From:
slider@anashram.com
(CNN)Taking the stage at a rally in Nevada Saturday night, President
Donald Trump didn't hold back.
He said his anger about a recent Democratic ad that highlighted his
alleged comments disparaging dead American soldiers had freed him to take
his campaign to the next level: "Now I can be really vicious," he said to
roars of approval from the crowd of Trump supporters in Minden.
The President, who has long relished his role as a divider who amasses
power by creating a climate of fear, went on to describe his opponent, Joe Biden, as "shot" and a puppet of the radical left, before accusing
Democrats of trying to "lock law-abiding Americans in their homes" during
the pandemic as they fight God, guns and oil.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/13/politics/2020-election-donald-trump-division-joe-biden/index.html
"At no time before has there been a clearer choice between two parties or
two visions, two philosophies, two agendas for the future. There's never
been anything like this," Trump said during the rally where he claimed he
was "probably entitled" to a third term because he's been so poorly
treated. "The Democrats are trying to rig this election, because it's the
only way they're gonna win," he said.
Trump's divisive tactics this weekend immediately erased the fleeting
moment of unity that came Friday as the nation marked the 19th anniversary
of the September 11 attacks.
At the 9/11 memorial service in New York City, the nation caught a glimpse
of the spirit of bipartisanship that existed back in 2001 as it reeled
from the terrorist attacks. Biden and Vice President Mike Pence exchanged
an elbow bump as they passed one another, a rare moment of comity within a deeply polarized nation led by a President who continues to divide
Americans and turn them against one another, even as the nation is gripped
by crisis.
The anniversary led many to reflect on how dramatically different Trump's leadership style is from virtually all of the recent presidents who came
before him. It recalled the images of President George W. Bush climbing
atop a pile of rubble in lower Manhattan with a bullhorn attempting to
unify the nation and speak for it as he sent love and compassion to first-responders and those affected by the tragedy.
Yet here we are, more than six months into a pandemic that's killed more
than 193,000 Americans, with a President who continues to lie about
downplaying the deadly virus in February and March and who insists that
his administration has done everything right as the US leads the world in coronavirus cases, while attempting to win reelection by pitting Americans
of different races against each other and creating a climate of fear.
Division permeating American life
Trump's rhetoric at his Saturday rally was emblematic of his political
strategy since he began running for the presidency in 2015. But his
embrace of division and discord now seems to have permeated every aspect
of Americans' lives, from football to the simple act of wearing a mask,
while at the same time, he has tried to subjugate some of the most
independent agencies of government to his political desires.
As Trump has minimized the importance of the life-saving act of wearing a
mask, there have been angry confrontations over mask-wearing: the people
asking patrons to put on masks have been spat on, shouted at, and in
several cases, assaulted.
While there appeared to be a chance for bipartisan unity on the issue of
racial justice after the killing of George Floyd this spring, the
President's efforts to vilify demonstrators as "thugs," rioters and
looters while portraying himself as the paragon of "law and order" have
led Americans to retreat to their partisan corners. A CNN poll released
earlier this month showed opinions about racism and the protests aimed at confronting it have become more divided by party.
While the protests against police brutality have been predominantly
peaceful, some of the most frightening confrontations have unfolded when
Black Lives Matter demonstrators were confronted by far-right agitators
and armed vigilantes who seemed to heed Trump's calls to dominate the
streets -- with some likely emboldened by the President's refusal to
condemn the violence unless it was directed at his own supporters.
After Trump's relentless efforts to disparage players who kneel during the National Anthem as a form of protest against systematic racism and police brutality, fans at Arrowhead Stadium this week booed after an announcer
asked for a "moment of silence dedicated to the ongoing fight for equality
in our country" before the kickoff at the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston
Texans game. (The crowd ultimately applauded after the two teams linked
arms to form a chain).
Undermining US institutions
And while political polarization in Washington pre-dated Trump, the intransigence has grown during his presidency. Though thousands of
Americans are out of work and struggling with the economic fallout from
the pandemic, it is now unlikely that any stimulus deal to aid workers,
schools and small businesses will come to fruition until after the
election -- just six months after Congress passed the largest stimulus in history in the early months of the crisis.
In Trump's continuing effort to make agencies that cherished their
independence from politics beholden to his political goals, Americans
learned this weekend that Trump-appointed communications officials at the
US Department of Health and Human Services sought to change language
within the weekly science reports released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so that it would align with the President's message.
Michael Caputo, the lead spokesman for HHS who is a former Trump campaign official, defended the practice in a statement to CNN by offering the
unfounded conspiracy theory that the CDC is under attack by deep-state
actors.
That report came after the uproar over a whistleblower's allegations that
top political appointees in the Department of Homeland Security instructed career officials to modify intelligence assessments to downplay Russia's efforts to interfere in the US election and the threat of White
supremacists, presumably because those assessments weren't helpful to
Trump's agenda.
The administration's efforts to control health and intelligence messaging follows the weeks-long controversy over the moves by Trump and his
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor, to undercut the
operations of the post office at a time when an unprecedented number of Americans hope to vote by mail to avoid exposure to the coronavirus at the polls.
On Saturday, Trump once again seemed to urge his supporters to engage in
the criminal act of voting twice in the critical swing state of North
Carolina, where he and Biden are locked in a tight race.
"NORTH CAROLINA: To make sure your Ballot COUNTS, sign & send it in EARLY.
When Polls open, go to your Polling Place to see if it was COUNTED. IF
NOT, VOTE!" Trump tweeted Saturday. "Your signed Ballot will not count
because your vote has been posted. Don't let them illegally take your vote
away from you!"
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein responded on Twitter with his
own all-caps message: "Do NOT do what the President directs," he wrote.
"To make sure your ballot COUNTS, sign and send it in EARLY. Then track it ONLINE with BALLOTTRAX. Do NOT vote twice (it's a felony)."
And in Nevada, Trump continued to undermine confidence in America's
election systems and mail-in-ballots, claiming that Democrats are "trying
to rig this election" while simultaneously arguing that he should be able
to "negotiate" for 12 years in the White House.
"We're going to win four more years in the White House and then after that we'll negotiate, right? Because ...based on the way we were treated, we're probably entitled to another four after that," he said.
Because in Trump's America, no institution, including democracy, is
sacrosanct. He seems to think the rules don't apply to him if they stand
in the way of his political ambitions -- even the 22nd Amendment, which
bars the President from serving for more than two terms. And he seems
willing to use whatever means necessary to bend them even if he further
divides the nation in the process.
### - lol i was only kinda joking before re trumpy being hitler 2.0? an intuition perhaps
but if things keep going the way they are it ain't gonna be 'hitler' we'll
have to worry about...
but Caligula??
and coz it's actually gettin' a bit scary now in the sense that if ya
stand back far enough and view these events on the 'world' stage, it's beginning to look like america is maybe starting to actually make it's
move in its bid for world domination?
not just economic domination but 'actual' domination of the entire planet!
i.e., hitler didn't win the war simply & solely because he failed to get
his nukes together in enough time to use 'em on america! something he'd
then have undoubtedly used to bomb the rest of the resisting-world into
total submission too! - but in 'this' instance he's already got those now perfected nukes before the war even begins!?
and thus there's likely only one last chance to stop all this left by
voting against him before democracy dies altogether??
problem is, he may not 'accept' the results of the election even if the
demos win by a landslide!
and because:
"...if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States,
including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss
of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science..." --churchill
really not good! another genuine yikes! moment in history! damn!
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)