Halloween 2020, with Trump Republicans, Charles Manson and Jim Jones

“Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Perhaps rulers did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise this value or that principle. After…German elections of 1932…(and) Czechoslovak elections of 1946…Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed…Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram (using Yale students and New Haven, CT residents)…grasped that people are remarkably receptive to new rules in a new setting. They are surprisingly willing to harm and kill others in the service of some new purpose if they are so instructed by a new authority.” – Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, From #1, “Do not obey in advance.”

“In 1945 he (Hitler) sought the destruction of Germany in the greatest planned Goetterdaemmerung of history… ‘We are the last people,’ he said (in 1932), ‘who will make history in Germany.’…What do these words mean? Is it not conceivable that Hitler, from the very beginning—perhaps unconsciously—had been working for the total destruction of Germany?” – R.G.L. Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, 1977

“At heart, any murderer is a complainer.” – Martin Cruz Smith

“The ‘Jonestown Massacre’ occurred on November 18, 1978, when more than 900 members of an American cult called the Peoples Temple died in a mass suicide-murder (drinking [not Kool Aid, but] a flavored drink mixed with Valium, chloral hydrate, cyanide, and Phenergan, Vox, 05/23/15) under the direction of their leader Jim Jones (1931-78). It took place at the so-called Jonestown settlement in the South American nation of Guyana.” – History.com, 11/20/19

“You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody’s crazy.” – Charles Manson

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” – Abraham Lincoln, Speech at the Cooper Union, New York City, Feb. 27, 1860.

“Burleigh County plans on ‘heavily staffing’ its polling centers so that if an election worker can’t work, the location has adequate staff, (County Election Manager Erika) White said. She added that she’s been working with younger poll workers for this election…Every poll worker position for Morton County has been filled, and a few people are even on a waiting list, County Auditor Dawn Rhone said. Of the 105 poll workers, about half have never worked an election before.” – Bismarck Tribune, 10/05/20

“Axios is reporting that Attorney General Bill Barr has informed the White House and top Republicans that there will be no report or indictments filed by Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham prior to the November 3 election. Durham, of course, is the prosecutor Barr assigned to investigate the genesis of the Trump–Russia probe launched during the 2016 campaign by the Obama administration.” – Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 10/09/20

I received recently, by U.S. mail of course, two interesting twists on North Dakota Republican arrogance. The first one was old school deception. The outside envelope showed a return address identified in bold: “MORTON COUNTY AREA ASSESSMENT,” right next to a seal of the American Eagle. Since, unlike the current Republican President, I try to pay my fair share of taxes, it got my attention. Upon opening it, however, the letter began “Dear Fellow Republican,” not a message that powers my boat. Since no one has voted Republican since I moved here in 2004, I checked the outside, and found lower down in smaller print in the return address: NRSC.

It seems that the National Republican Senatorial Committee assumes that everyone in North Dakota, the only voters with a State owned Bank, wants to defeat what they call a “socialist agenda,”- out where farmers couldn’t exist without government help. They also assume that they own the place, which, for now, they do, at least as far as the national political map is concerned.

But a second mailing showed me things are changing. Republican Secretary of State, Al Jaeger, who was moving heaven and earth to suppress Native American voters of Five Nations in North Dakota in 2018, is running a Get Out The Vote campaign in 2020. A clever marketing post card with photos of actual human beings, if not North Dakotans, typed me as an “Early Voter Ed,” my having voted September 29, along with “Vote-By-Mail Marie,” and “Election Day Dave.” All very patriotic in a State that likely will remain Red this year, despite what Trump says or does.

A change of heart? No. A change of voter turnout on the Rez, and defeats in the courts stopped Republican voter suppression tactics against a demographic they rightly identified as Democrat.

Nevertheless, it’s nice to see Al Jaeger doing the right thing, even if his motives lack sincerity, and it will make it harder to suppress the vote in the event that Democratic Party vote tallies increase to match other parts of the country later in this century. News from America outside of the Dakotas is better for Democrats who suffer among Trump besotted, mask-less morons. I shared such thoughts with my KGB animal friends for sanity’s sake, while social distancing.

High Plains Reader: I’m glad ND’s Secretary of State is finally behaving himself, but have doubts about the Covid Mask Deniers in the Republican dominated Legislature here and Legislatures elsewhere, like Pennsylvania. AG ‘Benito’ Bill Barr: Trump’s Badass Barracuda Barrister (B-6^th Power), and Chief of Staff, Mark “Mindless” Meadows (3M), wanted a rogue commission there to interfere with perfectly well run elections, but their local yahoos balked.

Putin: Republicans are huffing and puffing to stave off the inevitable. It never occurred to them that voters might not hate Democrats as much as they do. In addition, local officials regardless of Party, unless they have some kind of “skin in the game” like Republican Governors in Georgia, Texas and Florida or the Republican Attorney General in Kentucky, don’t take kindly to Federal or State authorities telling them how to do what they were elected to do.

HPR: But Trump does all he can to make the country suffer for rejecting him, given his failed efforts to rig the election with treason re: the Ukraine, trashing the Post Office, and other high crimes and misdemeanors that chicken hearted Republican Senators refused to convict him for.

Rasputin: And those cowering Republican Senators are watching their Red States turn purple and blue in front of their eyes. They drank the “Kool Aid” of Trumpism, laced with racism, misogyny, and contempt for the health and welfare of the American people. There is no antidote for their souls other than genuine repentance; possibly not even one for their electoral futures.

HPR: Wasn’t a poisoned fruit drink what was used by the charlatan religious fanatic Jim Jones to kill off himself and adoring followers in South America in 1978?

Lena: Yes. Hence the expression we use at the expense of a brand named beverage. But “Brand Name” Trump is too much of a wimp to do himself in consciously. He’s more like Charles Manson; who screwed, beat, and brainwashed his female followers to commit murder and mayhem in 1969, but claimed that he never was the actual perpetrator of those horrors. Trump loves using that of sort of power without responsibility, letting others take the fall.

Chicago Dog: Manson’s crimes caught up with him. So will Trump’s, unless he can brainwash his White House, GOP Senate, and “proud-, boogaloo-boy” zombies into imposing a dictatorship on two thirds of a bunch of really pissed off Americans who are now on to him and his Senators.

Prudence Possum: Actually, Trump’s a 3-way nut job. He’s also a major league coward like the Wizard of OZ/Cowardly Lion; a shriveling little man behind a curtain of deception and noise.

HPR: What a mess! A three way borderline personality is President of the United States. Now, thanks to Covid-19, and doctors that no other citizen could (or should) access, he’s on steroids.

Putin: The good news is that Trump is transparent, despite all of his efforts at masquerade. He telegraphs his punches, a mistake that could never be attributed to former Vice President Dick Cheney in lying the U.S. into the 2^nd Iraq War in 2003. Trump talks to himself, and lets us listen.

HPR: What?

Agatha Alligator: Twitter, for example. Congress, responsible officials, and the media, of course, have to take those words as coming from the Chief Executive of the United States. Shrinks, however, both professional and amateur, and the American voter, can interpret them as coming from one of the Donald’s three personalities: the Con Man-Mussolini wannabe of Charles Manson; the all out Hitlerian psychopath of Jim Jones; or, his inner self, the cowardly persona described so well by his niece, Mary Trump.

Mr. Swamp Fox: In addition, Trump talks all the time with his magic FOX News Mirror, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and the like, who keep pumping up his fragile Charles Manson/ Mussolini ego with comparisons to FDR and Churchill. The ever enraged citizenry gets to listen, and is voting against this charade in droves. Nine million+ early votes cast at last count.

Randy Raccoon: The full on, steroid driven, Jim Jones/Hitler directive came out last Tuesday when Trump trashed further Covid relief negotiations with Congress, dooming ordinary Americans to four more months of unnecessary misery; with a pinch of Stalinism thrown in for good measure, given the implications for evictions and starvation if no relief bill is passed.

Doo Doo Shoo Fly: With the stock market crashing, following Trump’s scorched earth Tweet about a Covid relief bill, his Cowardly Wizard/Lion persona returned, though some might be so naïve as to think that “Trump came to his senses.” (Senate Majority Leader) Moscow Mitch (McConnell, R-KY) won’t easily bail him out though, as long as their precious right wing Supreme Court Justice remains unapproved.

HPR: But what if Trump wins on Nov. 3^rd, or by Jan. 20^th, through force or chicanery?

Torquemada: You either believe in democracy or you don’t. It’s the same as believing in God, but it is more difficult. The existence of God cannot be disproven by methods known to this day, but the existence of democracy is disproven every day by the Vladimir Putins of this world.

HPR: I believe in God and democracy. I’ve voted in every election since I was 21 in 1960. In 1968 I had to drag myself to the polls. It took a “Rockefeller” Republican friend, voting for Nixon, to remind me to do my “citizen’s duty” and vote for Humphrey, though I’d wanted anti-Vietnam War candidates like RFK and Eugene McCarthy. I’m happy to see young people, and dedicated small “d” democratic citizens taking a similar path with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, despite their own previous Primary choices, but it’s not over yet. Trump is calling perfectly legal Republican poll watchers, his “army,” to incite violence as a cover for his impending defeat.

Prudence Possum: It could be worse for you. Think of the various 7 stages of denial Trump Republicans are going through as Joe Biden’s lead in the polls widens, the early voting numbers rise, and frantic voter suppression efforts fail, one after another. Then there is the White House of the Covid-19 Super-Spreader in Chief that my swamp creature friends have tapped into.

3-M: What are we going to do about our nut job boss, Bill? Can we get (House Speaker) Nancy (Pelosi, D-CA) and Mitch to pull the plug on him with the 25^th Amendment before it’s too late?

B-6^th Power: It’s already too late, Mark. It’s just a matter of “if” or “when” we pull the plug, on or before November 3^rd or January 20^th. The American people are pulling the plug on almost all of us. I’m not going to go to jail for Trump like the others. I’d advise you to be careful as well.

3M: What if he fires us?

B-6^th Power: He’d be doing us a favor. Who would he hire then? Vlad Putin’s Ambassador?

3M: We could always find work in a right wing radio outfit, pushing a stab-in-the back legend, like the one that worked so well for Hitler.

B-6^th Power: Give it up Mark! We need to get into the “Make Democracy Great Again” business, like Secretary of State Al Jaeger in North Dakota. Take credit for reforms in 2022 that will be pushed by the Biden/Harris/AOC alliance in 2021. Voters forget, but the straight arrows in D.C. are not going to let us off the hook until we are out of power and out of sight for a while.

Prudence Possum: Badass Bill Barr then confided his real thoughts to the swamp, not Mindless Mark Meadows:

Barr Lament #3 – “Straight Arrows Have Done Us In”…………..………Headless Horseman
I hate it when ‘straight arrows’ make their mark
Upon my blind ambitions, and reveal
The facts I cannot bend or else conceal;
And foil the upward journey I’d embark.

I slandered Mueller with success, for sure;
But Chuck and Nancy have my number now;
And voters make it very clear just how
They back REAL rule of law as proper cure.

If Trump were not a coward, and nut case,
We could have pulled this off; like Cheney’s done.
But no! The morons in the GOP
Have set Mitch back; and we have lost the race
To win dictatorship, and I’m the one
Who has to bend the Donald ‘cross my knee.