Beware the Trumpian "National Emergency"!

[nynakedtop]

It doesn't have to make any sense or even exist. Once he declares one, our freedoms, such as they are, go down the tubes. An earlier Congress, assuming any POTUS would be rational, a big mistake, gave the Oval Office at least 100 new powers. And all bets are off if it happens. Politically all that's left is a veto-proof override of two thirds in each house to declare it null, and/or a successful impeachment of both Trump and Pence. But most likely prepare for lots of mass mobilizations, mass strikes, progressive organizing among vets and troops. Don't kid yourself. It can happen here. Hope for the best, work for it, but also prepare for the worst.

1939 Germany
All over again
History Repeats itself!

[MsGuy]

For what it's worth, my understanding is that most legit conservatives (in Washington and in their think tanks) are working hard behind the scenes to head off this "National Emergency" crap. Apparently they've taken a look at the field  of Democratic hopefuls for 2020 and don't want to set any precedents that might come back to bite them in the ass.

PS It's more like 1933 than 1939. If we're gonna get all hysterical, let's at least get our dates right.

PPS I just can't see the Orange One as capable of staying focused on any one thing long enough to mount a coup d'etat.

[nynakedtop]

To get at the heart of Trump’s 10-minute performance on prime time, we need to get clear on a long-standing feature from the dark side of American politics and culture, i.e., race-baiting. Or to be more precise with Trump’s closing rant, illegal immigrant-baiting.

“He just turned immigrants all into ‘Willie Horton’” was the crisp and succinct way my partner put it. Those of you who were around for the infamous ad in the campaign by the elder Bush against Michael Dukakis back in 1988 will know exactly what she meant. For those of who weren’t, Lee Atwater, a GOP operative, took a case of an inmate on furlough in Massachusetts, one William Horton, who was arrested soon after and convicted for raping a woman and stabbing her friend, and turned an ugly mugshot of Horton into an ad blaming the crimes on Dukakis.

What does a race baiter do? He picks a particularly vile example of an outrage, real or fiction, attached to a person of color, and use it to condemn an entire category of people, whipping up a generalized fear of ‘The Other’ in the minds of his designated popular base, to entice them into supporting repressive responses. The outrage is the ‘bait’ on the hook of social control and manipulation.

Trump’s aim was for us to take the bait. He knows as well as anyone that the illegal immigrant population, as a whole, once living in the U.S., is more law-abiding than the American average. He knows that a majority of the undocumented in the U.S. enter the country legally, then overstayed their visas. He knows that most drugs entering the country from Mexico do so on trucks and cars at ports of entry, or planes at airports. He knows that his immigration policies are designed to curb all immigrants from ‘shit hole’ countries, legal or otherwise, while enticing the highly educated from 'Norway' instead.

Trump wants you to see him as your savior against ‘them,’ those seeking safety and work. And to keep you fired up, he has to insist on including the irrational into any rational package of reforms making for decent treatment of immigrants at well-regulated and efficient border crossings.

But what’s the larger purpose? My guess is that it serves as a distraction. It diverts our attention away from a more serious challenge to his presidency, his business and his family, the step-by-step relentless series of indictments and convictions coming from Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, who is likely soon to reveal a Donald Trump that no one voted for. Then we'll be tested more seriously.

[nynakedtop]

Donald J. Trump does not read - except in small doses and when his own name appears prominently. Prior to the presidency, his only activities were work and golf. He does not mingle with intellectuals, cultural trend-setters or artists. It should come as no surprise - and it has not - that he is sorely lacking in sophistication, knowledge of the world, understanding of government and a rudimentary grasp of economics. Sitting atop arguably the great resource on the planet - the body of knowledge retained by American government experts on everything from economics to medicine to military history - he remains blissfully ignorant on a range of subjects.

[nynakedtop]

Trump isn’t content to use the executive office to enrich himself and his circle. He’s warping national policy to serve his own interests as well. Trump believes via Fox News that his presidency is doomed (and his second term nipped in the bud) if he doesn’t fulfil his signature promise of building a wall. The government shutdown is all about Trump and his self-serving impulses.

To that end, Trump has threatened to extend the shutdown as long as it takes in order to squeeze funding out of Congress for his cherished wall. And why wouldn’t he? Shutting down government won’t lose any votes from furloughed federal workers (the vast majority of whom already despise him). Yes, the shutdown is unpopular, but the president’s base of support is delighted to see even a partial draining of the swamp. And shutdowns don’t seem to have long-term impact on public opinion.

But the truly frightening part of this standoff between Trump and the rest of government is his threat to invoke a state of emergency so he can direct the U.S. military to build his wall.

The president admires autocrats who can just get the job done. Rule by decree is the first stepping stone to transforming democracy into dictatorship. Declaring a state of emergency would be Trump’s desperate attempt to hold on to and ultimately expand the power that is slipping through his fingers in the aftermath of the midterm elections.

Rule by decree has an undistinguished, undemocratic parentage. In the Weimar Republic of the 1920s and 1930s, the German constitution contained the controversial article 48, which granted the president the right to rule by decree in the case of a national emergency. German leaders invoked this right several times between 1930 and 1933.

But the most momentous decree came in the wake of the Reichstag fire, six days before German elections in 1933. Hitler, already appointed chancellor at that point, persuaded German President Paul von Hindenburg to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree. No doubt inspired by Benito Mussolini and his use of emergency powers to establish fascism in Italy in the 1920s, the Nazis then took full advantage of the authority granted them by Hindenburg’s decree to remake Germany into a dictatorship.

Trump has already shown a marked preference for this style of governance. During his first two years in office, he issued 91 executive orders — 55 in 2017 and 36 in 2018. By contrast, Obama issued an average of 35 per year, George W. Bush 36. Many of Trump’s executive orders — such as withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement, the Paris climate accord, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal — place Trump in opposition to international and national consensus.

Trump has also used his executive privilege to take bold stands in foreign policy that diverge, in some cases sharply, from the consensus of the policymaking community. He defied the advice of his advisors to sit down one-on-one with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Most recently, he announced U.S. military withdrawal from Syria, generating considerable pushback from the foreign policy mandarin class. Like a stopped clock, an erratic commander-in-chief can be right once in a while.

These steps are authoritative but not authoritarian. Executive orders aren’t out-and-out decrees — the courts can say no, as they’ve done several times in the Trump era. Trump’s freewheeling foreign policy moves also face certain constraints. A deal with North Korea would require congressional consent. His decision to remove troops from Syria has already been modified by members of his own administration, with National Security Advisor John Bolton stipulating certain conditions that will delay or even nullify withdrawal.

But Trump’s threat to declare a state of emergency at the border would up the ante considerably. True, presidents frequently declare states of emergency under the National Emergencies Act. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama declared a dozen or so each (most of them still in effect). But these declarations pertained almost exclusively to war or terrorism.

Trump’s attempt to circumvent the congressional standoff over his wall is a different matter altogether.