Florida Jews Together

I expect something along the lines of the following, but of course I hope I am wrong.

In the first few days (probably the first day, January 20th), Trump will declare a national emergency, based on a (fake) immigration/border crisis/invasion, to immediately enhance his powers as president.

Trump will then institute Schedule F to politicize the civil service and purge everyone in the upper ranks who are not loyal to him. He will also institute a process to purge the top ranks of the military of anyone not loyal to him.

Then I expect him to take some extreme actions, like the Muslim ban last time, or taking away temporary protected status of certain groups (such as Haitians), so as to spark outrage and protests. He will then suppress those protests using the military and/or national guard, likely violently.

He will also threaten the independent news media with taking away their broadcast licenses, and intimidate people like Jeff Bezos who owns the Washington Post, but needs government cooperation and contracts for his other businesses.

The media is already largely a propaganda machine for him, but he will want to intimidate or eliminate the last vestiges of independent media.

As for mass deportation, he is surrounded by fellow racists and white nationalists, so they will not be careful about who they deport. Lots of people who have lived here for decades and committed no crimes will be deported. A lot of families will be broken up. There will be internment camps to hold immigrants before they get deported.

I also expect major efforts to restrict the right to vote. I fully expect him to follow the Hitler/Putin/Orban playbook for destroying a democracy and creating an autocratic government. There may be elections, but they will be like the elections we see in Russia, Hungary, and Venezuela.

Hopefully I am wrong. And of course we must fight every step of the way. We’ll see.

Hi all, what a week. I think Jimmy Kimmel said it well the other day. Rough road ahead for a lot of people, including many who voted for the “strong man” promising to fix everything — despite the many reasons (too many to list) why he is completely unfit for office.

Twice now, the most qualified candidate, who happened to be a woman, lost to a manifestly unfit person who literally embodies the seven deadly sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth). That says something, not very flattering, about the gender dynamics in this country. That needs to change.

In the meantime, we (the pro-democracy pro-freedom majority) will fight the MAGA extremism and corruption, including at the midterm elections in less than two years.

As for why he won, there are lots of reasons of course. I think one of the biggest is a media landscape that amplifies Republican talking points, and is fundamentally lies and propaganda. Fox News and other right-wing media outfits, local news, social media (where Musk used X for political advantage), podcasts, radio, etc. are pumping garbage into the minds of millions of Americans every day from multiple directions. It’s a major problem clearly.

Having said that, racism and misogyny surely also played a roll, as did the fact people were upset by the post-COVID high costs of things, even though inflation was experienced everywhere and the U.S. has come out of the pandemic more quickly and stronger than any other developed country.

Ultimately, high costs, a war in Europe, the death and destruction in the Middle East, and the effective demagoguing of immigrants, made people feel a sense of disorder, which is exactly the environment in which a strongman leader promising to bring order is most appealing.

We also need to do a better job communicating how we are fighting for the working class, and against unscrupulous big corporations, billionaires, and plutocrats, because somehow millions of working-class Americans thought voting for a man and party devoted to cutting taxes for billionaires and big corporations while slashing the social safety net and stripping away our freedoms was a wise decision.

Lots of issues, but the important thing is that we keep fighting for our values (democracy, freedom, opportunity, tolerance, inclusion, decency…), which I still hope and believe are shared by a majority of Americans (despite this election outcome).

As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”

We must: “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
–F. Scott Fitzgerald

Onward!

Pro-democracy progressive media:

1. Pod Save America
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pod-save-america/id1192761536

2. MeidasTouch
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-meidastouch-podcast/id1510240831

The MeidasTouch Podcast Politics Podcast · 1338 Episodes · Updated Daily

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