The gateway to strongman politics
Do you know any 6th graders? I know many. It’s a beautiful age.
Here is how The New York Times covered the first school shooting of 2024 — in Perry, Iowa — and the murder of a 6th grader, whose life was snuffed out like many more will be over the back half of the school year:
Hundreds of people huddled in the cold at a park late Thursday, where ministers led the group in prayer and residents shared their accounts of what had taken place that day. One high school student told the crowd that she heard the gunshots that morning and thought that they were the sounds of balloons popping. Another speaker said she knew the student who had been killed, “an amazing little boy, and he was the sweetest.”
“He was the sweetest.”
God’s “caretaker” — Trump — has spoken about the shooting and his message was direct:
It’s just horrible – so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.”
GET OVER IT??
Trump’s full remarks were as follows:
Trump’s comments came almost simultaneously with his sinister and unholy declaration that he was god’s anointed leader.
American Bridge, the politically incompetent and impotent Democratic Super PAC, lost and ineffective as ever, released a lukewarm banality to fight back:
Really? Is it really “beyond the pale” for Trump? Maybe the political dullards at American Bridge should develop a bit more imagination. Trust me when I say this: Trump is just getting started. President Biden was “good to go” at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and showed he can bring the fight to the MAGA extremists, which he must do — day in and day out.
President Biden can’t do it alone. He needs effective allies and his Super PAC allies are deficient as is the operating structure of his political campaign, which is tightly controlled from the White House by a team of Washington careerists, insiders, lobbyists, and unimaginative bureaucrats, with the exception of Jen O’Malley Dillon and Mike Donilon. This is why President Obama is concerned, and is advising President Biden to properly structure his operation and allow it to fight. Slow, slower and slowest cannot be the ethos of the Biden campaign operation. The president deserves the best. The country demands it. The fight against Trump demands commitment, ferociousness and common sense.
What is to be said about a man who said what Trump said? Maybe more importantly is what should be said to the people who lined up for hours to see their God at the Commit to Caucus event in Clinton, Iowa:
Yelling at them might be satisfying, but is likely to be ineffective. The Democratic National Committee has inferred for many years that they are ignorant and stupid, and that doesn’t seem to be working very well.
I wrote the following after I attended a football game at the University of Iowa, and saw the most beautiful tradition in all of college sports up close:
Sometimes it takes a football game to remember that America is us
American politics is fundamentally broken because, with few exceptions, a generation of American political leaders lost sight of what the business of American politics is about. Their cynicism has contaminated belief and eroded faith in American democracy. It paved the way for the rise of a demagogue like Trump, who profoundly harmed American society du…
How can a state full of decent people possibly be getting ready to deliver a massive victory for Donald Trump in the Iowa caucuses? How can they possibly tell decent people who lift up sick children on college football Saturdays to “get over” the murder of one of their babies going back to school on the first day of the new year after Christmas?
Is it because the people are indecent? Certainly, some are, but most aren’t.
Are they indifferent, evil, lacking any empathy? Again, some are all those things, but most people aren’t.
What then is happening?
The American people, by and large, are struggling. Life has become brutally hard, and the American dream has dried up as the nation’s elites have become a society apart. The simple truth is that many frustrated, ignored and unhappy people are falling for one of the oldest and most malicious lies there has ever been.
Democracy has long been lost for millions of Americans who have been stripped of agency, dignity, respect and economic liberty — if not yet the vote. These Americans — a staggering percentage of the population — live at the edge of disaster and carry heavy burdens of fear and anxiety with them at all times. Many feel they live on the edge, one disaster away from destitution. Where there is anger and hopelessness there is fertile soil for the deadliest political lie in history to take root. Trump expressed it this way in 2016:
“I alone can fix it.”
This is the gateway to strong man politics, dictatorship and a stripping away of decency, humanity, and ultimately. freedom. This is the greatest con in the history of the world, and the men who have pulled it off have the distinction of being the very deadliest in human history. Devastation always follows in their wakes.
“Have you no decency?”--Joseph Welch
Excellent newsletter Steve. I’m reminded of the words of lawyer Joseph Welsh, in 1954, to Senator McCarthy, during his Senate witch-hunt for communists.
This country is currently experiencing the same Shock Doctrine as in the 50’s. Instead of a communist takeover, we have an authoritarian kakistocracy takeover; both led by the most corrupt anti-American, shameless, self-promoting clowns of their times.
And if we learned anything from that era, it’s that witch-hunt’s and right-wing fallacies don’t end well for the heath, security and interests of this great nation. And it’s the most vulnerable that suffer the most.
I agree, Biden’s “let Trump continue with foot-in-mouth syndrome” is having the opposite effect. Trump and his minions continually gain ground, are becoming increasingly unified and his base is more galvanized and fanatical than ever before. He’s also making headway in African American and the Hispanic communities thanks to a biased media.
Is it shocking to know that Trump is an apathetic, egotistical charlatan, who only cares about himself? Only someone living in a bubble, and is oblivious to their surroundings, wouldn’t have already figured this out.
“The American people, by and large, are struggling. Life has become brutally hard, and the American dream has dried up as the nation’s elites have become a society apart. The simple truth is that many frustrated, ignored and unhappy people are falling for one of the oldest and most malicious lies there has ever been.”--Steve Schmidt
Excellent paragraph. Americans having been losing for generations. The wealth gap started under Reagan ( tax cuts and deregulation), and has continued by both parties as they became more addicted to billionaire campaign funding. I won’t argue who’s more at fault, since it’s irrelevant for this discussion.
The point is that wage increases and cost of living increases have been the best seen in the last three decades. Unemployment is at its lowest since 1962, and our economy is continuing to grow and outperform the entire world.
We even have record luxury car and yacht sales.; usually a sign of a robust economy. The people who struggle the most: healthcare, education, and living paycheck to paycheck are worse off because they continually vote against their interests; electing men and women who refuse Medicaid, the ACA federal subsidies and are constantly trying to cut entitlement programs. These people continually blame everyone and everything instead of caring enough to make policy based on empirical data and potentially good outcomes.
The real reason we got here is because of complacency and social media brainwashing. Not to mention, the MSM creating controversies where none exist.
As Robert Maynard Hutchins famously said:
“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”
One of the reasons that I think Democrats, Never Trumpers, and Never-Again Trumpers (my term) are struggling to get Republicans and MAGA voters to cast pro-democracy votes is that I honestly believe that Republicans and MAGA voters do not care about democracy. As you point out, many people are hurting, even though the economy has come roaring back after the pandemic. How do you stop the hurt? One way, IMO, is to promote economic equality by restoring labor unions and by fighting corporate greed. The opposite way is to usher in an American Hitler and an American version of Nazism.
President Biden’s administration has done a great deal to help ordinary Americans, but Republicans in Congress care more about beating him than about assisting their constituents. If Fox News and Republicans are telling someone that Biden is stealing elections and hasn’t done anything for them, and that foreign people, “thugs,” and socialists are running rampant, they may turn to someone who is willling not only to end democracy, but to rid the country of the perceived culprits. Those of us who are descended from Holocaust victims know how that ends.