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.”
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
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.
Republicans are at best corporate shit slingers and at worst fascists and pedophiles. Why do they deserve anything resembling mercy?
He misspelled politicians.
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.
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. =\
Maybe if people understood electoral design and consensus mechanism we could have something other than the worst possible options in each party. Election mechanisms that promote popularity instead of acceptability is what got us here. The truth is the system doesn’t work. When can people just start saying that openly?
Are any motherfuckers protesting in the lobby if the NYTimes LA Times, Chicago Tribune, or anywhere else that has been cushioning and softballing this shithead?
If we seek out ways to ‘kill’ that ‘political party’ I urge we give no mercy, no quarter, and we finish the damn job.
And by “finish the job” we of course mean going all the way: Unscrewing the pommel and ending them rightly.
Although I find the meme hilarious, this makes perfect sense. That’s something I assumed as well. The pommel was likely weighted and heavy, and the shock of it coming at you and the sudden ear-ringing “CLANG” of it bouncing off your helmet was probably just wtf-disorienting enough to allow your opponent into your blind spot or deadly proximity. Ouch.
I’ve practiced something similar in martial arts, where you throw your hands wildly toward the face for a half second and take advantage of the blinking flinch for a sweep or grab.
Thanks for sharing!
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.
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.
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
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…
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.
I don’t think we get enough credit just how much we’ve fought back the Republican assholes. Our system gives them a huge edge and we’re still winning. It’s the equivalent of fighting somone with your hands tied behind your back and still giving them an ass whooping.
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.
I like Donald Trump and I’m voting for him in 2024.
Am I allowed to say that here?
Out of curiosity, given that the author of the posted article formerly agreed with you, what do you make of his views now?
Yes. But don’t be surprised.
I have to ask, why? Why would you support someone so transparently anti-democracy, possibly one of the most dangerous enemies of the United States in a long time, the leader of our very own home grown Beer Hall Putsch? Why would you give him a second chance to overthrow the democratic government of our country?
The mainstream media “fake news” has created a caricature out of Trump. They have taken what he has said out of context, taken soundbites, and not accurately reported what he’s said and done. Therefore, it is no surprise to me that you, and many, feel the way you do. I’d be on your side if I believed the caricature version.
Look, I’ve talked to enough people to realize that we have more in common than not. And what’s dividing us are the filters. I listen to Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and Joe Rogan. Others (speaking in generalities, not specifically you) may read and listen to MSNBC, Salon, The Atlantic, The Rolling Stones, etc. Fair to say these two categories are not even reporting the same basic information, let alone opinion on the matter.
May I suggest listening and going to these sources that don’t agree with you (or you even find very offensive), and see what they have to say. That’s why I’m here. I want to connect with people, and see what people I don’t necessarily agree with are saying. I don’t care what you believe or where you came from.
I realize I didn’t exactly answer the question you asked, but if you really are interested in what I think (and I’m no one special) reply and I’d be happy to talk to you.
I don’t need any talking heads, “fake news” or otherwise, to tell me what my own eyes and ears saw and heard in the months between election night and January 6th (and in the years since, my conviction has only been strengthened honestly)
Donald Trump is easily the largest threat to American democracy in the 150 years since the civil war, because he’s tricking millions and millions of people into not believing in the democratic process itself, and is responsible for the first time in our country’s entire history that the peaceful transfer of power (ie, a candidate gracefully losing, which is a core component of a stable democracy) was threatened
I don’t give a shit about his policies, his clips, his soundbites, whatever other things you think are being used to unfairly paint him in a bad light, this fact alone makes him wholly unfit to be the leader of the free world
Oh, you believe in alternative facts, that explains it.
Because they align with every thing you just said he’s going to do?
They won’t respond, they have thrown their hand grenade and they’re off to the next comment section.
Why did you link me to a comment by a six hour old account with five comments?
They won’t respond.
I have no intention of drive-by comments. I’m here.
What got your last account banned?
On Lemmy? This is my first and only account.
On /r/politics I’d expect to get banned for such a comment, hence my first question.
Wait a minute, if we get rid of the Republican Party, wouldn’t a two party system become a one party system? So if Trump is elected, end of democracy, if Republican party is destroyed, also end of democracy? Is there no way out? End of democracy either way?
We need to enact schrodinger’s vote. Put the Democrats and Republicans in a box and never check on them again. Are they dead or alive? Walking fossils are kind of both. 🤔
The two party system isn’t the rule as much as it is a symptom of our winner-takes-all voting system. In the event that the Republican party loses significant support from voters, the Democratic party would surely split into two polar factions.
In countries with one party systems they also have winner-takes-all voting system. I think that without two parties at least, one party will take over complete power and use it to stay in power forever.
Maybe this is me being overly optimistic, but ideally if the Republican party ends, the power vacuum left behind would be filled by multiple parties, who would be more motivated to do things like implement ranked choice voting, abolish the electoral college, fix gerrymandered districts, etc. So we’d end up with a multiple party system. Maybe. Hopefully.
Extremely optimistic.
The two party system currently is holding hostage debates/funding/media. Even social media is in on it. Which is why a third party has always struggled. Not because they didn’t have good ideas, but because they were shut out of the room.
Yeah I don’t disagree with you. But for what it’s worth, I think there’s a chance that we could end up with a multi-party system if the Republican party dissolves. If the Democratic party disappears, I think it’s a whole other story.
The two-party system is a system, and systems can be changed. If the Republican party finally implodes, just as when the Whigs did, it will be an amazing opportunity for progress. We need to be ready to move.
Ranked choice has to precede a pluralistic system. We’ve had similar upheavals before, a long time ago (one presaged the civil war), but as long as we have first-past-the-post, it will always settle into two-party lock-in. But, and this is the good news, after the civil war, we had the second founding - a massive overhaul of the Constitution, for the better. If, in the aftermath of the death of the Republican party, we get another chance at that, (hopefully without all the killing), maybe we can enact ranked choice, eliminate the electoral college, ban gerrymandering, establish mandatory voting, add an enforced “none of the above” option to ballots, expand the Supreme Court, uncap the House of Reps limit, eliminate the senatorial land-vote in favor of proportional representation, get fully publicly funded elections, and and and am I asking too much? I just want a real democracy.
I’m not a political scientist but I watched Hamilton one time, and I think what would happen is the parties start to move around. Right now both parties are unfortunately right leaning.
Democrats, by European standards, are middle-right, while Republicans are
chaotic evilfar right. Maybe the parties start moving closer to the left?I hope so, sounds very risky to get rid of Republican party first and then wait in a one party system until something changes. I am afraid that once you have someone with complete power, they will use it to stay in power forever.
The real fix is to get rid of the electoral college. Only then will the will of the people be felt.
Yes, but it’s more than that. The electoral college only affects the presidency. We also need ranked choice voting. The first-past-the-post system assures the dominance of two parties, which can play the voters off each other to do whatever the donor/capitalist class wants. Mandatory voting and fully publicly financed elections would also be huge wins.
No more than the death of the whigs. A dead Republican Party creates a vacuum for either the democrats to split or a third party to ascend
I bet that will work about as well as trickle down economics.
Okay? Your prediction is based on what exactly? You’re pitching a hypothetical outcome to a hypothetical situation. We’re in the factual shallow end here.
Nah, the US-system is mathematically locked in a two-party system, it absolutely demolishes the chance for a third party but doesn’t tolerate a single party either. Though it might take 8 - 12 years for the (former) republican vote to congeal around a new point of possible agreement.
Yeah, I don’t think this article makes sense. I don’t think Republican party will die until we change elections into ranked choice voting or direct democracy.
We’ve had party changes and party restructures before. It’s not unheard of. There is the third option of the republicans needing to restructure and hide for a while like they did after the new deal.
So in the mean time, before this restructure, if it happens at all, there would be a period where one party would have unlimited power? Sounds like very risky, if it gets to that point, they can use that power to stay in power forever. I think we need ranked choice voting before we get rid of republicans or some sort of direct democracy.
I fully agree with tanked choice, and want to pressure politicians towards it. Hell I’ve been parliament curious lately. But I also understand the difference between realistic and unrealistic worries. The democrats are a catch all party with less cohesion than would be necessary for a tyrannical single party. And it’s not unlimited power, there are usually a few independents in congress. If the republicans collapse we’ll either have a replacement party within like an election or two or we’ll have a lot of independents very quickly.
I’m not saying that a single party isn’t bad. My home state is so gerrymandered that republicans brazenly defy the will of the citizens. Like we added abortion to our constitution and legalized marijuana by ballot initiative and the republicans in charge promptly considered banning abortion anyways and have been fighting over how best to gut the marijuana legislation we voted on since. But there’s a huge difference between gerrymandering and other means by which a single party holds control and a major party collapsing because it’s become so toxic it can no longer win
honestly I wouldn’t risk it to wait for an election or two. Once you have complete power you can use it to stay in power, gut everyone from the party that is not on your side. It is such a big risk to have a one party system, even for a short while, that risking your vote now for the third party is actually lower.
The Democrats because what they already are: the right wing corporatist party, and hopefully leftists actually form a coalition and a party
There are plenty of other parties.
Even if the Republican party disappears I guarentee liberals will tell you voting for a party like the greens or cpusa would be a wasted vote. It’s the only strategy they have other than not being republicans.
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.
Fitting. American democracy began with Mad King George III and will end with Mad King Trump I.
Until and unless we have a way to artificially enhance intelligence - or find some other way to push human nature forward - we will likely always be stuck with some significant minority of the deplorables. The trick is to not give them any power or say whatsoever, though.
