It's As If Trump And Friends Are Itching For A Terrorist Attack To Actually Happen

You've probably heard sometime recently about a book, published in 1935 by one Sinclair Lewis, titled It Can't Happen Here. It's a piece of political science fiction which tells of how Berzelius Windrip, a self-styled populist who turned out to be a corporatist dictator, won the 1936 Republican presidential nomination and defeated the incumbent Franklin Roosevelt on a wave of nationalism and contempt for the establishment. Thankfully, no one resembling Windrip appeared in the 1936 election, and Roosevelt would probably still have defeated them if they had because of how grateful the vast majority of Americans were for the New Deal. But especially after taking a good look at the events of this past month, it becomes clear that Lewis' prediction wasn't wrong; it was just eighty years off.

The first thirty days of the Trump administration, aside from some menacing statements from the president and his aides about the press being their enemy and a series of overreaching executive actions, have not quite been qualifiably fascist. But throughout these last few weeks, the president and/or his top aides have made some remarks which seem to very strongly imply they have an intention to take things much, much further. At one of his strange campaign-esque rallies today, Trump invoked the politically self-beneficial specter of a terrorist attack regardless of whether he was talking about a real event, having vaguely referred to a terrorist incident that happened "last night in Sweden."

Okay, you'd think. He said another ridiculous thing. Why make it into a provocative headline? Well, it's established a trend that Trump and Friends have developed of fabricating terrorism incidents for their own political leverage. Last month, as you know, the Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway referred multiple times to a nonexistent "massacre" in Bowling Green, Kentucky that was perpetrated by foreign Muslims to use as an argument for the thankfully now independent court-blocked Muslim ban. Days later, Trump himself cited a wide series of unsubstantiated terror incidents that he said the media was covering up. And now we've seen a remarkably similar piece of rhetoric coming from the highest office.

One explanation for this bizarre pattern is that Conway's the kind of counselor that tells her patients to listen to rather than ignore the voices in their heads. Another is that Trump and his inner circle have privately decided that focusing on terror attacks, real or not, is a way to create political capital for themselves out of thin air.

To be clear, I'm not going to pander to any "false flag" suspicions in this piece. I don't believe the Trump administration is plotting a terrorist attack any more than I believe Bush was behind 9/11. But I do have some solid reasons to suspect the Trump administration would welcome, and is even preparing for, the enormous position of power they'll be given in the event of a major terror attack during their term.

A Trump supporter gives his interesting take on this situation.

We've all seen the ghastly political shock waves that terrorism tends to have. 9/11 brought about one of the darkest periods in American history for our country's constitutional and democratic values, allowing the Bush administration to create a surveillance state, violate human rights, and tear apart the middle east for profit all while the vast majority of Americans backed the president out of "national unity." Most recently, the 2015 ISIS bombings in Paris that killed 130 people let the French government declare a prolonged state of emergency which threatened the country's pretense of democracy. And in the Trump era, as Phil Torres writes today after referring to the president's Islamophobic rhetoric, attacks on the judiciary, and demonization of the media, we are in greater danger than ever of losing our democracy because of terrorism:

So the dominos are in place for a major, sudden constitutional crisis. What’s frightening about this unstable equilibrium is that another terrorist attack will almost certainly happen within the next four years, if not the next year or coming months. It’s not so much a matter of if but when this takes place, as terrorism scholars unanimously agree. And once this does happen, those who still believe in American democracy will need to be vigilant and proactive in defending the only branch of government [the independent courts] that currently stands between democracy and autocracy.

And so when I see Trump and his top aides regularly fabricating terrorism incidents to strengthen their case for the persecution of Muslims, the dangers of a free press, and the expansion of the executive branch's powers, I get the impression that they're scratching an itch they have, consciously or not, for the things a real terrorist attack would let them do. Indeed, many in Trump's cabinet are anticipating, with an unsettling amount of conviction, the event of a terror attack and/or civilizational war between America and the Muslims of the world. Michael Anton, Trump's senior director of strategic communications, apparently expects Islamic terrorists to attack the U.S. with a nuclear weapon "any day now." And Steve Bannon insists that in accordance with a dubious, cycle-based view of history wherein world conflict is scheduled to peak around every eighty years, an epic global war is sure to come very soon.

The irony of this is that as has been the case with the Islamic fundamentalists who believe they're on the verge of winning a coming apocalyptic war between good and evil, Trump, Bannon and the rest are beginning to realize their visions of turmoil and the end times regardless of whether these expectations are based purely on myth. And both of these forces are helping the others' similar aspirations be brought about, with the middle east power vacuum that Obama's unnecessary military involvement created now showing hints of being filled as members of the Islamic State hail the things they're gaining from Trump's anti-Muslim actions. And the Trump administration, obviously, is using the Muslim extremists to further its own ends of gaining partisan advantage, consolidating economic and political power, and the allegiance of the American people.

I almost can't blame Bannon for believing in the eighty-year cyclical view of history, because so many disasters that developed in the 1930's are repeating themselves now. But in this case, things are in many ways far worse than they were eight decades ago. Instead of just the Dust Bowl, there's a global and irreversible environmental catastrophe. The economic inequities and corporate control over society now surpass in magnitude the similarly plutocratic conditions of the early 21st century. In addition to a new Great Depression that's expected to hit this year, we now have an unprecedented coming era of natural resource scarcity to deal with. And as wasn't the case eighty years ago, the new rise of fascism has occurred in not just Europe but in the United States.

And as long as we're talking about parallels, here's one of the songs in praise of Windrip's regime from It Can't Happen Here, which I suspect will soon be a very accurate description of the state of the country:

Bring out the old-time musket,

Rouse up the old-time fire!

See, all the world is crumbling,

Dreadful and dark and dire.

America! Rise and conquer

The world to our heart's desire!

We Need A Cure For Trumpism

"Carrier [US air conditioning company] is moving to Mexico. I would go to Carrier and say, 'You're going to lay off 1,400 people. You're going to make air conditioners in Mexico, and you're trying to get them across our border with no tax.' I'm going to tell them that we're going to tax you when those air conditioners come. So stay where you are or build in the United States because we are killing ourselves with trade pacts that are no good for us and no good for our workers"

"The TPP is a horrible deal. It is a deal that is going to lead to nothing but trouble. It's a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone. It's 5,600 pages long, so complex that nobody's read it. This is one of the worst trade deals. And I would, yes, rather not have it. We're losing now over $500 billion in terms of imbalance with China, $75 billion a year imbalance with Japan."

"I am all for free trade, but it's got to be fair. When Ford moves their massive plants to Mexico, we get nothing. I want them to stay in Michigan."

If you started to get a feeling that something wasn't quite right about those statements despite agreeing with them, your intuition is correct; they're Trump quotes.

Human beings have two emotions from which all others branch out: love and fear. Distinguishing from them sounds easy, but in situations of stress, we often fail to. As the world reacts to record numbers of refugees, economic inequality and the possibility of another financial crisis, it's essential that we recognize Donald Trump and others like him represent a paradigm of fear.

And Americans know it. 63% of them dislike Donald Trump, 60% disagree with his goal to build a wall to keep Mexican immigrants out, and there is of course a majority sentiment that his irrational ideas of hate and division no longer have any place in society.

Or is there?

What I'm about to tell you might come as a big surprise: most Americans agree with Trump's plan to bar Muslims from entering the country. This was found out in a March YouGov/Huffington post poll that showed 51% of the country sides with him on that issue.

In case you think I typed that number wrong, I'll do it again: 51%.

When I first saw that statistic, I assumed that anti-Islamic sentiments are still held by a minority of Americans, and that so many believe Muslims should be shut out simply because they're confused about the right methods to stop terrorism.

I was wrong again.

The most recent poll shows that 58% of the country holds an unfavorable view of Muslims. To assure you again that I typed that correctly, it's 58%.

To make you feel a little better, the majority of Americans still have a positive view of immigrants, but the strength of Trump's message of hostility towards the other should not be underestimated. And what many in the media have failed to notice is that the main appeal of Trumpism doesn't even have anything to do with bigotry.

Someone more qualified to reveal just why Trump is succeeding is Thomas Frank, who wrote on March 7 that

Stories marveling at the stupidity of Trump voters are published nearly every day. Articles that accuse Trump’s followers of being bigots have appeared by the hundreds, if not the thousands. Conservatives have written them; liberals have written them; impartial professionals have written them. The headline of a recent Huffington Post column announced, bluntly, that “Trump Won Super Tuesday Because America is Racist.” A New York Times reporter proved that Trump’s followers were bigots by coordinating a map of Trump support with a map of racist Google searches. Everyone knows it: Trump’s followers’ passions are nothing more than the ignorant blurtings of the white American id, driven to madness by the presence of a black man in the White House. The Trump movement is a one-note phenomenon, a vast surge of race-hate. Its partisans are not only incomprehensible, they are not really worth comprehending.

But that is not the case. Or at least not entirely. Aside from those who support him because they are genuinely bigoted or because they want to remain loyal to the Republican Party, many are drawn to him for his positions on trade.

"In each of the speeches I watched," wrote Frank, "Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called leftwing. Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame."

And it's paid off. I have to confess that even I in a way see him as preferable to Hillary Clinton for the reason that he won't pursue the TPP if elected (or at least it's not likely that he will-he's lied about a lot of other things). And largely, the professional class that makes up those in the major media have either ignored this fact or divisively used it as a method to make those who oppose free trade appear non-serious and paranoid. (For example, Time columnist Joe Klein, in a clear reference to Trump's opposition to free trade deals, once condescendingly dismissed the concerns of the anti-neoliberal left. "What remains of conservatism?" Wrote Klein. "I’m tempted to say: only the nasty bits–nativism, isolationism, protectionism. But a broad swath of the Democratic Party is every bit as nasty. Bernie Sanders’ supporters eschew nativism but adhere to the latter two isms, and socialism as well.")

The same is the case for the other Trumpist movements around the world, such as the pro-Brexit campaign, whose core argument aside from fear of immigrants was resisting globalism. (Sadly, they ignored that what they were pushing for was not in fact against free trade but for it, and it backfired.) And while the issues that politicians like Trump bring up are indeed in the interest of keeping people's jobs, their followers are not supporting the greater good. Trumpism calls for wasting time and resources on controlling scapegoated racial and religious groups, neoliberal goals like the merging of corporation and state, and the violation of civil liberties out of obsession with national security. Trump may be right about a few things, but he and his political type do not care about the needs of the people.

Trump supporters that call themselves part of the silent majority may not be kidding themselves after all-the population is poor, rightfully angry at the neoliberal policies of leaders like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and therefore vulnerable to Trump's propaganda.

And the effort to resist it may not even necessarily involve keeping Trump himself out of the White House, which will become only harder from here as his opponent's poll numbers continue to drop and she undergoes another FBI investigation. If he does defy the demographics and win, he'll be an ineffective president with congress mediating his every move and the opportunity for an unstoppable progressive counter in 2020. It's the longer term war of ideas that Trump must lose.

This country is ripe for a revolution. Income inequality is at a record high, millions of people are lacking higher education and health care, and the financial and political elite are allowed their own set of laws. But unless the disadvantaged masses address these problems with a rational and level head, Trump and others will twist all of our populist energy into support for the implementation of a fascist dictatorship.