Let me be clear on this point; I am not defending Donald Trump. He is both evil and stupid. He is a terrible human being and he is the worst President this country has ever had. He, along with the Republican party, are trying to destroy democracy. He has committed numerous serious crimes and should be in prison.
But…
Let’s not oversell the case. Trump is not planning on committing genocide. Trump is not planning on restoring slavery. Trump is not planning on starting a nuclear war. (Although he might do that last one by mistake.)
Why do I think this needs to be said? Because I feel that these false accusations (which have been made on this board) are helping Trump by making the crimes he is committing seem less serious.
Trump can legitimately deny he’s committing genocide as he illegally arrests people. Trump can legitimately deny he is restoring slavery as he guts civil rights. Trump can legitimately deny he is planning on launching nuclear weapons as he ruins America’s standing in the word. Making these wild and untrue accusations against Trump gives him cover for the things he’s actually doing.
The truth is on our side. We don’t need to fight Trump and the Republicans with lies. (And besides, the Republicans are much better at telling lies so they’d have an advantage in that fight.)
The problem is that so far a lot of the “ludicrous” things people said Trump was going to do actually happened. He’s expressed admiration for dictators of all stripes, so I don’t think it’s a stretch that he has these aspirations.
I was skeptical about what Republicans were thinking and doing but my eyes have been opened pretty damned wide. Women are being prosecuted for their miscarriages and our VP is sympathetic to the idea that women shouldn’t vote, and has openly stated that abused women should just put up with violence, all while working to end protections for women in violent situations.
And Republicans support them. And the Supreme Court is not even trying to make serious legal arguments at this point, they are just giving Trump whatever he wants. He’s just going to want more and more.
I didn’t want to believe it but this country is full of nasty violent viscous supremacists who think empathy is for pussies. People suffering right now is their wet dream and Trump will give them more and more suffering if they demand it.
That said, the only way I’m keeping sane is trying not to make predictions. Things are bad enough right now, we need to deal with right now and take things as they come.
So just to be clear, are you guys saying the things I posted about - genocide, slavery, and nuclear war - are things that the Trump administration actually is planning on doing? And I mean these literal things not some some metaphorical versions of them.
Arguably, mass incarcerating and deporting Latinos is genocide. They just passed a big bill to massively increase the federal capacity to imprison more brown people. I don’t think they will be systemically murdered in gas chambers or anything, because deportation does the trick. But a lot of these people are effectively being condemned to death when denied asylum.
Slavery - Probably not, but definitely Jim Crow. I think you will find the Supreme Court amenable to striking down racially mixed marriages. Clarence Thomas indicated so when he struck down Roe v Wade. I think you’re going to see a ton of basic civil rights protections becoming matters for the state to decide, which means government-driven institutionalized racism is back, baby.
Nuclear war - Planning? Probably not. But if it happens because of a whim doesn’t make it much better.
No, Trump himself may not be interested in reinstituting slavery, or committing genocide, or starting an apocalyptic global war. But he sure has people who work for him or support him setting policies that look an awful lot like the staging for these things. People like Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Mike Huckabee, Ric Grenell, Russell Vought, et cetera. People who are avowed racists, promoters of White Christian Nationalism, apocalypters who want a doomsday war in Israel to bring on “The Rapture”. People to advise Trump and are always looking for a way to insert their own odious agendas underneath his flagrant corruption and need for vengeance against all he perceives to have wronged him.
Weren’t you one of the nitwits claiming than the January 6 insurrection wasn’t really an attempted coup and later that Trump would never be re-elected? I’ll take your opinion for the wooden nickel that it’s worth, thank you.
We should be fighting the battles that are actually happening.
The Republicans are illegally arresting and deporting Latinos. So we should be fighting the illegal arrests and deportations rather than getting into a fight against genocide.
The Republicans are trying to abolish civil right protections. So we should be fighting to preserve civil rights protections rather than getting into a fight against slavery.
No, I said the January 6 insurrection was an attempt by Trump to overthrow the government and that he should have been impeached, arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for treason.
I will admit that I said I didn’t think a traitor like Trump would get re-elected. At least not legally.
I just want to point out - you posited the question to everyone here whether we thought slavery, genocide and nuclear war were things Trump planned to do.
I don’t think Trump plans much of anything, frankly, but when we answer your question, it doesn’t make sense to respond, “well, we shouldn’t focus on that." You focused on it.
Nobody knows what Mr. Trump plans to do really. I doubt Trump himself knows. All we know is the incredible amount of effort that went into Project 2025, and the fact that Republicans held their national convention in an authoritarian country and after praising Orban, complained that they have to get more creative in the US because of that pesky constitution. Then there are all the things we know about the kind of people Trump surrounds himself with. I think it would be silly at this point not to consider the worst case scenario.
Of those three scenarios you described, though, I think genocide is already happening, restoration of slavery is unlikely and the chances of a nuclear incident relatively low - but not nonzero, as Trump in 2016 didn’t even bother staffing his Department of Energy and I can’t imagine he’s suddenly more knowledgeable about nukes. He could well fuck up and detonate one due to incompetence, or in a fit of childlike rage. I dunno. I don’t lose sleep over that one.
Auschwitz didn’t start as a death camp, but it sure ended up one.
trump reportedly asked about nuking N Korea, and seriously asked about using nuclear weapons on hurricanes. I guess you go to nuclear war with the enemy you have, not the enemy you want.
I basically agree with the OP. But there is no one right or best way to feel about Trump and especially those who are using him for their own ends. I think threads like the “last straw” thread probably don’t help at all (although I haven’t read it). Calling stuff “over-the-top hysteria” I don’t think helps either. Our eyes must be open and our protests loud at every step and for every wrong along the way, and we shouldn’t fight each other.
I think the restoration of Black slavery is unlikely, but I think there’s a really, really good chance that the government is going to start leasing a lot of those farm workers they’ve rounded up back to the farms they used to work at, as “convict” labor that’s even cheaper than paying migrant workers.
Yes. But I don’t see anyone fighting the battles against slavery, genocide and nuclear war. So, what’s the problem. Where are you seeing the “false accusations?”
I’ve said before: with nearly every US mass shooting, we hear that “all the signs were there.” But that’s likely, in part, because ‘all the signs’ can be somewhat common factors among young people (or men or … pick your demo). It’s infinitely easier to draw the line backward than to draw it forward. Not everybody – not a fraction of a percent of everybody – who exhibits ‘all the signs’ goes on to commit atrocities.
But I maintain that – if your child is basically represented by articles like this one (as this administration, writ large, truly is) – get him or her professional help:
I have absolutely no idea what Trump will or won’t do (even on any given day), but there have been a great many truly horrible signs already.
Enough that we desperately need whatever the nation-state equivalent of ‘professional help’ is.
I’m reminded of a comic (possibly from Mad Magazine) sometimes in the 60s/70s which presented the argument that we should never have a female president because they were likely to decide to launch a nuclear strike because it was “that time of the month”.