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.”
Fitting. American democracy began with Mad King George III and will end with Mad King Trump I.
I don’t think we get enough credit just how much we’ve fought back the Republican assholes. Our system gives them a huge edge and we’re still winning. It’s the equivalent of fighting somone with your hands tied behind your back and still giving them an ass whooping.
Never ceases to amaze me how often I see this canard:
both parties share culpability in creating the opening for MAGA and Trump
So Dems, who are never elected to represent those poor, forgotten souls in the rust belt or former coal mining towns, and therefore are not in a position to actually do anything to help them, are somehow culpable for those folks, what, voting against their interests?
Fuck off with this both sides enlightened centrist bullshit. Folks in Virginia and Alabama voted for right wingers who fucked them over, then those people successfully channeled the resulting anger and resentment at the “establishment”.
It’s the political consequences of starve the beast politics.
Why would anyone nominate Biden? Couldn’t find a weaker candidate. It’s like putting a sleeping toddler in as goalkeeper and be annoyed that a one footed senior might score a goal.
In case you forget 2014-2016, Biden was immensely popular. He was seen as empathetic and with a sense of humor prior to Obama leaving office (remember all of the Biden/Obama bromance memes?) He was the most primed for the job in the public’s eyes.
I mean if you wanted relatable and empathetic with a stable track record we could have had Bernie but his own party had to pull the rug on him. =\
Which Republican said “The era of big Government is over!” right before dismantling or slashing the bulk of federal safety net programs? Which Republican took office on anti-corruption messaging, then immediately turned around and let criminal bankers who decimated the US economy off the hook?
The Republican party is a psychotic cesspool, but Democrats have plenty to answer for too. The rust belt in-particular was dominated by Democrats until Bill Clinton made the conscious choice to turn against the unions that had put him in office.
Trump is literarlly elected because Hilary’s campaign elevated him in their piped piper strategy to make Republiacan candidate more extreme so more people vote for her. https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/
Cool, so Hillary and the DNC were such incredible political masterminds that they single-handedly brainwashed GOP supporters into nominating Trump. And all the voters then picked him because, I assume, the DNC also tricked them into tacking toward fascism through, I guess, sheer force of political will.
Truly amazing.
Or course, it makes sense. Certainly when I think of the DNC and the Dems more broadly, I think of an incredibly effective organization with an all-powerful and unstoppable mind control apparatus demonstrating unparalleled powers to manipulate an unwitting electorate in order to achieve their nefarious goals.
And the GOP and their voters? Obviously simply sheep, following the lead of their Democratic puppet masters.
I’d call it a left-wing conspiracy theory, but if there’s anything I know about the Dems, it’s that they’re such incredible strategic politicians that this can’t be anything but the stone cold truth. Right?
Certainly that explains why, after the 2016 election, all those poor GOP voters woke up, confused and hung over, and realized what they’d done while under the spell of those nefarious Democrats, and why in subsequent years they rejected Trump wholeheartedly and certainly never goose stepped right along behind him.
I think it’s less “sophisticated mind control apparatus” and more
“Lol this guy is truly an insane charicature no rational person would want, let’s make sure we go up against him! Yeah, lol, nominate this clown you guys.”
…And they weren’t counting on just how “popular” a conspiracy-spouting walking meme of a madman would become to an easily-mobilized, highly emotional, constant-threat-perceiving, under-educated, news-cycle-obsessed slice of the population.
Y’know like when the CIA installs international dictators who are “friendly to our interests” and it completely backfires when they get off the leash.
So let me make sure I understand:
Step 1: DNC highlights the right-wing nutjobs in the GOP as a way to scare the undecides into voting for them. “Look at those nutjobs!” they say. “Aren’t they fucking nutty? Who would vote for someone that nutty? Not you. Because that would be really dumb, right?”
Step 2: GOP primary voters decide “Well shit, those nutjobs? Those are my kinda nutjobs!” and nominate Trump.
Step 3: In the general, all those GOP voters then vote for the nutjob.
And thus I am to conclude: Hillary and the DNC helped create the MAGA brownshirts.
Yeah. That makes sense.
It’s kinda like how, if I tell a toddler not to put paperclips in wall outlets, and then they do it and electrocute themselves, then really it’s my fault because I pointed it out in the first place.
Are any motherfuckers protesting in the lobby if the NYTimes LA Times, Chicago Tribune, or anywhere else that has been cushioning and softballing this shithead?
Until and unless we have a way to artificially enhance intelligence - or find some other way to push human nature forward - we will likely always be stuck with some significant minority of the deplorables. The trick is to not give them any power or say whatsoever, though.
Maybe if people understood electoral design and consensus mechanism we could have something other than the worst possible options in each party. Election mechanisms that promote popularity instead of acceptability is what got us here. The truth is the system doesn’t work. When can people just start saying that openly?
Trumpism is not going to be defeated by voting at this point. Pelosi: “US needs a ‘strong’ Republican Party.” Dems are fine with the good cop, bad cop dynamic.
In this case she may have been making an indirect swipe at Republicans in general, saying that the party isn’t strong.
Yeah, that’s the way I read, especially given all the republican infighting.
The country genuinely does need a competitive second party.
Everyone blames Democrats for the lack of choice in candidates, while the other guys are nominating a twice impeached, adjudicated rapist and insurrection supporter with ninety one criminal indictments and multiple pending civil suits.
I haven’t had a candidate come out of the GOP worthy of consideration in my entire lifetime. At one point, they were the party of not only Lincoln but folks like Eisenhower.
You know it’s bad when “BuT hE hAsN’t bEeN cOnViCtEd YeT!” is somehow a defense for supporting this guy.
Like, c’mon that nonsense wouldn’t fly pertaining to your daughter’s new boyfriend, why the heck would you let it excuse somebody running a crumbling world superpower?!
You’ve now been made a moderator of Lemmy’s conservative community. That’s exactly what they spout constantly…
It needs an electoral system that makes third parties viable.
Trump is here because dems wanted an easier candidate to run against. https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/
2016 was 8 years ago, and I think it’s rather weird and conspiratorial to blame Hillary for Trump in the first place. She might’ve had a preferred opponent but she certainly didn’t control the GOP. She barely controlled the DNC. She had a hard fought primary with Bernie who wasn’t even a member of the party, and had a relatively low national profile before the election.
This points at exactly what I’m talking about above. To hear you tell it, Democrats are somehow the only people with agency in the entire political landscape.
You will choose between two senile candidates. One a psychopath wannabe dictator, the other one a genocide enabler. I am not jealous.
Trump will also enable the genocide and remove all aid to Ukraine to give to Israel too.
Quite possible.
He’s already said as much. So I’d imagine it’s more incipient than possible
Sorry to challenge your worldview, but they are both genocide enablers. Arguably one of them already directly committed one by not taking the pandemic seriously. Not all 1 mil+ covid deaths are on his hands but many, many of them are.
Why should this challenge my worldview? I literally called him a psychopath. I just despice both of them.
I too, prefer my politicians bland.
Ok, maybe a little paprika.
Trump does look like a well spiced bird that’s been under a heat lamp for about 40 years.
Biden looks like a bland bird that’s been left to boil in a pot for 10.
“One of them is a genocide enabler”. The wording of A is this, B is that, asserts contrast and not a shared characteristic. Just a friendly reminder that both of them are genocide enablers.
Trump didn’t have the chance yet. But yes, I agree that he is an aspiring genocide enabler. Doesn’t change my views about Biden, though.
Sorry, you didn’t shatter any worldviews today, but we had a nice chatter about semantics.
Israel has been plotting genocide for quite a while and anyone who has kept a bead on Israel knows that. If you supported them even before the immediately recent actions you are still a genocide enabler. So it’s still both.
I agree with you that they are both genocide enablers but calling the pandemic a genocide doesn’t quite work. It didn’t wipe an entire group of people off of the planet or out of an area. But yes, anyone who supports Israel right now is a genocide enabler, literally, and unfortunately both qualify, and so does almost all of congress.
If the system only gives you genocide enablers as an option it’s time to stop believing in that system.
If the system only gives you genocide enablers as an option it’s time to stop believing in that system.
calling the pandemic a genocide doesn’t quite work.
Thank you for saying this. Yes. It was a mass casualty event perpetrated by willful incompetence of the highest degree, but it was an indiscriminate killer, not a targeted attack on a certain subset of human beings.
I notice people, especially fellow left-leaners, throwing the term “genocide” around like it just means “kills a bunch of people in some country or something.” It’s a strongly-worded appeal to emotion, and the heinousness of such a crime loses its meaning when it isn’t specific.
By all means lets accuse these politicians of the crimes they commit, but we lose credibility when we ignore literacy in exchange for drumming up fervor.
It is refreshing to see someone who has left MAGA and realises the full potential danger that Trump and the GOP pose.
don’t make me hope ;_;
i have been dreaming of this,
pleading for this.
but i never dared to consider it might actually happen
i can’t afford enough copium to sustain itSadly seems to be a small minority though.
If we seek out ways to ‘kill’ that ‘political party’ I urge we give no mercy, no quarter, and we finish the damn job.
And by “finish the job” we of course mean going all the way: Unscrewing the pommel and ending them rightly.
Americans have been electorally mercy killing the GOP for forty years, they invented moving the goalposts in response.
There may still be a less electoral way to mercy kill the GOP.
Americans have been electorally mercy killing the GOP for forty years
Feeling incredibly happy every time a cockroach dies of old age, because I’m pretty sure this means I’m beating them.
There may still be a less electoral way to mercy kill the GOP.
Unfortunately, the folks with the highest proclivity to try and run a rival’s campaign bus off the road aren’t in the liberal party.
They have been killing them with the popular vote. The GOP wins the electoral votes often actually.
This is another framing suggesting that the Republican party was a legitimate party until Trump, they have been the party of racists since, at least, Nixon and the implementation of the southern strategy.
Trump isn’t the root of the evil of the party, the party has been evil for 60 or so years, trump is the logical conclusion.
Calling it a mercy killing erases all the evil done for so long. The party doesn’t need a mercy killing, it needs to be held accountable for the evil it has done for decades.
It will be a “shock and awe” campaign visited upon the American people.
This subject does not seem to be receiving the warranted attention it deserves
mercy-kill
I don’t see why they deserve any mercy.
Because not all sheep deserve to be slaughtered. There’s a lot of people who vote out of fear because they don’t know any better. It’s the Republican party that needs to be done away with.
I think it’s important to clarify here that “the Republican Party” (see also: “the GOP”) refers to the party leaders and political figures. It doesn’t (usually) refer to the voters, although you might hear “Republican consituency” or “Republican voters”, or even “Republicans”. But “the Republican Party” is generally agreed to mean the leaders, or the organization that presents them as leaders. I think you agree with that point because you seem to be making the same clarification in your last sentence. My comment, and the article headline, are referring to this group.
I think I agree with you that the sheep don’t need to be slaughtered, although they are going to need some very tough medicine.
The people who led them to this point? No mercy.
exactly.
Whether we like to believe it or not, no one is the villan of their own story. I won’t deny that the Republican party courts the worst of the worst types of scumbags around us, but their propaganda machine gets so many people in so many different ways.
They managed to get my otherwise amazing gay cousin to vote for Trump by his displeasure with the Israel/Palestine conflict (this was well before the current genocide) The media he was consuming framed everything in terms of Democrat support so he was lead to believe the Republicans have the “compassionate” resolution. He votes against his own well being because of propaganda… :(
Bollocks. Anyone who still supports Trump after 6 January 2021 knows exactly what they are signing up for.
The Republican Party simply represents the voters, they’d get no votes without that.
So no, they don’t deserve mercy. The average conservative voter is the very reason we have this problem to begin with.
Politicians need someone to represent. They found it in America’s racists and nationalists.
Yes, but part of the Republican strategy is to distort the truth or history using lies. They may have found what they want or need in America’s racists and nationalists, but not until they pumped them full of misinformation first.
Republican party doesnt need a mercy kill.
It needs a legitimate, in depth, non-partisian federal criminal investigation and convictions against every one in the party that has betrayed their office and sold America out to foreign powers… Or have fucked kids.
Which, unfortunately for them, seems to be a significant chunk of them.
Start with all the ones that I’ve been balls deep on Putin.
