illiberal liberal class and the permanent regime. Many are dismissing and sneering at those who would dare argue that the various indictments against Trump are frivolous or purely political. For example, Mehdi Hasan offers his five points that ‘debunk’ the common defenses of Trump.

Firstly, to argue that anyone not fiercely in favor of these indictments must be a pro-Trump analyst or a Trump supporter is ridiculous. One can loathe Trump and recognize that the means used to go after him will inevitably be aimed at whoever the next threat to the Washington establishment is. Hasan’s final point is interesting, as he attempts to debunk the ‘whataboutism’ case.[iii] This is the argument that Hilary Clinton and her campaign challenged the 2016 election results, and that they engaged in similar behavior to Trump and his 2020 campaign. Hilariously Hasan objects to the notion that Clinton did what Trump did, and he writes, in response to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy positing this, “Did they? McCarthy cited Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, who did certainly complain after losing in 2016.”[iv] If only they just complained and didn’t coordinate a conspiracy to first subvert Trump’s 2016 campaign, and then his presidency once he won the election, as proven in the Durham report published by Special Counsel John Durham as well as the investigative reporting of many independent journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi.

Hasan does acknowledge that Clinton, as well as Al Gore in 2000, “may have objected to the results, and even argued they were cheated out of the White House. But they also conceded.”[v] Yes, Clinton phoned Trump and concede officially, but one symbolic phone call does not erase her numerous statements that Trump is an illegitimate president, and that the election was stolen from her, which she discusses in her silly, pretentious book What Happened. Beyond that, the conspiracy that Trump was a Russian agent, installed into the US presidency by the Kremlin and intended to serve their interests, was started by the Clinton campaign via the preposterous Steele Dossier.

To this day, the illiberal liberal class and the permanent regime have not conceded the 2016 election to Trump. He robbed them of their privileged position. He then proceeded to deface and degrade it. That is Trump’s real crime. Hasan is right that “Trump is being prosecuted for what he did, not for what he said.”, however, what Trump did that evoked the wrath of the permanent regime is not in any of the four indictments, and it won’t be.[vi] The illiberal liberal class are their useful idiots, crafting creative legal theories and grasping at straws to either bar Trump from running for office or to put him behind bars, hindering his 2024 campaign. These legal cases and trials are already set to be a massive drain on his campaign coffers. This itself is election meddling.

The persecution of Trump is election meddling of the highest and most sinister order. Trump is a loathsome and insipid figure, but he is a stand in for a huge portion of the US electorate. The displaced class in places like West Virginia and Kentucky see Trump and the treatment of him as an assault on them and their democratic rights. Thus, this could be an incitement to civil war.

Whatever happens next, the faux radicals and illiberal liberals in Washington are playing an incredibly dangerous game. They are persecuting the same political candidate they spent time and money elevating in 2015-16, who is still extremely popular and according to polls, and is almost certainly going to win the Republican nomination and has a solid chance of defeating incumbent president Joe Biden in a rematch in 2024.

Because of his feral opposition, the Trump show goes on and on. His show The Apprentice may have been cancelled many years ago, but he has been given a new starring role, one that is much more influential and enrapturing. That role is for some, Orange Hitler, and for others, it’s Orange Savior.

Amid all the chaos surrounding Trump and his legal plight, the conservative elite, who are part of the illiberal liberal class, are hopeful that he will be taken out of the 2024 presidential race, allowing them to move on from him.

The rest of the illiberal liberal class is hopeful that Biden can be re-elected through any means necessary, and that the status quo in Washington can be maintained. To them, the interests of the American people are meaningless. The fact that a second Trump term is a possibility is the fault of many. It is the fault of the corporate media who profit from covering him, the Democratic and Republican establishment in Washington who are threatened by Trump’s America First foreign policy doctrine, and the permanent regime who are embarrassed by Trump’s clownish and cartoonish antics. These are but a few of the many actors who seek an end to and an erasure of Trump and his political movement.

People need to stop being outraged at Trump, and need to instead channel their outrage at who is behind the rise and creation of Trump. All the forces that led to his election in 2016 are amplified now. The Trump show was never cancelled, it was paused, and in 2024, there is a chance that it will continue for another season. I understand the next season will make the first look like a children’s tea party, but hopefully it will teach the lessons that the 2016 election should have taught.

7 years on however, that seems unlikely. I vividly remember watching commentators break down in tears on election night then, aghast that such a vile person could be elected president, despite the same media elevating him throughout the campaign. Still, these same commentators deliver the same talking points about Trump and the alleged threat he poses to American democracy. This narrative itself is a conspiracy to defraud the American people.

People have been duped into believing that Trump is their problem. This belief system has driven various illiberal crusades, including the four recent indictments against Trump. With him gone, the US can go back to normalcy.

There are two cults in America, the anti-Trump cult, and the pro-Trump cult. Both are a cult of personality around Trump. They differ in how they see Trump and what they believe he is in America’s grand narrative. In both cults, the Trump show is selectively edited and presented. The anti-Trump cult claims to be enlightened, unlike those ruffians in the pro-Trump cult, and they do not even see themselves as cult members. In both cases, it is about belief and tribalism, not facts or fair-minded analysis. As Robert Anton Wilson said, “Belief is the death of intelligence.”[vii] In affirming their belief systems, the anti-Trump and pro-Trump cults are ensuring that the Trump show continues.

The Anti-Trump Cult’s Latest Act

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”[viii]– US Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three

Many think tanks and advocacy groups are developing and promoting a new way to target Trump and to bar him from running for re-election. They invoke Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that no one who holds any form of office, civilian or military, “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”[ix] The argument, recently articulated by two conservative legal scholars, William Baude, and Michael Stokes Paulsen, and then by illiberal liberals Laurence Tribe and Michael Luttig, is that Trump and his supporters engaged in an insurrection, thus Trump is not eligible to run for office, so he must be taken off the ballot in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.[x]

This argument rests on two faulty premises. Firstly, the events of J6, 2021 (From here on referred to simply as J6), were not an insurrection or even a rebellion. J6 was a PSYOP, an event orchestrated and encouraged by the US government at the behest of the permanent regime to justify the domestic war on terror. In this domestic war on terror the intricate, insidious police state developed and consolidated during the first war on terror under the Bush administration following 9/11 is used to target American citizens. Instead of pursuing militants abroad, those classed as militants within the US are being pursued. A notable example is the hundreds of people being imprisoned for participating in the J6 riot sometimes for years long sentences, whatever the extent of their involvement or their behavior that day. Even if you do not agree that J6 was a PSYOP, it was certainly not an insurrection on the level of the many coups that the US has coordinated in other countries. The people who broke into the Capitol were not insurgents. Many were government informants. The extent of government involvement in J6 is disturbing and that no one who loudly declares J6 the insurrection that rocked American democracy asks critical questions regarding it proves that they are puppets, not journalists.

Secondly, the argument that specifically targets Trump and posits that he is ineligible to run for office is that he incited the alleged insurrection through the speech he delivered on J6 and his attempts to challenge and overturn the 2020 election results from election day until J6. While Trump is, on a purely moral level, partially responsible for pushing a conspiracy, that he won the 2020 election and it was stolen by voter fraud, and then holding a massive protest on J6, directing people to the Capitol. However, in his speech, he did say explicitly that people should walk to the Capitol to make their voices heard “peacefully and patriotically.”[xi] Although his post-election behavior and this speech are abhorrent and contemptible, the crusade by the illiberal liberal class to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot are far more abhorrent and sinister.

Trump is likely to remain on the 2024 ballot, but his feral opposition will not rest until election day to try and ensure his removal from the presidential race. As Areebah Shah notes, writing for Salon, the barring of Couy Griffin, who served as a commissioner in Otero County and was the leader of the pro-Trump group, “Cowboys for Trump.”, is potentially a precedent for banning Trump and any politician or military official who was involved in J6 from office.[xii] This is significant as it is the first time a judge has declared that legally, J6 was an insurrection. Shah writes that “The judge’s historic ruling may well serve as a model for new arguments in favor of disqualifying other elected officials who attempted to overturn the 2020 election from holding office in the future — potentially including Trump himself.”[xiii] Such arguments are being made by prominent figures, like Tribe and Luttig, who made their case on CNN. Dissent from this view was not aired. Instead of making the case for why people should vote for Biden instead of Trump, people like Tribe and Luttig seek a way to erase Trump from politics, and by proxy, prevent voters from voting for him.

That groups who claim to stand for civil rights and democracy are pushing for an opposition candidate to be barred from running for office is nauseating, as these same groups will argue that stopping Trump is essential to fighting for the principles they claim to defend. For example, according to Alexandra Flores-Quilty, who serves as the campaign director for the group Free Speech For People, “Trump is responsible for the January 6th insurrection, plain and simple,” and that “Failing to hold him responsible not only violates the Constitution, but it also sets a dangerous precedent for permitting violent attacks on our democracy. That’s not a risk we can afford to take.”[xiv] As she and her colleagues in the illiberal liberal class violently attack democratic ideals and principles of civil rights, they claim to be working in their defense.

If Trump and those in his political movement do not have civil rights in the view of the American judicial system or other key US institutions, then they are not rights, but privileges. More importantly, they are privileges that are only gifted to those who comply with the permanent regime and the illiberal liberal class.

Conclusion

“The only satisfaction is that the system is working. That all of the efforts by Trump and his allies and enablers to try and silence the truth and undermine democracy have been brought into the light. And justice is being pursued.”[xv]– Hillary Clinton, 2023

“You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,”[xvi]– Hillary Clinton, 2019

The notion that Trump can win the election in 2024 is a joke to many, and it shouldn’t be. I have little to no sympathy for people who scoff at Trump regaining the presidency in 2024 are many of the same people who will act shocked if this occurs. Though not certain, it is a possibility. That it is a potential reality is an indictment of the illiberal liberal class, not Trump’s supporters.

The 2024 US Republican primaries are underway, and the first debate hosted by FOX News on the 23^rd of August was a race for second place, even with Trump not showing up. Instead of participating in the primary debate, Trump did an interview with Tucker Carlson. As anti-democratic as this is, the Democratic party elite is equally, if not more, despotic in its insistence that Biden must be their nominee for 2024. The Democratic primaries will probably never occur. Despite having challengers, Joe Biden will be coddled by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and secured by the party elite as the nominee.

Donald Trump also has challengers, though he is miles ahead of even Ron DeSantis in every recent poll.[xvii] Each indictment of Trump gives him a massive ego boost and a surge in the polls. For now, Trump is not going away anytime soon. Even if Trump is somehow taken down by the Democratic party’s lawfare or from within the Republican party, he will be like Rasputin, who, as it is famously told, was first poisoned with cyanide laced food and wine. After Rasputin did not succumb to the poison, he was shot point blank and left to die. Amazingly, Rasputin rose and tried to flee, where he was caught by his assassins, and they proceeded to tied him up and they threw him into the Neva River. Rasputin’s body was found days later, lungs filled with water, which showed that he died of drowning, not from being poisoned or shot. Felix Yusupov, one of Rasputin’s assassins, wrote a memoir detailing his account of Rasputin’s murder. Yusupov writes of Rasputin’s refusal to die that “This devil who was dying of poison, who had a bullet in his heart, must have been raised from the dead by the powers of evil. There was something appalling and monstrous in his diabolical refusal to die.”[xviii] Trump may not have been poisoned or shot, though many have considered it, but he has been hit with multiple indictments, impeachments, sexual scandals, civil cases, and still, he remains a frontrunner in the polls for the 2024 Republican nomination. Just like Rasputin was thrown into the Neva River, Trump was thrown out of office back to Mara logo, burdened by legal battles and a petty, vicious political opposition, and Trump, like Rasputin, is seemingly unhuman, and he is confounding in his resilience and formidability.

For those in the conservative and liberal elite, the illiberal liberal class, who want to move on from Trump and get back to business as usual, there is a desperate attempt to render Trump ineligible to run at all, let alone win. His legal battles will drain all the resources of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. At the same time, they ensure his nomination by the Republican electorate. No matter what happens in the 2024 election, mayhem will ensue. If Trump wins, we will have four years of clown acts and buffoonery, and the Biden administration will act to subvert both the election and Trump’s presidency with even more ruthlessness than before. If Biden wins, then we will have a renewed effort by Trump and his cronies to declare the election stolen and Biden’s victory illegitimate. No matter who wins, the opposition will claim victory and fraud perpetrated by the other side.

I wrote this essay out of frustration for the state of US and Western politics. Instead of working to understand why people like Trump appeal to voters, the political establishment and the portion of the public that has been successfully duped by them beat dead horses like the looming threat of white supremacy, or of Putin’s Russia, people attach themselves to their political clique, the anti-Trump cult. This cult is as mindless and slavish as those they critique and berate through op-eds and panel talks. The anti-Trump cult seizes on the immense profits that covering Trump as if they are covering a nightmarish despot like Joesph Stalin or Adolf Hitler bring them. The anti-Trump cult dismisses people who vote for Trump, or who would vote for Trump, as deplorables, plebs, idiots, dupes, and mouth breathers, and they are a sinister and malignant force in US and Western politics. Their overarching goal is to, at the behest of the permanent regime, erase Trump and his political movement.

However, removing Trump will not remove the will and hunger for change from his voters. With him gone, a much worse and truly heinous version of him could come along and capture the will of his base. America will then have fulfilled its own undoing. Totalitarianism will become more overt, though still inverted.

Another possibility is the takeover of the US by white collar populists. This group of populists are a part of the displaced class that is highly educated and working in careers that they are technically overqualified for. Where the displaced voters Trump appeals to are not as educated and left behind by outsourcing of labor, these white-collar displaced voters are highly educated and are left behind by a market that is oversaturated with degrees. Having an undergraduate or even a graduate degree nowadays is incredibly common. The people who come out of university now, inculcated with entitlement and the belief that they are ingenious, are typically left working jobs in hospitality or retail. Like other portions of the displaced class, their resentment and rage are channelled into politics.

The so-called progressive movement, represented by politicians like Alexander Ocasio Cortes and Bernie Sanders, are faux radicals and they are more concerned with policing language and fighting culture wars than engaging in war and economic policy. White collar populists are intent on enacting their own vision of tyranny, though they perceive it as an inclusive, tolerant utopia. They practice what Herbert Marcuse called “repressive tolerance”. These populists are much more insidious and dangerous revolutionaries than their far-right counterparts, as their idea of revolution is vengeful and self serving, not interested in the will of the masses.

Many of the most abhorrent political revolutionaries were highly educated and were of high social status. For example, Pol Pot was a raised as a member of the Cambodian elite and he eventually went to school in Paris, France, where he read Marxist writings and conceived his idea of an egalitarian revolution. Pol Pot’s notion of revolution was born not out of necessity or desperation, but luxury and lust for power. While desperation and despair among the populace are necessary fuel for any revolution, it is often political opportunists, not those sincerely devoted to serving the interests of the people, who seize despair to grab power. While a regime like the Khmer Rouge is unlikely to ever come to power in the West, it is not impossible, and it, and other regimes, like the Bolshevik Regime led by Vladimir Lenin, are examples of how white-collar populists, struck by romantic visions of utopian revolution, can be so destructive and inhumane. While working class populists are garish and grotesque, white collar populists are sleek and sophisticated. The result is the same, despotism and unbridled tyranny.

A revolution or overthrow of the current order is imminent, in the US and across the West. Whether it comes from white collar or far right populists, it will be violent and chaotic. For now, we will be stuck in the seemingly endless Trump show. Unlike the Truman show, there’s no escape.

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[i] Stone, Peter. “Trump Critics Warn of ‘Deep Decline of Rule of Law’ If He Wins Second Term.” The Guardian, June 5, 2023, sec. US news. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/05/trump-criticis-doj-rule-of-law-second-term.

[ii] Hartmann, Thom. “Here’s How to Ban Trump — and Other MAGA Cultists — from Holding Public Office.” Salon, August 9, 2023. https://www.salon.com/2023/08/09/and-14th-amendment/.

[iii] Hasan, Mehdi. “Mehdi Hasan: Debunking Trump’s Top 5 Election Fraud Defenses.” MSNBC.com, August 13, 2023. https://www.msnbc.com/the-mehdi-hasan-show/the-mehdi-hasan-show/debunking-trumps-top-5-election-indictment-defense-rcna99655.

[iv] Hasan. “Mehdi Hasan: Debunking Trump’s Top 5 Election Fraud Defenses.”

[v] Hasan. “Mehdi Hasan: Debunking Trump’s Top 5 Election Fraud Defenses.”

[vi] Hasan. “Mehdi Hasan: Debunking Trump’s Top 5 Election Fraud Defenses.”

[vii] Anton Wilson, Robert. Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati. Grand Junction, Colorado: Hilaritas Press, 2016.

[viii] Cornell Law School. “14th Amendment.” Legal Information Institute, May 17, 2018. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv.

[ix] Cornell Law School. “14th Amendment.”

[x] Zeitz, Joshua. “Opinion | Legal Scholars Say the 14th Amendment Bars Trump from Office. Here’s What History Says.” POLITICO, August 25, 2023. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/25/14th-amendment-insurrection-00112777.

[xi] Naylor, Brian. “Read Trump’s Jan. 6 Speech, a Key Part of Impeachment Trial.” NPR, February 10, 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial.

[xii] Shah, Areeba. “A Crucial Precedent? New Mexico Trump Loyalist Barred from Office over Jan. 6 Insurrection.” Salon, September 8, 2022. https://www.salon.com/2022/09/08/a-crucial-precedent-new-mexico-loyalist-ousted-from-office-over-jan-6-insurrection/.

[xiii] Shah. “A Crucial Precedent? New Mexico Trump Loyalist Barred from Office over Jan. 6 Insurrection.”

[xiv] Bernal, Rafael. “Activists Want to Disqualify Trump from Ballot in Key States under 14th Amendment.” The Hill, July 7, 2023. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4086124-activists-want-to-disqualify-trump-from-ballot-in-key-states-under-14th-amendment/.

[xv] Mastrangelo, Dominick. “Hillary Clinton Tells Rachel Maddow: Trump Indictments Mean ‘the System Is Working.’” The Hill, August 15, 2023. https://thehill.com/homenews/4152613-hillary-clinton-tells-rachel-maddow-trump-indictments-mean-the-system-is-working/.

[xvi] Cummings, William. “‘You Can Have the Election Stolen from You,’ Hillary Clinton Warns 2020 Democrats.” USA TODAY, May 6, 2019. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/05/06/hillary-clinton-warns-2020-democratic-candidates-stolen-election/1116477001/.

[xvii] Real Clear Politics. “2024 Republican Presidential Nomination.” https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/2024_republican_presidential_nomination-7548.html#polls, 2023. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/2024_republican_presidential_nomination-7548.html#polls.

[xviii] Felix Felixovich Yusupov. Lost Splendor: The Amazing Memoirs of the Man Who Killed Rasputin. New York: Helen Marx Books, 2003.

Bibliography

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