How to bend them, how to break them, how to bribe them

When I get to episodes of Gaslit Nation during the weekend after the transcript is available I occasionally think what they said on Wednesday might be out of date by the time I see it. Or not. This episode is titled Actual Nazis and the hosts are the usual Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. Kendzior started with describing where we’re at. It has been two weeks since Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the election. The nasty guy is still raising money off his refusal to conceded. He is backed by the GOP.

That is an attempted coup. You should not sugarcoat it. You should not parse it into very narrow definitions that require identical formations to what you may have seen in coups in other regions, in other times of history. Every attempted coup is different. It reflects its own political and cultural context. So, you need to view this in the light of American history, and of course, in the light of how Trump has "governed" for the last four years, which has been turning the United States into a mafia state.

First, Chalupa has a history lesson. Hitler and his Nazi Party attempted to overthrow the German government in 1923. It is known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler was tried and convicted of high treason. Because Hitler claimed to have acted out of sincere patriotic motives he was given a light sentence of five years in a minimum security prison. He served eight months. During that time he wrote Mein Kampf. That time taught Hitler that the way to his goals was to subvert the system from within. He worked to come to power by a popular vote. He succeeded in 1933 and immediately started destroying democracy and building the first concentration camp. Which sounds like what the nasty guy has been doing. Chalupa said:

In 2020, Trump lost the election, but Trumpism is here to stay until we dismantle the systems that allowed it to flourish. Hitler regrouped after his trial and 10 years later was in power. Where will the Trump crime family be 10 years from now? They can be back in power, destroying our country from within even faster now that they know who they need to get rid of first, who they need to buy off immediately, how swiftly they need to move and where. If you don't believe this, then look at the 70 million plus who voted for Trump. Look at the nurse in South Dakota who said people died in denial screaming and angry from a virus they died believing was a hoax. This nurse's name is Jodi Doering. Thank you, Jodi, for doing this.

To Trump-proof our democracy we need to: Require at least 15 years of tax returns. Demand your state uses only hand-marked paper ballots with mandatory audits. Demand your state join the National Popular Vote Bill. Once states with a combined 270 Electoral College votes enact Popular Vote (we’re at 196), the state’s EC votes are split according to its popular vote, avoiding winner-take-all. Kendzior said:

One of the things I want to emphasize, when we're talking about the fragility of the system is how much it relies on individual actors and on the ability of those actors to be manipulated, to be bribed, to be blackmailed, to be threatened into complicity, or simply cultivated as enablers.

Two years ago Johnny McEntee was hustled out of the White House because a security clearance showed a prolific habit for online gambling. He was rehired just after the impeachment trial and given full control of personnel changes. That’s one reason why there are a huge number of firings from the administration right now. McEntee’s crusade of purging the disloyal is reaching his goal. To find the disloyal he has a series of questions. An example is: What do you think of pulling troops out of Afghanistan. Employees at the EPA were puzzled by that question. Kendzior said:

So, we're at this point where we have to ask, will Trump threaten people into giving him a second illegal term? The answer is yes, he will threaten them. I don't know if he'll succeed, but he is doing that, because he works for a crime syndicate, and the US under Trump is a mafia state.

Kendzior lists several people who have been threatened by the nasty guy over the last four years. Even with the nasty guy out of the White House, his threats will continue. He or his subsidiaries will target Biden and his agenda, such as implementing a widely available coronavirus vaccine or environmental policies. The mafia state will still be there, linked to oligarchs and plutocrats with vast amounts of money and power. The target of those threats won’t just be Democrats and progressives. It will be anyone who deviates from the loyalty oath. An example is the GOP Secretary of State in Georgia who certified Biden’s win. Kendzior said:

And as the clock ticks down here toward late January, Trump is keenly aware that his chances of getting that illegal second term rest often on individuals, and how to bend them, how to break them, how to bribe them. That is what he will continually seek to do.

And deeply corrupt people are easily blackmailed, easily manipulated. So how many of the GOP have been blackmailed or corrupted already? If Lindsay Graham has threatened Georgia …

and we know about them, where else are they happening? Where have they happened successfully already? Have there been other states where the Secretary of State threw out legal ballots, say, for example, South Carolina? Who else has already been intimidated into silence, and what kind of protections are available for people who do want to speak out and protect our democracy?

We know there was massive voter suppression in this election. But we don’t yet know how massive. Kendzior and Chalupa list several people and groups they call actual Nazis. Last weekend the Proud Boys, a white supremacist group, held a march in Washington. It turned violent. The police let it go on too long, in contrast to the excessive force they use on black people. A black woman was knocked out. The Proud Boys told the police that Black Lives Matter people started the violence, a lie the police repeated to the media. A goal of these violent groups is to make sure if people go to the streets in counter protest they will know they put themselves at risk. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg allowed white supremacists to plan the event in Kenosha that attracted underage Kyle Rittenhouse who shot three people, killing two. Chalupa said of Zuckerberg, “Blood Money is a hell of a drug.” Then external threats. The nasty guy appears to be wanting a war with Iran. Several people were fired from the Department of Defense and conspiracy theorists were installed. Warmonger and Sec. State Mike Pompeo has been meeting with fellow warmonger Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The nasty guy approved massive arms sales. He fired leaders at three agencies that oversee nuclear weapons. For now, the vice nasty and Pompeo have talked the nasty guy out of bombing Iran. Well, that’s according to an article from the New York Times. Kendzior doesn’t believe the article because so many warmongers were listed. If such a war happened it would not be for the benefit of America, but to benefit the international crime syndicate that the nasty guy is a part of and has control of him. If it happened, they would be starting a war to be able to dump it on Biden to handle. It won’t easily be reversed. Kendzior talked about something Robert Mueller said way back in 2011:

The lines between white collar crime, state corruption, and organized crime have blurred, and those elite actors–those oligarchs and plutocrats and billionaires–wield power at such an extent that our traditional ways of representative government, our own voice in our country's affairs, has nearly been silenced. And that's the voice that we need to get back. In order for it to be heard, we need to root out the most corrupt actors and just identify them, be very honest, have an honest conversation about what's happening. I don't see that right now, and I think it's in part because Biden is being cautious, because when he gets into office, he's going to have to deal with the coronavirus, with the economy, he's going to have to try to bring back a level of trust broadly from the entire American public for a vaccine, for example, to be successful. He's walking a very fine line, and I understand that. But nonetheless, there are a lot of just destructive, vicious actors who are going to take advantage of that sense of caution and restraint. They're not going to have some sort of good faith bargain. They don't care who dies. They don't have a traditional conception of life or a loss. You see that with Donald Trump. He's a sadistic sociopath, and there are others just like him who have immense positions of power, and no one should underestimate that.

The saga in Michigan continues. Lee Chatfield and Mike Shirkey, leaders of the Michigan legislature visited the nasty guy yesterday. It seems obvious to many observers that the nasty guy would talk to them about having the legislature overturn the will of the people and vote to seat GOP electors. That talk would be followed by a threat that if Chatfield and Shirkey didn’t comply they would be thrown to the wolves, otherwise known as the thugs loyal to the nasty guy. After the meeting Chatfield and Shirkey said there was nothing to worry about. They weren’t going to overthrow democracy. They had faith in the process. They didn’t talk about the election with the nasty guy. This morning Michigan Radio reported that the legislature would not overturn the election. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos says what happened next was strange: Chatfield and Shirkey celebrated at the Trump Hotel in DC, drinking champagne until midnight, then sleeping in rooms at the hotel. A big question: Who paid for the champagne and rooms? Then today, Sumner reported, the chair of the Michigan GOP has demanded the state board of canvassers not certify the vote on Monday, but adjourn for 14 days so they can address “credible reports of procedural irregularities” – reports that aren’t credible because the don’t exist. Along with that effort in Michigan Rep. Mike Kelly of the Pennsylvania legislature filed a suit that claimed the law allowing mail in ballots is unconstitutional and all mail in ballots must be thrown out. That would be 2.5 million ballots, 1.6 million of them for Biden. Just a reminder, American deaths from COVID-19 have passed a quarter million. Wear a mask. Mark Sumner reviewed two studies that show masks are effective. I looked at Michigan’s coronavirus data today. The news said there were over 10,000 new cases in a day. The case count did go up by that amount in 24 hours, but the cases weren’t all assigned to the same day. Michigan assigns them to the day symptoms started, which changes data up to three weeks back. However, there was a day, about ten days ago, where there are almost 9,500 new cases. That’s now four times the peak at the start of April. Deaths are hovering around 60 per day, a much lower death rate than we saw in April.