Of course few of us do. But few of us have the option of doing something about it–and facing NO legal consequences.
But that’s exactly what the Supreme Court has given Donald.
Here’s the thing: Donald’s most-admired men on the whole planet do NOT permit criticism. Or dissent. Or suggestions for changing their dictatorships.
Tomorrow, Donald will be in the position of never again having to face voters. It’s true that he’d prefer that everyone love him, but even he has been able to figure out that this can’t happen. What CAN happen is that he can stop any and all dissent concerning his government and himself from appearing on the internet and on television and radio, too.
So why wouldn’t he?
His most-admired men don’t put up with dissent:
*Citation 1
**Citation 2
*** Citation 3
So why wouldn’t Trump institute these measures here?
Of course his task would go down more smoothly with many Americans if it were justified, or “justified,” by a Big Terrorist Event that would make it Necessary to take Stern Measures to Protect Us All. But that simply can’t happen here…right?
Well, it may seem unthinkable. But:
This, of course, is from Timothy Snyder’s classic On Tyranny.
Trump doesn’t like dissent. In a few hours he will have a military, some of whom are likely already prepared to follow orders about dealing with protesters. Those numbers will almost surely increase under the “leadership” of Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense. We already know that the tech CEOs will fall in line with any directions given by the Trumpites (who after all have the power to wreck both the CEO’s businesses and their personal lives).
Anyone betting that a month from now we will be able to post our true opinions of Trump, here or anywhere else, is …quite the optimist.
postscript: I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot of “the laws will constrain him” and “Congress will constrain him” and “the Supreme Court will constrain him” floated about. I’d love to see some evidential support for those arguments, but that’s another thing I’m not optimistic about.
It would show an unprecedented willingness to put effort into something for Trump to accomplish this big a change in a month. Plus an undemonstrated ability to accomplish something.
Trump would probably like it if it was illegal to criticize him. But I’ll speculate he’ll try to accomplish this by his usual practice of loudly complaining until somebody else does it for him. And I feel the rest of the Republican party will have more immediate priorities.
I wasn’t postulating that Donald would do anything other than barking the order. He’d have no idea what is involved in the control China and Russia (and other dictatorships) have over their Internets—none whatsoever.
That wouldn’t prevent it from happening, though.
Heck, Elon Musk might get behind any shutdown of the Internet: he and Donald could announce that the only form of Internet allowed to continue during the Crisis (created by whatever Big Event gets engineered)* would be Starlink.
Think of the sales!
*Engineered, again, by someone other than Donald Trump. You can take as given that I am never, ever theorizing that Donald Trump accomplishes something that requires his personal knowledge or expertise or willingness to do something other than golf or throw ketchup at walls.
We’re about to find out whether the Bill of Rights is any damn good when it’s needed most. I’m not particularly optimistic because the system of checks and balances hasn’t worked worth a shit, because the supposed last-resort protection of the Electoral College has failed to do what it was intended to do, and most of all because the Supreme Court has ruled that, in effect, a sitting president can legally violate the Constitution with complete impunity.
He doesn’t need to do any of this. Trump has power over the biggest newspapers in the US. Trump has power over all of the national television news channels. Trump has power over all of the national radio stations. Trump has power over all major social media platforms (outside of Reddit, which he will control soon).
Indeed. I’m waiting to see how loudly he complains when “Saturday Night Live” skewers him, as it undoubtedly will. It does it for every president, after all. Then he’ll call upon his Secretary of Communications to yank NBC’s broadcast license, and that person will have the unfortunate duty to inform Trump, “Sir, that’s not as easy as you think.”
I’m finding myself missing Mad Magazine. They’d have a field day with Trump, and we’d find out if he can really shut down print media.
I would guess that the direction you suggest (intimidation etc.) will be what he tries first.
But even aside from “two bit forums” (!) there is still a lot of stuff on the Internet, and leaking through in television and radio, that Trump will come to feel is not responsive to his needs. You can threaten the head of Comcast with regulatory shenanigans and IRS audits, but that’s really not enough to completely scrub all media of copies of that photo of Trump playing tennis with his rear hanging out.
If it were enough then Russia and China wouldn’t have to use all those nine methods of control mentioned in the Freedom House and other citations.
I don’t think an Event will happen right away. A good bet would be the State of the Union address, which usually takes place near the end of February. That would give the Trumpites time to get their ducks in a row (to be gunned down).
The Electoral College was never intended to prevent the election of a populist or demagogue, and indeed it was quite intentionally designed to preserve the electoral power of minority population states, which at the time of ratification favored the slave-owning states.
Trump cannot literally prohibit people from saying critical or unkind things about him, but he can intimidate politicians and public figures, ban journalists from access to the White House or other government briefings, threaten to revoke broadcast licenses, and SLAPP sue people on the basis of defamation of character, and encourage his supporters and followers to do the same.
Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, referenced by the o.p., is an excellent and easily digestible read (as is Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works), and Snyder produced a serious of videos a few years ago summarizing each of the lessons which is well worth the few minutes a day for a month it will take you to view them:
Trump had four years to eliminate criticism. Didn’t happen.
A month from now, a year, several years…there’ll still be plenty of bitching about Trump and his worshipful dingdongs. Certain types of unpleasantness in the form of lawsuits and investigations targeting high-profile critics may be forthcoming. But powerless anonymities on the Internet shouldn’t be expecting jackbooted Homeland Security officers pounding on their door in the dead of night.
Incidentally, the idea of “false flag” events designed to lead to crackdowns on dissenters has been a favorite trope of the loony far right. We can do without the left-leaning opposition falling for similar conspiracy theories.
Your last statement is correct, but the first one is not. AIUI, the Founders – who generally wished to restrict voting rights to tax-paying landowners – had a deep distrust of the uneducated uninformed masses. The EC was the compromise that introduced an intermediary body for precisely the purpose, in part, of overturning asinine decisions by said uninformed masses.
Quick summary:
The Founding Fathers established [the Electoral College] in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. What is the Electoral College? | National Archives
More details, with bolding mine:
One group of delegates felt strongly that Congress shouldn’t have anything to do with picking the president. Too much opportunity for chummy corruption between the executive and legislative branches.
Another camp was dead set against letting the people elect the president by a straight popular vote. First, they thought 18th-century voters lacked the resources to be fully informed about the candidates, especially in rural outposts. Second, they feared a headstrong “democratic mob” steering the country astray. And third, a populist president appealing directly to the people could command dangerous amounts of power.
Out of those drawn-out debates came a compromise based on the idea of electoral intermediaries. These intermediaries wouldn’t be picked by Congress or elected by the people. Instead, the states would each appoint independent “electors” who would cast the actual ballots for the presidency. Why Was the Electoral College Created? | HISTORY
Please note that the parts I bolded above are precisely what happened in the last election (just substitute “21st century” for “18th century”), and the Electoral College did precisely fuck-all about it.
I’m not worried about members of the military trampling all over the Constitution. Members of the armed services swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution above all else and spend a life time protecting that oath with their lives.
The real threat comes from lifelong civilians like Trump and Elon Musk who have never sacrificed a damn thing for the good of this country and do everything in their power to avoid paying one bloody cent more than they are absolutely forced.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Trump is rather like the Godfather, who never ordered anything illegal. He just mused aloud about things. If somebody decided to act on the Godfather’s musings, well, the Godfather can’t be responsible.
Your “everything is exactly the same as it was eight years ago and the Supreme Court which he appointed three justices to will find their principles and put the brakes on Trump’s excesses” schtick has worn very thin. This is a very different Supreme Court makeup which has demonstrated its conciliatory attitude toward Donald Trump, and a far more. MAGA-friendly GOP dominated Congress he is coming into as compared to 2017.
It was also intended to maintain a status quo in terms of a balance of power between states, and especially with respect to slavery, which was already a contentious issue in 1789 that threatened the ability of the Second Continental Congress to come to agreement on drafts of what became the Constitution of the United States, hence the Three-Fifths Compromise, awarding ‘votes’ to slaveholding states that contributed to both their apportioning of representatives and Electoral College votes…
That is certainly true of most senior officers who have lived most of their career under ‘normal’ leadership which held the oath to “preserve , protect and defend the Constitution” and aren’t addicted to social media and its reason-eroding effects, although Trump has openly vowed to remove officers in senior leadership who do not pledge fealty to him or refuse to carry out his orders. I am not sanguine about as many junior officers for whom Trump’s rhetoric has been normalized and concurrence with orders, however suspect, is the route to increasingly limited billets for promotion. There is a massive problem with racism, White Nationalist sentiments, et cetera among enlisted ranks.
