"In four years you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not gonna have to"

[solarbird]

Whelp, Trump’s just saying it now. Just straight up saying it.

Video as posted to mastodon, video and transcription on Alternet.

As much as the couch memes transitioning to dolphin porn memes are hilarious – and they are hilarious, keep attacking Vance, he doesn’t have the teflon of celebrity that Trump has and it’ll leak over – it’s a good reminder that this election is literally life or death for the Republic.

The Christofash are already talking about Trump 2028, a third term. He’s talked about it before, all the way back in 2020, Constitution be damned, saying he’s “entitled” to it because of “the way [he] was treated“:

And 52 days from now we’re going to win Nevada, and we’re going to win four more years in the White House. And then after that, we’ll negotiate, right? Because we’re probably—based on the way we were treated—we’re probably entitled to another four after that.

And of course, when he didn’t get the second term, he launched an insurrection to “fix” the result.

Trump has also talked about how nice it would be for the US to have a “president for life.” Not just once, but many times.

When he got into trouble for it, back then, he always said he was “kidding” or “being sarcastic.” But when he doesn’t feel like he’s in trouble, he’ll tell you straight up: “I don’t kid.“

That last one’s the truth, and you can tell. You could tell he was lying when he said he was “kidding,” and you can tell he’s not lying when he says he “doesn’t kid.” He absolutely doesn’t. He tests waters, then calls it a “joke” if he gets too much pushback.

In 2018, in 2019, he got enough pushback from Republicans that he had to pretend he was joking; in 2020 and later, he doesn’t. By 2023, he could say he’ll be a dictator and his followers will cheer.

Trump doesn’t know what humour is, other than the joy of using power to abuse those he sees as less than himself.

And yes, yes, now he says “for a day” – he didn’t at first, it was just being a dictator, like Putin, like Kim, like all those other dictators he openly admires so much – but the neat trick about being a “dictator for a day” is you just declare everything you want to do legal on that day and then you can pretend you’re a president again the day after.

What the Republican Party wants, what the so-called conservative movement now wants, is an Orban-style / Putin-style “illiberal democracy,” which is to say a state that looks like a Republic, but doesn’t act like one, in that only they can win.

There would still be elections, but they really won’t matter. They’ll be “fixed” so that only the “right” results come out, just like they were in Wisconsin for over a decade until Democrats managed to remove enough rightist Supreme Court justices at the ballot box to get the hyper-gerrymandering removed as well.

The most obvious, the most undeniable of these faux elections were in 2018, where the Republicans maintained a supermajority in the House – not just a majority, but a veto-proof supermajority – despite losing the popular vote by over eight percent.

The estimates are that only a 20% popular vote win would’ve given the Democrats back the House. A mere 53-45 loss couldn’t even take away the Republican gerrymandered supermajority.

That’s what he’s talking about, really; elections, but you won’t have to bother to vote. Elections you don’t have to worry about losing, since they’ll take care of that for you.

After all – as one popular YouTube political commentator likes to say, the Republicans don’t want to represent you – they want to rule you.

And they tell you so every single day.

Just like Trump did, Friday night.

So keep having fun – I mean it – because you should have fun. Keep mocking Vance and Trump, focusing on the bizzare shitshow Vance is, because while he may be famous he’s not a celebrity, which means he doesn’t have the American Royalty bit set, and he can be torn down, and he will bring Trump down with him, at least a bit.

Do all of that, and most of all, work on your Trumpy friends and family, every day you can. You might try just sincerely answering questions. Chip away at them, reduce their enthusiasm, lower the chances they’ll throw money to Republicans at any point on the ballot, because it’s not just Trump, it’s all of them. And work on your “I don’t do politics” friends just as much.

But if you can have some fun doing it, that is, indeed, oh so much the better.

100 days remain.
 

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.