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An ex-MAGA activist warns “no civic savior is coming” as Donald Trump’s cognitive decline becomes undeniable
What if Donald Trump defeats President Biden and takes control of the White House in 2025? He has already announced his plans to become the country’s first dictator, and to launch a reign of terror and revenge against his so-called enemies. As detailed in documents such as Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere, the infrastructure is being created right now to put Trump’s neofascist plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy in effect on “day one." The so-called resistance will not have the courtesy of ramping up or mobilizing to stop Dictator Trump’s onslaught. It will be a “shock and awe” campaign visited upon the American people.
Dictator Trump’s reign of terror will be made even worse by the fact that as shown during recent speeches, interviews, and at other events he appears to be encountering severe difficulties in cognition, language, and memory.
In a series of recent conversations with me here at Salon, Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” has issued this warning: “Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.”
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Again for the chuds and shills in the back:
“Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.
And let’s be honest, Trump has shown signs of dementia since the beginning of his first term. It was obvious when hearing his communication when he was younger.
Trump is now worse than Reagan 2nd term: not only is he demented, he and his people simply can’t hide it at all.
Trump thinks he doesn’t need to hide it, and he’s too much of a narcissist to let anyone home anything about him.
Person, woman, man, camera, TV.
He passed the test! He can remember words he remembered!
Not that any test was given in that moment, but facts don’t matter when you have Alternative Facts!™
I love how he literally named things in his field of view for this. That speech certainly included words
What’s terrifying about MAGA isn’t Trump, it’s who comes next.
A second term for Trump will be terrible, but it’ll end fairly quickly as I don’t think he’s going to live another 10 years.
However, if you take a look at the “Next generation” they are all copying trumpism but just making it a bit more crazy. Vivek is the poster child for this behavior. They are finding more and more than just abandoning pretext and saying the quiet part outloud doesn’t lose elections.
The only way to stop this is having the GOP lose over and over and over again. After Biden’s presidency the GOP cannot see power for at least another decade otherwise it will just snowball into more extreme craziness (it may do that anyways as the insane base will keep moderates out of office).
Trump has also stated he wants to be a dictator on day 1. This plus all of the other anti-democratic stances of the Republicans has me convinced that if Republicans win in 2024, there isn’t going to be another real election in the US. It’ll either be so corrupt, abbreviated or “managed” that it’s effectively Russia, or there will be an “emergency” that delays a national election indefinitely.
And then when we stop following the laws and the election is cancelled, we’ll see if the second amendment actually matters.
2nd amendment won’t matter unless a very specific thing happens: the entire government and executive branches, namely the military, collapses. It really depends on what the military does and enforces domestically. Whatever government the greater military props up wins and nothing individual citizens do can compete with that.
If everything collapses, famine will be the prime mover. And if you’re not part of a roving band of armed looters or an entrenched armed community, you’re screwed.
Cults of personality tend to die when the leader at the center goes away (by jail or death or something else). There are exceptions, but it’s what tends to happen.
You can see this in the lackluster performance of down ballot candidates who get Trump endorsements. The cult wants Trump, the singular man. They don’t turn out to put his lackeys into power. Some of them still win because they’re in safe red districts, but they don’t win as hard as they should.
It’s a lesson Caesar’s Legion in Fallout New Vegas taught us. A cult built around a charismatic leader often collapses into infighting when the leader dies. They follow the man, not his ideals. It may not happen right away, but it will given enough time. The followers will start to disagree on small things, some will be scooped up by some other charismatic grifter. In the end the movement fractures.
Not disagreeing with you necessarily, but I just love how you used a fictional example to learn from, which could be total bullshit since fiction is just that, made up.
The same thing happened with Alexander the Great.
Or we can look at a real world example. Scientology.
What? Which ones?
I’m actually drawing blanks. Perhaps it’s survivorship bias but to me it seems like most cults of personality stick around if there’s no force actively shutting them down, generally with violence.
Nazi germany, for example, didn’t end because hitler died. It ended because the allies and the soviet union occupied germany for decades squelching any Nazi sentiment. Ditto for Japan with the Hirohito (who himself was in a long line of royals that still continues just with muted power). You can look at mormonism where the founder was killed by a mob, that’s still very much alive. Or Scientology where the leader had a heart attack. Heck, even the moonies are still around.
Without a heavy societal push, cults of personality very often linger.
Oneida Cult. It dispersed almost immediately when the founder was arrested, and all that remains is the silverware manufacturer. Quite a few other examples in upstate New York in the 19th century, which was a very popular place to start weird new religious movements. There were tons of them, but you only hear about a handful that survived–Mormons, 7th Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are about it.
Nazis did fight right up to the point where Hitler died. He was the one pushing them to fight until every man, woman, and child in Germany was dead. Hitler died on April 30, and the official surrender happened on May 2. Nobody was actually interested in continuing to let Germany burn.
So yes, it’s a matter of survivorship bias. You know the counter examples because they stayed around, but they’re exceptions.
Without a heavy societal push, cults of personality very often linger.
They may linger, but they never have the power they used to. If they do, they have to rebuild from scratch, which is more or less what Trump does with white supremacists.
They may linger, but they never have the power they used to. If they do, they have to rebuild from scratch, which is more or less what Trump does with white supremacists.
I guess this is what generally concerns me about trump. I don’t think he’ll be replaced while he’s alive. However, the apparatus that made him a god amoung racists is still in place and hasn’t substantially been changed since he left office.
What’s frightening to me is it just takes the rightwing grifters to rally on another god king to ultimately start this problem anew. We have an entire “media” ecosystem that’s now learned that fascism is actually kind of cool.
The only hope, it seems to me, is that his supporters tend to be old people that will end up dying around the same time he does.
I’ll also say that I don’t think the study of cults (or more accurately to the terminology of the field, high control organizations and the BITE model) are very well developed. They’re focused on identifying them, and helping individuals leave and reacclimate to the larger society. There’s very little research on how high control organizations end, why the cults of personality that survived in the long run managed to do so, or tactics that could be used to dissolve them on a greater scale.
Here’s the thing, I’m not sure I’d totally classify Trumpism as a high control org. It certainly has aspects of it, but it probably more closely resembles the hippy movement of the 60s (from which many cults did spring). The only real core belief is how awesome trump is. Beyond that it’s a bunch of fringe and frayed beliefs based whatever that individual might believe.
For example, I have black in-laws that are also trump supporters (yeah… I know) who are convinced that Trump isn’t racist AND that trump has this secret plan that would have made all black people fabulously wealthy, Had Joe biden not stolen the election. It was something that was always on the cusp of happening were it not for “the deep state”.
I don’t think this is a mainstream trump belief but I now have to wonder how many trumpist have these sorts of special whacky beliefs untethered from the reality of who trump is.
But then there’s another phenomena that seems somewhat unique to trump which is, when he says something they do not like it’s “He didn’t say that. Oh, he did say that? Well he didn’t mean that, it was just something he said for X reason”. That is, they don’t actually care about what Trump says or does, they care about what he represents. Trump can’t really command his followers super effectively because half the time they are going to think he’s “just being trump”. This is also where it’s scary because a number of his followers want violence and I don’t think trump could stop them if they started down that path.
I don’t think this is a mainstream trump belief but I now have to wonder how many trumpist have these sorts of special whacky beliefs untethered from the reality of who trump is.
As a former Jehovah’s Witness myself, I can see parallels here. There are often things believed by rank and file members that don’t match up with what people at the top are saying.
For example, if you were to ask regular JWs what the doctrine says about the Big Bang theory, you would get an answer consistent with most fundamentalists Christians–that is, throwing it in the same bucket as evolution. However, I’ve also gone over the actual published material on the subject, and it’s not actually obvious what the official stance is. Much of what has been written in official material is along the lines of “the Big Bang shows that science agrees that the universe has a beginning, just like Genesis says”. It never quite comes right out and approves it, but it never strongly denies it, either. It’s a major contrast from evolution, where the official stance is quite clear.
They seem to be fully aware that the rank and file think one thing, but the official doctrine in place is something else. I find that even many former members are surprised to learn this.
I bring this up to say that you might be seeing a similar thing among your relatives. There are all sorts of crazy Trump beliefs that derive from nothing the man has actually done or said. People will imprint their own thoughts and hopes into places where there is otherwise a vacuum of things the cult tells you to think.
Scientology is a religion, was always meant to be a religion. Trump isn’t going down that angle. Ironically, he’s too much of a narcissist to have the self inflection enough to become a religious leader.
With something like Trump, who else in the party is going to take up the banner? DeSantis? He got completely fucking disgraced this last year attempting that. Haley? She’s a sociopath and nobody really likes her on either side. Trumps children? They’re about as charismatic as a wet sock.
He has no legacy. He’s it. It’s the weakpoint of serial narcissists. Their empire collapses when they do, because they’re too insanely jealous to share any secrets or power with anyone else.
Can’t stop the power sharing once you are dead.
I’ve no clue who 2.0 will be. Could be someone not on the stage at the moment, could be someone like Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz. There’s lots of options to be sorted out after Trump dies.
I view it sort of like the situation with the major rightwing propagandists. When Rush Limbaugh died, that wasn’t the end of rightwing propaganda, there were already new shitheads in the rafters like Tucker Carlson that’d eaten up the space.
With Tucker off the air, there’s now Jessie Waters (or whatever) doing his part. Before that there was bill oriely.
Trump might not be setting up a dynasty but that’s not really what I’m concerned about, I’m concerned about him setting up fascism that’s willing to glom onto the next leader like it glomed on to him.
the only way to stop this is having the GOP lose over and over and over again.
This is asking a lot imo. You’re asking everyone to be vigilant and I think the last 10 years have proven that a significant proportion of the voter population cannot be relied on to be vigilant, because they’re content in being myopic.
That seems to be the weak point of a republic. I just watched a video essay on YouTube about the politics of Star Wars and how the Republic fell to the Empire and I think the guy made a lot of good points and it included a call to action in our elections. I think Star Wars is known to have taken from the fall of the Roman Republic and there’s more recent examples of the death of a democracy in the Weimar Republic in Germany.
With the two real life examples, all it took was a prolonged period of decay (from inside and outside factors) to lead to the Roman Autocratic Empire and Nazi Germany. I’d argue the US was on this relative path before with the America First party that rose to oppose FDR in the 1930’s. All it may take is another bad world event to push people into being content with a populist autocrat like Trump.
I’m still hopeful, but we should all take the lessons of the past into account when deciding how to move forward.
Not to mention that the resistance is immensely fractured. I’m still not sure that we’ve seen an event heinous enough to galvanize the opposition past ideological boundaries. For many, stopping Trump is not yet enough to delay their potential political gains. Populism rides on the strongest human emotions, the easiest and vaguest enemies, and the simplest (wrong) answers. It’s going to take a united effort, the sort that was brought about by the geopolitical situation in the FDR era, or I worry that we fail.
The “resistance” is clustering themselves into smaller and smaller areas and because of our shitty representative apportionment they lose political power when moving to populated places.
If we want to fix this we need to convince people that the amenities in cities aren’t going to survive when the federal government mainly represents empty land and thinks those amenities are from Satan.
I’m not exactly going to fault persecuted people for fleeing their homes. It’s not always about “amenities” as much as it is safety and belonging. I’m not against the idea that this dilutes our political power in our system, but I’m also not sure that it’s the front I’m going to choose to fight on.
Absolutely. There are definitely people who need to leave in order to be safe.
But when I talk to people who don’t have that problem about living in flyover country their first response is “There’s nothing to do out there.”
Guess this one just hit close to home since I am one of the aforementioned runners. I do think that if someone is in the position to be able to contribute their vote in an area where it will make more impact, they should do so. I guess I just also understand not wanting to dictate so much of your life for a minor bump in a political cause, imperative as it might be. It’s a hard situation all around.
TBF, the only thing that matters is if he lives another 4 years. 8 if he loses this election.
The implication is that if Trump wins, he won’t be leaving in 4 years. He won’t be leaving until death. Because that’s what dictators do.
But doesn’t that just mean they will go back to not saying the quiet part out loud? Doubt they will actually change and have someone decent as a candidate anytime soon.
Exactly. Conservatives do not change. They just change how loud they are about their bigotry.
Republican party doesnt need a mercy kill.
It needs a legitimate, in depth, non-partisian federal criminal investigation and convictions against every one in the party that has betrayed their office and sold America out to foreign powers… Or have fucked kids.
Which, unfortunately for them, seems to be a significant chunk of them.
Start with all the ones that I’ve been balls deep on Putin.
No.
No mercy.
Make it an example.
Let them be electorally crucified. Make voting GOP as reviled as voting for the KKK.
Is it not? I’ve already felt that way, but having the comparison is a good point.
In a way, voting for the KKK is smarter. At least then you’d be part of the in-group you’re voting for.
Is it not?
God, I wish.
mercy-kill
I don’t see why they deserve any mercy.
Because not all sheep deserve to be slaughtered. There’s a lot of people who vote out of fear because they don’t know any better. It’s the Republican party that needs to be done away with.
exactly.
Whether we like to believe it or not, no one is the villan of their own story. I won’t deny that the Republican party courts the worst of the worst types of scumbags around us, but their propaganda machine gets so many people in so many different ways.
They managed to get my otherwise amazing gay cousin to vote for Trump by his displeasure with the Israel/Palestine conflict (this was well before the current genocide) The media he was consuming framed everything in terms of Democrat support so he was lead to believe the Republicans have the “compassionate” resolution. He votes against his own well being because of propaganda… :(
I think it’s important to clarify here that “the Republican Party” (see also: “the GOP”) refers to the party leaders and political figures. It doesn’t (usually) refer to the voters, although you might hear “Republican consituency” or “Republican voters”, or even “Republicans”. But “the Republican Party” is generally agreed to mean the leaders, or the organization that presents them as leaders. I think you agree with that point because you seem to be making the same clarification in your last sentence. My comment, and the article headline, are referring to this group.
I think I agree with you that the sheep don’t need to be slaughtered, although they are going to need some very tough medicine.
The people who led them to this point? No mercy.
The Republican Party simply represents the voters, they’d get no votes without that.
So no, they don’t deserve mercy. The average conservative voter is the very reason we have this problem to begin with.
Politicians need someone to represent. They found it in America’s racists and nationalists.
Yes, but part of the Republican strategy is to distort the truth or history using lies. They may have found what they want or need in America’s racists and nationalists, but not until they pumped them full of misinformation first.
Bollocks. Anyone who still supports Trump after 6 January 2021 knows exactly what they are signing up for.
Never ceases to amaze me how often I see this canard:
both parties share culpability in creating the opening for MAGA and Trump
So Dems, who are never elected to represent those poor, forgotten souls in the rust belt or former coal mining towns, and therefore are not in a position to actually do anything to help them, are somehow culpable for those folks, what, voting against their interests?
Fuck off with this both sides enlightened centrist bullshit. Folks in Virginia and Alabama voted for right wingers who fucked them over, then those people successfully channeled the resulting anger and resentment at the “establishment”.
It’s the political consequences of starve the beast politics.
Which Republican said “The era of big Government is over!” right before dismantling or slashing the bulk of federal safety net programs? Which Republican took office on anti-corruption messaging, then immediately turned around and let criminal bankers who decimated the US economy off the hook?
The Republican party is a psychotic cesspool, but Democrats have plenty to answer for too. The rust belt in-particular was dominated by Democrats until Bill Clinton made the conscious choice to turn against the unions that had put him in office.
Trump is literarlly elected because Hilary’s campaign elevated him in their piped piper strategy to make Republiacan candidate more extreme so more people vote for her. https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/
Cool, so Hillary and the DNC were such incredible political masterminds that they single-handedly brainwashed GOP supporters into nominating Trump. And all the voters then picked him because, I assume, the DNC also tricked them into tacking toward fascism through, I guess, sheer force of political will.
Truly amazing.
Or course, it makes sense. Certainly when I think of the DNC and the Dems more broadly, I think of an incredibly effective organization with an all-powerful and unstoppable mind control apparatus demonstrating unparalleled powers to manipulate an unwitting electorate in order to achieve their nefarious goals.
And the GOP and their voters? Obviously simply sheep, following the lead of their Democratic puppet masters.
I’d call it a left-wing conspiracy theory, but if there’s anything I know about the Dems, it’s that they’re such incredible strategic politicians that this can’t be anything but the stone cold truth. Right?
Certainly that explains why, after the 2016 election, all those poor GOP voters woke up, confused and hung over, and realized what they’d done while under the spell of those nefarious Democrats, and why in subsequent years they rejected Trump wholeheartedly and certainly never goose stepped right along behind him.
I think it’s less “sophisticated mind control apparatus” and more
“Lol this guy is truly an insane charicature no rational person would want, let’s make sure we go up against him! Yeah, lol, nominate this clown you guys.”
…And they weren’t counting on just how “popular” a conspiracy-spouting walking meme of a madman would become to an easily-mobilized, highly emotional, constant-threat-perceiving, under-educated, news-cycle-obsessed slice of the population.
Y’know like when the CIA installs international dictators who are “friendly to our interests” and it completely backfires when they get off the leash.
So let me make sure I understand:
Step 1: DNC highlights the right-wing nutjobs in the GOP as a way to scare the undecides into voting for them. “Look at those nutjobs!” they say. “Aren’t they fucking nutty? Who would vote for someone that nutty? Not you. Because that would be really dumb, right?”
Step 2: GOP primary voters decide “Well shit, those nutjobs? Those are my kinda nutjobs!” and nominate Trump.
Step 3: In the general, all those GOP voters then vote for the nutjob.
And thus I am to conclude: Hillary and the DNC helped create the MAGA brownshirts.
Yeah. That makes sense.
It’s kinda like how, if I tell a toddler not to put paperclips in wall outlets, and then they do it and electrocute themselves, then really it’s my fault because I pointed it out in the first place.
No, the rich corporations funded both and told them to support each other. It is not just a conspiracy theory, there are cryptographicaly signed emails about this, for which journalists when to jail for publishing. There are public records of major donors funding both sides. They are all puppets that play in theater of politics to pretend to be enemies while working for the same employer doing the same thing and getting votes by pretending they are against each other.
Why would anyone nominate Biden? Couldn’t find a weaker candidate. It’s like putting a sleeping toddler in as goalkeeper and be annoyed that a one footed senior might score a goal.
In case you forget 2014-2016, Biden was immensely popular. He was seen as empathetic and with a sense of humor prior to Obama leaving office (remember all of the Biden/Obama bromance memes?) He was the most primed for the job in the public’s eyes.
I mean if you wanted relatable and empathetic with a stable track record we could have had Bernie but his own party had to pull the rug on him. =\
Americans have been electorally mercy killing the GOP for forty years, they invented moving the goalposts in response.
There may still be a less electoral way to mercy kill the GOP.
Americans have been electorally mercy killing the GOP for forty years
Feeling incredibly happy every time a cockroach dies of old age, because I’m pretty sure this means I’m beating them.
There may still be a less electoral way to mercy kill the GOP.
Unfortunately, the folks with the highest proclivity to try and run a rival’s campaign bus off the road aren’t in the liberal party.
They have been killing them with the popular vote. The GOP wins the electoral votes often actually.
It is refreshing to see someone who has left MAGA and realises the full potential danger that Trump and the GOP pose.
don’t make me hope ;_;
i have been dreaming of this,
pleading for this.
but i never dared to consider it might actually happen
i can’t afford enough copium to sustain itSadly seems to be a small minority though.
This is another framing suggesting that the Republican party was a legitimate party until Trump, they have been the party of racists since, at least, Nixon and the implementation of the southern strategy.
Trump isn’t the root of the evil of the party, the party has been evil for 60 or so years, trump is the logical conclusion.
Calling it a mercy killing erases all the evil done for so long. The party doesn’t need a mercy killing, it needs to be held accountable for the evil it has done for decades.
There is no more Republican party, it is MAGA now. People who don’t fall in line behind Trump are retiring and leaving office.
No, there is a Republican party. It’s MAGA and a large number of voters who vote R regardless of name.
So many Republican voters simply don’t care.
Source: I worked as an election poll worker. The number of people who asked me, “Who are the Republicans?” on ballots where there is no party would shock you.
Trumpism is not going to be defeated by voting at this point. Pelosi: “US needs a ‘strong’ Republican Party.” Dems are fine with the good cop, bad cop dynamic.
In this case she may have been making an indirect swipe at Republicans in general, saying that the party isn’t strong.
Yeah, that’s the way I read, especially given all the republican infighting.
The country genuinely does need a competitive second party.
Everyone blames Democrats for the lack of choice in candidates, while the other guys are nominating a twice impeached, adjudicated rapist and insurrection supporter with ninety one criminal indictments and multiple pending civil suits.
I haven’t had a candidate come out of the GOP worthy of consideration in my entire lifetime. At one point, they were the party of not only Lincoln but folks like Eisenhower.
It needs an electoral system that makes third parties viable.
You know it’s bad when “BuT hE hAsN’t bEeN cOnViCtEd YeT!” is somehow a defense for supporting this guy.
Like, c’mon that nonsense wouldn’t fly pertaining to your daughter’s new boyfriend, why the heck would you let it excuse somebody running a crumbling world superpower?!
You’ve now been made a moderator of Lemmy’s conservative community. That’s exactly what they spout constantly…
Trump is here because dems wanted an easier candidate to run against. https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/
2016 was 8 years ago, and I think it’s rather weird and conspiratorial to blame Hillary for Trump in the first place. She might’ve had a preferred opponent but she certainly didn’t control the GOP. She barely controlled the DNC. She had a hard fought primary with Bernie who wasn’t even a member of the party, and had a relatively low national profile before the election.
This points at exactly what I’m talking about above. To hear you tell it, Democrats are somehow the only people with agency in the entire political landscape.
Politicians have no real agency, it is the rich that control the entire political landscape. They liked Hilary and Trump, and they told them to support elevate each other so that no matter who wins, they get their way. They do this in every election, same major donors fund both sides.
Democrats and Republicans are just puppets that pretend they are against each other, but in reality they are on the same side working for the same employers and getting votes by bashing each other.
So you had a long think on this response and decided that your take that Hillary was responsible for Trump was too nuanced? 😆
There are material differences between Democrats and Republicans and acting like there aren’t serves nobody (except perhaps Republicans).
Trump is a democrat funded candidate in republican party. They both work for the same people and same interests.
You’re an idiot
Sounds like he’s well qualified to be the first king of the USA. He’s got everything. A ridiculous family tree, he’s loony, he’s corrupt, he’s bankrupt. All hail king Trump the first!
King Donald I. They use first names for kings
Yeah, it would be the first king in the Trump dynasty. Blech.
Republicans are at best corporate shit slingers and at worst fascists and pedophiles. Why do they deserve anything resembling mercy?
It is a saying…
And in the end almost everyone deserves mercy.The republican party is not a person though. Theres no need to be merciful to a ideaology, especially one that aspires to become fascism.
Bless your heart.
I think plotting the execution is a bit premature given how they’re winning all the judicial races.
He misspelled politicians.
It will be a “shock and awe” campaign visited upon the American people.
This subject does not seem to be receiving the warranted attention it deserves
Fitting. American democracy began with Mad King George III and will end with Mad King Trump I.
