Astonishingly, the normalizers are at it again, at 3 a.m. on the most bizarre and disturbing election night in American history. Sure they're trying to be calm and say all is normal. But it is a disservice to understate the extraordinary damage the president has just done.
It is misleading to underplay the danger posed by Trump right now. Yes, our system should work, but so far, for four years now, it has not. Manifold crimes have gone unpunished. Our institutions have come under assault from those sworn to protect them.
Now, Trump is carrying forward a plan he announced weeks ago. He has launched a coup against the US people. He is attempting to steal the power our Constitution gives to them--to us. And anyone who blithely assumes that won't happen, because "our system doesn't work that way..."
...anyone who assumes he can't pervert the outcome of this election with the aid of his corrupt attorney general, his illegitimate judges and their patrons in the still GOP-led Senate, has just not been paying attention. He betrayed the country even before he took office.
He stole from taxpayers. He committed human rights abuses on our border. He served a foreign enemy. He obstructed justice. He turned US government forces against peaceful protestors. He contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands to advance his political interests.
And so far he has gotten away with it. Every time he crushed or norm or violated a standard or kicked a law or Constitutional provision to the curb, he got away with it. We should take very seriously therefore the possibility that Trump's coup attempt will succeed.
But even if, in the end, he is not the one who is taking the oath of office on January 20, even if somehow, some one of the few remaining guardrails in our system holds, we must fight like Hell any effort to normalize what he is doing as mere lies or typical Trumpian excess.
This is an act unprecedented in our history. This is an attempted coup by a president. This is the ultimate betrayal of our democracy. This is America a hair's breadth away from becoming an autocracy.
This is a serial betrayer of country and oath doing his corrosive worst, a cancer not only on the presidency but on our entire democratic system weakening it, threatening its viability & doing damage it will take generations from which to recover. If we ever can recover from it.
No, don't be calm. Don't accept it. Don't count on cooler heads to prevail. Push back. Demand accountability. Resist via every means at your disposal and recognize that the most powerful of all those means--the ballot box--has now been compromised, been stolen by a thief.
And should he ultimately lose, beyond the accountability the law demands of him and his co-conspirators, demand that he and they and what they are doing and their enablers are condemned for what they are, are characterized as they should be.
He is a would-be dictator. He is a criminal. He is a traitor. He is a friend to our enemies and an enemy of our country and our system. He must never be granted the deference past holders of his office have been given. He has disqualified himself.
His legacy is one of death and pain and debasement. His reward should be ignominy and such punishments as justice demands. Our system will never recover unless we acknowledge the unprecedented severity of the crimes he is seeking to commit before our very eyes.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
