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Clif Brown's avatar

This essay is on the mark.

The only trouble is, Trump's obsession with himself at whatever cost it may be to anyone or anything else, puts complete unpredictability in the White House. Yes, the elite is out to get him, but for the rest of us he is also a very dangerous character with no guidelines in his personal behavior that show regard to any accountability. He will do and say anything to at least preserve if not gain power, the perfect example being the incident where he held up a bible for the symbolism, but at another point could not give a single example of anything in the bible that meant anything to him. Nothing is off limits.

My point is that he is nobody's friend, not any individual or any group if his ego is offended. What a parade we had of dismissed office holders, none of whom had anything good to say about Trump when they were free to do so. Michael Cohen's book, Disloyal, is a must read.

Given the truth of your essay, what is the voter to do? When the American pubic is given a choice or there is a possibility of that, it goes nowhere. Jill Stein, no insider, got 1% of the vote. Bernie got shuffled off the stage by the Hillary machine.

The elite protect themselves in our democracy of lobbies. Biden is certainly an obedient member. We pretty much know exactly what to expect (bank bailouts, de-regulation, etc.) that are no service to we the people, but with Trump all we can expect is a carnival strongly hedged in by established power and the chance of real chaos through his unpredictability. His recent statement that any indictment would likely bring "death and destruction" shows he cares nothing for the stability of American society. He learned nothing from Jan. 6.

I don't want to vote for Biden, but I don't want to vote for a hand grenade with the pin pulled either.

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bill wolfe's avatar

I am baffled by this column, especially this claim:

"Once Nixon, like Trump, attacked the centers of power"

That claim suffers major problems:

1) it is contradicted by all the acts that Hedges lists under "Why wasn't Trump prosecuted for..." each of which is evidence that Trump served and posed absolutely no risk to the "centers of power";

2) False equivalence and revisionism: Nixon never "attacked the centers of power". Nixon may have attacked elites, but not the centers of power. Chomsky's point is that the elite are self serving and the US system of justice is two tiered: one for the powerful and one for the rest of us. But that is not an argument that Nixon attacked the centers of power; and

3) Hedges has written a superb book about White Christian Nationalists Fascists, yet somehow he continues to ignore Trump's rhetorical support for fascist culture and fascist politics and the threat of consolidation of those politics into governing power.

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