The Warnings For Delusional Supporters Are Starting To Pile Up

The warnings for Trump supporters are starting to pile up, from James Comey's fate to mention of an ICE agent being referred for criminal charges to a class action suit against ICE.

The warnings for delusional Trump supporters are starting to pile up, from James Comey’s fate to mention of an ICE agent being referred for criminal charges to a class action suit against ICE.

History repeats itself, and they will not escape the madness they’re supporting. In fact, if history is any guide, they will often be the first to pay.

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The Delusion Of Trump Supporters

Trump supporters appear to be the ultimate “pick-mes,” so sure are they that they will never be on the bad side of the person to whom they are feverishly handing unchecked power, as if they have never read history and lack the ability to even ask themselves who among them they would trust with ultimate power.

Ultimately, they’ve decided to entrust the power to prosecute over personal grievances and even kill to the man with infamously thin skin. The petty, vengeful convicted felon and adjudicated fraudster who shows no loyalty to friends or family (except his favored daughter) or ally or co-conspirator. They have already witnessed how he turns on his own people and leaves them to go to prison for him, and still they think they are special.

They alone will be the chosen ones. This is delusional thinking.

His voters suffer from the same delusions of grandeur. We see them daily on social media bemoaning how he could do x to them after they supported him three times, why hasn’t he fixed groceries and why is he deporting the good people who work their farms and why is he taking money from their Medicaid when they voted for him.

They have not yet figured out that he does not care one bit. They are nothing but tools to him. He used them for the last time and he doesn’t need them to like him anymore. Even this indignity is met with groveling by the supporter, and an unsupported confidence that the “president” just doesn’t know about their suffering and as soon as he is told, he will do something to help them.

Reader, he will not.

Their false, exaggerated belief in their own importance to Donald Trump is truly tragic.

The man who the UK says left the sheets in his room in Windsor Castle stained orange and “takeout trash” scattered about is not going to substantially help the UK, even after they fell on their knees to provide Disney carriage rides that had to be hidden from the protesting public and then tried to not react to his incoherent and exceptionally divisive speech at the state dinner they threw for him on the backs of the people of their country, many of whom couldn’t afford heat last winter.

He repaid them by dissing their country and London’s mayor just days later during another incoherent speech at the UN.

None of these people get it: They are not special. They will not be the exception. Donald Trump only cares about himself, his power, his greed.

The Eager, Clueless Fascist

In July of this year, Mehdi Hasan “debated” a man named Connor Estelle, who is a self-proclaimed fascist. Estelle, whose face brimmed with delusional self-confidence coupled with unsupported smugness, declared his support for autocracy and fascism in the episode.

The eager and clueless self-proclaimed fascist cited Carl Schmitt’s “friend-enemy distinction” to justify why he was fine with brutality and killing of “public enemies,” as if he had never heard about what happened to Carl Schmitt.

Fascist: In his work, it’s the ‘friend enemy distinction’, right?

Hasan: You call the Nazi theoretician?

Fascist: Absolutely. I don’t care.

…

Fascist: Well, sure you can have a vote to get to that —

Hasan: and then no more votes afterwards?

Fascist: Absolutely. 100%.

Hasan: Wow. And if that autocrat kills you and your family, you’re fine with them.

Fascist: Well, I’m not. I’m not going to be a part of the group that he kills. Because that’s a whole thing.

Yes, the “whole thing” is that they believe they are never the enemy, even as they watch everyone around the autocrat be labeled an enemy after they’ve served their usefulness.

In fact, numerous individuals associated with Donald Trump have faced legal and professional consequences, including criminal charges, prison time, disbarment, and financial ruin, including: Michael Cohen, Rudy Guiliani, Paul Manafort, Allen Weisselberg, Rick Gates, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Peter Navarro, George Papadopoulos, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.

In reality, it only took three years for the Nazis to turn on Schmitt, investigating him and stripping him of his party positions. He created the “friend-enemy distinction” for the Nazis to justify murder, and then became an enemy himself.

Because there are a lot of these types around right now, it’s worth mentioning that Schmitt became an editor in chief for a professional newspaper and from that perch, he justified the political murders of the Night of the Long Knives:

“… In June 1934, Schmitt became editor in chief for the professional newspaper “Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung” (“German jurisprudents’ newspaper”); in July 1934, he justified the political murders of the Night of the Long Knives as the “highest form of administrative justice” (“höchste Form administrativer Justiz”).”

There really is nothing new about this current situation or the corruption of the elites that are enabling this all to go down.

Schmitt was a Catholic German jurist and political theorist who made excuses for the Third Reich, sanewashing their murderous regime with legal intellectualism and searing critiques of liberalism. You know the type. He was well known for his authoritarian theories, including “effectively denying free will based on a catholic world view.”1¹

One of his most infamous theories was that the sovereign decides on who is the exception. That is, he argued to discard legal norms and the constitution — much like the conservatives on our current SCOTUS — and give that power to the executive.

In other words, his arguments were used to justify authoritarianism for Adolf Hitler. His ideas were “used by the Nazis for an ideological foundation of their dictatorship, and Schmitt was later accused of having justified the “Führer” state with regard to legal philosophy.”

In spite of all that he had given Hitler and the Third Reich, including his demand in October 1936 that German law be “cleansed from the Jewish spirit,” Schmitt was accused of being an opportunist by an SS publication a mere two months later.

How soon they do turn, and for everyone they can find a reason.

In fact, off the top of my head, Vice President J.D. Vance’s history of calling Trump “America’s Hitler” could be used against him if they feel it necessary.

Other Examples Of Fascists Purging Their Own

There are, of course, worse examples because this is a pattern and it’s not accidental.

In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin eliminated any perceived threats to his absolute authority with a purge of the Old Bolsheviks who had helped him rise to power as part of the Great Purge.

Mao’s Cultural Revolution purged many senior officials including original Chinese Communist Party members, including a person thought to be his successor, Liu Shaoqi, who was tortured, imprisoned, and died from a lack of medical care in 1969. His death was not announced until 1974. The violent purges were driven by Mao’s desire to reassert his authority and eliminate potential opponents.

Lesson? Dictators take down from within because those people are the biggest perceived threat to their power and the public might not even know about it. Why would they want to hide that from the public? Perhaps to avoid people putting 2 and 2 together to figure out that they could be next.

Franco

Francisco Franco, whom the fascist called a “benevolent dictator”, had a nationalist coalition comprised of ultra right-wing groups, including monarchists, traditionalist Catholics, along with the fascist Falange party. In 1937, he took control of the Falange party because its ideology was appealing to young men.²

But of course, as part of his broader strategy to consolidate power and eliminate rival factions, Franco needed to ensure the new party answered directly to him. So he purged or sidelined Falangist leaders. And so he arrested Manuel Hedilla in 1937. Hedilla had been a successor to the Falange’s founder. Hedilla was sentenced to death in a rigged trial, and then Franco commuted his sentence.

Hitler

After rising to power using the working class as a tool, Hitler sought the support of Germany’s wealthy industrialists and business leaders. In 1934, he eliminated the leadership of the SA — his “Brownshirts,” who had been instrumental in his rise to power but became a liability to his plans for total control — during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. Hitler needed the support of the professional army, which saw the SA (read: Proud Boys, ICE agents, Capitol Insurrectionists, etc.) as thuggish street fighters, and so he simply eliminated the people who helped him rise to power who had become a threat to his absolute power, in order to secure the support of conservative elites.

Friend Enemy Distinction

It’s just that Schmitt was cited by the fascist at the Jubilee debate with Hassan as a great example of how useful the us-versus-them mindset is in politics for his “friend-enemy distinction,” in which they think they will all be safe from being declared enemies.

The friend-enemy distinction is tied to the real possibility of physical killing and armed conflict, using the fact that certain people are public enemies and as such, represent an existential threat to one’s way of life.

This argument might be seen in Trump et al’s collective statements demonizing political opponents and calling everyone who doesn’t lick their boots “enemies” and “terrorists,” in an effort to exploit division to justify violence.

Certainly, many dominant voices on the Right understand the mission and they will tell you so in public. This is “war” for them. They are so offended by immigration and trans people and women having the right to vote that they are ready to destroy America from the inside, only they see it as a patriotic and Christian mission because it’s being sold that way.

Warnings Pile Up On Trump Supporters