The Trump Ship is Sinking Fast
By Ed Kociela
The Donald Trump ship is sinking fast, leading to dangerous and outrageous suggestions from the White House that the 2020 Election be postponed because of Covid-19 and the false claim that mail-in voting would be fraudulent.
These are desperate claims by a desperate man who sees his tenure as president coming to an ugly end as the latest polls are coming in heavily weighted in favor of Joe Biden.
Elections have held solid, even during our most trying times, like the influenza pandemic of 1918, two world wars, the Great Depression, the terrorist attacks of 2001, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and even power outages that forced voters to cast their ballots by flashlight.
That didn’t, however, dissuade Trump from floating the idea of postponing the election “until people can properly, securely, and safely vote.”
There was initial concern because of Trump’s penchant for issuing Executive Orders that do not require Congressional assent. However, if you paid any attention at all to your high school civics class, you knew that could never happen.
The date and execution of the presidential election is governed by Article II of the Constitution that gives that power solely to Congress. An 1845 federal law fixed the date of the election as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The House, currently under the control of Democrats, and the Senate, which is run by Republicans, would have to agree to any such date change. Even the staunchest Republicans in the Senate have rejected the idea. I think even Trump understands that, which leads to the dangerous part of all of this: his attempt to render the 2020 election illegitimate months before voters go to the polls.
It’s an effort to foment distrust in the system, that somehow it is rigged, that somehow, mail-in balloting will be rife with fraud, thus negating the results.
Of course, minds capable of rational thought understand that voter fraud is a figment of Trump’s imagination, as well as his delusional followers who accuse everything that flies in the face of his lies and instability as fake, a hoax, a conspiracy among the secret global elite who control the Deep State.
The Trump fanatics, from White Nationalists to the hate groups that have supported his dog whistle calls to the three great “isms” – separatism, isolationism, racism – are already lining up their potbellied militia types to cast a shadow of potential discord when the walls come tumbling down. These renegade tin soldiers are sending signals that they are prepared to defend their man, even if he ends up getting the bum’s rush from the Oval Office by the U.S. Secret Service at noon on Jan. 20, 2021 when his term expires. You can bet he will not go gentle into that good night of life as a former president. In fact, I would wager that he will not, under any circumstances, concede an election loss or participate in the traditional transfer of government that occurs each Inauguration Day. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
I think he is prepping voters for a full-out assault on the election. In fact, I would not be surprised if that is the reason we have heard so little from Rudy Giuliani. It would not surprise me to learn that Giuliani and Trump’s team of high-priced shysters are already writing briefs to invalidate the election, especially as more states employ mail-in voting.
“Mail ballots, they cheat,” Trump said at a White House briefing. “Mail ballots are very dangerous for this country because of cheaters. They go collect them. They are fraudulent in many cases.”
Nonetheless, he has voted by mail during the last two elections, as has the vice president and many members of the Trump staff.
Trump also set up an investigation into voter fraud, which proved that the incidence of cheating at the ballot box is microscopically rare.
They do occur, however. The most recent incident of voter fraud involved an incident in 2018 in North Carolina when a Republican operative tried to round up absentee ballots to swing the 9th Congressional District race for the Republican candidate.
But, clearly, the claims of rampant voter fraud are lies.
There is this thing psychologists call the illusion of truth, where a lie that is repeated enough times becomes accepted as truth. It happens because most people are either too lazy or not interested enough to verify if something is true or not. The repeated lie becomes familiar in their brain, which ultimately decides it is true, even if it isn’t. It doesn’t mean people lose their ability to employ logical reasoning, it just means they refuse to do so. It is a con man’s greatest ploy to manipulate the gullible, and God knows, there are plenty of gullible people out there.
The noted psychotherapist Alfred Adler once said that “A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous,” which explains, perhaps, the president’s propensity for prevarication.
As a pioneer of individual psychology, Adler focused heavily on an individual’s superiority and inferiority complexes and their part in a person’s emotional development, which weigh heavily in any psychological analysis of Trump, from his habitual lying to his faux superiority issues that are most likely deeply rooted in a well-disguised inferiority complex. His environmental experiences are connected to his extreme narcissism and culturally spawned racism. Value, in the Trumpian world, is based on varying degrees of power. Money is important, but not as important as power, and as president, he is considered by many as the most powerful man on the planet.
This idea about postponing the election?
Just another ploy to hold onto that power.
He did this before, arguing that his term should be extended to cover the time of the investigations that led to his impeachment.
We also have seen him send federal agents to Portland to squelch protests that challenged his power. Look, any time a leader starts ranting about law and order, you can be assured they are willing to back it up with strongman tactics, such as Gestapo-type agents going in and cracking skulls.
This is dangerous stuff, the kind of thing you hear from dictators.
It doesn’t play well, however, among those whose job it is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued an unprecedented apology for participating in the fiasco that resulted when Trump and his minions marched into Lafayette Square and violently pushed through the crowd for a photo op.
Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense, took Trump to task for threatening to enforce the Insurrection Act to stop the recent protests.
Jim Mattis, who served as Secretary of Defense from January 2017 until January 2019, described Trump as an existential threat to the Constitution.
If the top-ranking members of the military turn on the Commander in Chief it’s a pretty good indication that things have gone terribly wrong in the White House.
We can only hope that the latest polls are accurate.
We need a president, not a third-rate, Third World strongman.
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