We are in the midst of a coup attempt.
Over the course of his presidency lame-duck Trump has been steadily building a cult of personality, a classic and proven way to overthrow government.
Wikipedia has an excellent article on the nature and history of such cults, which I recommend to you. Here is its opening sentence:
"A cult of personality, or cult of the leader, arises when a country's regime – or, more rarely, an individual – uses the techniques of mass media, propaganda, the big lie, spectacle, the arts, patriotism, and government-organized demonstrations and rallies to create an idealized, heroic, and worshipful image of a leader, often through unquestioning flattery and praise."¹
If that sounds familiar it's because we've been watching that exact thing unfold over the past four years. Trump's platform of racism, bigotry, paranoia, and xenophobia appealed to the darker instincts of a shockingly large number of Americans. Although he lost the popular race by some 3 million votes, he accrued sufficient electoral votes to win the presidency.
He offered no coherent plans or policies. His "America First" doctrine, repeated ad nauseam, was a litany of the wrongs suffered by America at the hands of international cartels, i.e. treaty organizations and such, and of the injuries done to loyal Americans by foreigners, immigrants, and nonwhite races.
"America First" is code for "whites only."
The only foreign policy the Xenophobe-in-Charge pursued was to remove the United States from as many international treaty and aid organizations as possible and to isolate us from the rest of the world.
His wish to be an autocrat became clear when he made at least two attempts to have the Supreme Court remove Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch. When those attempts failed he attempted to assert control over the Supreme Court by stuffing it with a conservative super majority.
He has attempted to use the armed forces as his personal security force to put down civil unrest and has praised vigilantes as heroes.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began he paid little attention to it, its rapid spread, or the alarming numbers of victims who were falling ill and dying. Throughout 2020 his focus was on one thing and one thing only: his re-election bid.
In the midst of the pandemic, seeking to silence true information about COVID-19, he gutted the CDC.
Because the pandemic was likely to persuade a lot of people to vote by mail, he attempted to dismantle the Postal Service.
With the election over he and his apparatchiks have inappropriately and unsuccessfully flooded courts at all levels with requests to overturn the election. His attempts to subvert the electoral process, one of the cornerstones of our government, clearly amounts to sedition, if not treason.
Donald Trump has created a cult of personality: the first step in creating an autocratic regime. He has incited his followers to intimidate voters, disrupt the electoral process, and threaten voting officials who were simply doing their jobs. He and his followers are consciously and systematically
attempting to subvert the will of the American people by trying to
reverse the presidential election results.
If you're still not convinced that this is a cult, consider this: The Arizona State Republican Party in a recent series of tweets essentially asked its members if they were willing to die in the effort to overthrow the vote.²
The list of personality cults that have grown into tyrannical autocracies is long. In the modern world it includes Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Idi Amin, Mao Zedong, and Kim Jong-un. Will Trump be added to that list?
No cult of personality has yet confronted the Constitution of the United States. Trump has mounted a number of attacks on the Constitution, to no avail. He has attempted to suborn the Supreme Court, the chief guardian of the Constitution, with no success.
People like Trump are the reason that all federal elected officials except the president swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Trump is a domestic enemy of the Constitution, even though he also swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend it.
For now the Supreme Court is the last governmental bastion between democracy and the lying, seditious, hypocritical, treasonous creep that is the president.
There are ways to remove him from office, and even now someone should do it. He and his rabid followers can do a lot of damage in the next 39 days.
La lutte continue!
--- Diogenes, 12/12/2020
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality
² The Arizona Republic, https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/08/arizona-republican-party-asks-if-followers-die-election-president-donald-trump/6488952002/
