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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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This is going to backfire in a big way. Whole lot of people seem to think this will be justice porn or somehow convince his base of his criminality but it is going to do no such thing. According to one poll, the majority (77%) of likely GOP primary voters are already convinced the trial is "politically motivated", with only 8% more concerned about him attempting to overturn an election. You can take a look at some polling here, there are other even more troublesome results as well: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-poll-indictments-2023-08-20/
No matter how awful, contradictory, and ridiculous he will be in that court room, this is likely going to be a massive boon for Trump, and his followers are going to see it as the realization of their own fears of persecution. This man is an ascendant fascist leader, not the sad sack finally facing consequences that liberals so desperately want him to be, and the effect this will have on mobilizing his base to continue to escalate will be immense. These people do not give a single fuck about """law and order""" no matter how much they pretend they do, stop assuming they will just accept things when he is found guilty. They won't.
I'm just trying to help people realize how dangerous and precarious this whole situation is. People were laughing and making jokes when he first announced his candidacy, and kept on doing it right up to the point that he won the election. Don't make the same mistake again, because while yall are cracking jokes, him and his ghouls are hurting people. They are passing discriminatory laws, they are in the supreme court setting dangerous precedents and overturning inconvenient ones, and they are patrolling the streets looking for people to brutalize and throw in jail. They are committing hate crimes and becoming increasingly radicalized and mobilized.
Stop pretending this is entertainment or business as usual, it's not. I'm begging you to understand that the fascists are already here, and the longer they're underestimated the better their chances of seizing control.
I really feel the important part of this trial is whether at the end he's barred from the ballots. If he's allowed to run it doesn't really matter who wins. His candidacy alone would show the rule of law and democracy has failed. That's the final, dim hope i cling to, that he will be barred from running. If he isn't, and runs? Thats when i will know for sure it is already as you said, that fascism is already here and democracy is dead.
Even if he's barred, I don't imagine anyone winning the GOP primary without a pledge to pardon him once elected. Beyond that, it seems that people really do not want to consider the very real possibility of a coup or jail break. Every time these fucks escalate there's a chorus of wilfully ignorant liberals bleating about "who could have seen this coming???" and every time there have been people like me begging them to take the threat seriously and to stop imagining there will be some moment when they finally see reason and accept defeat. The democratic strategy for opposing fascism seems to be just never losing another election, and somehow think throwing their most vulnerable constituents under the bus and catering to republicans and the mythical undecided voter is going to grow their lead enough to make that happen.
I'm saying all this not to frighten people but to try to wake them up to the reality of the threat we face, because right now we're sleepwalking into fascists seizing power.
I agree. As one of the Democrats left behind in their rightward lurching i feel (quite painfully, tbh) how the party seems more interested in bringing moderate Republicans into the fold more than they want folks like me who have been here all along. Their practice of giving money to Republican extremists with the express purpose of running against them in the general tells me they wish to use fascism to their benefit rather than stomp it out as they claim.