What will happen if Trump gets medieval... or has he already done this? By Hal M. Brown

 When I was a kid we had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica that I used to read books choosing volumes at random. There was one entry that really got to me. It was about medieval torture methods and devices. It had lots of pictures. The one device that haunted me and which I even had bad dreams about being used on me was the iron maiden. 

Watching the news yesterday where a commentor was describing how Joni Ernst doubled down on her “everyone’s going to die” comment (reference) that “the cruelty is the point.” Of course this has been an often used description of Trump policies. Trump has given permission for the likes of Ernst to be as mean as she is.

I got to thinking about how Trump was lashing out with ever more unrestrained vengeance against his enemies in words and deeds. Then I thought of medieval torturers and the phrases about getting medieval came to mind. 

You can read about the origin and popularization of the term get medieval (or git medieval) here. It is sometimes phrased as someone going medieval. This is how the Urban Dictionary defines it:

From the movie Pulp Fiction, one of the most feared characters stated his henchmen would "go medieval on yo' ass", which basically was a way of saying his men would click out on the men being threatened. To go medieval means to become savagely violent without restraint, similar to how we imagine those in the savage, unrestrained medieval times would respond to someone who had done them wrong.

Watch video.

I was thinking about Trump going medieval and then began to consider what it would be like if he went even more medieval than he already has.

For example, consider what he’s already done in such a short time.

Start with the fairly benign tax war he started…

and about the unprecedented monetization of the presidency for his personal enrichment…

he’s not just ignored and defied the courts, but he’s attacked and insulted judges so some fear for their personal safety…

add his alienation of our allies…

as well as his abandonment of Ukraine (while insulting its leader)…

throw in his appointment of incompetent toadies to run and ruin so many branches of government we depend on, turning some like the DOJ and FBI into his personal army…

and then there’s the DOGE/Musk decimation of life saving programs from USAID to medical research to NOAA and FEMA…

and the soon to be put on the chopping block Medicaid and Medicare…

with Trump it’s if you cross me, since I can’t literally cut your flesh and bleed you dry with a knife, I’ll do it by cutting your federal funds…

and let’s end with the unleashing of ICE to terrorize the country. The latest and worst example occurred yesterday in a San Diego restaurant. See: ‘This was bananas’: Rachel Maddow floored by ICE raid gone ‘horribly wrong'

Excerpt:

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow unloaded on Trump-era immigration agents while blasting what she described as a bungled and militarized ICEraid in San Diego that left the community stunned.

“This was bananas,” Maddow said during the opening minutes of her show Monday night. According to the MSNBC host, "multiple clown cars" of agents in “full battle rattle with helmets and long guns and flak jackets and goggles and masks” stormed a San Diego restaurant on Friday.

“Looking like they were going to repel out of helicopters into the Tora Bora cave complex to fight al-Qaeda,” Maddow told viewers. “These guys, dressed like this, run into a neighborhood Italian restaurant and reportedly handcuffed the entire crew working at the restaurant, everybody inside.”

She said the raid ended with busboys and waiters arrested while stunned neighbors demanded answers.

Trump has put our democracy on a medieval rack. 

He is stretching it. Muscles are tearing, bones are breaking. It’s in the iron maiden.

He’s doing this and he’s not particularly angry yet. 

What will happen when the mad king goes truly mad? 

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With Trump's ordering his armed thugs to emulate the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or the Waffen-SS, we might as well call the country the USSA. By Hal M. Brown There could be 10 million cold-hearted people diagnosable as psychopaths in the country to take jobs in Trump's SS.

 There are updates to this on Substack.

I made the SS illustration above by adding a U and an A to an SS. The motto of the SS was telling in the context of today's Trump regime. It was Meine Ehre heißt Treue. This translates to My honor is loyalty. Of course their loyalty was to Adolph Hitler. Certainly not all, but some of Trump’s armed thugs, whether in ICE or other so-federal law enforcement agencies, are loyal not to the Constitution despite taking an oath to uphold it. They are loyal, like the Nazis, to one person. That person is Donald J. Trump.

The Trump SS are not upholding the law unless you consider Trump’s law, “The Law.”

They are not what I’d call real cops who protect, serve, and enforce the law. A real cop may write you a speeding ticket, hopefully making you a safer driver, but they also protect you from real ciminals. They get drunk drivers off the road. They help you if you’re in a traffic accident or if someone breaks into your house. 

If your child is doesn’t come home from school you call your local police. You don’t call ICE unless you think they were arrested in a raid. I wouldn’t be confident that you’d get a reassuring response in the later case.

The people who may or may not be members of violent gangs are being treated like they are bloodthirsty beasts who, were they not chained and bent over, might turn and rip the throats out of their captors. Who wants to treat fellow human beings this way?

Whenever I see pictures, like the one below, of an ICE officer wearing POLICE on their uniform it enrages me because they don’t deserve to be called police.

I take this personally because I have had lots of experience with the police. This is because I was an auxiliary police officer for 20 years in two different cities.

I feel strongly about this because I knew dozens of police officers. In the two departments where I was an auxiliary officer I rode with regular officers countless times. What we did most of the time on late night shifts was look for drunk drivers. In Mason, Michigan our department was honored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving with their Lifesaver Award twice. As a psychotherapist one of my specialities was police stress. I had the number one website about this for years, Police Stressline, and some of my articles were published in police magazines.

Today the ultimate boss of federal law enforcement has broken, bent, or ignored the law. He is their role model. They not only don’t have an incentive to consider that what they are doing defies the Constitution, but that there would be swift retribution if they refused to follow an unconstitutional or illegal order. As for them being a decent person who feels empathy for everyone except the most brutal criminals? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Trump has a group of people roaming the country with guns many of whom have charateristics which would fit the textbook defintion of being psychopaths. So do their bosses.

Studies show that 1-3% of the US population (3% of men) are psychopaths. While this may seem like a small number, if we say the total population is around 350 million this adds up to over 10 million people. There are certainly enough of them to take jobs in one of Trump’s SS agencies.

Addendum:

This is related to this Substack: Combine DOGE and ICE and we could have an American Gestapo armed with both guns and computers. Trump could be Hitler with a giant mainframe database of undesirables who are poisoning the blood of America.

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