TRUMP WARNS OF “CHAOS AND BEDLAM”, IN COURT FILING

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

The Iowa Republican caucus, representing the first votes cast in the current presidential election cycle, was held last Monday, in freezing air and wind-chill temperatures. Only 14% of the total Republican electorate cast their votes, 110,000 to a total electorate of 750,000. However, sub-zero temperatures do tend to shrink dimensions of caucuses.

Donald Trump clinched the Iowa presidential nomination by a large margin, winning 56% of the votes cast. DeSantis finished a distant second (21%) to Haley (19%) in a fight for second place. Trump remains the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination in November.

Some relevant, even frightening facts were revealed by the Iowa caucus. One, over two-thirds of Republicans believe the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Two, 75% of Republicans believe that Trump will be a fit occupant of the White House, even as a convicted felon.

Three, and perhaps the most sinister, is that rank and file Republican politicians are frightened to speak against Trump. Even his rivals for the presidency, except for Chris Christie, who has since withdrawn his candidacy, hardly criticize him for his criminal behavior. Death threats against those who speak against Trump – political opponents, Republican congressmen and senators, judges, prosecutors, witnesses, journalists, – have, according to the FBI, broken all records in the past three years. Fear, violence, death threats – those are the deadly weapons Trump’s terrorist supporters use to maintain his dominance of the white supremacist cult that is the Republican Party of today.

In fact, last Thursday, in a court filing, Trump warned that “chaos and bedlam” would follow if he is disqualified to contest the 2024 presidency, as the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine Secretary of State have ruled. The grounds for such disqualification are impeccable, according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. There is no doubt that Trump was involved in inciting an insurrection against the legally elected government of the United States, which disqualifies him from holding public office in the future.

If, as seems likely, the Republican majority Supreme Court takes the case, it will permit Trump to remain on the ballot, against a strict interpretation of the Constitution. But this is the type of rhetoric Trump uses to incite his cult to violence when he feels things are going against him.

Where election strategies are concerned, Trump uses his tried and proven weapon, racism. With Nikki Haley threatening him in the New Hampshire primary next week, he has begun using her middle name “Nimrata”, as a dog-whistle to his Republican cult, implying that Haley, the daughter of first-generation Indians, is somehow less than “American”. Just as he used President Obama’s middle name “Hussein” to sow doubt about his “Americanness”.

Last Tuesday, Trump was in court, having donned his rapist hat, to find out how much more damages he will be legally required to pay in continuing to defame a woman he has already been convicted of sexually assaulting.

There are many other hats on his rack, representing treason, sedition, espionage, fraud and most of the crimes in the penal code, which he will be forced to don on numerous trial dates till November, dates which will play a major role in his election campaign.

I would like to explain why I keep on writing about the state of US politics with a most partisan, anti-Trump/Republican slant. The primary ethical function of a journalist reporting the news is to research and analyze every aspect of any person or situation, and arrive at an educated, equitable conclusion.

I report the news based on meticulous fact-checking, evidence of actual events with collaborative sources, and audio/video clips available to the public. Unlike Trump’s famous urging, “Believe me. Don’t believe your lying eyes”, my conclusions are based on provable facts.

My unbiased reasoning is that there is no second side to Trump, no redeeming feature whatsoever. He is pure, unadulterated, white trash evil.

I have always been of a liberal bent, which means that I espouse an ideology practiced in every advanced democracy in the world, in which the super-wealthy willingly pay their fair share of taxes, a thriving middle class form the vast majority of the population, and there is a social safety net to provide for the unfortunate and the vulnerable. A nation living the values enshrined in the Christian Bible, as well as in the tenets of every religion and philosophy in the world.

At what cost? The “cost” is an educated and cared-for society with no impairment in innovative productivity or creation of wealth.

Values completely rejected by the current phony Christian Nation Under God, the richest and most hypocritical, holier than thou country in the world where I would be contemptuously dismissed as a Commie.

During my two decades in the US, I have always been a Democrat. I worked at Party offices in Pasadena, CA and Phoenix, AZ, even when I was not qualified to vote. The invaluable functions I carried out in Phoenix in 2008, licking stamps, registering voters and answering telephones in my thick Sri Lankan accent, no doubt played a role in President Obama’s historic presidential victory.

I have been following American politics closely since the Reagan years, when that mediocre movie star and worse president dismantled a thriving middle class by halving the taxes on the super-rich with his famous “Reagonomics”, the much vaunted “trickle-down theory”, which has proved to be successful only for the super-wealthy and the big corporations.

Reagan was succeeded by the one-term older Bush, who waged “Operation Desert Storm” against Iraq, a military operation aimed at expelling Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait.

Both President Saddam Hussein and the Palestinians had accused western colonialists of arbitrarily carving artificial states of Kuwait and Israel after World War II.

Saddam claimed that Kuwait was the 19th province of Iraq. Palestinians had made the equally ridiculous claim to ownership of Palestine, just because they owned 97% of the land and comprised over 90% of its population (Jews numbered less than 10%) in 1947.

Still, the American and European rulers of the world after World War II, had two irrefutable reasons for the creation of both the states of Kuwait and Israel. Kuwait had nearly 10% of the world’s oil reserves, and the Holy Land of Palestine had been promised to the Jews 4,000 years ago by Yahweh, God of the Israelites Himself. What more authentic reasons and title deeds do you need as proof of ownership?

Then we had the younger Bush who was presented the 2000 presidency by the Republican majority Supreme Court, which ordered the termination of the counting of votes in Florida when Bush was ahead. Democrat Al Gore won the national popular vote by over 500,000 votes, but conceded the election to Bush “for the good of the country!” An extraordinarily stupid reason only a Democrat would conceive. Trump has yet to concede an election the Republican Supreme Court ruled he lost over three years ago!

The younger Bush waged an illegal war against Iraq, lying to Congress and the United Nations that Saddam was about to use Weapons of Mass Destruction on his own people, a claim since proved to be entirely false. A war that cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. Bush’s reign of error left the nation with a housing crisis and a near recession in 2008, only to be rescued by the brilliance of the administrations of President Obama.

I have deliberately left out Nixon and Watergate, which forced the resignation of a crooked president. Trump’s crimes make Watergate seem like a Jaywalking misdemeanor.

The above digression is intended to illustrate how difficult it has been to recall any acts beneficial to regular, middle-class Americans by Republicans in 50 years of four pre-Trump Republican administrations. Though it must be conceded that all these pre-Trump presidents, possibly bar Nixon, were men who may have been stupid and/or consumed with greed, but they were not entirely evil.

Not so with Trump. The task of searching for two sides in Trump’s moral compass is similar to looking for a non-existent needle in a filthy Republican haystack, an exercise in futility.

Trump’s lie that the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol was a peaceful protest, rather like a tourist visit, a “beautiful day”, provides the greatest danger faced by American democracy. A lie against the evidence of our own eyes, as we saw the violence unfolding of the storming of the Capitol by domestic terrorists brandishing TRUMP and Confederate flags and Nazi Swastikas. An insurrection that left five dead, hundreds seriously wounded, and millions of dollars damage to the Capitol, the seat of American government and one of the most iconic and beautiful buildings in the nation.

This is a lie that has denigrated the integrity of future elections, the cornerstone of American democracy. The peaceful transfer of power may be a thing of the past, with every future election subject to dispute, even a repeat of the violence of January 6, 2021.

President Biden made a most inspiring speech at the historic African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, on the eve of the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021 insurrection. He concluded his speech with the most important question Americans will face in November:

“Today, we are here to answer the most urgent question of our time. Is Democracy still America’s sacred cause?”

There is no confusion about who Trump is and what he intends to do.

He has shown the world that, in his perverted mind, democracy in the United States has run its course, the US Constitution is outdated and should be terminated. He has laid down publicly his plans, if re-elected, of weaponizing the Department of Justice, exacting retribution on his political opponents, and employing only Trump loyalists in key federal positions.

And, of course, rounding up all illegal immigrants, separating children from their parents, interning them in concentration camps and implementing the greatest deportation program in history.

The real questions facing America today are:

Who are the American people of today? Who are these people who keep pretending to believe that a criminal convicted on multiple felonies and facing trial on many others, including sedition and espionage, would be a suitable occupant of the White House?

Who are these Americans who believe that a criminal who consorts with the dictators of the world, the nation’s adversaries, would be the ideal Leader of the Free World?

Have Americans crossed the thin line to white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic hatred and fascism, as the Germans did in the 1930s?

If Donald Trump wins in November, the Cradle of Democracy would be transformed by a criminal wannabe dictator into an authoritarian kleptocracy, a satellite of Russia. Russia’s Putin will use Trump to achieve his ultimate goals – the illegal annexation of Ukraine and other neighboring European nations.

And the United States will abdicate from the longest lasting military alliance the world has ever seen, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

It will be America First. And America the Most Despised.

When former New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie recently decided to withdraw his candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination, he said he was disgusted by what had happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the part he had played in that insurrection.

He was reminded of a statement made by Benjamin Franklin, when he was walking the streets of Philadelphia after the Constitution Convention in 1787, a woman asked him, “Mr. Franklin, what kind of government have you given us?”

Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it”.

November 2024 will provide the answer.