Trump will try to replace democracy with 'a regime in a permanent state of emergency'

[workinclasszero]

Trump will try to replace democracy with ‘a regime in a permanent state of emergency’: Yale historian Timothy Snyder

CHAUNCEY DEVEGA, SALON - COMMENTARY 14 JAN 2019 AT 06:35 ET

Trump has now escalated his manufactured crisis by threatening to impose a state of national emergency on the United States. Given that he has repeatedly shown that he is an aspiring tyrant and an authoritarian, such a move would be one more action among many against the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law, the twin bedrocks of American democracy.

Donald Trump is now threatening to declare a “national emergency” if he does not get his way about building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. As a scholar of authoritarianism and fascism, when you hear “national emergency” what do you think?

Donald Trump talking about a national emergency is like a black hole talking about gravity. The United States is in a national emergency — just one with a small N, and a small E. Donald Trump is the emergency. As the emergency Donald Trump cannot declare a state of national emergency.

The idea of “the exception” is the most dangerous idea for modern democracies and modern rule of law systems. If you want democracy, you have to have the rule of law. Rules help to create normalcy.

When the president starts talking about a “state of exception,” then one should be aware that Donald Trump is working in a tradition, and the tradition is one which says you use the exception to open an aperture, and then you try to make that opening bigger and bigger and bigger.

I’m not saying it will work. But that is what Donald Trump is attempting. Another part of this tradition is that the emergency is fictional. For example, the burning of the Reichstag [in February 1933], which allowed Hitler and the Nazis to take power. To this day historians are not entirely sure what happened. There was no real emergency. It was fictional.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/trump-will-try-replace-democracy-regime-permanent-state-emergency-yale-historian-timothy-snyder/

[RKP5637]

1. Bottom Line - he wants to be a dictator and a strong arm corrupt politician. If state of emergencies

do it, he will try it. Far too many Americans are still too stupid or asleep at the wheel to get what's going on ... especially Fox News viewers/stooges.

[johnp3907]

2. We have always been at war with Eurasia.

How can anyone even suggest that we haven’t always been at war with Eastasia?

[Baitball Blogger]

3. That's what saved the GWBII presidency.

War: A national emergency. Trump has to fabricate one in order to get the same armor.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. it's the dictators' playbook

All dictators follow this path.

[workinclasszero]

6. The right wing evangelical GOP has been following the nazi script since Rayguns

Trump is the fascist bastard of their dreams.

[Grasswire2]

5. THIS is it.

Get his book now.


On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century.