Part Two – Abuse of Power Happening Before Us

Evil-Echo Empire Update

Trump’s level of delusion & dishonesty is truly scary.  Those who say otherwise are simply in denial or drinking the echo Kool-Aid.  And to compare the irresponsible/erratic antics of this president to any other political leader in America’s history, would be like comparing an armed robber to a shoplifter.  What we’ve seen this past year can’t be compared to anything else….EVER!  This weekend in response to that book questioning his mental fitness, Trump answered he’s a “very stable genius,” so I’m glad he cleared that up.  But as the book’s author explained, the prez has less credibility than anyone who has ever walked the Earth.  So I guess odds are we’d get closer to the truth if we believe the exact opposite of whatever Trump says.  He’d be easy to dismiss as some pathological liar if not for the fact he is now leader of our nation, so whatever he says carries enormous weight.  And he couldn’t get away with all the lying if his Trumpeter fans could see through it, but they’re mesmerized by this guy as if in some sort of trance, while being instructed by the hypnotic mind-control constantly spewing from the echo.

So his leadership has inspired echoing his lies by the echo, his state-run media now led by Fox fake-news.  Fox sold out to Trump awhile back once realizing all those Trumpeters were tuning in, so they decided to appease their audience.  His leadership has also brought out tribal spirits in DC by his sycophant supporters in the GOP, where in their self-interests they’ve calculated allegiance to Trump trumps doing what’s in the best interests of America.  Plus his leadership has unleashed among millions of his fans a toxic/nihilistic form of grievance politics based more on visceral anger than pragmatic policy solutions.  So in speaking only to his base & advancing their narrow pet interests, the prez alienates the rest of us, which is definitely not the unifying leadership we so badly need.  With our country having become so very divided, we managed to elect the most divisive president imaginable.

Now that he has so many entrapped in his cultish aura, from the echo psycho-media to his GOP politician enablers & fawning Trumpeter base, Trump has enough backing to conduct what we can easily consider nothing short of an attack on America & our democracy.  At this pivotal point in our history where Russia interfered in our last presidential election & we have overwhelming evidence the Trump campaign knew of it, perhaps even assisting in the effort, this egregious attack cries out we must learn the truth.  So what would any loyal cult member do to worship their omnipotent leader?  Why of course, they’d follow his exact instructions, which the edict has gone out to fight the Russian investigations through any unscrupulous means possible, including blaming a primary witness & also blaming (drumroll please)….Hillary!  At the urging of the echo & millions of Trumpeters, GOP congressional members subservient to Trump are following the White House playbook to attack others in distracting attention away from the real scandal.  So the past few days featured requesting a criminal inquiry into the British author of that dossier, & dredging up renewed investigations into all the old Hillary scandal leftovers, the same ones she had already been cleared of throughout the past few years.

Those Hillary indiscretions have always been favorite hits with the echo-crowd, so they keep going back to them repeatedly.  Trumpeters will always believe Hillary’s (comparatively minor) infractions are far worse sins than Trump possibly being involved in the biggest political scandal of all-time.  Playing tunes like Hillary’s emails/uranium deal/Clinton Foundation still top the charts inside echo-world, which many years later still have no expiration dates in sight.  And if there were any collusion between Hillary & the Russians as Trump claims, why would the Russkies have gone overboard in hurting her campaign & helping Trump?  And since Hillary is not the president nor does she currently hold any public office, there’s no indication what Trump, the GOP & the echo are trying to impeach her from.  Constantly playing the Hillary card is as baffling as it is dangerous, since taking out revenge on losing political opponents seems only worthy inside countries with two-bit dictatorships.

As for the attempts to smear British spy Christopher Steele, it is an obvious ploy to discredit the damning evidence against Trump compiled in that dossier.  If they need to investigate him to reveal more facts, so be it, but appointing a second special counsel would be a ridiculous overreach.  He should be hailed a hero for helping us in saving our democracy.  All these alternative probes aren’t so much based on real evidence, it’s just the GOP in Congress under the direction of the prez & his echo stirring the pot.  With Trump chanting there was no collusion, there was no collusion a thousand times over doesn’t make it so. Far better if he were to instruct his people to cooperate with the investigators in bringing out the facts to clear him & those around him. Instead we see the President & all his men doing the exact opposite, fighting, lying & diverting attention away from the probe, only adding to suspicions of guilt.  All these sidetracking journeys down various rabbit holes only delay efforts to get at the truth.  With strong indications we have a leader engaging in abuse of power, it’s very disturbing the way some seem willing to help him along.

As ridiculous as these pranks are, the subterfuge is coordinated throughout the echo to make them look authentic to their bamboozled audiences.  Especially for those who regularly watch a propagandist network like Fox & don’t follow real news sources, they are prone to echo-brainwashing.  I truly believe those trapped within that bubble are generally more gullible than stupid, but such a widespread misinformation campaign does present a huge challenge for our country.  A democracy is unable to thrive when such a large number in the voting population reject truths in favor of echo-sponsored alternative facts.  That is particularly true when an autocratic personality like the one currently occupying the White House is so willing to destroy democratic norms to usurp personal power.  Here in 2018 we may well discover our prez illegally partnered with a foreign adversary to steal the election, then coordinated a full-scale cover-up.  Such a nefarious plot would require using the echo to spread multiple falsehoods & conspiracies, discrediting anyone or any organization which could expose these crimes, including the real media, courts, intelligence agencies, investigators, witnesses & politicos from the other party, including his former presidential opponent & his predecessor.  So anybody offering to help by pursuing the truth are targets for attack.

To the extent so many of his GOP allies in Congress are joining in on the false conspiracies & smear campaigns, that indicates to me they’re worried.  They’re worried that not joining in on aggressively pushing back against the investigations, they could face the wrath of the echo & still large faction of Trumpeters within the GOP base. But they’re also worried about what Mueller is learning behind the scenes, in that it could not only take Trump down soon but badly damage the GOP, especially with November midterms coming up this year.  And with some of the more radicalized GOP reps who’ve totally tied their wagons to Trump’s, as I’ve been speculating some of them seem so intricately involved in this cover-up, that as the indictments from Mueller come showering down in large numbers, I anticipate some of them will be found complicit.  Some of the ones potentially being scooped up seem obvious (does the name Nunes ring a bell?), but expect some surprises to be thrown in, including major donors & media personalities (have any of you ever heard the name Hannity?).  I have included a good number of links below to learn more about that guy named Hannity.

In the first article below, Republicans unconscionably enable an unbalanced president, Rubin issues this plea to Dems, seeing how the GOP has seemingly utterly failed in upholding our constitutional laws & contribute to our leader’s abuse of power: 

Inside the link Republicans-kick-off-2018-with-a-frighteningly-fascist-bent-for-protecting-Donald-Trump, rather than getting to the bottom of potentially the biggest scandal & worst attack on our electoral process in America’s history, incredibly the more extreme far-right demagogues in Congress are working from this following list on their agenda in an obvious attempt to conflate the real scandal:

There are two ways for a president to corrupt the vast powers of federal law enforcement. The one that has commanded the greatest attention so far is the defensive corruption of curtailing investigations into the administration and its allies (by, say, firing Robert Mueller). The other is offensive, by directing investigations into the administration’s political critics. And while this form of corruption has attracted less attention, Trump appears to have made far greater headway here.

At minimum, the effect will be to feed the right-wing news media’s message that Trump’s opponents are the real criminals, in order to supply a distraction for his base. At maximum, the “charges” will allow Trump to have something to trade away — he could fire Mueller while “magnanimously” pardoning his enemies in the alleged spirit of letting old feuds die. In either case, the threat of investigation can be used to make any potential Trump critic think twice. A year ago, the prospect that law enforcement would be investigating Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and Christopher Steele would have been unthinkable. At the moment, it seems hard to imagine the Republican Party raising any objection.

Also consider these next 2 paragraphs found in trumps-white-house-using-putins-lying-kremlin-tactics, where Trump & his minions keep throwing all this outlandish mud up against the wall, trying to see which concocted stories can best stick for their base:

The latest effort is Devin Nunes’s attempt to draft a report on “corruption” within Mueller’s team. This follows a string of similar attempts to sling mud at Mueller, including calls for his recusal or resignation; accusations that the investigation illegally collected transition emails ; and claims from Fox News commentators suggesting the Special Counsel is plotting a “ coup in America ” or an assassination attempt. A very troubling trend is emerging: these are the very same style of tactics used by the Kremlin and other authoritarian governments.

The White House and its allies are using these same methods in their attacks on the Mueller investigation: there’s whataboutism around the funding of the Fusion GPS dossier. There’s muddying of waters by continually re-raising the Uranium One deal, a manufactured controversy that has been repeatedly and consistently debunked, as well as the fantastical claims of liberal bias at the FBI. And now we are seeing full-fledged conspiracy theories entering the mainstream, throwing around words like “coup” and “assassination.”

Inside the link american-reich-who-said-it-couldnt-happen-here, it starts out with the same warning I’ve mentioned often in the past, don’t think it can’t happen here:

Our version of this mindset is evoked by the title of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here. No military coups, no dictatorships, no violent revolutions, no breaks in the constitutional order—what do we really have to worry about? The United States will persevere somehow, and if you need reassurance, recall Watergate’s bipartisan removal of a president via constitutional processes. And then along came Trump.

This next one is something I’ve been speculating on for quite some time, that none other than Sean “insanity” Hannity could face legal jeopardy over the scandal.  He’s not only Trump’s biggest sycophant in all of the media, but has been directly involved in strategizing with Trump & basically serving as a de-facto adviser, feeding off each other’s contrived conspiracies & lies. The link titled hannity-denies-collusion-with-trump-by-russia-and-himself starts out with this sentence:

After spending months and months scoffing at any notion that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, Fox News host Sean Hannity is facing a collusion allegation of his own. 

In the section where Trump attacks the media, there’s a link titled donald-trump-michael-wolff-fire-fury-authors-guild-libel-suit-threat, providing this inconvenient truth our prez is reticent to accept:

“The ability to criticize the government and its leaders lies at the essence of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech; and threats of libel lawsuits are one of the de facto primary means of curtailing free speech in this country today.” The statement also includes a quote from Authors Guild president James Gleick. “This isn’t a country where we quash books that the leader finds unpleasant,” Gleick said. “That’s what tyrants do, not American presidents.”

In the final group of links which feature antics from the likes of lunatic nutjob Alex Jones, we also see contrition from the zany, bigoted, nationalist, alt-right Breitbart czar, Steve Bannon. Since he got the lion’s share of the blame for the book about the White House, he has lost his major donor, much of his fan base, plus his Breitbart job is even in jeopardy. So today he offered an apology in trying to salvage his career & his influence, since Trump breaking away from him could spiral Bannon into a state of perpetual irrelevancy.  In reality Bannon may have for once provided a great service to America, by helping expose the incompetence in this presidency as offered up in that book, plus helping to discredit much of the slanted narratives constantly spewed by Fox & the rest of the echo.  He’s helped create a crevice among the base, offering hopes the dangerous agenda of Trumpism & his echo can ultimately be brought down once cracks/disagreements cause supporters to turn on each other.

And with Bannon quoted as using the word “treasonous” to describe Donny Jr’s meeting with Russians in Trump Tower, we can’t help but wonder if investigators will discover evidence damaging enough that such a word might be soon attached to Trump himself?  And who else among White House & campaign staff, plus loyal enablers in a GOP Congress & the echo, might have been so involved that such a criminal tag could also be attached this year to some of them?  Stay tuned.