This is Why Trump Keeps Doubling Down on His Coup

By now, you’ve heard the details of Trump’s infamous phone call. The one where he asks Georgia’s Secretary of State to “find” 11,780 votes, exactly the number needed to win the State. The one where Trump not so subtly hints at jail time if he doesn’t. What the?
Come on, my friend. The only people left in America who can pretend to be oh so shocked at this turn of events are maybe Ezra Klein, Jake Tapper, Chris Hayes, and the rest of the white-boy pundit-fraternity. Anyone else, on the other hand, who’s been living on planet earth for the last, oh, four years, should and could have seen this coming miles away.
Trump was never going to concede. He was always going to concede his coup right down to the bitter end. Why? That is who he is. That is what authoritarians and fascists do. The only question has been: where exactly would the line of “the bitter end” finally be drawn?
Pundits are already proclaiming the leak of this phone call as some kind of triumph of American democracy. Institutions are working, they cry. What? Are they high? That a head of state can demand election results from a local secretary of state at all is a major, major, calamitous breakdown in democratic norms, rules, codes, and precedents. Whether or not he gets what he wants is yet another one. But make no mistake: in working countries, heads of state do not call officials up, and demand election results.
Why not?
Let me put the question another way. Why is Trump assaulting American democracy — right down to, again, the bitter end? Right down to his final hours in office? Why won’t he stop? Is he delusional? Crazy? Insane? He might be all of those things, and he probably is, but those have no bearing on this situation whatsoever.
Trump is assaulting American democracy right down to his final hours in office because he can. Now, that’s not an answer I like to give. It’s a very American answer. Often, an easy, superficial one. But in this case, it is the most accurate one. What does it mean?
Why don’t heads of state in functioning societies abuse their powers the way that Trump has done? Because they have been stopped, usually, long before this point.
In functioning societies, an authoritarian’s pattern of escalating abuses of power, transgressions of norms, violations of codes, breaking of actual laws, is met with just the response it deserves. Not just contempt and fury — but action.
The opposition tries the head of state — over and over again. The people take to the streets — in a large-scale strike. The media and intellectuals demand the resignation not just of the head of state, but of his entire administration — and then the media and intellectuals and people all press for these rogue elements to face justice.
What is justice, exactly, in the case of a head of state trying to overthrow a democracy and turn it authoritarian? It is justice that meets each specific kind of injustice like for like. For the violations of cultural codes, the party in power is met with cultural contempt and disgrace. For the transgressions of social norms, the head of state and party is shunned and repudiated. For the breaking of laws, the head of state and his party are prosecuted, harder than any common criminal would be, much harder, because their abuse is that much greater.
None of that has happened in America. I know that if you’re a certain kind of person, a good white liberal, you think it has. But it hasn’t. Members of the Trump Administration are going to go on to fine sinecures, well-paid, cushy jobs, at “lobbying groups,” “thinktanks,” and every other kind of corrupt organisation under the sun. They are not going to face social opprobrium, but are going to appear every single night on CNN and Faux News as various kinds of “analysts.” Like Sean Spicer, they will get paid vacations with fancy titles at Harvard.
Trump is pushing American democracy to breaking point right down to his final hours in office because he knows he can. There are no consequences whatsoever. Nothing matters in America. He knows that he can push American democracy right down to the last second of the last minute of his term — and so what? — nobody is coming for him.
So why wouldn’t he?
You see, a coup, as I’ve pointed out in the past, can succeed in more than one way. The most overt and highest level of success is the outright seizure of power. But that only happens in about half of all coups. The authoritarian can settle for a consolation prize, which is well worth the effort: corroding democracy. Weakening it severely. For next time.
The authoritarian is an abuser, and he follows the abuser’s mental logic. If I can’t have her, nobody can. I will destroy her, end her, before I let anyone else have her. So it is with nations. If Trump can’t have America, he’s more than happy to burn it down to the point that nobody can. And that is the purpose of pushing American democracy to whatever breaking he point he can.
Every minute, every second, that Trump is allowed to spend attacking on American democracy might look ridiculous and absurd and comical to you. But it is not. It has a very, very specific purpose. It is corroding trust. It is eating away at norms. It is setting precedents that the GOP is sure to follow. It’s solidifying the impression in the minds of all those American Idiots that the election was stolen from Trump. It’s legitimising the hate, stupidity, violence, and brutality of the last four years for millions of people.
In other words, every minute, every second, that these attacks go on, they are doing something deeply inimical and sinister and especially violent. They are creating a culture and politics of authoritarianism. They are normalising and legitimising it for millions of Americans. They are building power and nerve centres both for the next coup — groups of true believers, legal arguments, conspiracy theories. “Hey, man! Trump won! He won Georgia by 12,000 votes!” “I know! They stole it from us!!” You see what I mean. The resentment and entitlement and rage simmer for the next four years. And violence, stupidity, and brutality — authoritarianism’s not-so-secret ingredients — emerge that much the stronger, more concentrated, more abundant, distilled, poisonous.
Trump is attacking American democracy because he can.
Let me give you the perspective of much of the rest of the world. They are baffled at the weakness of the Democrats. Biden and Harris have announced, at this point, that they won’t prosecute Trump, his family, and members of his administration.
Why? They want the nation to “heal,” and their theory of how a democracy heals is that you play nice with fascists and authoritarains, try to brush their abuses of power under the rug, and hope that people simply forgive and forget.
In other words, they are willing to give a free pass to all of the following abuses of power. Concentration camps, kids in cages in them, “family separations,” which are a form of genocide, threatening to declare martial law, ordering a Gestapo to beat moms in the streets — I could go on for pages and pages. The list of abuses of power to prosecute is endless. That is America’s great task.
https://mi.instructure.com/eportfolios/9066/Home/Monster_Hunter_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://cosn.instructure.com/eportfolios/1542/Home/Monster_Hunter_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://rmit.instructure.com/eportfolios/29102/Home/Monster_Hunter_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://mi.instructure.com/eportfolios/9074/Home/Demon_Slayer_Mugen_Train_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://cosn.instructure.com/eportfolios/1543/Home/Demon_Slayer_Mugen_Train_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://rmit.instructure.com/eportfolios/29106/Home/Demon_Slayer_Mugen_Train_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://mi.instructure.com/eportfolios/9081/Home/Wonder_Woman_1984_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://cosn.instructure.com/eportfolios/1544/Home/Wonder_Woman_1984_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://rmit.instructure.com/eportfolios/29110/Home/Wonder_Woman_1984_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://mi.instructure.com/eportfolios/9083/Home/Soul_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://cosn.instructure.com/eportfolios/1545/Home/Soul_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://rmit.instructure.com/eportfolios/29114/Home/Soul_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://mi.instructure.com/eportfolios/9087/Home/The_Midnight_Sky_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://cosn.instructure.com/eportfolios/1546/Home/The_Midnight_Sky_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://rmit.instructure.com/eportfolios/29116/Home/The_Midnight_Sky_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://mi.instructure.com/eportfolios/9091/Home/We_Can_Be_Heroes_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://cosn.instructure.com/eportfolios/1547/Home/We_Can_Be_Heroes_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://rmit.instructure.com/eportfolios/29118/Home/We_Can_Be_Heroes_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://mi.instructure.com/eportfolios/9096/Home/Tenet_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://cosn.instructure.com/eportfolios/1548/Home/Tenet_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://rmit.instructure.com/eportfolios/29121/Home/Tenet_HD_FULLMOVIE_Movie_Online_Free_2020
https://www.ku.lt/vipanetwork/index.php/community/profile/wonder-woman-full-movie/
https://www.ku.lt/vipanetwork/index.php/community/profile/the-midnight-sky-full-movie/
https://www.ku.lt/vipanetwork/index.php/community/profile/soul-full-movie-online/
https://www.ku.lt/vipanetwork/index.php/community/profile/tenet-full-movie-online/
https://www.ku.lt/vipanetwork/index.php/community/profile/ma-rainey-s-black-bottom-full-movie/
https://www.ku.lt/vipanetwork/index.php/community/profile/coming-2-america-full-movie-online/
https://www.ku.lt/vipanetwork/index.php/community/profile/the-christmas-chronicles-part-two-full-movie/
https://www.ku.lt/vipanetwork/index.php/community/profile/klaus-full-movie-online/
https://www.ku.lt/vipanetwork/index.php/community/profile/monster-hunter-full-movie-online/
https://famoci3140.medium.com/doing-the-right-thing-feels-awful-454a6d7d17bd
https://www.guest-articles.com/education/doing-the-right-thing-feels-awful-05-01-2021
https://www.thewyco.com/travel-books/doing-the-right-thing-feels-awful-05-01-2021
https://www.cryptoliveleak.org/?p=433446
https://onlinegdb.com/tf8Gem_MV
https://jsfiddle.net/e51xocdk/
https://pastelink.net/2h37q
https://paiza.io/projects/jO-T6oH9KDS9wckBLnY5_A
https://ideone.com/SJ4ml6
https://paste.ee/p/4SasT
https://paste.toolforge.org/view/5a062940
https://pasteio.com/xmQgOWlNAhjk
https://cox.tribe.so/user/dsfgdsgsfdgs
https://www.hybrid-analysis.com/sample/171282c775d35eccb34b9d93b830966fd8a2e3828351688a69f49a213402cd3e
https://blog.goo.ne.jp/tyadelia/e/755ea037a9bcf20118899bb66b67028c
http://network-marketing.ning.com/profiles/blogs/6410128:BlogPost:12653759
http://www.onfeetnation.com/profiles/blogs/6595159:BlogPost:21538738
https://webhitlist.com/forum/topics/6368021:Topic:19869033
https://caribbeanfever.com/photo/albums/y-124
https://dcm.shivtr.com/forum_threads/3273863?post=14479925#forum_post_14479925
http://www.4mark.net/story/3029009/monster-hunter-hd-full-movie-movie-online-free-2020-home-monster-hunter-hd-full-movie-movie-online-free-2020
http://officialguccimane.ning.com/photo/albums/3685062:Album:51844581
https://www.peeranswer.com/question/5ff41c4476c1c4245583ca39
Why? Because that is how societies truly defeat fascist and authoritarian movements. How do you think Germany recovered from Nazism? By handing the Nazis flowers, and telling Jews to forget? The Nazis were tr