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ACCORDING TO LIZ - On the 3rd anniversary of the most notorious crime committed by the X-POTUS, people must consider if the United States is devolving into a 3rd world country.
Whether this country has become a banana republic for the multinational corporatocracy, like the ones that the CIA ran so lucratively for American interests in Central and South America last century, or if it can pull up its bootstraps and reinvent the American Dream, reinvent itself as a progressive democracy.
For now, the Ex continues to live in a fantasy land far, far away where he can do no wrong, which makes anyone who dares challenge him guilty of criticizing the Trump-made-God icon. And for such heresy deserves to be persecuted – oops, prosecuted.
That is the first conspiracy – the one in which all Trump bootlickers from Mike Pence through every last MAGA member actually believe he is the Great and All-Powerful, and that they will ride with him when he storms the White House again.
The rest revolve around the fact that, instead of being the fabricator of conspiracies, the Orange Cheat-o imagines himself as the victim of anyone who does not bow down and believe; that all charges against him are fabrications that MAG-idiots become contortionists to disprove in the face of overwhelming evidence.
He can never be the martyr a recent New York Times article worried about – martyrdom is reserved only for those who have a modicum of personal integrity. Trump does not.
But with neither the Republican nor the Democratic party machines delivering other credible candidates, too many voters may forgive Trump’s transgressions or buy into the Fox News-abetted claims that it is lies, all lies.
That people can’t see the evidence of the evil blob’s high crimes and misdemeanors is proof that too many Americans are living unhappy lives.
That too many Americans feel betrayed by their government cozying up to the plutocracy ensuring the American Dream is maintained as a members-only club into which they will never be invited.
Their feelings reverberate in Trump’s Christmas Truth Social message to America: that his enemies "ROT IN HELL."
And in the rather bizarre reposting on Truth Social of a word salad published by the Daily Mail of the most common words people surveyed selected to describe a potential second Trump term:
The histrionic narcissist is a clear and present danger to our democracy. Even in his bombastic insanity, the peril he poses must be confronted to avoid a total implosion.
As Sasha Abramsky wrote in The Nation:
“The sheer volume of bilge coming out of this man’s mouth, the language about immigrants poisoning the country’s blood and domestic political opponents being vermin, sounds like the ravings of a madman.
“One can hear this sort of rant on any big-city street in modern America, from the disadvantaged, untreated mentally ill who have been abandoned by society to wander from one corner to the next. We may feel sympathy for them, but we rarely pay attention to the delusional fantasies some shout into the ether.
“Trump, by contrast, retains a cult leader’s grip over a shocking number of citizens, his increasingly bilious messages amplified by the distorting yawp of social media.”
Is this the man Americans want to have leading their country as it embarks upon even more parlous times?
A repeat Trump voter claims they don’t have to like the president so long as the policies that the president champions are effective.
But they aren’t – at least not for ordinary Americans.
His ability to engage on the gut level continues to blind too many of his devotees from just whose interests the prior Prez really represents – the billionaire class that puts itself above the law and think that wealth and power entitle its members to lie, steal, cheat, mistreat women and minorities, victimize the defenseless...
The list goes on, all with no sense of culpability or guilt but, instead one of absolute elitism, of selfish, self-serving, egomaniacal narcissism.
Like them, the cheeseburger glutton cares only for himself, not for other people. Not their health or lack of housing, not their shitty jobs or overdrawn accounts, and certainly not their lack of access to the American dream. He is a fervent supporter of his own dissipation.
And for those whose own excesses dovetail with his blowhard self-image or feed into his paranoia.
When even Facebook had to disown the X-POTUS, he acted like the two-year-old having a tantrum that is his primary modus operandi: defiantly, the Ex set up Truth Social to continue ranting, unfettered by outside influence.
What America needs now is a whole bunch more influencers, but rational and credible ones who care for real people not their own egos.
What is appalling is the scope and variety as well as the number of X-POTUS crimes. They range from just being gross and simple theft (albeit on a oversize scale) to manipulation of government officials in their official capacities, and treason.
Some, especially those involving financial wrongdoings in his business operations, clearly crossed into the criminal when he tried through proxies to hide evidence of previous malfeasance.
Anyone charged with 91 felony counts in 5 indictments – and has had the chutzpah to file countersuits in some cases – should not be a matter for states to determine if he is eligible to run. He should be laughed off the ballot as a bad joke.
But in the ultimate proof of how money is buying elections these days, the apologists for Trump are not the blathering Trump-ettes but the ugly underside of the billionaire class – the likes of Harlan Crow and Charles Koch, the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, the barons of Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Ag and everyone who believes that they are above the law.
And how their claws into the Supreme Court, into the halls of the Capitol, and into our media are distorting the truth and making a mockery of democracy.
So we, every one of us who is committed to protecting our ability to speak freely, to welcome immigrants into our country, who believe in a multicultural democracy, freedom, and the American Dream, had better actively turn out voters to oppose Trump.
The terrible-twos would be nothing compared to a second term with Trump in the While House.
Not only did the events of January 6, 2021 demonstrate just how much the very X-POTUS saw himself as above the law, his prior and subsequent actions spotlight a showman who considers it his absolute right to wave his wand of wickedness to reward his courtiers and scream ‘OFF WITH THEIR HEADS’ about those with whom he disagrees.
Reality? The only reality he recognizes is his own fantasy. Unfortunately too many others have bought into it in the belief they can manipulate it for their own ends.
But they are playing with matches.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.). Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis