It's clear how Trump's presidency will play out.

[DanTex]

His policies will bolster his ego, his rich buddies, and Russia, while hurting most Americans. Then he and his army of surrogates will constantly lie about how things are getting better. They will lie about employment numbers, healthcare numbers, growth, and everything else. If the stock market drops by 20% Kellyanne will go on TV saying that it went up 20%.

He will try to replace everyone in the executive branch with propagandists, so that there won't be any facts to trust anymore. He will try to turn Treasury and BLS and CBO the rest of the bureaucracy into the equivalent of a Banana Republic (or Russia), where all the numbers they put out are for the sole purpose of bolstering the president's popularity.

It's already started. Bringing a cheerleading squad to press briefings and lying about crowd sizes when there is photographic evidence is really third world dictator stuff. I hope the Democrats really understand what's about to happen. I hope the press does as well.

And I hope someone knows how to combat this. Because I don't. I have family and friends in countries where this is how the government has been run in the past or present (Latin America, Eastern Europe, Berlusconi, etc.), where everyone I talk to seems to know how much of a clown the leader is and yet the leader stays in power.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Watching "Where To Invade Next" Michael Moore

and what is remarkable is even with a progressive president like Obama or the woman who won this last election, Hillary, our treatment of workers here is sick, disgusting, terrible.

With Trump it will get way worse, way worse.

What would trump voters do if they saw this movie about how people are treated elsewhere? Do they know mandated vacation is only not allowed here and in the poorest country on earth? Forget the name of the country, but it is them and us.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Agree,

looks like we are going to see the Golden Urinator retaliate against anyone whom he thinks are his enemies. Remember his statement,I hit back ten times more than they hit me.

[PatrickforO]

3. We must oppose it tooth and nail, every minute of every day until

we are arrested and thrown in concentration camps, and then we must keep diaries so that the world will remember.

Uh, on a less alarmist note, Michael Moore has said we tweet and write letters challenging he and the Republicans, and drown out the lies with shouts at all levels of our political system, local, state and federal - in effect become the Tea Party of the left.

Dan Rather calls upon the press to focus on Republicans in Congress and question them closely every time the Donald's administration uses 'alternative facts.'

Rabbi Michael Lerner says we must change the dialog to take into account the existential/spiritual angst that drove many religious people to the right.

You know what REALLY sucks, Dan? That we have to go through all these contortions. I was only half kidding about the camps. I'm expecting Trump and the GOP to massively expand the NSA in three areas: an alternative fighting force that stands beside but is not beholden to the US Military (the Waffen SS), a Secret State Police (Gestapo), and a group specializing in rounding up, imprisoning, guarding undesirables (the Einsatzgruppen). I'm thinking the Gitmo will become too small and there will have to be other 'camps' and that these will be funded by the government but privatized (a neoliberal twist), and big corporations will work with the for-profits running the prisons leasing out the prisoners as slave labor while maintaining them on starvation diets to keep up profits.

As it consolidates its power, the Trump Administration will institute a Nacht and Nebel (night and mist) policy - you will awaken some mornings to find your neighbors have been taken and no one knows where they are or what happened. You will go to work and find this has happened to colleagues. Fear will settle over the American public.

In the meantime, networks like HBO and Comedy Central will be muzzled with comedians now confined to fare acceptable to the new American state.

And so on, leading to a war pitting this nation against pretty much the rest of the civilized world, followed in a few short, bloody years and tens of millions of deaths, by those allied against us marching through the ruins of DC. De-Trumpization policies will be imposed on us, and those who had power during the Trump administration, particularly those in the NSA, will be sought and when caught will be tried for war crimes.

Well...some of my friends think I have become unhinged in some way, needlessly alarmist. And I hope they are right, Dan. I hope I've gone clear off the deep end, because that shit can NEVER happen here. I really hope that.

[DanTex]

4. I hope you have become unhinged (well not really, but you know what I mean).

But I'm having similar thoughts. Look at the facts on the ground. Trump has exactly the personality traits of a Stalin. It's not like Stalins aren't born all the time in every country on earth, it's that the institutions and norms in those countries prevent the neo-Stalins from becoming actual Stalins. And we repeatedly see that in countries with weak institutions, murderous dictators do indeed come to power.

And the other thing is, the GOP will never stand up to Trump no matter what he does, this is clear.

Having said that, I don't think we're going to be in for disappearances and camps. But I do think that US intelligence services will be purged and replaced by people that will spy on Americans for Trump's political benefit. I think that the economy will be pushed into cronyism, with companies needing to kiss Trump's ass or face government retribution, and the government will start cooking its own books, Greece style. I think that Blue States will be targeted for collective political retaliation by Trump, and Red States will get bribes.

It will be really bad.

[tblue37]

5. Don't forget, he wanted his parade to include tanks, missiles, & (probably goosestepping) soldiers!

[no_hypocrisy]

6. With Trump, the Stock Market could lose 1,500 points in a day and Kellyanne would claim

that it was a good thing.