Letters from an American: April 28, 2024
Senior GOP are not 'challenging democracy' but are working to forcibly impose an autocratic Christian Theocracy across the US which will be violent and intolerant of opposition. Bill Barr, Trump's criminal Attorney General, is a lead figure in this movement. His actions include repeated and gross misinterpretations (or, interpretations of convenience) for our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Heather Cox Richardson's attached commentary speaks to this well.
In November 2019, in a speech to the right-wing Federalist Society, Barr ignored the Declaration of Independence, which is a list of complaints against King George III, to argue that Americans had rebelled in 1776 not against the king, but rather against Parliament. In the modern world, Barr argued, Congress has grown far too strong. The president should be able to act on his own initiative and not be checked by either congressional or judicial oversight.
That theory is known as the theory of the “unitary executive,” and it says that because the president is the head of one of the three unique branches of government, any oversight of that office by Congress or the courts is unconstitutional, although in fact presidents since George Washington have accepted congressional oversight.
In April 2020, to justify his demands for states to reopen in the face of the deadly pandemic, Trump told reporters, “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total….” Now, in 2024, Trump’s lawyers are in court arguing that the president has criminal immunity for his behavior in the White House, possibly including his right to order the executions of those he sees as enemies.
Trump’s ‘total authority’ during the pandemic has been well documented to have been directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of unnecessary COVID related deaths, suffering and expanded disability to include from Long COVID among Americans with a focus on people of color and those more impoverished; both white and Black Americans.
All the while, the American media sat in Trump’s clown show weekly COVID press conferences (most of them did, anyway) and allowed this to happen. Transcribed Trump’s recommendations to inject bleach or use Ivermectin instead of seeking authentic medical care as he did when he contracted COVID, himself.
But the media sat afraid to afraid to challenge what amounted to mass manslaughter led by Trump and aided and abetted by the GOP and his then growing hard Right Cult.
The time for change is now as it can — it will — still get far, far worse.
Every action taken by America’s Christian theocrats in waiting, every piece of incredible cruelty ranging from Ron DeSantis’ denying federal funding for children's food programs and incredibly dangerous and deadly attacks on women's reproductive health to political assaults on public education/public school curriculum and LGBTQ/trans Americans to especially include children, are —component pieces of this move towards an eventual American Christian theocracy.
This is all very real. While the media keeps America transfixed on the violent insurrectionist criminal, Trump, his histrionics, salacious stories and really bad wig, America’s Christian Taliban are able to operate in full view and with little challenge.
This is the primary reason why evangelicals and American Christian fundamentalists continue to support, even if it seems to be imperceivable, the criminal Trump’s potential second presidency. To regain power and free himself of his multiple indictments, Trump will follow their orders and, probably, do about anything. I wrote years ago that I see Trump as ready to bid for the contract to build the first sets of Concentration Camps targeting American citizens. Doesn’t seem so far fetched anymore, does it?
So many Americans continue to dismiss and/or laugh all this off at our individual risk and nation’s great peril. Trump is their deadly idiot front who’s well known and repeated calls for targeted executions could quickly become real and enforced. That Trump clearly appears to be experiencing progressive early dementia makes his role even more dangerous as these others will cover for him while acting on his behalf.
When Trump's attorneys argue in front of a deeply dysfunctional, amoral and unethical Christian fundamentalist SCOTUS that political assassination could be considered a presidential act, they are not using this analogy lightly or figuratively but quite literally.
Take them seriously - it's not a joke.
A question I haven’t heard much considered is that if Trump’s push for ‘unconditional immunity,’ where about everything a President does on ‘behalf’ of the Office is bought into at about any level by SCOTUS, Biden would then be fully within his right to arrest and jail Trump due to the threat he poses to our nation and our Democracy combined with his record of violent incitement and treason.
Why not? Maybe The Biden White House should put any opening SCOTUS is likely to give Trump to an immediate test.
A key question should Trump regain the White House is if the US military would be as complacent as the GOP Christian theocrats believe. If the US military would simply and blindly act on their unlawful and criminal orders to move against American citizens. I think not, but that could also change
Good and thoughtful Americans of either party, those who are religious and those who are not, must absolutely take what's happening seriously. We need to truly start organizing ourselves for this eventuality. And this included were Biden to win an undeniable victory margin.
Our nation, American citizens and our nation’s future is at risk in ways that are perhaps greater and even more dangerous than that of our Civil War period
More soon….