My impression is the goal with Trump is to weaponize the government by incrementally going after more and more mainstream and powerful groups, hoping that we adjust to the treatment of previous groups. Its the frog in boiling water situation. They start off with people society doesn’t care about, then they find another group society cares about a little more and target them, then another group, etc.
Like Trump originally went after illegal immigrants who were criminals.
Then it was just illegal immigrants, including lab abiding and working ones.
Then they went after some legal immigrants
Now they’re going after the homeless
What groups will they go after next? I know he wants to heavily weaponize the government against street protesters, but I don’t know if he has the power.
My assumption is his end goal is to weaponize the government against anyone who criticizes him or tries to hold him accountable (democrat, independent or republican). However you can’t just start targeting people like that on day one, you have to build up the paramilitary infrastructure and get the public used to the idea of the government clamping down on groups nobody cares about first (like illegal immigrants or the homeless) before you turn those state weapons against people with more power, rights and social status like politicians, activists, media personalities, judges, etc.
I’d assume his next logical target isn’t going to be a particular race/ethnicity or religion, but overt political opponents. Mainly, Democratic politicians, figures and voters.
However, this could be done using race and immigration status as the fig leaf. So, for instance, prominently investigating and arresting any high-profile Democrats whose immigration status might be hazy.
Also, he’ll purge the military even more. The military, due to its civilian control system, is the easiest to purge since orders have to be followed as long as they aren’t blatantly illegal and resistance is insubordination.
I thought he was already trying to purge the military of generals and admirals who resist his illegal orders.
I don’t know if targeting individual voters is that productive. He would probably target the much smaller number of people who oversee elections instead of targeting individual voters. It would (sadly) be more efficient to target the handful of people who oversee elections in 5 or 6 swing states vs targeting 75 million people.
However I could see him creating an environment of random state sponsored terror against people who don’t vote for him. He wouldn’t go after all 75 million people who voted against him, but he’d make it clear he was picking from among that group to target.
I feel like one of his end goals is for him to unilaterally decide he has the power to revoke native born US citizens of their citizenship, and then deport them. The question is if he does that, will the checks and balances hold up.
No, he didn’t originally go after illegal immigrants who were criminals. He said that illegal immigrants in general were criminals; and people who wanted to hear ‘they’re only going after the criminals’ managed to hear that.
At some points he, or others in his campaign and/or administration, said they were going after criminals. (Trump’s perfectly capable of saying two contradictory things in one paragraph.) But there was never any real attempt to discriminate.
This isn’t going to fall into a neat pattern, one step at a time. They’re simultaneously trying to use claims of anti-Semitism to attack Muslims, and using actual anti-Semitism themselves.
True to a point. However, a significant number of white politicians seem to already be scared shitless; and quite a lot of straight white males are already, if nothing else, out of their jobs and/or support systems.