A Desperate President. A Secret Police. This is How Trump Steals the Next Election.
Jul 21, 2020
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Masked men. No badges. Carrying machine guns. In unmarked vans. Snatching people at will.On American streets.
In case you haven’t heard, “federal officers” were recently sent to Portland. Nancy Pelosi described them, more accurately, as “stormtroopers.”
And there, these heavily armed men began beating and gassing…Moms. That’s right, they began using chemical agents on…groups of mothers, who were simply marching and protesting together, creating a human barrier to protect other protestors, shouting, “Feds stay clear! Moms are here!” Then they proceeded to abduct people, in unmarked cars, simply plucking them off the streets, taking them…who knows where. A veteran asked them to remember their oaths — andtheybroke his hand. They weren’t wearing badges — and for a time, nobody much knew who they were.
It turned out that they’d been sent on the order of —who else— Donald Trump.They were “agents” ofthe ominously named “Homeland Security.” But now its force was being used against…regular Americans…simply walking down their very own streets,while their friends and family scream in horror. What the?
That should chill you, right down to your bone. If it doesn’t yet,I don’t know what to tell you.“Federal agents” ordered to abduct people, arrest them, intimidate them, beat them, and gas them for no apparent reason, onthe orders of a demagogue, aspiring tyrant, his minions?
Here’s something else that should chill you further.These heavily armed men are now being deployed to a city near you. Maybe the one you live in. Chicago. Philadelphia. Baltimore. New York. The “policy” was “so successful” in Portland, that it’s beingtaken nationwide.
Wait, what?Are American cities on the brink of anarchy? Are there groups of armed terrorists roaming the avenues? Then what reason is there to send in men with gas and machine guns to occupy the streets?
There’s every reason, unfortunately. This is the part where I tell you that your worst fears are coming true.It’s time to think the unthinkable.
Connect the dots for a moment. You’re a President who’s tanking in the polls.Your negligence and recklessness arebecoming impossible to ignore, even, finally, to some of theArmy of Idiots that backs you. You’re getting nervous. Worried. Anxious.
There’s an election coming up, in six short months. A crucial one.Win it — and you,the authoritarian, keep power, probably for life. You hand it down to your weirdly dead-eyed kids. Lose it — and you lose everything. You live in infamy and disgrace forever, your name cursed and spat upon by generations to come. Everything — everything — hinges on the next six months.
You only know how to do one thing well. Bully. Intimidate. Frighten. Terrorize.You’ve done it all your life.With women. With the press. With underlings. In business deals. And you’ve learned, over the last four years, that it’s not so hard to terrorize an entirenation, too. That’s why you’vefollowed one transgression with an even bigger one. One shock with an even bigger one. You know that blitzkrieg works. Mein Kampf is your favorite book.
You wonder, your brow furrowing.You think you’re thinking, but you were always only going to do one thing, because doing that one thing is all you know how to do. Terrorize. Force. Create fear and panic. Then, maybe, you can frighten people back into line. Into the place they belong. Which is either backing you —or being too frightened to vote at all.
Who’s going to vote if you make it terrifying enough to just walk down the street?If there are men in camouflage carrying machine guns checking papers on every city block? Who drive unmarked cars and don’t wear badges, and can whisk you off to nowhere for any reason at all?
If people can be disappeared, you reason, they’ll be scared.Scared enough that you have a chance again. Of winning that crucial election, which is everything.Power, for life. A dynasty. A whole country, to prey on, and own,to abuse and degrade— just like you’ve done to everyone foolish enough to back you.
You smile. You know exactly what to do now.
Send in the Stormtroopers.
Over the last few years, you’ve done something that Gaddafi, Saddam, Stalin, Kim would all have admired.A time-honored step inturning a nation authoritarian. You’ve built your very own SS and Gestapo. What made the SS different from your average grunt? They were ideologically committed to the mission. They were the hardcore of the hardcore. Willing to put it all on the line for the Reich, the ultimate objective of racial purity —personally pledged to the Fuhrer. Extreme violence? Who cared? The people they were hurting weren’t really people anyways — such went the illogic of the mind of the SS officer.The Fuhrer demanded it.
You’ve built just such a paramilitary of your very own.You’ve cultivated a dedicated following amongst the “agents” at “Homeland Security.” The very name of the institution seemed to have beendesigned with a figure like youin mind. Now, it seems, many of its agents — enough — have a kind of cultish devotion to both you, personally, and to your mission of making America aracially pure ethno-state. They’re the ones who throw kids in concentration camps, after all — happily. Who can really do that — but someone who’s moral core has been swapped out and replaced with a facsimile of your nonexistent one?
You frown. Blood rushes to your face. Your shock troopers are going to teach them a lesson.Allof them.Not justthe hated minorities, this time — who they’ve been hunting in the streets. But even the ones who think they’re“real” Americans. They’re not going to know what’s hit them. Your shock troopers are going to dominate their battlespace — which is what you’re going to make American cities. They’re going to learn the hard way how strong you are, that you must be admired, feared, respected.Or else.
Adrenalin surges through you. The rush curdles your mouth curdles into a bitter grin.
Howdumb are Americans, anyways? It’s so easy to terrorize them, because it’s so easy to outwit them.Even now, they don’t call your concentration camps…concentration camps,even though every good scholar of atrocity and holocaust has begged them to. To the dumb-as-rocks American — not just the ones that make up your Idiot Army, but even many of the so-called good ones in the resistance, “concentration camps” don’t really exist. Neither do any of the other things you’ve done — bans, raids, purges — whichconstitute the classical checklist and sequence of fascism.
America’s a nation indeep, deep denialabout what it’s going through, which is a fascist implosion.About what you are — which is a proud fascist. So how would it see an SS and Gestapo coming?How would it know what to do? How would it respond with anything other than shock and fear — which is exactly what you want.
Your chuckle turns into a grin. You’ve done everything —everything— in your powerto tell Americans you were a real-deal fascist.From putting kids into cages to banning ethnicities to sending in your elite shock troops to hunt the hated.
Now those elite shock troops are going to hunt… “real” Americans. The ones who dare to resist you, challenge you.
They’d better learn their lesson. If you’re not one of us — stay silent.Stay afraid.We own this society now. It belongs to us.
That’s the lesson the shock troops are there to teach. You’re pretty confident Americans will learn it.
You think of how youliterallytold them you keep a copy of Mein Kampf at your bedside. Whatelsecould you have done to signal that you were a fascist? Howdumb and easy to exploitarethese people?
Your base certainly understood the signal — and rewarded you with arock solid bulwark of support.But those who claimed to resist you? You laugh, in contempt.They still won’t say fascist. All those New York Times columnists and CNN pundits. There you were,putting kids in cagesand sending shock troops to hunt the hated. No Sir! No fascism here, they kept telling their audience of hundreds of millions. As a result, the final crucial element in the recipe you needed to take over a country was born. Not shock troops — but something even more silent, and more corrosive.Denial.
You know that the best friend you have isn’t even the Idiot Army which will back you right into oblivion —which will let its kids die of a new plague for you. Your best friend?It’s the denial of the good person.The good American, still crying, “Butit’snot happening here. It isn’t! I’m telling you!”
They’ll still be crying that, you reckon,whileyour shock troops occupy their streets. You can’t quite say why or how. Why they can’t see fascism while itliterally occupies their neighbourhoods. Who knows — and who cares? The point for you is that they can’t. And for that very reason, they’re going to be shocked, terrified, surprised, when those shock troops arrive. Shocked and terrified into submission and silence, is your bet.
You raise a glass to yourself.And then, halfway up to your tiny lips, you stop.
Your brow furrows. What if there’s another one of the damned legal challenges? What if the courts decide it’s not permissible? Then you look weak. And that can’t be allowed.
Your porcine lips curl into a smile again.The courts blocked your ethnic bans, too — the first time. And by the third time, it passed, and nobody much noticed or cared.The courts never stopped you from throwing kids into cages. Courts? You laugh, in scorn.They impeached you for a bribe— which nobody cared about — not your real high crimes,the ones the last living Nuremberg Prosecutor said amounted to crimes against humanity, like building camps where children are separated from their parents and kept in cages. A bribe! LOL. You laugh, in hate. Spittle flies from your mouth. Your face turns red in rage.
You’ll just keep trying, and trying, and trying. Until, at last, you do.You do occupy the streets with shock troops. Until the people who were too foolish to see that all this is fascism —and many of whom still are— are terrified of putting a foot wrong. Until everyone knows their place. With you, behind you, below you — or silent, frightened, and cowed.
You have six months left to pull it off.The greatest heist in modern history.Can you steal a Presidency?
You look at a picture of your shock troops.Men with rippling muscles, wearing camouflage, garbed in armor. Carrying machine guns, dripping with weapons. Something like love cuts through you.
It’s not love. You’ve never been able to feel that.It’s the closest you’re ever going to get.A kind of desperate need to hurt and hate. A sick and insatiable craving for power. A terrible lust for violence. You call the consequences of all that that being loved. What it really is is fear, terror, numbness.
You smile, and take a drink.
They’ll learn to love you,in the end.
UmairJuly 2020
