From Bad to Worse, as Trump’s Empire Implodes: Is this Armageddon?

 

“It’s like Armageddon.”

That’s what my mom said to me the other day.

I’m concerned. Maybe it isn’t “like” Armageddon. Maybe it is Armageddon.

We have multiple “great battles” on our hands. While other countries have united people to fight Covid-19, Trump has worked to keep us divided and unprotected. His early insistence that the virus would simply go away and his focus on blue state spikes in cases (which he apparently interpreted as proof that red states would be fine) curtailed the swift and decisive actions that would have prevented the virus from spreading across the entire country. 

Trump’s blame game tactics have filtered down to the lowest, meanest, most susceptible and unstable of us, who are using his rhetoric to justify violent acts. While the family of the latest victim of a police shooting called out for peaceful protest, some unnamed Facebook group rallied to travel to Kenosha, Wisconsin, armed and ready to take on the BLM protesters, whom they imagined were intent on damaging property.

Where did this come from? We heard the family of Jacob Blake. We listened to their pain and we respected their wishes. Peaceful protests were what we had, until an outside group chose to show up with weapons to protect buildings and property. It was heartbreaking to watch the victim’s mother and father plead for protesters to avoid violence, putting their own pain aside to reach out to us to stop the madness of police shootings and work toward solutions. How does a group of right-wing extremists conjure up a threat to public property out of that? It’s delusional. 

This is one of Trump’s self-fulfilling prophecies. While the President of the United States defends the conspiracy theorists of QAnon and calls violent extremists “good people,” peaceful protestors are being sabotaged by unstable extremists. Their purpose: to deceive the public into believing that we are the inciters. We are the enemy now—the ones crying out for more humanity and tolerance are the bad guys. 

Our battle with the Covid-19 pandemic is still raging as well. Until a few days ago, the virus was receding, though slowly, credit given to more widespread use of facemasks. In response, the CDC changed its testing recommendations. Prior to today, the recommendation was that we get tested if we know we’ve spent more than 15 minutes close to someone who has tested positive. Now, we must wait until we exhibit symptoms.

How can this be the recommendation from the CDC, when it is an established fact that many people carry and spread the virus while asymptomatic?

Nobody but Trump benefits from this.

Deaths still occur at approximately 1,000 per day in the U.S., yet Trump wants less testing. “Less testing means fewer cases,” he says. No, it doesn’t. It means more transmission, because asymptomatic people don’t know they are spreading the virus. But for Trump, what matters is the number of positive tests. When that number goes down, Trump looks better.

Mother Nature is raging as well, across the globe…yet another sign of Armageddon.

President Trump is focused on rolling back environmental rules designed to protect us from climate change. Not only is he failing to lead us toward slowing global warming, he’s actively working to remove protections put in place prior to his presidency.

Here are some recent statistics from Oxfam:

The number of climate-related disasters has tripled in the last 30 years:

• Between 2006 and 2016, the rate of global sea-level rise was 2.5 times faster than it was for almost all of the 20^th century.
• More than 20 million people a year are forced from their homes by climate change.
• The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that adapting to climate change and coping with damages will cost developing countries $140-300 billion per year by 2030.

Dire shortages of food and water are among the additional hazards of our failure to curtail global warming. None of this persuades Trump and his allies.

But perhaps the biggest irony of all is that the chaos we have today is being used to frighten voters into believing further chaos will result if Biden becomes President. The chaos is real, and it’s happening now, with Trump in charge. How can Biden be blamed for the current climate of fear, instability and insecurity when Trump has been our president for the last three+ years?

If Trump stays in power, he will disable our democracy entirely. He’s already begun his plans to militarize the nation by sending troops to states that don’t want or need them there. Citing the same ridiculous pretense of protecting property from “violent” protesters, Trump does nothing when his followers become violent. If he can just get things to fall apart entirely, he will have the chaos he wants. He can declare Martial Law, postpone the election, and justify it as an unprecedented need in unprecedented times. That would be illegal, but since when has legality concerned Donald Trump?

If Trump is not reelected and leaves the White House, he will undoubtedly be indicted. The evidence of his illegal actions is mounting, and the folks at SDNY are building strong cases. Trump’s only move is to force a win—his entire house of cards tumbles if he loses this election. It’s not about politics or even money now for Trump. It’s about salvaging his identity.

Once his taxes are revealed and it’s proven beyond all doubt that he’s a financial fraud guilty of multiple crimes, as well as a failed businessman, his supporters will abandon him. Who will enable him, protect his fragile ego, promote his falsehoods then? What achievements, what greatness, what exceptionalism will he be able to claim from his jail cell? 

For Trump, this is winner take all. He’ll fight like his life depends on it, because it does.

But our lives depend on it too.

We must remove this sociopath from office. The future of America and the future of the planet are in jeopardy with Trump as president. It is literally a battle between GOOD and EVIL.

So, if you’re still struggling with which side to be on, here’s a tip from former Republican David Jolly:

 “In then end, it will come down to one thing: either you believe Donald Trump, or you believe everybody else.”

--Laurie Fosner

Russian Hackers not Prepared for Massive Mail-in Voting in the 2020 US Presidential Election

Imagine the frustration. After successfully stealing the 2016 Election for Donald Trump--with every expectation for success again--the whole thing falls apart, just months before the election.

Despite Russian bots frantically pushing false narratives toward unsuspecting users, who accept as truth what feels right to them, regardless of its validity, the huge impact all that had in 2016 might not be repeatable in an election with a process that might go on for days if not weeks. Just as Hannity and the like prepare to bombard the media with falsehoods, hoping to create enough distrust, for just long enough, to get another 77,000 folks in just the right places to once again put Trump in the Oval, Covid came along and messed it all up. Their plans might not work so well in a drawn out process where timing is, well, a little off.

It’s been ages since news about securing voting machines against hackers was even discussed in the media. For all we know voting machines in key states have already been hacked and are just waiting until they can count those cast for Biden as Trump votes.  

And then, boom! The worst-case scenario for Donald J. Trump: massive mail-in voting. Mail-in voting takes place over several days if not weeks. Timing isn’t precise enough for another Comey-like announcement to work its magic.

There goes their ability to target a specific election date to publicize false and damaging information that will get into people’s heads before they vote, but not far enough in advance to be disproved until after the vote.

Then there’s that pesky paper trail that will allow us to know how people voted so whatever machine hacking might be in the works simply won’t work. Seems like this is a lose/lose for Trump any way you look at it.

My step-dad always said, “The excuse is rarely the reason.”

Trump’s excuse for not wanting mail-in ballots is he thinks they are prone to fraud. The reason he doesn’t want them is because they do more than any other type of voting to discourage fraud--unless you destroy the Postal Service first. 

Then you can’t have mail-in voting, can you?