Trump's dangerous parting gift

He and Republicans don't just want to obstruct Biden. They want Democrats to fear for their lives.

Remember back in days of yore when Mitch McConnell and the Republicans declared it was their goal to make Barak Obama a one term president?  They pledged to oppose everything Obama wanted to do as president.  The did their best to stop passage of the Affordable Care Act.  They made as much use of the filibuster as they could, invoking cloture hundreds of times over Obama’s two terms in office.  McConnell took pride in his moniker “the grim reaper,” the man who killed hundreds of bills passed by the House as they died at his hands in the Senate.

Donald Trump has gone way beyond McConnell’s obstructionism.  Since losing the election in November, he has laid mines across all 50 states and the nation’s capital, set to go off any time a Democrat takes a wrong step.  He doesn’t want Joe Biden and his administration merely frustrated.  He wants them afraid for their lives.

That’s why he turned his murdering horde loose on the Capitol.  That’s why we saw senators and congressmen and women and even the Vice President cowering in the galleries and locked behind closed and barricaded doors in secure rooms.  Because Donald Trump sent his people to the Capitol to loot and pillage and yes, to kill people.  It’s not a mistake that five people died that day.  Donald Trump wanted blood.  He wanted bodies. 

This is the way that Trump has chosen to extend his power beyond his presidency.  He has lost the megaphone of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, but he hasn’t lost the loyalty of his horde of MAGA believers.  Trump watched armed insurrectionists occupy the Michigan Capitol last summer just like we did.  What was a horror for Michigan’s elected representatives and especially Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who faced a plot to kidnap her and her family, was a blueprint for Donald Trump.  He must have sat there in his bathrobe in the family quarters of the White House watching the armed men in their camo gear and Kevlar vests take over the Capitol building in Michigan, and he must have said to himself, what a great idea.  If the Congress doesn’t overturn the election for me, I’ll overturn their lives.  I’ll show them.  I’ll whip up my  people, and we’ll see how they like it when the halls of Congress are stained with blood.

This isn’t a theory.  This isn’t a joke.  On his way out the door of the White House, Donald Trump is turning the United States into a battlefield.  He is fixing it so that Democrats won’t just face obstructionist Republican tactics in Congress. President Joe Biden will face the constant threat of an armed insurrection.  Prosecuting the criminals who perpetrated the attack on the Capitol will be just the beginning.  Already, Trump has got his right-wing allies calling for “unity” and “healing” in the wake of the violence and disorder they helped to foster.  Just wait until the Democrats attempt to pass legislation giving the FBI and other federal law enforcement the same laws they use against foreign terrorists to wield against domestic terrorists, the right wing Trump army.  Wait until you hear pained whining from Republicans about “freedom of speech” and “the rights of protesters.”  Already they’re calling for investigations of “big tech” for banning Trump from his favorite online platforms. 

After every mass shooting, the sales of guns and ammo go up, not down, and Republican legislatures across the country have passed laws making it easier, not harder, to buy and carry guns.  Now you’re going to see one red state after another pass even looser laws allowing open and concealed carry of semiautomatic weapons in public spaces like state offices, parks, and yes, even in their capitol buildings.

Remember when they used to call Newt Gingrich a “conservative bomb thrower?”  Such a cute nickname for a loud mouth back-bencher.  But what was then a tiny minority of right-wing lunatics soon became more “movement conservatives,” then the “Reagan Revolution,” then the “Tea Party,” and now Trump’s MAGA army.  This has been a long time coming, folks, but now it’s here.  They’re trying to turn the defeat of Donald Trump at the polls into a victory on the streets.  More guns and ammunition were sold in 2020 than in any year in history, and you know who bought them. 

Already we’re having to surround the Capitol with heavily armed National Guard troops just so we can inaugurate a Democratic president and vice president. Downtown Washington will be shut down until the inauguration is over.  This is just the start.  I think in the coming months and years, we’ll have to shut down the nation’s capital again and again because of threats of violence by right-wing extremists and racist mobs.    

Last Wednesday was just a dry run for the future.  All Trump had to say at his rally was “go to the Capitol” and look what happened.  He knows exactly what he’s doing.  The results of the November election showed them that they are already an electoral minority.  They know that within 20 years, they will be a racial minority, and they aren’t happy.  In the past, when Donald Trump didn’t get his way, he filed lawsuits – hundreds of them.  He saw how well that worked for him with the suits they filed contesting the elections.  Trump has stopped relying on his lawyers.  He’s going to rely on his bomb-throwers now, and this time it won’t be a lonely congressman from Georgia giving speeches to an empty House chamber.

This time the bombs and bullets are real.  Buckle your seat belts, folks.  In eight days, Donald Trump will be gone, but we’re going to find ourselves living in his armed camp.