Sunday, July 28, 2024
Trump's handmaid's tale
The paper tells us that Trump said on Friday night at a rally hosted in West Palm Beach, Florida, by the far-right advocacy group Turning Point Action: “Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it anymore. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
Bizarrely, he continued, with a slight shake of his head and his right hand pressed against the left side of his chest, to say: “I’m not Christian.” But, he added: “I love you. Get out – you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
The paper says that Trump’s remarks – delivered not far from his Mar-a-Lago resort and home – were immediately met with consternation in some political quarters:
The constitutional and civil rights attorney Andrew Seidel, for instance, replied to video of Trump’s comments circulating on X by writing: “This is not subtle Christian nationalism. He’s talking about ending our democracy and installing a Christian nation.”
Actor Morgan Fairchild added in a separate X post: “But … what if I want to vote again?? I was always raised that we get to vote again! That is America.” And NBC legal commentator Katie Phang said: “In other words, Trump won’t ever leave the White House if he gets re-elected.”
Trump’s comments on Friday came months after he remarked that he would be “a dictator on day one” if given a second four-year term in the White House. He has repeatedly made known his admiration for authoritarian leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. And a former White House aide reported that Trump once said Adolf Hitler – whose Nazi regime murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust amid the second world war – “did some good things”.
Meanwhile, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has detailed plans to aim retribution at Trump’s actual and perceived enemies – whether politicians or bureaucrats – should he be re-elected.
Experts on authoritarianism warn the public to take Trump seriously when he speaks in that manner. And before Joe Biden halted his re-election campaign on 21 July and endorsed Kamala Harris to succeed him in the Oval Office, the Democratic president repeatedly sought to portray Trump as an existential threat to American democracy.
If nothing else this speech confirms Trump as an existential threat to democracy in America and, for that matter, the rest of the world.
His vision is tantamount to the dystopian world portrayed in Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale with one crucial difference: not being a Christian himself Trump apparently plans to let others impose their religious dictatorship while he presides over it as an atheist overlord, barking out orders, consuming endless McDonald's burgers and imprisioning his enemies.
He has to be stopped.
He has to be stopped.
