You want MAGA to wake up and refuse to live the lie, even though the lie feels so damn good to these people? You are right to "fear much worse is coming soon."
He has total control over these people, Trump told them that they are the victims of a culture war, that only authoritarian rule can save their country. Trump told them that Putin is their friend, and Americans are their enemy, and they believed him, he told them the US government is their enemy, LGBTQ is the enemy, trans people are their enemy. His lies have convinced them that their country is under siege, that this is a war to save their country, The culture war is, for them, a real war, and in real wars, rules have to be broken, laws set aside, and enemies have to be destroyed by any means necessary. Seen as weakness, democracy, decency, compassion, and respect are irrelevant in wartime.
What I find most frightening is how easily it was to desensitize them by dehumanizing their perceived enemies. The sheer joy they find in hurting people, the way they are energized by cruelty, how a man with a toy chain saw can work them into a joyous frenzy over thousands of people losing their jobs, how they take pride in the hatred he has brought to the surface. Again, and again the rhetoric of hatred gets them frothing at the mouth at the promise of retribution, when they are the transgressors and none of their so-called enemies are at war, they are simply innocent targets of MAGA’s wrath.
Don’t count on these people waking up, the last thing they want to be is “woke”, and how would that happen anyway? They don’t watch news because Trump told them the free press is the enemy of the people, they watch the propaganda channel and think it is news, they were told not to believe what they see and hear, and there is no need to think for themselves, what could possibly wake them up?
It might be too late, but what the rest of us need to wake up to is what’s next, it's what he promised, it's what got him re-elected.
He promised the voters he would be a dictator on day one, and they elected him, let’s look at what did he did on day one? One of Trump's first executive orders, signed the evening he took office on January 20, was titled, "Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States." Under Section 6 of the order, Trump directs Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to submit a joint report with recommendations for actions that "may be necessary to obtain complete operational control", it specifically cites the option of “whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807."
The Insurrection Act of 1807 gives the president broad powers to deploy the military domestically in response to what he deems to be emergency situation. All the lies about a city in Ohio having been overrun by Haitian immigrants who were eating all the cats and dogs, the lies about a city in Colorado completely under the control of Venezuelan street gangs, the lies about “millions and millions of illegals are pouring into our country every week.”, the lies about how the survival of this country is under attack by liberals, trans, LGBTQ, “the enemy of the people” press, and the “deep state” of the US Government, all of it to establish the legal premise for invoking the Insurrection Act, and to lay the predicate to invoke martial law. Then he will be th full blown dictator he promised his voters.
He has mused about invoking the Insurrection Act for years, calling it a “Magic Power”, throughout the second campaign he has spoken of weaponizing the law enforcement and the military against civilians, with the promise of infringing the “other” American’s civil liberties. When he recently spoke at the Justice Department describing his adversaries as “scum,” “savages,” and “Marxists,” as well as “deranged,” “thugs,” “violent vicious lawyers,” and “a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government.”
In the “Friday Night Massacre” at the Pentagon Trump fired the nation’s top uniformed officers, including all of the top uniformed lawyers at the Army, Navy and Air Force, the three star generals whose primary responsibility is to review orders from the commander-in-chief and defense secretary, to decide whether they’re legal. In case there is any doubt as to why this happened, recognize that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth explained these actions were taken, preemptively, to prevent them from blocking “orders that are given by a commander in chief.” For years Trump has promised he would be a dictator and invoke martial law if he came back to power, and we elected him, this is what half the country wanted.
The Insurrection Act of 1807 consolidates federal power under the president and allows him to deploy the military against the American people, it allows him to declare martial law and set aside our Constitutional rights and guardrail laws.
His followers don’t need to wake up, Trump has fully awakened their hatred and bloodlust, Trump promised martial law, violence, and the complete destruction of their enemies, and they were fully awake when they elected him.
A futile “talking to” by Chief Justice John Roberts, a man who already granted him immunity from the law, isn’t going to have any effect, it’s just more political theater. Roberts granted him the power to attack anyone he wanted, and then reconsidered when he attacked the judicial branch, and MAGA will cheer until he attacks them, there is no mutual loyalty from a dictator, and he won't give destruction of the people who elected him a second thought, he will enjoy sticking it to those "suckers and losers".