Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

How do Republicans expect to win the next election given the massive disapproval of the electorate relative to the callous and stupid DOGE purges of the vital civil service governmental agencies and Trump’s tariff “taxes” along with obscene handouts to billionaires while threatening cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, attacking women, immigrant, the world’s poor and the environment, etc.? Not to mention making enemies out of practically the whole world. And then there are the attacks on the courts, the media and the universities. A lot of MAGA voters didn’t vote for this. They may have been deluded but not stupid. Trump and his Project 2025 MAGA faithful have to know their own base is going to be brutalized by these policies, and there will be massive defections. They don’t seem to be too worried about that — why? Clearly they are not depending on our democracy to keep them in power. Elections may have become optional depending on how successfully Republican legislators can effectively suppress voter engagement through gerrymandering, voter ID restrictions and various poll site access conditions.

It’s as if Trump and his coup accomplices are deliberately driving people to the streets in protest, as if they want to provoke an angry chaotic frenzy, encouraging the conditions and potential for some violent clashes — incidentally, easily provoked by his newly pardoned Jan. 6 White Nationalists, “standing back and standing by,” national security measures against the now conveniently identified “lefty domestic terrorists,” rounding them up to secure “law and order” (i.e. anyone defending immigrant arrangements with foreign prisons. Why not let them do double duty — how “efficient.” In the face of such chaos, elections may have to be postponed or suspended.

It’s within this context that we have Trump toying with the idea of a third term, like he toyed with the idea of acquiring Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. After all, there may be enough MAGA party animals interested in being entertained by some exciting imperial conquest. And, in that now everyone is out to get us — “take advantage of us” — these acquisitions will also be a matter of national security — Trump’s notion of “liberation.” (Like Hiter’s need for German “living space.”)

Trump and MAGA will have a hard time, however, blaming the usual suspects — lefties, remnants of the “deep state,” immigrants, “Canada” — for the failures and the punitive effects of their policies on their constituents — not when Trump tariffs could easily cost a family with an annual income of $40,000 an extra $4,000 a year; that’s cars, appliances, education and health care, home improvements, vacation, etc.

Even if Trump is baiting us we still need massive public protest and demonstrations or the administration will walk all over us. We just need to fight harder than they do building strength, confidence and community in our numbers. In this moment we can’t depend on the courts or elections alone to stand up to this assault. The process is too slow to effectively respond to such a “blitz.” Timely massive protest is critically important. It only took Hitler about 150 days to crush all dissent and opposition to his regime and consolidate his dictatorship once he was made chancellor.) DOGE is sabotage. Oppose the coup. Defend democracy.

Mike Kelly
Albert Lea