Trump’s Open Plan for Tyranny

The Next Election Isn’t Only the Most Important, It Might be Our Last

Imagine it’s November 6, 2024, and Donald Trump has been elected to a second term. In this godforsaken scenario, you would be faced with three choices: Fight, flee or conform. Conform to what you ask? Living your life in the continent of North America, but in a country that is no longer America. The name of the nation and the flag might remain the same, but everything else would likely change.

How do we know this? Because Donald Trump and his sycophants are explicitly telling us. The question remains whether enough Americans are wise enough to listen and believe what MAGA-world is imparting in broad daylight. It’s become a cliché to say, “This is the most important election in our lifetime.” I’ll go further: The 2024 race isn’t only the most significant, but if Trump wins it might be our last.

In his speech at CPAC in March, Trump said the presidential race was “the final battle” for America and declared, “I am your retribution.” At a recent rally in Michigan, Trump roared, “We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

One can elucidate that anyone who doesn’t bow down and proclaim fealty to Trump could easily be placed on his expansive enemies list. In his first term, Trump also had authoritarian inclinations. He was kept in check, however, by numerous guardrails and staffers who pledged allegiance to the U.S. Constitution over the whims of one man.

Unfortunately, it seems that Trump and his minions have learned from their mistakes and have had three years to contemplate how to overthrow democracy and concentrate power in Trump’s tiny hands. A pliant Supreme Court packed with religious fanatics could very well make his destructive dreams come true.

A frightening New York Times article laid out Trump’s sinister plan to wrest control of the federal government to afford him extraordinary powers and remake America in his pathological image. Noah Rosenblum, an assistant professor and legal historian at New York University School of Law, told the New Yorker, “It seems like he is now trying to put together legal plans that would make the Presidency into more of a kingship.”

According to the New York Times:

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

In this terrifying new version of America, Trump is the nation and the nation is Trump. He would change the rules to legalize corruption and abuse of power. The rule of law would be replaced by the mood swing of one delusional man.

Paranoia and ruthless purges would become public policy and Trump would deform our institutions to conform to his dictatorial will. Overnight, America would be transformed into a banana republic with nukes, while former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon would accomplish his psychotic drive to enact “deconstruction of the administrative state.” 

It would be serious enough if this toxic vision was relegated to Trump’s diseased mind. But the ideas he proffers have been enthusiastically adopted by leading right wing institutions such as the Heritage Foundation.   

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

The cesspool of serpents and sycophants running against Trump for the GOP nomination seem to share many of his deranged views. Ron DeSantis could even be worse, with his weirdly homoerotic crusade against LGBTQ people and a scary private army he’s assembled to squash dissent in Florida. The only sane Republican running for president is Chis Christie, and even he tends to travel a bridge too far.

The likelihood is that Trump will lose given his recent track record. However, the nation is so divided that his victory, provided he stays out of prison, is within the realm of possibility. It’s going to be a filthy campaign with lies, distortions and likely interference from Trump’s commie comrade Vladimir Putin, who needs the former president to bail him out of his hapless Ukraine debacle.

An example of what to expect is the debunked lie, circulating in right wing fever swamps, that Joe Biden was caught napping during a July 18 Oval Office meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. The video disseminated online has been manipulated to promulgate the “Sleepy Joe” narrative. Get ready to see Joe repeatedly “snoozing” in a dishonest effort to plant doubt in voter’s minds and suppress Democratic turnout.  We’d like to think that the American people are smart enough not to be fooled – but they are the American people.  

So, I ask again, in all sincerity, do you have a life-plan if Trump is elected? Would you stay and fight his tyranny? Would you conclude it’s too late for America and choose to be a political refugee, moving your family to a saner country? Or would you accept defeat, becoming inured to autocracy and adjusting your life to fit the moment’s fascism?

These once unthinkable options are the unpleasant choices we must countenance as we head into election season. Our best bet is to give money, organize, vote and fight like hell to stop the political apocalypse from occurring. We’d be wise to take Ben Franklin’s advice: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”