Category Archives: comrade trump

no, donald

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We all know former president Comrade Trump has no respect for the US Constitution. I mean, he’s never been shy about that, has he. The guy has been committing crimes without any serious repercussions for decades. But he’s rarely so openly dismissive of the Constitution as he was yesterday. You’ve probably already seen the comment he made on his social media site, but it’s awful enough that it deserves repeating.

We can safely ignore that ‘revelation’ he’s talking about because it’s seriously stupid. It’s grounded in the belief that Twitter’s decision in 2020 NOT to allow posts with dick pics stolen from a private laptop allegedly owned by Hunter Biden is somehow a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. You can’t make this shit up.

Let’s also ignore the fact that Trump put “Founders” in quotation marks, as if the title is an exaggeration. And let’s further ignore his bullshit about “massive & widespread fraud & deception” because that’s either delusional thinking or deliberate lying (or possibly both). And while we’re ignoring stuff, let’s ignore Trump’s ridiculous assertion that his baseless claims of fraud magically ‘allows’ us to put aside “all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” because Jesus suffering fuck, that’s idiotic.

Instead, let’s look at how Comrade Trump’s base has reacted to his statement. And for that, we have to hold our nose and go wading through the fetid waters of FreeRepublic.

Not surprisingly, a lot of Freepers initially refused to believe Trump actually made that statement. They felt the post must be a lie or, more likely, another demonic Democratic-commie false flag propaganda effort.

Are these confirmed posts by Trump?
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:01:51 PM by EEGator

There is no suggestion of terminating the Constitution; however, it appears to suggest that this is exactly what Biden is doing right now.
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:26:06 PM by Olog-hai

But, of course, he did actually post that. Once it was confirmed, the majority of Freepers found it necessary to ‘interpret’ what Trump really meant, because clearly he wouldn’t suggest violating the Constitution. So what did Trump really mean when he said fraud “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”?

I don’t think he’s actually suggesting that we take extra-Constitutional measures, just that we will wish that we had before we had to.
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:35:40 PM by Jonty30

When Trump says “even those found in the Constitution,” he’s speaking of the 12th amendment counting of Electoral College votes. He suggesting that if the election was based on fraud, then the 12th amendment legally counted fraudulent Electoral College votes and should be set aside.
I’m not endorsing his argument, but he’s clearly not suggesting that the Constitution be terminated.
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:59:09 PM by Political Junkie Too

He is merely calling for the restoration of the constitution, by rectifying the deep state monkey wrench that was jabbed into it in 2020 (and 2016, 2018, 2022, etc).
posted on 12/3/2022, 8:12:06 PM by C210N

Some Freepers, of course, were perfectly happy with the idea of Trump ditching the Constitution and seizing control of the country. That pesky Constitution just got in the way, keeping him from doing what needed to be done to protect…well, the Constitution. And also make America great.

He has a point doesn’t he?
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:08:30 PM by isthisnickcool

Anyone who doesn’t think the Democrats aren’t trying to terminate the constitution and replace it with progressive socialism is a fool. I’ll take Trump’s alternative any day.
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:16:27 PM by bigbob

Fine by me.
posted on 12/3/2022, 8:12:34 PM by going hot

Maybe that’s why our great founders had no thought of popular voting as a means of appointing a President.
posted on 12/3/2022, 8:21:12 PM by Jim Noble

That’s the stuff I was expecting to find on FreeRepublic. A lot of ‘damn the Constitution, full speed ahead’ alpha-male bravado. But surprisingly (to me, anyway) at least a third of Freepers called Trump out. Many were decidedly and decisively against terminating the Constitution; others thought it was merely a bad idea.

So as someone who’s sworn multiple times to support and defend the Constitution with my life, that’s slightly problematic.
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:02:09 PM by quikstrike98

No, Donald.
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:03:40 PM by Mr.Unique

Greatest president ever. Now shut up and go away. You will not get the nomination. And only a fool would vote for you as a third party candidate.
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:10:05 PM by rrrod

Termination of the Constitution’s rules? That actually does sound fascist. I am adamantly opposed to this suggestion.
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:23:16 PM by Golden Eagle

In my opinion this would disqualify Trump from ever being considered for POTUS.
posted on 12/3/2022, 7:32:23 PM by xkaydet65

Face it, your lord and savior Trump would burn the Constitution itself if it meant he could regain power. You’ve been conned.
posted on 12/3/2022, 8:05:25 PM by thefactor

Trump seems to be saying that we must go past the Constitution to set things right. Well, that’s exactly how banana republics work.
posted on 12/3/2022, 8:12:37 PM by Leaning Right

That sort of angry opposition from Freepers is unexpected and downright shocking. It’s a good shock, to be sure, but lawdy it’s a massive tectonic shift in the hard-core conservative firmament (and yes, I know there’s no plate tectonics in the heavens, but you know what I mean).

Comrade Trump molesting an innocent flag.

However, there was also a minority of Freepers who wished Trump would rescind the Constitution and were openly angry with him because he hadn’t done it already and wouldn’t do it in the future.

Trump doesn’t have the balls to do anything of the sort, just look at how he allowed BLM and Antifa to burn the nation’s cities in 2020 with barely a whimper. A President with balls would have declared a national emergency, suspended habeous corpus, and sent the Marine Corps out to arrest the enemies of the USA. But he did nothing. So when the rubber meets the road, I doubt President Trump will have the courage to act.
posted on 12/3/2022, 8:36:36 PM by rod5591

This is just a small sample of the more than 450 posts in a single discussion thread, but I think it accurately illustrates the scope of the Freeper discussion. Here’s the thing: this is Comrade Trump’s base. These are the people who followed him with almost religious fervor. These are the people he counted on to stop the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th, and who came close to succeeding. These are the people he’s counting on to support him in the 2024 election.

And a sizable proportion of them apparently aren’t going to do it. If Comrade Trump has lost a significant number of Freepers, he’s effectively done as a viable presidential candidate in 2024. He’s still a threat to democracy, of course, and his true believers remain a danger to civil society, but IF (and yeah, that’s a big IF) these posts are representative, then Trump has managed to kneecap himself.

As another Republican said, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” I’m not sure Lincoln actually said that, but it’s a good line. I hope it’s true.

warranted

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This question/comment was made by a senior economist employed by a major economic policy center:

Seems if we had an attorney general who respected the law, he would send the FBI to ALL of Trump’s residences and tear them apart to look for every damn missing document, just like would happen with a drug lord. What happened to no one being above the law?

Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. And it shouldn’t–not to Trump, not to a drug lord. It’s not gonna happen because we DO have an Attorney General who respects the law. It’s not gonna happen because it’s fucking illegal.

I’ve heard similar questions/comments by other folks. Some of those folks are boneheads, some are smart folks, educated folks, folks who follow the news. I blame television. On television, all a detective has to do is say to some flunky, “I know in my gut that this guy did the crime. I just need to find the evidence. Get me a warrant to search his house!” and hey bingo, the detective gets a warrant.

That just ain’t how it works. Law enforcement–and I’m talking about everybody from the FBI down to officers from your local Mayberry police department–can’t just act on a hunch or a gut feeling. This is pretty basic stuff, and it’s right out of the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No warrants shall issue. What the hell is a warrant, anyway? The term comes from the Old French ‘garant‘ out of the Frankish ‘warand‘ meaning ‘pledge.’ It’s also the root term for ‘guarantee’ and ‘guard’ and ‘warden’. It means a pledge or guarantee that the information written down has been attested or given under oath.

If the State wants to search a place, they first have to swear an oath that they’ve got a legit reason to do that. There’s a process to this search warrant business, and that process always, without fail, begins with the question, Hey, did somebody break the law here? Is it illegal for Comrade Ex-President Donald J. Trump to stuff classified documents down his pants and take them to Trump Tower or one of his many golf resorts? The answer, of course, is yep. Totally illegal. But you have to be specific; you have to be able to point to an actual criminal statute and be able to say to a judge, “That law right here, that’s the law we believe Trump broke IF he walked away with those documents.“

Step two is another question: Did Trump do that? Did he stuff documents down his pants and walk away? This is where shit gets complicated. Obviously, you can’t prove Trump did that without evidence and you can’t get the evidence to show he did that without searching for it. But you can’t search for it until you can convince a judge that (okay, here’s some legal-sounding language) you have sufficient credible information to establish that Trump probably did that.

The judge will expect you to lay out what that information is, how you got that information, why you believe the information is credible, and your qualifications to justify your belief in the credibility of that information. So you tell the judge, “The Archives reports that Trump was supposed to give them all his shit after he left office, but there’s shit they KNOW exists and they don’t have it, so probably Trump does. The Archives haven’t ever lied to us before and we’re seriously experienced and skeptical FBI agents, and we trust them, so there.”

So yeah, you’ve shown that a crime was probably committed and Trump probably committed it. Now comes Step three: finding the damned evidence. Now you have to convince a judge that you’ve got good reason to believe the evidence of that specific crime exists and can be found in these specific locations. In the Mar-a-Lago search, the FBI told the judge, “We got us some witnesses who saw Comrade Donald J. Trump stuff like TWO truckloads of boxes labeled Classified Shit down his pants at the White House, and witnesses who saw those same boxes unloaded from his pants at Mar-a-Lago, and we’ve even got witnesses who saw those boxes in Trump’s basement and in his goddamned office, if you can believe it, where all sorts of loopy people go wandering through.”

The FBI had all that for Mar-a-Lago. So they were able to convince a judge to issue a search warrant and do the search. They apparently don’t have everything they need to get a warrant for Trump Tower or any of Trump’s other golf resorts. Not yet. But we know they’re talking to folks with information about those locations. So they’re working on it.

Why is this search and seizure business so complicated? To protect innocent people. To keep the agents of the State from wandering through anybody’s home or place of business on the off chance that maybe they’ll find something illegal. It’s to stop them from just walking into YOUR home or your office, opening YOUR drawers, snooping through YOUR closets, rummaging around in YOUR kitchen, or trolling through YOUR private stuff on YOUR computer.

The irony, of course, is that if Comrade Trump were ever to have power again, that sleazy motherfucker absolutely WOULD want to be able to do that.

a horrible experience of unbearable length

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A month ago I made the argument that Comrade Trump doesn’t have many actual supporters; instead, he has fans. I wrote:

Trump fans aren’t supporters of Trump’s beliefs (if he has any) or his political or religious ideology (if he has any) or his policies (if he has any); they’re fans of Trump his ownself. They want Trump to win, of course, but the thing about fan loyalty is that it doesn’t require winning.

It’s just a coincidence that I recently stumbled upon a 2009 article by Roger Ebert, the late and much-missed film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Ebert had written a scathing review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which apparently upset Transformer fans (or maybe Transformer movie fans or fans of somebody in the movie–I don’t know and can’t bring myself to care enough to check). The thing about fans, of course, is that they will immediately go to war with anybody who questions their fandom. And they went to war with Ebert.

The thing about Ebert, on the other hand, is he was always rational, analytical, and really fucking smart. He starting rationally analyzing fandom. He wrote this:

A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It’s all about them. They have mastered the ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Star Trek’ universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk in order to be the first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies.

Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other, which is so much safer than having to ad-lib it. Your fannish obsession is your beard. If you know absolutely all the triviea about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it save you from having to know anything about anything else. That’s why it’s excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They’re always asking you questions they know the answer to.

And yeah, that’s spot on. It applies perfectly to Trump fans (who, come to think of it, aren’t that different from Transformer fans — they’re both devoted to something fundamentally ridiculous and tacky). Trump’s fans tend to be not just socially inept, but aggressively and proudly so. Believing in Trump saves them from having to know anything about anything, or from having to retain internally consistent views. If Trump, on a Monday, says Candidate A is a genius but on Wednesday describes him as an idiot, then Candidate A is a genius until, through the power of Trump, he becomes an idiot. It’s that simple.

The difference, of course, between Transformer fans and Trump fans is Trump fans are more willing — even eager, at times — to turn violent against critics of their fandom. I’m talking about violence ranging in scale from a recent incident in which a Trump fan hurled a can of beer at a comedian because she voted for Biden to a few thousand people violently assaulting the Capitol Building in an effort to overturn a legit election.

The risk posed by Transformer fans is that they increase the odds that more shitty movies will get made and inflicted on the public. The risk posed by Trump fans is sporadic irrational large scale violence, the occasional attack on FBI buildings, possible assassination of Trump ‘enemies’, and the potential destruction of representative democracy.

Ebert described Transformers as “a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine.” The four years of the Trump administration could be described in much the same way, only with Trump humping the leg of Vlad Putin.

big problems

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Recently Comrade Trump had a radio interview with one of his media flunkies, Hugh Hewitt, during which he commented on his possible probable inevitable indictment. He seemed to be balanced between denial that it will happen and making blustery threats about what to expect when it happens. He said,

“I don’t think the people are going to stand for it. […] But I think if it happened, I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it. […] I think they’d have big problems, big problems. I just don’t think they’d stand for it. They will not, they will not sit still and stand for this ultimate of hoaxes.”

I suspect Trump is fantasizing his indictment will spark massive demonstrations across the nation, demonstrations that will turn violent. He’s probably imagining hundreds of mini-1/6 insurrections, in which his fans will rise up and terrorize the government into returning him to power. Fantasies of young, virile white guys wearing polo shirts carrying torches through the streets at night, chanting his name; white folks in camo with ALICE packs they bought on Amazon, holding Trump flags and storming the local city hall.

That, I suspect, is his fantasy. His actual hopes are probably smaller — like keeping enough power to bully GOP politicians and being able to continue scamming yobbos, gits, and idjits out of large chunks of their Social Security checks.

That said, Trump is probably sorta kinda right. There will be problems when he gets indicted. Because many of his fans are fucking QAnon lunatics. Sure, there’ll be protests and marches, but when Trump gets indicted, there’ll probably also be some incidents of stochastic terrorism. Some may be well-planned and organized, but most will likely be slipshod and stupid — like that already-forgotten fuckwit who decided to storm the FBI office in Cincinnati.

But yeah, there’ll be some violence. And yeah, some folks will get hurt. Some people may die. Which will give Comrade Trump a momentary jolt of dopamine, because he enjoys cruelty and loves the notion that there are people who’ll commit violence in his name. It may make him feel worthy for a short time. But it won’t change anything.

I’m confident Trump will be indicted eventually. I have no idea if he’ll ever face trial. If he faces trial, I’m not confident he’ll get an impartial jury. But if he does, I’m pretty certain an impartial jury would probably convict him. Even if he’s tried and convicted, it seems unlikely he’ll do any time. Not just because he’s former POTUS, but because he’s rich and old and in shitty health.

Among the many awful things Trump has done, is this: he’s made us all a bit more cruel too. Not just his fans and followers, who may be prone to cruelty anyway, but those of us who generally aren’t cruel by nature. Many ordinarily decent people will take perverse pleasure in Trump’s disgrace and humiliation.

I know I will. I’m not happy about that. I’m actually ashamed of it. But there it is.

Comrade Trump predicts/threatens big problems when he’s indicted? We already have big problems. He’s the source of many of them.

the power to kill conversation

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— So, did you see where Trump tweeted that the Queen had knighted him in secret and he didn’t tell anybody?
— Fake.
— Well, yeah, of course it is. Wait, hold on…
— What?
— Are you saying it’s fake that Trump was knighted in secret? Or that the tweet itself is fake?
— See, this is what Trump has done. He’s fucked with the entire notion of capital T Truth. Now we can’t even have a conversation because we have to stop and do reality checks on stuff that ought to be obvious, but isn’t anymore. Because everything is nuts.
— Well, yeah, but…wait, what?
— The tweet is…and, I mean it’s not even a ‘tweet’ is it, since the fucker got himself kicked off Twitter.
— Yeah, but calling it a ‘Truth’ is so fuckin’ stupid that I can’t bring myself to do it.
— Agreed, so okay, we’ll call it a tweet even though it’s not.
— Okay, good. Where were we?
— We were at ‘what’s fake’.
— Right. Continue.


— The tweet itself is fake. And the fake tweet’s claim is fake as well.
— It’s a lie in a lie, yeah. But it’s also the sort of boneheaded stupid lie that Trump might actually make in the hope that somebody might think it’s true. I mean, it’s possible to believe it would be true for Trump to make that sort of lie.
— Yes. Maybe? I think you’re right, if I understood what you said.
— I’m saying ‘The Queen made me a knight in secret and I didn’t tell anybody’ is sort of believable as a lie that Trump would tell.
— …
— Right?
— I’m still working through that.
— …
— Yeah, okay. Yes. I’m pretty sure I agree with that. What was the original question?
— Fuck if I can remember.
— You wanted to know if I saw that Tweet?
— Did you?
— I did. Why?
— …
— …
— I don’t remember. I think I was trying to make a point. About…something.
— Fuckin’ Trump…
— …
— You want to talk about the new Game of Throne thing?
— …
— I haven’t seen it.
— Nor have I.
— Maybe we should just sit here and drink quietly for a bit.
— There’s a new Lord of the Rings thing too.
— …
— …
— Didn’t we used to have actual conversations about, you know…stuff?
— …
— …
— Fuckin’ Trump. The very mention of his name has the power to kill conversation.

fans

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Most etymologists agree that ‘fan’ is a shortening of fanatic. But ‘fanatic’ comes from the Latin fanaticus, meaning “mad, inspired by a god.” This, in turn, is derived from fanum, meaning “a temple, shrine, or consecrated place.” In the 1880s, when the newly-invented game of baseball began to catch on, the term fan became associated with sports. It now applies to any form of entertainment. Fans are basically crazy people.

Here’s the important distinction between being a fan and being a supporter: fandom is about passion based on faith and group identity; support is grounded in agreement. Supporters encourage and promote a person (or a group or a cause) because they share the views of what that person is doing, with what that group believes, with that cause. Fans support a person (or a group or a cause) because of who they believe that person (or group or cause) is.

For example, nobody supports the Chicago Cubs because they agree with the team, or because they share the team’s beliefs, or because they agree with the Cubbie’s cause. The team (as opposed to individual players) doesn’t have a cause. The Cubs exist to play baseball–that’s it. Cubs fans love the Cubs because they’re the Cubs. Maybe it has to do with the city of Chicago, or because of the team’s history, or because of a specific player (who doesn’t love Ernie Banks?), or even because of the friendly confines their iconic stadium. The reason for fandom isn’t as important as the fact of fandom.

Chicago Cubs fans

Back in the 1990s, a researcher named Daniel Wann created a Sport Spectator Identification Scale–a series of questions to determine how deeply sports fans are invested in a team. He found strong correlations between identification with a team and a fan’s 1) self-esteem, 2) belief in the trustworthiness of others, 3) belief that the depth of one’s support can influence the outcome of a game, 4) consumptive behavior (the willingness to spend money, wait in line, consume media related to the team), 5) willingness to anonymously injure an opposing team player/coach, and 6) willingness to anonymously cheat to help one’s team.

Sound familiar?

Here’s a True Thing: Comrade Trump has few actual supporters; but he’s got a very large fan base. Trump fans aren’t all that different from sports fans. True fans (as opposed to weekend fans) will frequently change their lives to accommodate their fandom. They feel a powerful need to publicly demonstrate their membership in the fan base. They join clubs with other fans, they prefer to associate with other fans. They attend events (rallies, speeches, conventions, games). They wear hats and jerseys and scarfs to identify themselves as fans. They adorn their vehicles with fan stickers. Some will even fly flags showing their allegiance. They’re often loud and obnoxious in their support; they’re often louder and more obnoxious in their opposition to competing figures/teams.

Trump fans aren’t supporters of Trump’s beliefs (if he has any) or his political or religious ideology (if he has any) or his policies (if he has any); they’re fans of Trump his ownself. They want Trump to win, of course, but the thing about fan loyalty is that it doesn’t require winning. True fans (as opposed to fair weather fans) will continue to support a losing team; they’ll rationalize the losses (the referees are incompetent or corrupt, the home office is failing the team, the other teams cheat). Fans will even defend their team if/when it’s accused of cheating–even when there’s undeniable evidence of cheating. At the very least, they’ll justify the cheating.

Trump fans

When reporters ask people who attend Trump rallies, “How can you continue to support Trump when he has (fill in the blank with something awful and inexcusable)?” the answer lies in fandom, not reason or logic. And that’s a really big problem. Why? Because it’s almost impossible for a Cubs fan to stop being fans of the Chicago Cubs. That’s also true for Trump fans.

Remember this: groups of passionate sports fans can turn violent. Hell, the most common form of group violence among white men is the sports riot. This is true whether their team wins or loses. After the Detroit Tigers beat the San Diego Padres in the 1984 World Series, Detroit fans celebrated by a riot that left one person dead, eighty injured, and millions of dollars in property damage (the eight rapes that took place are often overlooked, because capitalism and misogyny place more value on property). The same thing happened in Chicago when the Chicago Bulls basketball team won the NBA final in 1991 (and again in 1992, and also in 1993, not to mention 1996 and 1997). We’ve seen similar sports riots in every nation with a passion for sports.

When asked why they rioted, sports fans usually claim they just got caught up in the moment. Which is also the most common excuse given by the January 6th insurrectionists.

That sort of unreasoned, passionate fan loyalty (and subsequent willingness to get ‘caught up in the moment’) applies to Trump fans. That’s scary in itself. It’s even more scary considering a LOT of Trump’s true fans are also true fans of the Second Amendment. The only thing worse than than a rabid fan is a rabid fan with a gun.

a few true things

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Here’s a true thing: back in 2019, a Chinese ‘businesswoman’ named Yujing Zhang was caught wandering around Mar-a-Lago carrying some unidentified electronic equipment and two different passports. She was eventually stopped by a random receptionist.

Another true thing: a woman calling herself Anna de Rothschild showed up at Mar-a-Lago driving a $170,000 Mercedes. She visited the resort often, attended several ‘functions’, and was photographed larking about with both Sen. Lindsey Graham and Comrade Trump his ownself. We now know her name is Inna Yashchyshyn; a Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant.

These women almost certainly weren’t spies. They were probably just grifters. But the fact that they were able to infiltrate and roam around Mar-a-Lago shows how shoddy the security was. And probably still is. I’m talking about the security of the facility itself. The security of the former president is handled by the Secret Service; their only concern about the resort is how it affects Trump’s physical safety. They’re bodyguards, not counter intelligence operatives.

Comrade Trump, Comrade Graham, and ‘Anna de Rothschild’

Here’s another true thing: we only learn about the incompetent spies, or the spies who are unlucky. We only hear about the spies who get caught. There are undoubtedly agents and assets of hostile (and friendly) foreign nations noodling around Mar-a-Lago. They’d be foolish NOT to be.

One more true thing: in October of last year–eight months after Comrade Trump moved to Mar-a-Lago–the CIA sent a cable to every single CIA station warning there had been a sudden a rash of CIA informants and assets in hostile countries (particularly China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan) who’d been compromised, captured, arrested, or killed. It also warned that some informants and assets may have been turned, and may now be double agents. These informants and assets were vanishing in different adversarial countries at the same time, rather than a single geographical area. That suggests it wasn’t simply a local breach in security; it suggests somebody with access to high level worldwide internal CIA operations had exposed those assets and informants. The British Security Services apparently suspected there may be a ‘super mole’ in the CIA.

And still another true thing: among the many classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago were some labeled HSC-P and HSC-O. HSC refers to HUMINT Control System. Human intelligence. That’s spy stuff. HSC-P refers to the product of an intelligence operation–the stuff the spies learned. HSC-O refers to the operation itself. What the spies did (and possibly still are doing) to obtain the product.

Just to be clear, I’m NOT saying that CIA informants and assets were compromised and killed in hostile nations because 1) Mar-a-Lago is an attractive soft target for spies from hostile nations and 2) because Trump’s ignorance of and lack of concern about security issues made spying easier there, and 3) because highly classified documents pertaining to human intelligence operations were left in non-secure venues of Mar-a-Lago. Those things may NOT be linked at all.

It could be a coincidence.

I’m just pointing out a few true things.

blood in the streets

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“If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information…there’ll be riots in the street.”

That was Senator Lindsey Olin Graham of South Carolina. But I’ve been seeing and hearing that sort of idiotic bullshit a lot lately–on the news and in real life. There was a guy at the gym last week–a living caricature of a Trump supporter; overweight and angry, loud and obnoxious–saying much the same thing. He said he was so angry he was “about ready to take up arms.” About ready. Not actually ready to take up arms, but just about ready.

Putting aside the fact that this guy would have probably collapsed in a puddle of his own urine if he’d had to run across the street, there’s the question of whom he’d take up arms against. In his rant, he mentioned Uncle Joe Biden, Antifa, the DeepStateFBI (yes, it was all one word) and communists. Maybe he meant to take up arms against all of them? Or maybe he thinks they’re all the same group? I don’t know. It was an unhinged, unfocused, unorganized rant.

Is this blood-in-the-streets scenario something we really need to fret about? Well, yes and no. I mean, the 1/6 insurrection is evidence that there are a lot of angry Trumpistas who are willing to use violence to get their way. So yeah, that’s a real concern.

But that anger had focus. Misdirected focus built on lies, true–but there was a focal point. The Capitol Building. Comrade Trump pointed them at the Capitol. It’s entirely possible (assuming Trump gets indicted–and I think he will–and goes to trial–and I’m not so sure about that) that a Trumpista mob would assault the courthouse.

He could riot for maybe half a street.

But as for widespread rioting in the streets? Naw, probably not. Sure, there’ll be pro-Trump protests and some of those will likely turn violent. But the problem with the sort of conspiratorial free-floating rage we see from so many Trumpistas is that it’s undirected. Like the fuckwit at the gym, they’re intensely angry at some vague, nebulous Biden/Antifa/DeepState/commie Bogeyman that doesn’t exist. It’s easy to sustain that sort of anger, but hard to sustain any sort of direct action against vapor. You can’t punch smoke.

But you can punch fascists. If holding Trump accountable for his crimes leads to violence in the streets, then so be it. I’d much rather it didn’t happen, but if it does then it does. It’s a price we may have to pay to resist fascism.

EDITORIAL NOTES: 1) I don’t advocate punching anybody, even if they’re fascists. But if you find yourself on the street and there’s a fascist in front of you doing or saying fascist stuff, DO NOT punch him (it’ll almost certainly be a guy) in the head; heads are mostly bone and you could hurt your hand. Punch him someplace soft. 2) When I described the Trumpista at the gym as being “overweight and angry” and said he’d likely collapse “in a puddle of his own urine if he’d had to run across the street,” it wasn’t to denigrate fat people. There are fat people who are in really good shape. I’m just describing those armchair warriors who sit around drinking cheap-ass beer and eating bags of Doritos and fantasize about being tough. I probably am denigrating cheap-ass beer, though. Sue me.