Look, comrades, I grew up at a time in this country when the thing we kids were taught to fear more than anything else in our little Midwestern lives was COMMUNISM! Communist Russia — the USSR — was the big, scary enemy, a country led by authoritarian leaders like Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, who were attempting to take over the world and destroy democracy and the American way of life. They were the commies, the pinkos, the red menace — a nuclear-armed adversary who was also our rival in space, with their cursed Sputnik satellites. The Russians were so bold they even propped up Fidel Castro in a communist state 90 miles away from Miami.
Russia, we were told by our teachers and parents, was determined to force everyone in the world to live in a commune and toil under communism, a fate presumably worse than death. In our schools, we had two kinds of drills: fire drills, in which at the sound of a long bell, every student high-tailed it “single file” down the stairs and out the doors onto the schoolyard lawn, goose-assing and laughing all the way. (If you were lucky, you attended a school that had one of those cool fire-escape slides out a third-story window, which livened up the process.
) But the real serious stuff took place during the air-raid drills, where, at the sound of a keening siren, we had to “duck and cover” under our desks, which, as everyone knows, will protect you against nuclear holocaust. Mainly, of course, it just scared the crap out of us and traumatized a couple generations. This went on through the 1980s, at which point, President Reagan had turned standing up to Russia into performance art (“Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”). It turned out to be a surprisingly effective gambit, or at the worst, Reagan’s timing was spot-on. The Soviet Union’s economy was collapsing during the 1980s, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and lending a measure of stature to Reagan’s latter years in office.
ALSO READ: Trump's 'communist' attack on Harris 'simply not credible' — and costing him: GOP pollster If there was one benefit of this strange, decades-long international game of Russian roulette, it was the fact that we were actually taught what communism is. We learned most of Karl Marx’s greatest one-liners, including the scariest one: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” which we Americans were taught to see as the mantra of a system that destroyed ambition and the drive to succeed that American capitalism was built upon. I think that’s simplistic, but it’s also mostly true.
Living on the dole is living on the dole. All communism does is narrow economic opportunity to oligarchs. Everyone else? Pass the beans and borscht and keep your head down, comrade.
The fact is that communism has proven to be a horrible system of government, one that concentrates power under an authoritarian rule, censors books and newspapers, offers only rudimentary education for the poor, discriminates on the basis of gender and race, and controls healthcare. In communist countries, posters of the authoritarian Dear Leader are plastered on every open space. Flags with his image are flown in every public square.
That’s why it seems so absurd to me to hear MAGA types — and Donald Trump himself — call Kamala Harris and Democrats “communists.” It sounds like you’re being tough when you call someone a communist, but they literally appear to have no idea what a communist is. Think of the two major American political parties: When it comes to a cult of personality, one that features posters of Dear Leader, flags, religious iconography, clothes, and even tattoos, which party comes to mind? Which party has come out in support of banning books? Which party wants to give public tax dollars to private schools? Which party openly demonizes LGBTQ Americans and people of color? Which party wants to centralize power and give it to an authoritarian who will “be a dictator on day one”? Which party wants to control the healthcare decisions of the country’s females? Which party literally rejected democracy in 2020? If your answer to those questions is anything other than the Republican Party, you’ve gone down into a scary rabbit hole, a place where the light of the obvious won’t penetrate.
It’s like you’re in a permanent duck-and-cover drill. ALSO READ: Even Trump's fans aren't buying his scaremongering threats: analyst Special counsel Jack Smith urged the 11th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse federal judge Aileen Cannon's decision to dismiss the classified documents case against Donald Trump — but there's little chance she'll be removed, a columnist wrote. The Trump-appointed judge tossed out the federal case last month by ruling that Smith had been unlawfully appointed and funded, but the special counsel's appellate brief highlighted how unusual her decision was and pointed to numerous contradictions with previous decisions, wrote MSNBC's Jordan Rubin . "Smith’s brief didn’t indicate his intention to seek a new judge," Rubin wrote.
"That doesn’t mean that the appeals court couldn’t still remove her while reversing her, but there’s reason to not expect that here." Cannon cited U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in her decision, which was based in part on the deeply conservative jurist's concurring opinion in the Trump immunity case in which he questioned Smith's appointment because the special counsel had not been confirmed by Congress. ALSO READ: Donald Trump exploits AP photo error for new $99 'Save America' book "That wasn’t the issue in the immunity case , so we don’t know how many other justices (if any) agree with Thomas," Rubin wrote. "But it would seemingly make it more difficult to kick a judge off a case in part for reaching a decision citing a sitting Supreme Court justice’s reasoning, however flawed that reasoning is.
" "Of course, if the high court ultimately upholds Cannon’s ruling if the case gets to the justices, that would moot any reassignment issue — as would a Trump presidential victory in November, which could lead to him eliminating the case entirely," Rubin added. On Friday, after the rousing Democratic convention was over, Trump charged that Harris’s securing of the Democratic Party’s nomination posed a “threat to democracy.” “It was a coup.
We had a coup,” Trump said of Harris’s nomination, “the first coup of the history of our country, and it was very successful.” This from a man who actually tried to orchestrate a coup — who continues to baselessly claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, who after the election threatened state election officials if they didn’t change their tallies, and on January 6, 2021, urged a crowd of armed followers to attack the U.S.
Capitol to prevent the election results from being certified. What’s Trump’s basis for his absurd claim that Harris orchestrated a coup? He argues that Harris has “no right” to run for president because she got “no [primary] votes to Biden’s 14 Million.” READ: 'Compare and contrast': Ex-GOP insider has theory why Trump's attacks on Harris don't land This is utter nonsense.
The Democratic Party had the power to replace Biden with Harris. In choosing Biden, primary voters elected delegates to pick their nominee. Once Biden dropped out, those delegates could pick his replacement.
They chose Harris. Their overwhelming enthusiasm for Harris at last week’s convention should have laid to rest any doubts about whether the Democratic Party is behind her. Why is Trump saying this was a coup? Some analysts think he’s laying the groundwork for claiming, if and when he loses the 2024 election , that the results are illegitimate.
That may be part of Trump’s motive, but there’s a far simpler explanation: Trump simply cannot believe that Biden — or anyone in Biden’s shoes — would put the nation above their own personal ambition. Trump’s malignant narcissism cannot conceive of selfless patriotism. To Trump, no one would relinquish power simply because it is in the nation’s interest that they do so.
Therefore, the Democrats must have forced Biden out. Trump insists it “was an overthrow of a president. This was an overthrow,” adding “they deposed a president.
” Trump is even claiming it was a “vicious, violent overthrow.” In Trump’s addled brain, the transition from Biden to Harris had to be vicious and violent because Biden would never have peacefully relinquished power. Before the convention, Trump predicted that Biden, “whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him,” would crash it and take back the nomination.
Several times during last week’s Democratic convention, Trump described Biden as an “angry man” who was “seething” at being replaced by Harris. It is Trump who’s angry and seething, because he now faces an opponent who’s attracting bigger crowds than his and has more volunteers, more donations, better ratings, higher poll numbers, and better vibes. It’s not just that Biden did what Trump would never do — bow out for the good of the nation.
It’s that Trump cannot believe Biden bowed out for the good of the nation. The man who claims to want to “put America first” has always put himself first, and thinks everyone else in public life puts themselves first, too. Or they’re violently overthrown.
NOW READ: 'His stability is in question': Biden hits Trump for claiming Harris ousted him in 'coup' Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.
com/ A GOP strategist, faced with a growing number of Republican lawmakers and national security experts warning voters away from former President Donald Trump , conceded Tuesday he was faced with a problem. Brad Todd, a strategist managing down-ticket campaigns across the nation, was made to watch on CNN Tuesday multiple video montages of never-Trump Republicans declaring support for Vice President Kamala Harris . "You put me in a tough spot," Todd admitted to anchor Kasie Hunt.
Todd made this admission as he tried to make his case that the growing number of former Trump appointees who've turned against him — and the 200 former staffers for conservative bigwigs such as President George W. Bush and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) — was just politics as usual.
ALSO READ: Donald Trump exploits AP photo error for new $99 'Save America' book "The first name on that letter today was a finance intern," Todd said. "So let's not get carried away with exactly how broad this is." Hunt responded to this claim with a video montage featuring back-to-back comments from high-ranking former security staff who once worked for Trump and now speak out against him.
Gen. Mark Milley, Trump's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declares "We don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator." Trump's former Defense secretary Mark Esper says, "I think he's unfit for office.
" Former National Security Advisor John Bolton closes the montage with the warning, "I think he's dangerous." Before pivoting to make his case for Trump, Todd was forced to admit, "I agree with John Bolton on virtually every policy issue." Todd then argued these comments showed a lack of loyalty to the former commander-in-chief and that voters appreciated his ability to make enemies out of former staffers.
"Trump is very well-defined," Todd said. "The main thing they like about him is that he fights and that he fights against the far-left and they see the left and the Democratic Party, is way too far left. They know his downsides.
" As expressed by the hundreds of Republicans who endorsed Harris on Monday, those downsides include a threat to democracies across the globe. "At home, another four years of Donald Trump's chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025 , will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions," the endorsement reads. "Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies.
We can’t let that happen." Watch the video below or click here..
