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In the first place, in fact there were two articles in the mainstream capitalist media predicting exactly what the author puts forward. The first was in the Irish Times and was entitled "Trial Runs for Fascism are in Full Flow" ( https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375). It compared the situation to the "blooding of the hounds", where the hounds have to get used to the taste of blood. The author wrote: "Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it." The second piece was in the "Gray Lady" -- the New York Times (!) and was entitled "Trump's Road to American Martial Law"( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/opinion/trump-putin-summit-republicans.html). Similar to the IT article, it pointed out that each outrage is succeeded by an ever greater one. It concluded: " "The president is not done. Soon, there may be indictments from Robert Mueller, the special counsel, of high officials or members of Trump’s family. What then? Ornstein’s nightmare scenario: Trump fires Mueller, pardons himself and everyone else, sends his followers into the street, and, after the inevitable bloodshed, declares martial law. Not yet [done]. Not yet [done]." I've been saying this for some time now. I think a lot of people on the left - socialists and otherwise - see what's happening as a continuation of what happened under Obama and even before him. In part this is true, but it's also a sharp break, a change in course. All you have to do is look at that frenzied mob at Trump's recent Florida rally just about to assault Jim Acosta of CNN to see that. As socialists we should have no more illusions in CNN than we do in the bourgeois democracy that it represents. However, what that frenzied mob represented was not the replacing of bourgeois democracy with workers' democracy; it was the destruction for something like martial law. And a martial law with a fascist base as a component. The article pictures a fascist or fascist-like development after 2020. Here's another scenario, and we have to start by recognizing Trump's actual position. At this time, he's been able to cover over his collusion with the representative of the Russian mafia - Putin - through his complete domination of the Republican Party and, through that, of congress. His cabinet, unlike other presidential cabinets of the past, is a monolith of yes-men and women. Now, with his nomination of a series of compliant appelate court judges and of Kavanaugh to the supreme court. Kavanaugh has written that the president is in effect above the law. This will give Trump near complete control over the judicial system. Given his collusion and, even more important, his past role as a money launderer for the Russian mafia, he cannot afford to lose that control. What will happen if that control appears to be threatened in November's elections - if it looks like the Democrats may take a majority in either or both the houses? Can he afford to allow that to happen? I don't think so. In that case, we could see a "Florida 2000" (when Bush faked the Florida election results to defeat Gore) on a national scale. It could also include voter suppression not seen since the pre-civil rights days in the South. That could result in mass protests in the streets. If it really went deep into the working class, and shut down major sectors of the economy, this could force Trump to retreat, maybe even force him out of office. However, the Democrats and their representatives, including the union leaders, will do everything in their power to prevent that from happening. In that case, Trump could really crack down, with widespread arrests and repression not seen in this country since... Well since I don't know when. I think McCarthyism would pale in comparison. John Reimann PS. There's another factor: Trump's appointment of Brian Benczkowski. He was the lawyer for Alfa Bank, the major Russian bank that apparently had direct contact with the Trump campaign before the election. Benczkowski was recently confirmed as head of the criminal justice division of the Department of Justice. As such, he is directly over Mueller and, at the very least, is in a position to give Trump a direct ear into what that investigation is doing, if not to fire Mueller outright. Maybe Trump will not be able to afford to wait until November. -- *“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black Jacobins" by C. L. R. James Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
