Sarah Kendzior has a pretty extensive CV which qualifies her to pontificate on the fascist nature of the incoming Trump administration, which has been lowering the already low expectations for what he'll achieve as president. Qualified and informed people are a threat to Donald Trump, and there's already evidence of a crackdown on the free press.
From Turkey to Poland to Hungary, democratically-elected leaders who don't believe in liberal democracy have already consolidated power by curtailing the freedom of the press, the courts, and the opposition. Now that might happen here. Trump's threats to "open up" the libel laws, his attacks on a judge because of that judge's ethnic background, and his praise for Putin even when it's been pointed out to him that Putin has almost certainly been behind the murder of journalists and political opponents are something dark and new in our politics.
It sure seems like ages ago when we never even suspected that we could possibly fall under dictatorial regime. In March, Kendzior cautioned that Trump's words are absolutely reminiscent of an autocratic regime, and she is absolutely certain of this, now that this awful reality has commenced.
Kendzior wrote a warning about the imminent dark times we are going to face, and she doesn't say could face, we will have to fight a very tough battle against an autocratic dictator, one whom the people were duped into electing. She doesn't want even Trump supporters to be punished, and says to these Trump supporters in her native Red State, Missouri:
...while surrounded by your signs and hats proclaiming support for Donald Trump. You do not deserve what is going to happen to you, and I do not deserve what is going to happen to me, because there is absolutely no one in the world who deserves what may be coming.
Thanks again to AM Joy and the host, the tireless Joy Reid, who airs the voices which are usually ignored on other shows like MTP Daily and Hardball, who are lending legitimacy to and normalizing Trump. Joy listed the anomalies of Trump and how they are indicative of a government based on theft. Imagine if this responsible journalism began a long time ago and across the spectrum of available outlets, and the Fairness Doctrine wasn't eradicated? One can dream, right?
KENDZIOR: All the incidents you described, installing his family within the administration, not divorcing his business interests from the government, not disclosing his tax returns, those are all signs with kleptocracy. Kleptocracy goes hand-in-hand with authoritarian rule. You see this particularly in Russia and other post-Soviet authoritarian states.
We are much more vulnerable than we think. Our system of checks and balances, of legal procedures, may not hold when somebody whose primary goal is the personally benefiting himself to strip the State down to its parts is in charge and is able to override those regulations.
REID: Is there any reason to have confidence that a fully Republican government, meaning Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, as well as the Supreme Court, as well as sort of all the mechanisms of the State, would be a check or a balance on that kind of kleptocratic impulse?
Sarah has no confidence that this is will force Congress to behave like responsible legislators, and the SCOTUS could be a disaster for decades. There's no guarantee checks and balances would work as they were originally intended by the framers of the Constitution. Period.
Kleptocracy is a NON-PARTISAN ISSUE! Trump will hurt everyone. That is a fact, and he must be stopped before he changes laws to facilitate his insidious plans for profiting off the country at the expense of the country.
