Trump the Ominous, Pt. III

 

Continuing on with my little story, the next quote from the article about Trump's Veterans Day speech shall be:

"The real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left, and it's growing every day—every single day," Trump claimed. "The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within."

Now then, what do you suppose Trump means with "the radical right"?  Given that quite a few right-wingers claim that the nazis were leftists?  Did Trump keep a copy of Mein Kampf on his bedside table (as one of his ex-wives claimed)? Was Trump's dad in the KKK?  Was this guy:

Really an attendee at Trump's January 6th. rally/riot?  I can't remember where I got that picture from in January 2020.  That appears to be a "Proud Boy" member/supporter behind him.  That group was certainly fans of Trump.  ("6MWE" stands for "6 Million Wasn't Enough."  The object in the eagle's talons is a fasces.)  You will occasionally see images of swastikas at both right-wing and left-wing rallies.  They are often used by the corporate media to assert that leftists or rightists (whichever group is holding the rally) are tolerating the presence of nazis at their rallies, when, in fact, the people using the swastikas are actually (rightly or wrongly) accusing the government they're protesting of being totalitarian.  But that shit-head's t-shirt is clearly PRO-nazi.

What did Trump mean by "radical right"?  (I just looked it up: "Radical" comes from the Latin word for "root.") When he says that the threat isn't from the radical right, does he mean himself and his supporters?  That he and his supporters are the radical right but they're good, peaceful people (as long as they don't get trodden upon)?  Or is the radical right some other group of people that is problematic but isn't really a threat?  And why aren't they a threat?  Or at least not the "real threat"?

Speaking of threats in general, I have long marveled at the ability of everyone from centrists to right-wingers to simultaneously believe that US-American "democracy" is the bestest, greatest, most wonderfulest political system ever devised anywhere and an envy of the world, while also being easy prey for deranged ideologies that only appeal to the mentally handicapped.

When a US president says "My fellow Americans" there is this implied assumption that he is speaking to the majority of the citizenry and that they share his devotion to the USA's "way of life," its values, the system, its rules, the Constitution and etcetera.  Whatever their differences at the margins, they share more than they disagree.  Because the "American way of life" is just so obviously successful and right that the average person can't help but enthusiastically agree with it.

Whereas the authoritarian ideologies of the far-right and the far-left fill the average US-American with revulsion.  Perhaps for, say, a reporter from New York City who is non-Anglo-Saxon and non-Protestant, some small town in "Fly-over Country" that wants a white, Christian, ethno-state is just as scary as some cabal of sinister communist grifters stirring up the lazy and the stupid in a plot to foment rebellion and thereby takeover the United States in order to rule over it as despots.  Either way, they're both to be deplored.  

And, for some strange reason, while they're minorities, advocating for obviously stupid ideologies, the "American Way Of Life" is threatened by them.

Regardless, Trump doesn't appear to be identifying with the radical right.  He appears to be speaking of them as a group separate from himself and his supporters.  And (whoever they are) they're not the real threat.  It is the "radical left."  It is "growing ... every single day." This is a "sinister, dangerous and grave" threat.

I don't know about you, but I do have fears of authoritarian governments clamping down on civil and political rights and subjecting us to a future of subjection to greedy and rapacious rulers.  I wish that I didn't, but I do.  In Canada it is the mainstream parties (generally the Liberals and the Conservatives but the others haven't shown themselves as dependable either), while in the USA it's the Democrats and the Republicans.  Both parties in each system have been expanding the surveillance state.  This has been to "protect" us from the threat of Islamic terrorism.  Which (as I've pointed out several times over the years) is odd, given their support for Saudi Arabia and their providing weapons, money and training and diplomatic and legal cover for fundamentalist jihadist terrorist groups in places like Libya, Syria and elsewhere.  They use the threat of terrorism to give themselves the power to arrest and hold people without charges.  They use "anti-Hate" or "anti-Smut" or "anti-terrorism" or "anti-disinformation" or other reasons to impose censorship on expression and to even shut-down political rallies. Again, using the supposed threat of terrorism, they grant themselves the right to torture and (in the case of Obama) the right to create "Kill Lists" to assassinate US-American citizens overseas.  [And it was the harper Conservatives who regularly shat upon electoral integrity and the rights of Parliament.  And then there was Dick Cheney's brazen contempt for political accountability.] It's been this erosion of human rights, carried out in broad daylight, with support from across the political spectrum, carried out by mainstream parties, that worries me.  If a brazen totalitarian steps in, the road will have been laid out and paved already.

Lastly (for now anyway), and this seems to be a right-wing thing, they tend to yawn and look the other way when the police murder minorities, abuse poor people and certain types of accused people, and they don't give a shit about the conditions in their nation's prisons.  Of course, they'll turn on a dime when it's their ox being gored, in the same way that they want to condemn drug addicts to serve "hard-time" in order to get the junkie filth off of the streets, but when Rob Ford was found to be smoking crack with gangsters on a regular basis, they prayed for him to get the Lord's help fighting his "demons" and called for compassion.

So many concepts.  So many questions. So little time.