"Either this nation will kill racism, or racism will kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018. And if you don't believe that, just look at the Trump-Cruz-Hawley attempt to steal the 2020 election for Trump by invalidating millions of Black and other minority votes.)
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Introductory note: What might well have happened if Donald Trump had succeeded in his coup attempt? After all, it was just a few minutes away from being successful. Depending upon how many weapons the armed units of the insurrectionists had with them, the Secret Service and Capitol Police details could have been slaughtered. Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi could have been summarily executed, along with numbers of Senators and Congresspeople and their staffs. Various hostages, like supposedly persuadable "pro-Trump" folk, could have been taken. (You can imagine who they might be.) And we could have proceeded to the scenario described briefly below, in a column that I would have written following the Trump Takeover, whilst I was trying to get myself and my family out of the country.
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"Trump Wins" (Written sometime in February, 2021, from an unknown location. With no illustration[s] this time. Web access if VERY limited.)
Hello everyone. This may be the last column that I will be able to write for quite some time now. It is being published under an encryption software that I am told is difficult to break through. But the Trumpers have as many cryptologists on their side as we do on ours. So who knows? In the meantime, I am trying to get myself and my family out of the country, but that is becoming increasingly difficult for a variety of reasons that most of you know about all too well. As for the details of what happened following the success of the January 6 "Glorious Insurrection," as the Trumpublicans © call it, the barest of those are being written down here for the benefit not of yourselves, for you know many of them all too well. But they are here for those many others around the world who know that they cannot trust what comes out of the mouths of Trump himself, and of the spokesmen and women of the type who inhabited the White House, 2017-2021, as well as his shills on Fox"News" and the rapidly increasing number of further-to-the-fascist-right propaganda channels. (For the record, our side of course will record January 6 as a Date in U.S. history that Shall Live in Infamy, just as Dec. 7 and 9/11 have done.)
First, as to the events of January 6. As is well-known, the Capitol was breached, by an incoherent mob on the one hand, and by a well-organized strike force made up of members of several right-wing militias on the other. The mob-members were there just to protest, in a violent way to be sure (breaking and entering, destroying furniture, hardware, electronics, papers, records, and etc.) but without a plan for revolution, that is to overturn the certified results of the 2020 Presidential Election. A much smaller, very well-armed, group was intent on doing the latter. Although of course Trump was the principal beneficiary of the organized terrorists' actions, it is still unclear just how much he was directly involved in the planning of the event and equipping of the forces. But when the outcome that happened happened, he was delighted to go along with it, as were his many minions in the House and the Senate (at least those who survived the onslaught).
Since the Trumpists are now fully in charge of what was the Department of Justice, the Secret Service, the CIA, the military intelligence services, and etc., it is not likely that we will know the true extent of the events anytime soon, if ever. But we do know what happened on the ground, to the benefit of one Donald J. Trump, his family members (and it is important to note that there is a feudalistic/monarchical element to just about everything he does), and the formerly rapidly dwindling number of acolytes both within and outside of government, which number then exploded upwards after the reality of the success of the coup rapidly became clear.
As is well-known the principal objective of the organized terrorists was the disruption of the formal counting of the electoral votes from the 2020 election. That was accomplished fairly easily. As is well-known, the terrorist leadership of the mob was intent on hanging Vice-President Mike Pence, which they horrifyingly did, on the gallows that had been erected for that purpose in front of the Capitol. As for the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, when caught she was just summarily shot in the head, just as various far-rightists had been advocating for quite some time, and left on the floor of the House Chamber. (Rumors that before being shot she was sexually assaulted, as certain of the Insurrection leaders had advocated, could not be confirmed.)
The formal Electoral Vote counting and tabulating was obviously stopped. The terrorists went looking for other Democratic Senators and Representatives who had begun to flee as soon as it became apparent that a fascist coup was underway. Some were caught and immediately executed, but others (and we don't know how many) were able to get away and flee to Canada (as did the President and Vice-President elects and their families). There, a Government-in-Exile has already been set up. The location of the members of the Supreme Court is unknown, but the Trumpists are referring no court cases to them. In fact, the whole Federal Court system nationally has been suspended. Certain Trump-favorable state courts have been allowed to stay in existence. We do not at this time know all the details as to exactly what was finally done with the reported Electoral vote documents, but they were obviously immediately sequestered by the Trumpists.
In response to the violence that he and his people had instigated, the President immediately declared a national emergency and martial law. But it was a peculiar kind of martial law, for it did not employ the regular U.S. military. The Trump-appointed Secretary of Defense had ordered the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Chiefs of Staff of the four main military branches to stand down. When they refused to do so, they were immediately interned by Trump's New Militia, the TNM, a force made up of members of the various right-wing paramilitary forces who had been gathered from around the country. They began to appear in units that had received some training and wore something of a uniform characterized by a shirt of a particular color that had been secretly produced in some numbers in various locations around the country. The Sec.-Def. then appointed new Service Heads, loyal to Trump of course. They in turn ordered the forces under their command to stand down.
The prelude to this production was the vast number of "Trump" flags, banners, and outfits that had been on display during the "Glorious Insurrection" and at other locations around the country. (To date, there has been no information available on the firm or firms that produced the vast numbers and amounts of Trump-paraphernalia, including the very large "Trump" banners of various types, over a period of many months, starting from before the election of Nov. 3.) The choice of color for the shirts was historically logical. The shirt colors for the major 20th Century fascist parties were already taken, Black by the Italian fascists, Brown by the German Nazis of the Sturmabteilung (SA, "Storm Division"), and Blue by the Spanish fascists. Given the color of "MAGA hats" and the tie that Trump always wore, the logical color for the Trumpist military-style uniform shirts was red. (Of course, few Trumpites realized, least of all Trump himself, that red was the color of the anti-fascist Communist Parties that had existed round the world in so many countries in the 20th century and was still the national color for the remaining Communist Parties, as in China and North Korea.) And so, the Trumpist militia became The Red Shirts (the shade of red for them of course being the shade of Trump's ties). They emerged all over the country in numbers much larger than anyone could have anticipated they would.
What we would regard as a rump Congress, House and Senate, convened the next day, consisting primarily of those Republican Congresspersons and Senators who had asserted, in one way or another, that the election was a sham and had been stolen from Trump. They conveniently ignored the deaths/disappearance of many of the colleagues as the unfortunate by-products of the necessary "taking back of the elections." Trump then conveniently delayed Inauguration Day, and the Cruz-Hawley "Ten Day Recount" mechanism was put into effect. (Of course, it had no basis anywhere in the Constitution or even in Federal law or regulation, but that matter was easily by-passed, just by not mentioning it, as had been the case before the Insurrection.) The result was predictable.
In those swing states that had had significant numbers of "Black votes," they were thrown out as fraudulent. (Except that the results of those same elections that resulted in wins for Republicans at the state and local levels were not thrown out.) The New Congress created a temporary new date for Inauguration, February 7th, a Sunday. Since the event could not be held at the significantly damaged Capitol, it was held at the National Cathedral, which had been taken over from its customary apolitical management by a council chosen by the alliance of Christian Rightist organizations that not too long before had designated Trump as having been sent to the U.S. by God.
Once back in the White House, Trump moved quickly to achieve many aims of his own agenda and those of the Republican Party as well. With a rump Congress, most of the Democratic members except for a few "Centrists" (the Canadian word for them was "decoratifs") having fled, this was fairly straightforward. Any of the mass media which the newly established "Office for the Truthifying of the Media" labelled as "Fake News" were immediately shut down. The Armed Forces were permanently confined to barracks, and the senior officership was replaced with Trump loyalists, as had happened to the civilian leadership of the Defense Department in the last days of the first Trump term. Republican governors were empowered to replace any National Guard commanders who were regarded as "disloyal" by the Trumpists.
As for the Trump-program, this time with no Congress to object and with the courts either sidelined or firmly in the Trump camp a number of measures were quickly undertaken. What had been called "Obamacare" was abolished, as was Medicaid, so that the so-called "self-supporters" (who are really freeloading off the Blue States) would no longer have to pay for the misleadingly-termed "dependents." The Environmental Protection Agency was abolished so that "free competition" could be allowed to "flourish." All national education aid was to be funneled to religious schools since the states should be able to support public education on their own.
The border wall was scheduled for rapid completion. Deportations at the Southern border, of both adults and unaccompanied minors was ramped up. As far as COVID-19 was concerned, just as the President had proposed at one point, testing was cut back so that the apparent number of cases declined. If hospitals reported problems, that was the result of their own mis-management, which they would have to fix. "Re-education centers" were set up all over the country to house adults and children who deemed by the Red Shirts Teams not to be compliant with The Program. Of course, the actual number of coronavirus infections and deaths soared.
As noted at the beginning of this column I am hoping to leave soon. But hey, you never know. I hear that Canada and Mexico, if you can get to either one and safely across the border, are filling up and may soon have to stop accepting refugees. At the same time, I am hearing talk of secession for the three Pacific states and those in the Northeast, either together or separately. But so far that is only talk. Unlike the Southern-dominated states did at the time of the First Civil War --- fight for secession --- this time around those same states --- which are the center for Trumpite fascism --- plus many of the mid-Western states like South Dakota --- would likely fight hard against it, dependent as they are for so much of the revenues being paid out to them by the states on the two coasts, something that I had written about when we still had a country.
And so on and so forth. I cannot stay on what is left of the internet for too long, in case the Red Shirts could find me. Hopefully, I and my family will be able to get to Canada soon, before the border is closed for good, and be writing to/for you again, as the struggle against the full-blown Trump Fascist machine that has taken over our nation goes on.
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Note (for real): An earlier version of this column was published at: click here.
