An ex-MAGA activist warns “no civic savior is coming” as Donald Trump’s cognitive decline becomes undeniable
What if Donald Trump defeats President Biden and takes control of the White House in 2025? He has already announced his plans to become the country’s first dictator, and to launch a reign of terror and revenge against his so-called enemies. As detailed in documents such as Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere, the infrastructure is being created right now to put Trump’s neofascist plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy in effect on “day one." The so-called resistance will not have the courtesy of ramping up or mobilizing to stop Dictator Trump’s onslaught. It will be a “shock and awe” campaign visited upon the American people.
Dictator Trump’s reign of terror will be made even worse by the fact that as shown during recent speeches, interviews, and at other events he appears to be encountering severe difficulties in cognition, language, and memory.
In a series of recent conversations with me here at Salon, Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” has issued this warning: “Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.”
Wait a minute, if we get rid of the Republican Party, wouldn’t a two party system become a one party system? So if Trump is elected, end of democracy, if Republican party is destroyed, also end of democracy? Is there no way out? End of democracy either way?
No more than the death of the whigs. A dead Republican Party creates a vacuum for either the democrats to split or a third party to ascend
I bet that will work about as well as trickle down economics.
We’ve had party changes and party restructures before. It’s not unheard of. There is the third option of the republicans needing to restructure and hide for a while like they did after the new deal.
So in the mean time, before this restructure, if it happens at all, there would be a period where one party would have unlimited power? Sounds like very risky, if it gets to that point, they can use that power to stay in power forever. I think we need ranked choice voting before we get rid of republicans or some sort of direct democracy.
I fully agree with tanked choice, and want to pressure politicians towards it. Hell I’ve been parliament curious lately. But I also understand the difference between realistic and unrealistic worries. The democrats are a catch all party with less cohesion than would be necessary for a tyrannical single party. And it’s not unlimited power, there are usually a few independents in congress. If the republicans collapse we’ll either have a replacement party within like an election or two or we’ll have a lot of independents very quickly.
I’m not saying that a single party isn’t bad. My home state is so gerrymandered that republicans brazenly defy the will of the citizens. Like we added abortion to our constitution and legalized marijuana by ballot initiative and the republicans in charge promptly considered banning abortion anyways and have been fighting over how best to gut the marijuana legislation we voted on since. But there’s a huge difference between gerrymandering and other means by which a single party holds control and a major party collapsing because it’s become so toxic it can no longer win
What’s terrifying about MAGA isn’t Trump, it’s who comes next.
A second term for Trump will be terrible, but it’ll end fairly quickly as I don’t think he’s going to live another 10 years.
However, if you take a look at the “Next generation” they are all copying trumpism but just making it a bit more crazy. Vivek is the poster child for this behavior. They are finding more and more than just abandoning pretext and saying the quiet part outloud doesn’t lose elections.
The only way to stop this is having the GOP lose over and over and over again. After Biden’s presidency the GOP cannot see power for at least another decade otherwise it will just snowball into more extreme craziness (it may do that anyways as the insane base will keep moderates out of office).
Cults of personality tend to die when the leader at the center goes away (by jail or death or something else). There are exceptions, but it’s what tends to happen.
You can see this in the lackluster performance of down ballot candidates who get Trump endorsements. The cult wants Trump, the singular man. They don’t turn out to put his lackeys into power. Some of them still win because they’re in safe red districts, but they don’t win as hard as they should.
What? Which ones?
I’m actually drawing blanks. Perhaps it’s survivorship bias but to me it seems like most cults of personality stick around if there’s no force actively shutting them down, generally with violence.
Nazi germany, for example, didn’t end because hitler died. It ended because the allies and the soviet union occupied germany for decades squelching any Nazi sentiment. Ditto for Japan with the Hirohito (who himself was in a long line of royals that still continues just with muted power). You can look at mormonism where the founder was killed by a mob, that’s still very much alive. Or Scientology where the leader had a heart attack. Heck, even the moonies are still around.
Without a heavy societal push, cults of personality very often linger.
Oneida Cult. It dispersed almost immediately when the founder was arrested, and all that remains is the silverware manufacturer. Quite a few other examples in upstate New York in the 19th century, which was a very popular place to start weird new religious movements. There were tons of them, but you only hear about a handful that survived–Mormons, 7th Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are about it.
Nazis did fight right up to the point where Hitler died. He was the one pushing them to fight until every man, woman, and child in Germany was dead. Hitler died on April 30, and the official surrender happened on May 2. Nobody was actually interested in continuing to let Germany burn.
So yes, it’s a matter of survivorship bias. You know the counter examples because they stayed around, but they’re exceptions.
Without a heavy societal push, cults of personality very often linger.
They may linger, but they never have the power they used to. If they do, they have to rebuild from scratch, which is more or less what Trump does with white supremacists.
They may linger, but they never have the power they used to. If they do, they have to rebuild from scratch, which is more or less what Trump does with white supremacists.
I guess this is what generally concerns me about trump. I don’t think he’ll be replaced while he’s alive. However, the apparatus that made him a god amoung racists is still in place and hasn’t substantially been changed since he left office.
What’s frightening to me is it just takes the rightwing grifters to rally on another god king to ultimately start this problem anew. We have an entire “media” ecosystem that’s now learned that fascism is actually kind of cool.
The only hope, it seems to me, is that his supporters tend to be old people that will end up dying around the same time he does.
I’ll also say that I don’t think the study of cults (or more accurately to the terminology of the field, high control organizations and the BITE model) are very well developed. They’re focused on identifying them, and helping individuals leave and reacclimate to the larger society. There’s very little research on how high control organizations end, why the cults of personality that survived in the long run managed to do so, or tactics that could be used to dissolve them on a greater scale.
Here’s the thing, I’m not sure I’d totally classify Trumpism as a high control org. It certainly has aspects of it, but it probably more closely resembles the hippy movement of the 60s (from which many cults did spring). The only real core belief is how awesome trump is. Beyond that it’s a bunch of fringe and frayed beliefs based whatever that individual might believe.
For example, I have black in-laws that are also trump supporters (yeah… I know) who are convinced that Trump isn’t racist AND that trump has this secret plan that would have made all black people fabulously wealthy, Had Joe biden not stolen the election. It was something that was always on the cusp of happening were it not for “the deep state”.
I don’t think this is a mainstream trump belief but I now have to wonder how many trumpist have these sorts of special whacky beliefs untethered from the reality of who trump is.
But then there’s another phenomena that seems somewhat unique to trump which is, when he says something they do not like it’s “He didn’t say that. Oh, he did say that? Well he didn’t mean that, it was just something he said for X reason”. That is, they don’t actually care about what Trump says or does, they care about what he represents. Trump can’t really command his followers super effectively because half the time they are going to think he’s “just being trump”. This is also where it’s scary because a number of his followers want violence and I don’t think trump could stop them if they started down that path.
I don’t think this is a mainstream trump belief but I now have to wonder how many trumpist have these sorts of special whacky beliefs untethered from the reality of who trump is.
As a former Jehovah’s Witness myself, I can see parallels here. There are often things believed by rank and file members that don’t match up with what people at the top are saying.
For example, if you were to ask regular JWs what the doctrine says about the Big Bang theory, you would get an answer consistent with most fundamentalists Christians–that is, throwing it in the same bucket as evolution. However, I’ve also gone over the actual published material on the subject, and it’s not actually obvious what the official stance is. Much of what has been written in official material is along the lines of “the Big Bang shows that science agrees that the universe has a beginning, just like Genesis says”. It never quite comes right out and approves it, but it never strongly denies it, either. It’s a major contrast from evolution, where the official stance is quite clear.
They seem to be fully aware that the rank and file think one thing, but the official doctrine in place is something else. I find that even many former members are surprised to learn this.
I bring this up to say that you might be seeing a similar thing among your relatives. There are all sorts of crazy Trump beliefs that derive from nothing the man has actually done or said. People will imprint their own thoughts and hopes into places where there is otherwise a vacuum of things the cult tells you to think.
Trumpism is not going to be defeated by voting at this point. Pelosi: “US needs a ‘strong’ Republican Party.” Dems are fine with the good cop, bad cop dynamic.
The country genuinely does need a competitive second party.
Everyone blames Democrats for the lack of choice in candidates, while the other guys are nominating a twice impeached, adjudicated rapist and insurrection supporter with ninety one criminal indictments and multiple pending civil suits.
I haven’t had a candidate come out of the GOP worthy of consideration in my entire lifetime. At one point, they were the party of not only Lincoln but folks like Eisenhower.
Trump is here because dems wanted an easier candidate to run against. https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/
2016 was 8 years ago, and I think it’s rather weird and conspiratorial to blame Hillary for Trump in the first place. She might’ve had a preferred opponent but she certainly didn’t control the GOP. She barely controlled the DNC. She had a hard fought primary with Bernie who wasn’t even a member of the party, and had a relatively low national profile before the election.
This points at exactly what I’m talking about above. To hear you tell it, Democrats are somehow the only people with agency in the entire political landscape.
Politicians have no real agency, it is the rich that control the entire political landscape. They liked Hilary and Trump, and they told them to support elevate each other so that no matter who wins, they get their way. They do this in every election, same major donors fund both sides.
Democrats and Republicans are just puppets that pretend they are against each other, but in reality they are on the same side working for the same employers and getting votes by bashing each other.
So you had a long think on this response and decided that your take that Hillary was responsible for Trump was too nuanced? 😆
There are material differences between Democrats and Republicans and acting like there aren’t serves nobody (except perhaps Republicans).
Trump is a democrat funded candidate in republican party. They both work for the same people and same interests.
You’re an idiot
Americans have been electorally mercy killing the GOP for forty years, they invented moving the goalposts in response.
There may still be a less electoral way to mercy kill the GOP.
Americans have been electorally mercy killing the GOP for forty years
Feeling incredibly happy every time a cockroach dies of old age, because I’m pretty sure this means I’m beating them.
There may still be a less electoral way to mercy kill the GOP.
Unfortunately, the folks with the highest proclivity to try and run a rival’s campaign bus off the road aren’t in the liberal party.
I like Donald Trump and I’m voting for him in 2024.
Am I allowed to say that here?
I have to ask, why? Why would you support someone so transparently anti-democracy, possibly one of the most dangerous enemies of the United States in a long time, the leader of our very own home grown Beer Hall Putsch? Why would you give him a second chance to overthrow the democratic government of our country?
They won’t respond, they have thrown their hand grenade and they’re off to the next comment section.
Why did you link me to a comment by a six hour old account with five comments?
They won’t respond.
I have no intention of drive-by comments. I’m here.
What got your last account banned?
On Lemmy? This is my first and only account.
On /r/politics I’d expect to get banned for such a comment, hence my first question.
The mainstream media “fake news” has created a caricature out of Trump. They have taken what he has said out of context, taken soundbites, and not accurately reported what he’s said and done. Therefore, it is no surprise to me that you, and many, feel the way you do. I’d be on your side if I believed the caricature version.
Look, I’ve talked to enough people to realize that we have more in common than not. And what’s dividing us are the filters. I listen to Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and Joe Rogan. Others (speaking in generalities, not specifically you) may read and listen to MSNBC, Salon, The Atlantic, The Rolling Stones, etc. Fair to say these two categories are not even reporting the same basic information, let alone opinion on the matter.
May I suggest listening and going to these sources that don’t agree with you (or you even find very offensive), and see what they have to say. That’s why I’m here. I want to connect with people, and see what people I don’t necessarily agree with are saying. I don’t care what you believe or where you came from.
I realize I didn’t exactly answer the question you asked, but if you really are interested in what I think (and I’m no one special) reply and I’d be happy to talk to you.
