This is one of the most depressing articles I've ever read. The only hope I see is if that enough of these voters didn't really want Trump to be a ruthless dictator. By Hal M. Brown

 

Since you're reading this you're one of the people Trump voters see as a smug privileged snob.

You don’t even have to read “How Donald Trump Has Remade America’s Political Landscape in today’s New York Times (subscription)” to get the gist of it. You can just look at the graphics. Here are four more of them:

There are graphics showing that even in primarily Black or Hispanic communities Trump has made more gains than Democrats.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

These counties, which we are calling “triple-trending,” offer a unique and invaluable window into how America has realigned — and still is realigning — in the Trump era. They vividly show, in red and blue, the stark changes in the political coalitions of the two parties.

The scale of Mr. Trump’s expanding support is striking. While roughly 8.1 million Americans of voting age live in triple-trending Democratic counties, about 42.7 million live in Republican ones.

Even more ominous for the Democrats are the demographic and economic characteristics of these counties: The party’s sparse areas of growth are concentrated almost exclusively in America’s wealthiest and most educated pockets.

Yet Mr. Trump has steadily gained steam across a broad swath of the nation, with swelling support not just in white working-class communities but also in counties with sizable Black and Hispanic populations.

Trump has managed to divided the country into as us against them, or as the “them” would put it, “them against us.”

Those reading this are members of the more highly educated and more affluent “us.” I think you more likely than not can read the NY Times article because you have a subscription. The other “us” would read the previous sentences and say “see, that’s what we mean, these people are a bunch of smug privileged snobs.” 

We have to admit that the so-called party of the working class is no longer the Democratic Party. It is now the Trump Republican Party. For decades since the decidely upper-upper class FDR was president for three terms, Democrats won elections because the working class believed that the candidates from the professional class and upper class, even upper-upper class, would make their lives better. They believed that they really cared about them. Jimmy Carter pulled off being seen as being just a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia even though his peanut farm was between 2000 and 3000 acres.

The cruel irony of this is that these candidates really did care about people less affluent than them. 

Then along came Donald J. Trump. While he was not only a member of the upper class, he was an in-your-face member of the upper-upper class. 

He took his cruel Apprentice “you’re fired” persona and turned it into his brand. Millions of people ate it up. None of the people who got the “you’re fired” treatment were villains. In fact they were even horrible potential job candidates like many of the performers on The Gong Show who got the gong.

By way of comparison, Gong Show star and creator Chuck Barris (who once lied about being a CIA assassin) actually was the creator of the show while 13 time Emmy Award winner Mark Burnett deserves credit for the successful casting of Trump as a business genius on “The Apprentice.” 

Trump isn’t an Einstein level genius like he thinks he is. He is a genius at some things like marketing and unabashed lying. In other areas he is as dumb as a post.

His most recent dumb as a post example is a demonstration of his segmented intelligence. This was in his comments about stealth aircraft. They were made at his weird trophy wife West Point commencement address (from below reference):

However, one avenue of free-associative speculation Trump meandered along while speaking about military investment seemed to confirm that one of his much-derided beliefs remains intact: the president seems to genuinely believe that so-called “stealth” fighter jets—military aircraft designed to be difficult to detect by radar—are actually invisible.

“We are buying you new airplanes, brand new beautiful planes, redesigned planes, brand new planes, totally stealth planes,” Trump said, speaking to a proposed record increase in defense spending.

“I hope they’re stealth. I don’t know, that whole stealth thing, I’m sort of wondering.

“We shape a wing this way, they don’t see it. But the other way they see it? I’m not so sure, but that’s what they tell me!

Trump’s supporters don’t give a shit about any of this. While I doubt that if we could give them all IQ tests we would find that they aren’t what you could label “dumb” meaning having significantly below average scores. However if they answered honestly I think they would score fairly high on this gullibility test.

I took the test:

Trump sold himself as a man of the common man. He appealed not only to the gullibility of a large enough segment of the population to win, but hid his true intention to become a ruthlessly cruel dictator throughout the campaign. He made his bigotry clear, but he never said “vote for me and I will destroy democracy” for everyone including most of you in my adoring audience.

If enough people decide that this isn’t what they want their country to be there’s a chance there will be enough blowback to lead to an active resistance that will derail his blitzkrieg to Trumpify America. It took the Allies four years to undo what the Nazis did following their blitzkrieg to take over Europe. Alas, it may take this long for democracy loving Americans to undo what Trump is doing.

Addendum (nothing to do with the above):

Trump’s supporters don’t care that he is a grandiose narcissist who needs to hang pictures like this in the White House. 

I just wonder what foreign leaders think about him when they see it. They don’t even have to be there in person as many stories are being published about it including this one in The Irish Star.

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MAGA minds soft as shit in a sneaker. By Hal M. Brown -- I doubt there are enough Little Dutch Boys to save us from a democracy demolishing dike disaster.

 

This morning I was talking on the phone to my good friend from back east where I used to live. We were discussing politics as we often do. She got into talking about how she finds it so puzzling and upsetting how people can worship Trump the way they do. Her own sister is one of these people. To say she’s smitten by Trump is an understatement. Then she used a term I’d never heard before. 

If you are a regular reader of my Substacks you know how I like descriptive alliterations, my own and when they are used on the main page of websites like HUFFPOST.

She said that these MAGA’s have minds as soft as shit in a sneaker.

Twice a week my partner, Ann, and I go over to her kid’s house and walk their little dog. Of course we always pick up her poop but the last time we walked her she went into some high grass and pooped there. Ann couldn’t find her deposit and pick it up with the poop bag. I told her to give up because nobody walked there. Then I recalled when there were no such things as doggie poop bags and people just let their dogs do their doody anywhere. I recalled the number of times I had the decidely unpleasant experience of stepping in dog doo.

Don’t say I don’t provide references in my Substack for your enlightenment:

Dog poop bags were invented in the mid-1980s as a way to clean up after dogs. They quickly became popular and are now a common sight in parks, on sidewalks, and in other public areas. While some people still prefer to use plastic grocery bags, most dog owners now use specialized poop bags that are made from biodegradable materials. (Reference)

MAGA minds can be described as soft meaning these people are gullible, get their news from far right media, lack the ability or inclination to engage in critical thinking, and when a few do try to get more information they succumb to confirmation bias.

In another way, their thinking isn’t soft, it is hard and rigid. Once they have an established constellation of beliefs which in sum confirm that Trump is a god and his actions are the best thing for themselves and the country they are not subject to change their minds.

Only drastic actions that they can attribute to Trump which hurt them personally may put a hole in the dike that holds back the flood of the destruction of the democracy they enjoy for themselves.

The story of the Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates, which includes the hole in the dike story (but only in some versions), isn’t where this tale originated. It is from from “Dr. Boli’s Fables for Children Who Are Too Old to Believe in Fables “where it was titled .“The Little Dutch Boy Who Saved Holland” (here).

Here’s how that fable begins:

ONCE THERE WAS a little Dutch boy who discovered a leak in the dike.

What should he do? From a single leak, a terrible breach might grow. The whole country could be flooded, and everyone he knew would drown.

So he did the only thing he could think of. He stuck his finger in the dike, and the leak stopped.

Of course, now he was stuck. He couldn’t move, because as soon as he did, the leak would start again.

So he stood there for quite some time. He was rather tired, and his finger felt a bit numb from the effort of holding back the North Sea, but he knew he was doing his duty.

Obviously I mean this to be a metaphor as, perhaps, the author of this did. Consider that as the story goes on the Burgomaster passes by, sees the boy and realizes he is stopping a catastrophe and tells him he will be rewarded but to stay there.

The story continues:

So the boy stood there with his finger in the dike for a few more days.

It was not long, however, before another leak sprang in the dike, a little bit farther down the way.

“What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Burghers. “There is another leak.”

“As private enterprise has so admirably solved the previous problem,” one of the Burghers responded, “the solution to this new leak is obvious. We need only persuade another heroic boy to stick his finger in it.”

So they went into the local school and found another boy who, after much persuasion, was willing to stick his finger in the dike.

It was, however, only a few days later that two more leaks appeared. This time it was much harder to persuade boys to stick their fingers in the holes; and when, a week later, half a dozen more leaks appeared, no volunteers were to be found.

When no boys would volunteer to plug the new holes more were forced to do this lest the dike collapse.

The story concludes:

“What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Council. “We have run out of heroic little boys. At this rate, we may have to plug the leaks with our own fingers.”

“That would be moderately inconvenient,” one of the Burghers remarked.

So the Council voted to remove the North Sea by digging a new seabed somewhere in Germany; and they voted themselves a number of solid gold spades, befitting their dignity, for the purpose. And if you go to suburban Wilhelmshaven right now, and look into the field to your right as you drive westward on the Friedenstrasse, you will see a number of Dutch burghers very busy with their spades, trying to dig a new bed for the North Sea. It is lucky for them that the people of Wilhelmshaven have mistaken the burghers for a party of archaeologists looking for ancient Saxon remains, which has allowed them to continue the work uninterrupted.

I see this as a metaphor for what we face today. There’s no one hero trying to save democracy. There are lots of us. But it remains to be seen whether there are enough.

Addendum:

The following is from this article about The Silver Skates:

The most famous part of Hans Brinker is actually far removed from both the A and B plots (or even the C plot surrounding the race). It is the famous story of the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the hole in the dike and saved his town. This incident is a folktale facsimile which is apparently based on nothing, but Dodge makes it feel so credible that she convinced whole generations this was an old story – despite appearing in the text only as an English school lesson. It took on a life of its own, and Dutch Genealogy did an interesting article on the topic.

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Trump & Co. have just blown by the "SPEED, NO LIMIT" sign on the road to tyranny, By Hal M. Brown

 

The Trump blitzkrieg smashed into the speed sign in their juggernaut to conquer democracy. They are now in the village where we live which is on the other side of the hill.

Maureen Dowd is not Walter Cronkite, who on Feb. 27, 1968 appeared on television and delivered an editorial claiming that the Vietnam War was “mired in stalemate.” (Read article). He was the most trusted news anchor in America, if not the most trusted person in the United States. LBJ knew that when you lost Walter Chonkite, you basically lost support of the country.

Certainly not everyone reads The New York Times. For one thing it requires a subscription to so unless you go to the library. There are many people who never even heard of Maureen Dowd. She became a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine in 2014. In 1999, Dowd received a Pulitzer Prize for her series of columns on the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. She has been a regular columnist for the Times since 1995.

Yesterday she wrote “Fail Ceasar,” a column well worth reading if you have subscription.

This is how she began her column:

“Remember, I can do whatever I want to whomever I want.”

It sounds like President Trump, to the world. But it was Caligula, to his grandmother.

At least America’s Emperor of Chaos has not made his horse a consul. Yet.

A horse might be better than some of the sketchy characters surrounding Trump.

After pillaging and gutting the U.S. government, the Western alliance and our relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump is thinking of himself as a king and cogitating on a third term. He basks in the magniloquent rhetoric of acolytes genuflecting to an instrument of divine providence.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, a group calling itself the “Third Term Project” erected a sign depicting Trump as Caesar. A wag on X wondered if they knew what happened to Caesar.

She concludes:

Many who had hoped to tune out Trump this time realize they don’t have that luxury. It’s far more dangerous now. There are frightening moments when our 236-year-old institutions don’t look up to the challenge. With flaccid Democrats and craven Republicans, King Donald can pretty much do whatever he wants to whomever he wants.

If you don’t have subscription you can read a summary of the column in RawStory in their article titled 'Far more dangerous': NY Times' Maureen Dowd shares terrifying realization.

If only Maureen Dowd was Walter Cronkite. If only the country had a Walter Cronkite. There is no single person with the ability to sway a large portion of the public to see the truth of what Trump is about to turn the country into.

To the contrary, many people in the media are still trying to minimze what he is doing. They try to cherry pick all the things that they think have been impediments to his turning the country into a dictatorship and they tell us that this means the blitzkrieg can be turned around. They won’t even call it a blitzkrieg, which means lightening war, even though it is an appropriate term because this is how the Nazis conquered Europe and parts of Russia. Their blitzkrieg could barely be slowed down, let alone stopped.

The optimists point to MAGA setbacks in court and public opinion polls showing an unprecedented low approval ratings for Trump and the things he is doing. They suggest that everyone contact their representatives in Congress. They advocate going to actual protests. Show Trump how many people are against him, but better hope no protests turn violent, or even lead to minor law breaking, since this will give Trump an excuse to declare martial law. 

The Meidas Touch Network YouTube channel announced it has more viewers than Fox News a few days ago. 

If you follow their news (see below) you might think we are winning the war against Trump and Trumpism:

Regarding the Trump & Co. rationale for many of their actions, I want to emphasize something I don’t think has been reported. I believe that the entire DOGE, anti-woke, and anti-DEI personnel purge is an attempt to rid agencies and departments of as many people as possible so they can be replaced by obedient foot soldiers. While some MAGA officials probably believe this is important, I am certain Trump, and possibly Musk, see ginning this up as being a means to an end. I also don’t see any strong belief with Trump that immigrants are really “poisoning the blood of the county.” Hitler might have this believed this about Jews, but I think this was a position heavily promoted by Trump to rally his troops into a fear fueled fever so they would support him.

In his Substack yesterday Robert Hubbell (Profile) wrote “Reflections on the news through the lens of hope.” The key word is “hope.” So many people, quite understandably, can’t cope with the levels of anxiety and despair that believing the country is about to turn to tryanny will lead to will cause. Just about every post in The Contrarian, the Substack started by Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen, lays out ways to fight the good fight against Trump. For good measure, to keep morale up they have recipes and a pet of the week - gotta keep that sense of optimism.

This is part of what Norm Eisen wrote in “Spring Training-for democracy:”

But there are stumbles too. Pitchers don’t have their pitches down. Batters are rusty and out of sync. Teams have made major personnel changes since the championship parade last November—but the new rosters haven’t quite gelled yet.

The same is true of the patriotic opposition to Donald Trump throughout the first month of his administration. Across the country, Trump’s illegal actions are being stopped by the courts, they’re being protested in the streets and questioned at increasing volumes in town halls. For every illegal action, pro-democracy lawyers and organizations (some bipartisan) are working to file multiple lawsuits and have multiple demonstrations against it. The coalition of pro-democracy forces has won many fights—but not all of them.

Take Friday. The coalition had three important wins: a judge issued a preliminary injunction against Trump’s anti-DEI policies, another court blocked DOGE out of Treasury, and SCOTUS refused to interfere with a lower court order reinstating a wrongly fired agency head. There was a loss too: a judge denied a preliminary injunction in one of the cases to protect USAID. And there were two new major lawsuits: AP sued the Trump administration over being unfairly banned from press pool access, and NYC sued over $80 million in FEMA funds being withheld. (h/t Ryan Goodman.)

Just like my Dodgers and everyone’s teams in spring training, it feels like democracy is still gelling; still working to hit its stride. Team Democracy will not triumph in every contest, although, on the whole, I thought Friday was a good day and fairly representative. (I can’t resist noting that our team at State Democracy Defenders Fund is undefeated so far in the dozen-plus cases we have filed or worked on in the past month. Remember, by subscribing to The Contrarian, you are supporting those legal efforts, in addition to enabling our journalistic efforts.)

He is keeping that optimism flame alive!

I received the image above via email asking for donations. I’m supposed to believe that Trump and Musk are really shaking in their boots. It says it’s a miracle, IT’S A MIRACLE!”. I don’t believe in miracles. If a highly contagious lethal virus which only infected psychopaths became a pandemic, I might might change my mind about this. 

Joyce Vance titles her Substack today “A little Morning happiness” and has three photos of her chickens. She prefaces her photo essay with “There has been too much news lately to take a night off, which means I’ve been hearing, increasingly, from some of you who want a few chicken pictures to interrupt the doomscrolling. So here you go.” I can appreciate the need to take a break to keep one from desending into a pit of anxiety and despair. She concludes: “Back to serious things: In case you missed it, last night’s piece on the Friday Night Massacre in the military is an important one and the Kash Patel piece provides some important context about the confirmation of prior FBI Directors that can be helpful in explaining why this confirmation was both wrong and a serious departure from how Directors are selected and confirmed.”

There are exceptions to those who are downplaying how Trump’s juggernaut is damn near unstoppable. One is Sabrina Haake who writes a Substack called The Haake Take. In her column “Dear President Zelenskyy” she concludes by predicting violence in our homeland:

As the world’s wealthiest men team up to impose maximum harm on the world by embracing Nazism and partnering with Putin, one of the world’s most lethal dictators, please take heart. It’s obvious violence is coming to the US, but America will sort itself out. We always do the right thing, as Churchill reportedly said, after other possibilities have been exhausted.

I close here in shared weariness in knowing there really are evil men in the world who will do anything for power and wealth. Also, in sympathy and apology, heartbroken for both our countries, but not defeated.

Read the most recent Haake Take :

Trump has just fired top generals. He knows he has to control the military to achieve his dictatorial goals.

Kash Patel has reassigned something like a thousand FBI agents from DC to offices around the country. These are senior agents who made their way to the DC office because they were the best of the best. No doubt they will be replaced by agents, people with guns and the power to break down doors and arrest people, with Trump loyalists. Some of them may be members of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, or J6 insurrectionists.

It is debatable whether members of the military swear an oath to not only obey the Constitution, but also to follow orders from the President. It could be argued that obeying the Constitution takes precedence over obeying the President when he issues an unconstitutional order. (More about this here.)

If a soldier defies a order because it is considered by them to be unconstitutional, I doubt the new JAG officers in the different branches will look kindly on this. Hegseth has fired not only top generals, but also the top military lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force (reference).

Congress has been neutered. The Republican members are so desperate to hold onto their positions that they are willing to bend at the knee for Trump. Those up for reelection in two years think Trump, and Musk with his money, can make sure they lose a primary. They don’t want to admit that there might not even be a free election in two years. There might not be a functioning Congress. 

If Trump has his way, within two years the three co-equal branches of government won’t exist with each one acting to restrain the other, and as intended by the Founders, keeping the country from becoming a monarchy.

We still don’t know what will happen if the Supreme Court issues a major ruling limiting Trump’s imperial power. My hunch is that he will defy the order and dare them to do anything about it. Of course, they can’t. Trump controls all the means to enforce federal law.

If Trump has his way the only law enfocement left in the country will be local police departments and state National Guard units. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this could end up in a kind of civil war. When we go to our granddaughters indoor soccer games in the winter we drive by a large Oregon National Guard facility with lines of military vehicles outside. I’ve said to my partner that I could see a time when they were deployed to the Idaho border to protect our state from their National Guard which Trump and Hegseth ordered to take over Portland and other cities in the state because they are sanctuary cities. (Reference)

If only we were merely on the road to becoming a country like we were under English rule before the War for Independence. Compared to Trump, King George III, imperialist that he was, was a sweetheart.

On Friday I wrote “We’re on the road to tyranny” using the illustration which you see I modified for this Substack.

In just two days the actions from Trump & Co. led me to revise this image and so it will illustrate my title. It is meant to show a cloud of exhaust from the Trump tyranny blitzkrieg just having gone over the horizon. It is out of sight there, but it really has just begun to take over the village on the other side of the hill. The village is us.

As I finish writing this I have MSNBC on.

They are talking about how important it is to take everything Trump says and does seriously. They say we must not dismiss his words as hyperbole. Michael Steele said that we need “militant democracy.” I suggest that the last time militant democracy against a power as formidible as Trumpism was successful was in World War II.