It feels like we’ve inadvertently jumped into an alternate timeline. It’s as if Biff Tannen traveled back in time with Marty McFly’s Sports Almanac and, yada-yada-yada, we’re suddenly faced with a crisis in which Biff is running everything rather than merely washing and waxing Marty’s truck. Only this wrinkle in time is far worse than anything Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis ever conceived in any “Back to the Future” film. President-elect Donald Trump is an anomaly that should never have occurred — a disruption of time and history with which the world is unprepared to cope.
The fear and uncertainty accompanying Trump’s victory has a lot to do with not really knowing exactly how Trump plans to govern; whether he’ll remain confined within the strictures of the Constitution and the rule of law; whether he’ll govern as a somewhat normal political leader; or whether his regime will push well beyond those boundaries and into uncharted despotic territory. What we know, however, is that Trump campaigned as a screeching populist autocrat, and so we really have no choice but to steel ourselves for him to govern accordingly. Therefore, the foolish attempt to normalize his behavior during the transition only serves to misinform voters who have a penchant for deluding themselves into believing everything will be fine. If Trump governs the way he campaigned, we’re in for a long, dark era in history, and one that won’t be easily mitigated.
On Monday, President Obama struggled to give Trump a chance. “It’s only been six days,” the president said. Sure, six days of Trump as president-elect, but we also have 17 months of Trump as a candidate and 70 years of Trump as a man, with more than enough nefarious deeds, blurts and comments to give us an idea of how he intends to exercise his newly won power. As I’ve been writing in Salon for more than a year: Never forget that this is Donald J. Trump, a man with zero political or military experience, and a man who knows very little about the even the most familiar rules of constitutional government. He’s an erratic cartoon supervillain without any core values outside of pushing his brand and expanding his fortune.
Rachel Maddow, on her extremely compelling Friday evening telecast, delivered a brilliantly written and horrifyingly breathtaking cautionary tale of what’s in store with the Trump administration. Specifically, there’s a not insignificant shot that we’ll see a profoundly autocratic Trump presidency in which the new chief executive will behave similarly to Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who’s been actively imprisoning dissenters, including journalists, politicians, military personnel, clerics and academics. Among other egregious deeds, Erdoğan handed down orders to censor the internet, while banning citizen access to social media. And, as Maddow outlined on Friday’s show, Trump’s closest military aide and National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn, has professional ties to the Turkish strongman. Additionally, Flynn has said he’d like to extradite an anti-Erdoğan Turkish cleric from the U.S. back to Turkey. Essentially, Erdoğan is slowly consolidating his power in a way that’s extraordinarily easy to apply to what we can expect from Trump.
Regarding those expectations, what has Trump pledged to do so far? What are the known knowns? Here are a few:
- On numerous occasions, including during rallies and interviews, Trump has engaged in a jihad against press freedom, threatening journalists like Katy Tur and Jorge Ramos. He’s discussed “opening up” unconstitutional libel laws, allowing journalists to be more easily sued for publishing unflattering news about public figures, specifically Trump himself. He’s banned publications of record like The Washington Post and The New York Times from his press pool. The other day, Trump ally Sean Hannity called on Trump to ban the press entirely from the White House.
- Trump has also discussed imprisoning his political opponents, especially Hillary Clinton. The “lock her up!” chant wasn’t invented by his loyalists. It emerged after he pledged during the second debate to investigate and jail Clinton. Trump has since softened this posture, but who knows for how long. Trump is well-known to flip positions, even mid-sentence.
- He’s also talked about solving crime during week one, which can only mean some form of augmented police force or full-on martial law packaged in some other politically friendlier term.
- He’s threatened to engage in unilateral warfare to retaliate against international trespasses as mundane as obscene finger gestures.
- He’s pledged to resume the Bush administration’s violation of the Geneva accords by re-instituting ineffective torture techniques like waterboarding, while perhaps even expanding those techniques. We don’t know exactly what Trump’s torture menu is, which leads us to…
- He’s refused to inform the public about his military plans, believing that unpredictable sneak-attacks and secretive wars are more effective. So much for transparency or rational diplomacy. Along those lines, as of this writing, it looks like former Bush administration hothead John Bolton will be our next Secretary of State, provided he’s approved by Congress. By the way, why should Autocrat Trump care about congressional approval anyway? Is there any recourse, other than impeachment, to prevent Trump from simply handing Bolton the job, with or without Senate approval? Not really.
- He’s also planning, as an actual agenda item, to deport American citizens, including and especially children.
- And how will Trump behave if he’s backed into a corner, or embarrassed by a policy or personnel failure? How will he react when members of Congress or Supreme Court justices repudiate something he desperately wants? Is there anything in Trump’s character, knowing what we know, that would lead anyone to believe Trump will just sit back and take it? No way.

Source: Salon: in-depth news, politics, business, technology & culture > Politics
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