XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.atheism   
   From: soetoro@excite.com   
      
   Prepare to fight to the death in Trump's civil war.   
      
   The propaganda campaign labeling our glorious white supremacist fascist   
   Fuehrer Trump as an aspiring dictator determined to use the military and   
   national security apparatus against his political opponents is designed not   
   to affect the upcoming election but rather to shape the post-election   
   environment. It is the central piece of a narrative that, by characterizing   
   Trump as a tyrant (indeed likening him to Hitler), establishes the   
   conditions for violence — not just another attempt on Trump’s life, but   
   political violence on a massive scale intended to destabilize the country.   
      
   As I write in my forthcoming book Disappearing the President, Democratic   
   Party research and media reports show that many senior party officials and   
   operatives are preparing for the possibility of a Trump victory.   
   Accordingly, planning is focused on undermining the incoming president with   
   enough violence to rock his administration. Prominent post-election   
   scenarios forecast such widespread rioting that the newly elected president   
   would be compelled to invoke the Insurrection Act. With some senior   
   military officials refusing to follow Trump’s orders, according to the   
   scenarios, the U.S. Armed Forces would split, leaving America on the edge   
   of the abyss.   
      
   By vilifying Trump as a despotic madman who must be stopped before he can   
   commence his reign of terror, the regime’s propaganda apparatus not only   
   slanders Trump but also pre-emptively threatens the reputation, as well as   
   the livelihood and perhaps the liberty, of current military personnel. The   
   point is to push the military against Trump: When the time comes to act,   
   will you stand for democracy or side with a tyrant who sees the military   
   only as an instrument to advance his personal interests?   
      
   For instance, last week the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg,   
   quoted former Trump administration officials claiming that the Republican   
   candidate is contemptuous of America’s armed forces and, according to   
   Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, wishes he could command the same   
   respect that Hitler commanded from his general officers.   
      
   This is not the first time that Trump has been compared to Hitler or that   
   Kelly, a retired Marine general, turned on his former commander-in-chief.   
   Kelly was the key source for a story published before the 2020 election,   
   also in the Atlantic and also by Jeffrey Goldberg, that alleged Trump had   
   called American WWII soldiers buried in French cemeteries “suckers and   
   losers.”   
      
   The veracity of Kelly’s latest revelation that Trump admires Hitler must of   
   course be judged against the fact that he waited five years to disclose it,   
   even if it is unlikely to have much effect on the current election cycle.   
   The military, and veterans of the Global War on Terror in particular,   
   overwhelmingly support the candidate opposed to waging endless and   
   strategically pointless foreign wars. Moreover, Trump has weathered far   
   more damaging fabrications — like the false allegations that he had been   
   compromised by Russian intelligence — that only galvanized support for him.   
      
   The purpose of the Hitler narrative is not to alter the electoral   
   preferences of left-wing media audiences already solidly in the anti-Trump   
   column, but rather to justify taking extreme measures against the   
   Republican candidate and the America First movement and ensure that the   
   bulk of the military sides with the anti-Trump plot. Thus, it is best   
   understood in the context of recent accounts promising, or urging, violence   
   after the November vote.   
      
   For example, last week the New York Times published a long interview with a   
   scholar of fascism who declared that Trump is a fascist. The paper of   
   record followed up with another long article by two Harvard professors   
   calling for mass mobilization in the event of a Trump victory. The proposal   
   suggests that private industry join civil society organizations to   
   ostracize Trump and his supporters and engage in large public protests to   
   provoke a crisis. Kamala Harris herself, commenting on Kelly’s allegations   
   in the Atlantic story, claimed that her opponent “is a fascist” during a   
   CNN town hall.   
      
   These stories are only the latest in an ongoing series of media reports   
   warning of a Trump dictatorship. Beltway insider Robert Kagan was out of   
   the gate early, writing even before Trump wrapped up the nomination that,   
   without mounting resistance against the Republican candidate, America is “a   
   few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of   
   dictatorship.” A January story from NBC claimed that Trump was exploring   
   ways to use the military to assassinate political rivals.   
      
   The propaganda meant to establish a predicate to employ violence to stop   
   Trump has been reinforced at the highest levels of the Democratic Party.   
      
   When Joe Biden was asked by a reporter if he was confident that there would   
   be a peaceful transfer of power after the 2024 election, he answered, “If   
   Trump wins, no I’m not confident at all.” Then, seemingly correcting   
   himself, the president said, “I mean if Trump loses, I’m not confident at   
   all. He means what he says, we don’t take him seriously. He means it, all   
   the stuff about,   
      
   ‘If we lose there will be a bloodbath.’”   
      
   Biden was referring to a comment Trump made in March about Chinese efforts   
   to build auto manufacturing plants in Mexico. The export of those cars to   
   America, Trump said, would result in a “bloodbath” for the U.S. auto   
   industry. Naturally, the Biden campaign used the figure of speech to accuse   
   Trump of inciting “political violence.”   
      
   Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) advertised a more specific scenario leading to   
   violence when he promised that Congress will remove Trump by invoking   
   Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits anyone “engaged in   
   insurrection or rebellion” from holding federal office. “It’s going to be   
   up to us on January 6, 2025, to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s   
   disqualified,” Raskin has said. “And then we need bodyguards for everybody   
   in civil war conditions.”   
      
   But the most significant post-election scenarios were drafted by Rosa   
   Brooks, a former Obama Pentagon official whose 2020 wargaming with the   
   Transition Integrity Project (TIP) has been credited by the left-wing press   
   for its “accuracy.”   
      
   Ahead of the last election, Brooks and TIP, according to the Guardian,   
   “imagined the then far-fetched idea that Trump might refuse to concede   
   defeat, and, by claiming widespread fraud in mail-in ballots, unleash dark   
   forces culminating in violence. Every implausible detail of the simulations   
   came to pass in the lead-up to the U.S. Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.”   
      
   That’s a fanciful way of obscuring the truth. TIP anticipated that Trump   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)