The reality of Trump and all those who consider themselves Loyalists of Trumpism are no different than the same ideologically-compromised, fearful followers and sycophants, so in need of a saviour down through the ages of every civilization, culture and society, that they have been willing to follow the irrational, illogical rants of whatever ‘flavour of the month’ demagogue to have ever come along. It is what lies at the heart of the human experience.
Frank G. Splitt enumerates who the diehard loyal followers of President Trump are in his Odyssey of Reform Initiatives 1986-2015, and its sequel Reflections 2016-2019. Splitt is a former McCormick Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a Vice President Emeritus of Nortel Networks.
Readers are presented with the uncomfortable reality that the reasons for the broad spectrum of supporters loyal to Donald Trump means that the real possibility of his re-election, and the subsequent horrors that potentially could come to pass as a result, shouldn’t be of any great surprise or shock to anyone.
Who the many factions are in America that make up the Trump Loyalist base of voters, suggests how their collective existential angst continues to cause America’s political and economic civilization to ebb and flow as it devolves into more radical lawless forms of government as in the past, makes the possibility of a Trump Victory in 2020 as alarming-as it is a frightful.
When taken as a whole, the wide array of Trump Loyalists, that some political analysts say may comprise upwards of 40% or 20 million hard-core believers, many of them radical paramilitaries who definitely won’t go easily into the night if Trump is soundly defeated. This reality points to the degree to which America already has become or is fast becoming an even more right-wing, authoritarian nation with its own Proud Boys & Boogaloo Boys ‘black and brown shirt’ versions of what the German people in the 1930’ also once were prepared to accept for whatever few emotional, financial crumbs they might gain for slavishly following their megalomaniacal leader, almost blindly until the bitter end, because he spoke the language they wanted to hear and could readily understand.
While the fascist Benito Mussolini in Italy once had his Black Shirts and their Squadrismo battalions, and Hitler had his Sturmabteilung (SA) Brown Shirts, Trump now has his Proud Boys and Boogaloo Boys paramilitaries.
Trump loyalists represent a long and extensive list of voters, comprising a wide swath of the American public, that make up a sizable number of those in 2020 who, in spite of the many insane things Trump has ever done or said, are willing to look the other way and re-elect Trump in spite of, or possibly because of, his many obvious authoritarian, racist, radical right ideologies.
LIST OF TRUMP LOYALISTS & IDEOLOGUES
Trump’s loyalists and ideologues are said to include a wide variety of those who variously identify themselves as:
* LAW & ORDER proponents who fear the lawlessness of Black & Brown peoples
* ANTI-IMMIGRATIONISTS who fearfully desire to create walls to keep unwanted foreigners out rather than welcome them in
* ANTI-PUBLIC SCHOOL/PRO-CHARTER SCHOOL supporters who favor private entreprenurial schools that dogmatically proselytize about religion and sanitize U.S. history and the history of Black and Brown Peoples in the America’s to suit their own skewed world view of things.
*ANTI-GLOBALISTS whose credo is Americanism and ‘America First’ rather than globalism
* PRO-GUN defenders of the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment Rights to bear arms
*RACISTS who reject the idea that systemic racism by White Americans is perpetrated towards Black and Brown Americans
*ANTI-PRO CHOICE militants who don’t believe women have a fundamental right to control their own bodies
* MONETARIESTS who have faith that Trump will continue to increase their wealth while eliminating as many rules and regulations as possible that impede their wealth acquisition
* ANTI-ABORTION Evangelical Christians and far-right, Anti-Pope Francis protagonists who believe all those who would give women the right to choose not to have a baby will go to hell
*CLIMATE DENIERS who reject the occurrence of man-made climate changes and consider the notion of mankind’s responsibility for climate change is a hoax
*PRO-ISRAEL CHRISTIANS who believe the fundamental human right of Palestinians are expendable because they are interfering with God’s Master Plan to one day rapture up Jews and Christians alike into Heaven from the Holy City of Jerusalem
*ANTI-HEALTH CARE advocates who seek to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act
* HOAXERS & CONSPIRATORIAL THINKERS who believe the American government is constantly creating fake news, and especially when it comes to the many times that Trump himself is actually caught in a lie or proven wrong
*TAX EVADERS who believe they, their businesses and corporate way of life are being over-taxed by the government and have an inalienable right to avoid paying taxes whenever they can.
THE PANDEMIC MAY THROW A MONKEY WRENCH IN TRUMP’S LAW & ORDER PARTY
Yet how all this will ultimately play out after the 2020 Election still is a huge unknown given that Trump and the First Lady and many others in his administration continue to test positive for the corona virus. Yet given the endless diabolical machinations of Trump’s always sociopathic, trickster mind, Trump even now has used his personal contact with the virus for his own nefarious political and ideological ends.
As a result, what should now be crystal-clear to the American people is the alarming extent and almost clinical degree to which President Trump’s sociopathic, delusional use of deceit, misinformation, obfuscation, inability to empathize with others, reliance on magical thinking and-outright lying have prominently risen to the fore as Trump has continued to tweet comment after comment about his current medical condition and what he now believes to be the cause and solution to the pandemic. Trump repeating some of the same irrational ‘magical thinking’ beliefs he expressed long months ago in the spring when he repeated the trope that the virus one would day“ will just go away and disappear”. Trump repeating once again the canard that “herd immunity” will naturally kick in at some point and act as a natural vaccine.
Trump further manifests his own peculiar brand of macho, gutsy, ‘John Wayne’ bravado when he comments to the American people, ]“Don’t be afraid of the virus” and “don’t let it dominate your lives”, as he once again takes off his mask, folds it up and puts it in his suit pocket.
In spite of the fact that Trump has declared his personal experience with the virus has caused him to have an epiphany of sorts to the extent that he so proudly says “I finally got it”. But, as it turns out, he actually didn’t and hasn’t ‘got it’. Because Trump hasn’t obviously taken the time to think about and ponder the consequences and implications of what he meant when he cautioned Americans “not to be afraid of the virus and don’t let the virus continue to dominate your lives”.
Yet in America there already exists the survivors of some 200,000 plus, and counting, citizens who already have lost a: father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife, uncle, aunt, cousin, friend, neighbor or may eventually become infected themselves like the some seven million and counting Americans who thus far already have been infected. As much as Trump now says he’s got it, he still doesn’t recognize what real truth and empathy is if he tripped over it.
As if to make a mockery of the way Trump and his ‘Law & Order’ administration have so totally bungled America’s response to the COVID Pandemic and the alarming rise in infections, Trump’s subsequent hospitalization and treatment has since further revealed that the White House itself now has become one of America’s super-spreader ‘hot spots’ for the Pandemic ever since Trump and his administration recklessly hosted, without insisting everyone present wear masks and observe proper social distance during the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett in the Rose Garden of the White House to fill the position of the late Ruth Badar Ginsburg.in the U.S. Supreme Court.
With that reality it now has become as sadly obvious as it is tragic for Trump’s own well-being, as both a man and a leader of the American people, as well as the fate of the American people themselves who naively voted for him in the past, or no doubt will continue to vote for him in the future. Especially when it means voting for a sociopath to hold the highest office in the land.
Voters may now have to instead pay even closer attention to Trump’s List of Loyalists and the categories they represent to check if they or those they know already fall into one or more of the same categories as the leader they would choose to lead America into the future.
THE U.S. ELECTION REPRESENTS A BLACK HOLE OF UNKNOWNS
At this point it’s unclear what the election on November 3rd will end up looking like given so many problems with: voting in person because of the dangers of the corona virus; voting by mail-in ballot that Trump already has ensured will be vulnerable to voter suppression or fraud and so, no matter what the results, he no doubt will legally contest besides, and; the fact that Trump himself already has approved the presence of so-called ‘poll watchers’ at polling stations, especially in predominantly Democratic, Biden-leaning precincts; while Trump’s son, Donald Jr, himself also has since tweeted calling upon every able-bodied man and woman to join together at their polling stations because, as Donald Jr. declared, “We need you to watch them”.
The Donald Trump and Republican use of the word ‘them’ of course clearly means those Democrats who seem more likely to vote for Biden. Trump’s poll watchers no doubt will certainly include among them the Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys and other right-wing observers. One can only imagine the deleterious effect this will have on voters on November 3rd, nervously standing in long lines of unmasked voters and angry ‘observers’ eye-balling them, anxiously awaiting for the chance to cast their ballot as they ‘run the gauntlet’ past hostile, menacingly-looking ‘poll watchers’.
The fact that Trump already has told his right-wing supporters to “Stand Back & Stand By” has since been widely interpreted by many as a scary signal to, as one Proud Boy, Joe Biggs, chillingly has put it, “Says to us to go fuck them up” when the time is right. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Joe Bigg’s reference to ‘them’ doesn’t auger well for the outcome.
With so much conflicting confusion, uncertainty and chaos currently in America, the result of the 2020 Election may not even finally be known for weeks if not many months that follow. Meanwhile, once the popular vote is tabulated for each state, then on December 14th, or at some other later appropriate date, given the potentially-impending political and legal delays, a ridiculous separate body of electors must then be selected, consisting of a total of 538 electors, each of whom will represent one of the 50 states.
These 538 electors within this antiquated, clearly undemocratic process will then be mandated to convene the U.S. Constitution’s ill-conceived America’s ’House of Lords’ Electoral College where at least 270 of such electors, who are not legally–bound to adhere to whatever the actual results are of the popular vote in the state they represent, will actually have the ultimate power and final say as to which candidate is finally declared the actual winner or loser of their states popular vote. Until the Electoral College makes its decision the whole election process isn’t considered to be an officially-legal and binding one as what happened in the U.S. elections of 2000 and 2016.
Yet until which time as these ‘electors’ are chosen to vote in their Electoral College it is unknown how many among the 538 electors will be Trump Loyalists or proponents of one or more of the categories of Trump Loyalists.
Democracy in America in 2020 is, indeed, now in a strange state of flux and free fall in more ways than one
WHERE’S THE LITTLE BOY WHO CLAIMS THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES?
What are the rights and responsibilities of every citizen and elected official in America in times of dire emergencies, such as the current worldwide Pandemic that continues to kill more people in America than anywhere else in the world?
When President Donald Trump introduced his new Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, in that packed Rose Garden at the White House, more than 150 guests were in attendance, from all the parts of the United States, seated cheek by jowl to one another, the vast majority of them, willingly, in defiance of common sense, neither practicing recommended social distancing from one another or nor wearing the protective face masks recommended by America’s leading health experts.
It’s nothing short of scandalous that such an event, in the wisdom of Trump and his Law & Order Party, was scheduled to be held within the middle of a worldwide pandemic of such continuing colossal proportions. For all those in the world who have been faithfully endeavoring to follow the health safety directives of their medical experts, such an utterly insane, irresponsible thing to be doing at this point, for the sake of political expediency, seems beyond what words of incredulity can even begin express about one of the world’s most powerful leaders and powerful nation’s, once looked up to for guidance by so many in the world.
The rising incidence of COVID virus infections among those who were in attendance in the event in the Rose Garden of the White House, held at the behest of Trump & His Loyalists, have begun to bear out the dire consequences of such a foolish, irresponsible act. Regardless of the rising incidence of infection among those who were in attendance, wherever they’re currently now at in the world, still haven’t been subjected to any rigorous contact tracing process.
Yet the thought now crossing the minds, if not the lips, of increasing numbers of Americans and observers worldwide wonder, “Is America now being led down that same old beaten garden path of death and destruction by still another demented, pathological, megalomaniacal leader who has no other real sense of personal responsibility to his fellow citizens, his country or the world at large, save for anyone but himself?
Where is that fabled little boy in the Hans Christian Anderson folktale, who, in truthful youthful innocence, finally declares for all to hear, “Look. Everyone! The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes?
Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who, for decades, has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by excessive mega-development and host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that has led to numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul
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