Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
AMERICA'S CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IS AT HAND
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The primary danger of a man like Trump is not only that he’s so self-serving that he’s willing to test the limits of democracy to promote his own interests, but he’s also so uninformed that he doesn’t recognize that there are any limits. That’s why he’s so enamored of the world’s most brutal dictators. He not only admire them, but he envies their unfettered and absolute power. What makes that so dangerous in a man like Trump is he’s also so undereducated that he doesn't realize that, that kind of power is incompatible with both the American ideal, and our form of government. For Trump, desire, delusion, and reality are one and the same. That's why he thinks he can re-write the Constitution with an executive memo.
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Trump has always been the victim of a combination of ignorance and delusion, and those who have spent any amount of time around him immediately recognizes it. Trump's former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is reported to have called him a “moron,” and the late William T. Kelley, who taught Trump at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”
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Thus, Trump is so uninformed regarding the underpinnings of America’s democratic traditions, and so self-serving, greedy, and still in such fear of the revelations yet to come out regarding his Russian connection that didn't come out in the Robert Mueller Report, that he’s completely untethered to the democratic principles that most of us take for granted. As a result, as we speak, he’s currently testing the limits of America’s willingness to defend our Constitution - and by the way, yes, despotism can happen here.
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Trump has always been the victim of a combination of ignorance and delusion, and those who have spent any amount of time around him immediately recognizes it. Trump's former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is reported to have called him a “moron,” and the late William T. Kelley, who taught Trump at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”
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Thus, Trump is so uninformed regarding the underpinnings of America’s democratic traditions, and so self-serving, greedy, and still in such fear of the revelations yet to come out regarding his Russian connection that didn't come out in the Robert Mueller Report, that he’s completely untethered to the democratic principles that most of us take for granted. As a result, as we speak, he’s currently testing the limits of America’s willingness to defend our Constitution - and by the way, yes, despotism can happen here.
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Trump has casually announced that he intends to change by executive order the 14th Amendment of the Constitution that declares anyone born in the United States a U.S. citizen. He claims he wants to change the amendment to prevent undocumented immigrants from sneaking into the country and creating “anchor babies.” But it was also the 14th Amendment that declared citizenship for former African American slaves, so if his Republican-stacked Supreme Court allows him to tinker with the 14th Amendment, who’s next? If he could declare all African Americans non-citizens, that would certainly solve the GOP's demographics problem, wouldn’t it?
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Any other president in United States history would immediately recognize that just the thought of trying to override the United States Constitution with an executive memo is crazy. But not Trump, and that’s exactly the problem with a dangerous demagogue like him - he’s such a blindly narcissistic and pathological sociopath that he doesn’t view reality like a normal person. We’ve been warned about him by more than one group of professionals who are ordinarily disinclined to criticize the President of the United States in such a blunt and pronounced fashion, but Trump’s behavior is so glaringly dysfunctional that they felt compelled to speak out. In its article reviewing the book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” Psychology Today pointed out:
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“John Gartner, Ph.D. is the founder of ‘Duty to Warn’ an organization intent on warning our country that we are in dire trouble due to our president’s mental instability. More than 60,000 mental health professionals have signed John’s petition, which states:
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‘We, the undersigned mental health professionals, believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States. And we respectfully request he be removed from office, according to article 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which states that the president will be replaced if he is ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.’”
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‘We, the undersigned mental health professionals, believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States. And we respectfully request he be removed from office, according to article 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which states that the president will be replaced if he is ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.’”
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But as deadly serious as that is, that’s not the worst of it. When you combine Trump’s mental instability with his blind narcissism and fear of going to prison if he's thrown out of office, and then add to that the fact that he’s being enabled by a Republican Party that’s in a panic over the loss of power due to a rapidly changing demographic, it becomes clear that the very viability of American democracy is in severe jeopardy.
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So now all of the chips are in place. The GOP controls two branches of the government, including a reliably conservative Supreme Court to protect Trump from the Mueller investigation. They are now in a position to validate any and all of their radical assaults on the Constitution. So now the final phase of the conservative conspiracy to take over America begins:
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Trump is already talking about an “immigrant invasion” of the United States, and he’s already predicted “there will be violence” if the Democrats win the coming election - which they did. So now, all the conservatives have to do is send in Trumplodytes to incite violence. That would give Trump all the justification that he needs to declare martial law and suspend the Constitution. He then instantly becomes the Vladimir Putin of the United States - possibly for life.
So America shouldn’t take this threat lightly. It’s time for Americans to stand up and fight this attack on our democracy with just as much passion as we fought WWII, because while the battle we currently find ourselves in is not against the guns and bombs of an outside invader, we’re now fighting the guns and bombs of a domestic enemy, and the threat to our way of life is just as severe. Could that be why Trump is currently disrupting the operations of Homeland Security? Think about that for a moment.
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I've written extensively about how conservatives tend to be mindless followers, and we saw a perfect example of that in the NFL controversy. The American flag is a symbol of American values, and the freedom of expression is the very FIRST Amendment of the United States Constitution. And as a former United States Marine I can tell you for a fact that the Marines who died for this country didn’t die for either a piece of cloth, a song, or the opinion of a cowardly draft dodger like Donald Trump. They died for what that beautiful piece of cloth represents - the right for Colin Kaepernick to do exactly what he did. Without that right both the American flag, and the National Anthem, would be totally meaningless. But most conservatives don’t possess the intellect to see that.
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As a result, Donald Trump has convinced his mindless conservative minions that it's wrong and unpatriotic to exercise the rights guaranteed under the Constitution - it's fine to brag about them, but it's grossly disrespectful to actually act upon them - and his mindless minions obediently follow his lead. But the fact is, those who follow Draft-Dodging Donnie and who are jumping up and down about patriotism and how the flag is being disrespected, these are the people who are actually disrespecting our flag and the troops, not Colin Kaepernick. These people are trivializing the very values for which our Troops gave their lives. They’re allowing a dummy like Trump to manipulate them into promoting bigotry and stupidity in an attempt to tear this nation apart, and thereby, escape the consequences of his own criminality. So to allow themselves to become complicit in that effort is what’s actually un-American, and it takes a complete idiot not to see that.
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As a result, Donald Trump has convinced his mindless conservative minions that it's wrong and unpatriotic to exercise the rights guaranteed under the Constitution - it's fine to brag about them, but it's grossly disrespectful to actually act upon them - and his mindless minions obediently follow his lead. But the fact is, those who follow Draft-Dodging Donnie and who are jumping up and down about patriotism and how the flag is being disrespected, these are the people who are actually disrespecting our flag and the troops, not Colin Kaepernick. These people are trivializing the very values for which our Troops gave their lives. They’re allowing a dummy like Trump to manipulate them into promoting bigotry and stupidity in an attempt to tear this nation apart, and thereby, escape the consequences of his own criminality. So to allow themselves to become complicit in that effort is what’s actually un-American, and it takes a complete idiot not to see that.
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With regard to the recent spate of domestic terrorism that has been overtaking the country of late, Trump claims that it's not due to his hateful rhetoric, but the unfairness of the press in asking about it. Well, ABC news did a little research into the matter, and here's what they found:
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Eric L. Wattree
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.