An ex-MAGA activist warns “no civic savior is coming” as Donald Trump’s cognitive decline becomes undeniable
What if Donald Trump defeats President Biden and takes control of the White House in 2025? He has already announced his plans to become the country’s first dictator, and to launch a reign of terror and revenge against his so-called enemies. As detailed in documents such as Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere, the infrastructure is being created right now to put Trump’s neofascist plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy in effect on “day one." The so-called resistance will not have the courtesy of ramping up or mobilizing to stop Dictator Trump’s onslaught. It will be a “shock and awe” campaign visited upon the American people.
Dictator Trump’s reign of terror will be made even worse by the fact that as shown during recent speeches, interviews, and at other events he appears to be encountering severe difficulties in cognition, language, and memory.
In a series of recent conversations with me here at Salon, Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” has issued this warning: “Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.”
This is asking a lot imo. You’re asking everyone to be vigilant and I think the last 10 years have proven that a significant proportion of the voter population cannot be relied on to be vigilant, because they’re content in being myopic.
That seems to be the weak point of a republic. I just watched a video essay on YouTube about the politics of Star Wars and how the Republic fell to the Empire and I think the guy made a lot of good points and it included a call to action in our elections. I think Star Wars is known to have taken from the fall of the Roman Republic and there’s more recent examples of the death of a democracy in the Weimar Republic in Germany.
With the two real life examples, all it took was a prolonged period of decay (from inside and outside factors) to lead to the Roman Autocratic Empire and Nazi Germany. I’d argue the US was on this relative path before with the America First party that rose to oppose FDR in the 1930’s. All it may take is another bad world event to push people into being content with a populist autocrat like Trump.
I’m still hopeful, but we should all take the lessons of the past into account when deciding how to move forward.
Not to mention that the resistance is immensely fractured. I’m still not sure that we’ve seen an event heinous enough to galvanize the opposition past ideological boundaries. For many, stopping Trump is not yet enough to delay their potential political gains. Populism rides on the strongest human emotions, the easiest and vaguest enemies, and the simplest (wrong) answers. It’s going to take a united effort, the sort that was brought about by the geopolitical situation in the FDR era, or I worry that we fail.
The “resistance” is clustering themselves into smaller and smaller areas and because of our shitty representative apportionment they lose political power when moving to populated places.
If we want to fix this we need to convince people that the amenities in cities aren’t going to survive when the federal government mainly represents empty land and thinks those amenities are from Satan.
I’m not exactly going to fault persecuted people for fleeing their homes. It’s not always about “amenities” as much as it is safety and belonging. I’m not against the idea that this dilutes our political power in our system, but I’m also not sure that it’s the front I’m going to choose to fight on.
Absolutely. There are definitely people who need to leave in order to be safe.
But when I talk to people who don’t have that problem about living in flyover country their first response is “There’s nothing to do out there.”