The Trump Chronicles, 2020, Part 1

"Either this nation will kill racism, or racism will kill this nation." S. Jonas, Aug., 2018

The U.S. Covid 19 pandemic (or as I call it, the Trumpidemic2020[C]): What Trump will be most remembered for.
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Introduction

As I said as the beginning of my previous three columns for OpEdNews, as we come to the end of the first proto-fascist Presidency in U.S. history, what was originally was planned to be a four-part series of listings of my published columns on "Trump and Trumpism," with a brief comment on each one, has become a five-part series. That is because in 2020 I posted a total of 55 columns on OpEdNews. 44 of them were Trump-related, so I am splitting the 2020 set in two.

Referring to Trump, I say "proto-fascist" because of course Trump, try as he might, did not achieve creating even a modified version of fascism at the governmental level. But it has been clear for quite some time that that is what he and the forces behind him were aiming for. And his behavior in his attempt to overthrow the election Joe Biden, amateurish and scattershot to be sure, which will continue at least until the official tallying of the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021, indicates that authoritarianism is exactly what he has had in mind. Just imagine (perish the thought, actually) what we might be facing if a) the votes were closer in the swing states, b) the Republican judges who ruled against him followed the law but had been total Trumpist ideologues, and c) he had had capable legal counsel. Oh my!

But it should be noted, that as of this writing (Dec. 29, 2020) he is encouraging pro-Trump in-person forces (literally) to show up in Washington on Jan. 6 to "protest" the official counting of the Electoral Votes in the Congress. As well, he is encouraging those Republicans who have already announced that that will be challenging the official tally to certainly do so. (Louis Gohmert is the latest of those: suing the Vice-President, no less!) It is impossible to tell at his time what Trump has in mind, calling out potentially armed protesters. Interestingly enough, a hotel that has been intermittently frequented by some "Proud Boys" announced that it is cosign for the period Jan. 4-6.

Given what the Proud Boys, egged on by Trump, have been at least thinking about, it should be recalled that on March 23, 1933, when the German Reichstag (parliament) was called into session to consider a motion for changing the Weimar Constitution to in effect make Hitler Dictator for Life, after having had expelled the Communist Party members, the Nazis surrounded the chamber and the remaining Deputies with armed Sturm Abteilung (SA, "Storm") troopers in uniform. Hitler got his necessary 2/3's majority. One wonders if Trump has in mind something along these lines.

Now let's assume that the true Electoral Vote does go though and former Vice-President Biden does statutorily become President-elect, despite Trump's phumphering around now. Assuming that he stays in the country (and he may not), depending very much on how Trump is and/or is not prosecuted for his many crimes (Federal, state, and local*), he may well be a major fixture in U.S. politics for some time to come. And of course, if he doesn't make it to the role of First Fascist Dictator for the U.S., a position for which he hopes to be running in 2024, there are many true Republicans more than ready to stand in in his place. That list begins with Ted Cruz (from whom the fascist-wizard Steve Bannon --- and he is a real wizard, not like the one in "The Wizard of Oz" --- originally came to Trump, along with Kellyanne Conway). This all depends, of course, in which direction the dominant sector of the U.S. capitalist ruling class wants to go.

As for the 2020 list, here are the first 22 of the 44 Trump-related columns that I posted in this space in 2020. The second set will be posted next week.

And so, to this week's list:

1. "The Mueller Report and The Third Article of Impeachment that Might Have Been," as for example on witness/evidence tampering.

2. "Trump and Lynching: An Historical Comparative Analysis." Trump used the word "lynching" to describe the Impeachment process in the House of Representatives. This column visits, briefly, true lynching in the U.S. Jim Crow South, and the crowds that attended them, with some comparisons to the behavior of Nazi guards at the Extermination Camps in World War II.

3. "Trump Transactionalism Writ Large: The Soleimani Assassination and the Letter 'U'."

The most likely reason for the Soleimani assassination? One of Trump's typical WMDs, Weapons of Mass Distraction (from the Ukraine mess). 

4. "Trump, the Evangelical Republican Right (ERR©), and 'God'. " Betcha didn't know that Trump had been selected by God to be U.S. President, did ya'. Me neither. 

5. "Ukraine: Some Historical Background" This column is not directly about Trump, but the historical background will be helpful in understanding the U.S. situation there, which is very much relevant both in terms of the Trump Impeachment and also for how the Biden Administration will be dealing with that country. 

6. "How Trump Thinks (and he does), as in: 'I have done nothing wrong'. "

One conclusion: given how Trump does think, in Ukraine he actually did, in his own mind, nothing wrong. 

7. "Impeachment Thoughts: As the Defense (seems to) Rest." And that is what this column is about. 

8. "Two New Constitutional Rules: Of Dershowitz and of McConnell." During the farce of the Impeachment Trial in the Senate, several new Constitutional rules were announced. This column is about the one created by one of the President's attorneys, Alan Dershowitz. 

9. "What Might a Second Trump Term Look Like? It Will Not be Fun, Folks." Actually, as the Trump first term (with no second, fortunately) winds down, he is giving us a very clear view of what for openers things would be like if he had won that second term. 

10. "Trumpite Fascism: A view from 2016." This column is a reprise of column that I originally wrote on Trump and Fascism, back in 2016, with some updating. Scary stuff. 

11. "The COVID-19 Epidemic and the Disastrous Federal Government Response: It Ain't Just Trump." As I said in the opening paragraph of that column, which was published on March 3, 2020:

"As is very well-known, we as a nation are now standing at a cross-roads in our history, caused of course by the COVID-19 epidemic. If certain estimates of its eventual scope come true (and to be sure, these estimates are at the far right-hand end of the bell-shaped Curve for the count), we are standing on the precipice of as many as 60,000,000 cases. (Sounds like a lot in raw numbers, and it is, but that number is less than 20% of the U.S. population.) This, if the projected death rate is correct, would produce 600,000 deaths. As is widely agreed to (outside of the Trumpublican© inner sanctum --- see Fox"News" --- of course) the major cause of this horrible potentiality in this country has the been the dreadfully slow response of the Trump Administration to the threat, which has been known since China first announced the outbreak and its then-extent at the end of last year."

12. "An Ounce of Prevention --- and Trump Could Have Been on a Glide-path the Re-election." As we found out later from the Bob Woodward book, Trump seemed at the time to know the true nature of the coming pandemic. But of course, he did not act on that knowledge. In this column I discuss the likely reasons why not, and what likely would have happened if he had.

13. "The Deconstruction of the Administrative State and the Trumpidemic2020©." As it says in the title, this column discusses what can be called "The Steve Bannon Project" and its (totally negative) effect on early efforts to control the spread of the SARS-Co-V-2 virus.

14. "One-and-a-Half Months in the Life of Trump; 10 Days in the Life (and death) of New York City." This column compares Trump statements in the early days of the pandemic with what was actually going on in New York City at the time.

15. "The US Ruling Class and Trump's Personality and Politics: A Fatal Attraction." As the title says, this column discusses the relationship between Trump's personality and the policies of the dominant sector of the U.S. ruling class.

16. "Nikki Haley, Trump, and Let the Govs. do It, Part 1." This column discusses the support of Trumpub. 2024 hopeful former Gov. Nikki Haley for Trump's disastrous "let the Gov.'s do it" policy. 

17. "Trump, Testing, and His Magical Thinking." This column was the first of a three-part series of what I described as Trump's "Box of Six Magic Tricks" which got this poorly educated, low-intelligence, value-less, narcissistic, con man (history's greatest, in my book) all the way to the Presidency of the United States.

18. "Donald Trump, the Trumpidemic2020©, and His Magical Thinking, Part 2." This column further analyzes how Trump's "Box of Magic Tricks" forms and informs his policies.

19. "Trump's Magical Thinking Pt. 3: 'There Shall be No National Testing Program --- and the Virus Will Magically Go Away'" This column discusses how Trump's Box of Magic Tricks specifically informs his policy on (non) testing. 

20. "Nikki Haley, Trump, Let the Govs. do It, and the Constitution, Part 2." This column discusses the Trump/Haley "let-there-be-no-national-program-for-dealing-with-a-nationla-problem" policy in the context of the Statement of Purpose of the U.S. Constitution, otherwise known as the Preamble.

21. "Infectious Disease Science and D.J. Trump, Part 1." This column discusses how Trump's ignorance of science in general and the science of COVID-19 specifically, informed his disastrous policies. At the time of writing of that column, of course that he knew the science at the time he spoke with Bob Woodward back in February was not known. But obviously what he had said back then was either forgotten, or cast aside, most likely for political reasons (as discussed in a column later in this series, that will appear in next week's list).

22. "Infectious Disease Science and D.J. Trump, Part 2." Obviously, a continuation of the discussion in the previous column.

And this brings this list to its end, for now. To be continued next week.

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* Just for the record, here is an incomplete list of the crimes with which Trump could be charged, at the Federal, state, and local levels, upon leaving office. Particularly on the civil suits, the process servers might be lining up, as close as they are allowed to get, at the entrance to his escape-helicopter: income tax evasion, tax fraud, (possibly) rape, obstruction of justice, violation of the Emoluments clause, insurance fraud, campaign financing violations, money laundering, bank fraud, colluding with a foreign power to influence an election, treason (failing to do anything about the "Russian bounties" program, breach of contract, loan defaults.