Coop Scoop Special Election Edition #5 The coming violent MAGA storm is already making landfall

And what will the US military do if called upon to support an extra-legal Trump regime

October 29, 2024

By Marc Cooper

American fascism?  You don’t have to wait 9 more days or re-watch the Trump Nuremberg in New York City rally from Sunday night to get a feel for it. The outer bands of the violent MAGA storm are already making landfall.

Where I live in Vancouver in SW Washington state voting is only by mail. Period.  You can mail in your ballot or drop it off in three or four ballot boxes placed in strategic venues. Those ballot boxes are our voting booths in a different form.

We find out that Sunday morning, one of those ballot drop boxes was set afire compromising hundreds of ballots already cast.  The state is providing a system to see if one’s mail-in ballot was destroyed and will be given a new one.

Ballot drop box on fire in Vancouver WA

A similar incident took place in nearby Oregon on Monday morning on the heels of Trump disparaging democracy, “An incendiary” device was found and most of the ballots were saved, say reports. Another mail box was burned in Oregon a few days earlier.

I was literally shocked to learn from our Democratic congresswoman that those boxes, our booths in our city, lack any consistent law enforcement protection. Unreal as this state is very progressive in many ways including the electoral process.  I suspect some cops will now be nudged into guarding them 24 hours a day. I assume!

Ballot box destroyed in Oregon...

Arizona meanwhile is spending ten million dollars to provide bullet proof glass and bullet proof vests for their election workers. And similar security measures are being taken in several other states. All three states, Washington, Oregon and Arizona, depend heavily on mail in and absentee ballots against which Trump has railed for the last 4 years.

Welcome to America’s 2024 election in which fascist vandals and corrupt state bureaucrats and many MAGA state and congressional officials and election bureaucrats are already disrupting the election which is underway in many states with early voting and voting by mail.

MAGA leaders know they cannot win the popular vote and are seeking every possible way to distort the process and intimidate voters. If the had their way, there would no no elections.

That is partly why the Trump rally Sunday descended into Nuremberg territory as a lineup of vile and frankly insane anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian speakers warmed up the crowd so the aspiring American Fuhrer could whip up the bitter racist dummies in the audience into a frenzy. We are an occupied country, and he plans to deport literally millions of immigrants. Darker colored ones.  The crowd cheered and chanted “Send Them Back.” So much for the pundit chatter about ”kitchen table issues.”

All that was missing were some Heil Hitler chants! 

It has taken a long 3 and a half years and with a scant week before the historic election between democracy and authoritarianism, but most of the major media has worked up the courage to label Trump as a fascist, albeit by quoting others. 

I have no idea if the grotesque and full-on racist rants at the Sunday rally, including a doped up Elon Musk and the angry and threatening felon presidential candidate’s “deportation” rants will have an impact on the election.  But the sordid comic who I shall not name who opened the show calling Puerto Rico  an “Island of floating garbage” and said that Latinos make too many babies because “they don’t ‘pull out and don’t pull out of the country,” along with a racist wisecrack about Blacks and watermelons, should be ostracized from any other venue and hung upside down by his shrunken balls.

The Trump campaign and a few other MAGA quislings were quick Monday morn to put some awkward distance between the bigot “comic” and Trump – for saying out loud what Trump constantly thinks and suggests.

This is complete horse shit as 4 hours passed between the garbage-man comic and Trump’s speech, leaving Trump ample time to come out and say something to put out the fire.  You know, like the ones his local thugs are setting in ballot boxes.

But why would he when this pathetic chump comedian was merely punctuating what Trump has been saying for years?

The media is also full of crap with its mythology that his two top advisors are real pros who can contain him.  Well, if those two pros were Himmler and Heydrich, it would make more sense. But he is only contained if at all by the cacophony of crazed voices that crowd his head.

And for those looking forward to the election ending on November 5, I strongly suggest you rethink that fantasy.  The election violence is already underway.  And if Trump loses, I expect the period between November 5 and Inauguration day will be one of  storm-trooper violence that will make January 6 look like a tea party.

And if he wins, it might be even worse as the thugs, militias, MAGA nuts and stupid old men with guns will be celebrating the same way the Nazis celebrated Kristallnacht. Trump will be encouraging “real Americans” to act like the Stasi and will tell them to identify, denounce and turn in suspected “migrants.”

I want to be clear. Either side can win, but I want to think that the Trump racist rally will sink votes from hundreds of thousand voting Puerto Ricans who live in the key states of Florida and, yes, Pennsylvania.

But Trump now threatens to use the 18^th century Alien and Sedition Act that will allow him to deport and jail anybody with no due process and would allow regular American army troops to operate on domestic territory to suppress dissent and resistance.  And I would venture to say that the primary difference between an “authoritarian” regime and a “dictatorship” is the relative role of the Armed Forces – something nobody wants to talk about.

We don’t know where the US military stands on these issues as they have never shown any desire to govern and they know it would forever sully them.   It has been heartening to see a couple of Trump’s former top military leaders come out forcefully against Trump as an unfit fascist, though again, those statements are about three years late.

Nor do we have much insight into what all the other active-duty generals might be thinking if called into the streets to shoot other Americans.  That’s a totally opaque question.  Also remember that 40% of active-duty troops are racial minorities and they might be hesitant to shoot down folks who look like them.

Then again, when I was in South Africa in 1984, it was primarily Black police who were carrying out the repression in Soweto, albeit under the command of White army regulars.

I am not going to forecast anything in this regard because we simply do not know.  I have lived through the military coups and resulting dictatorships in Chile and Argentina but I don’t see many similarities with the US military who has rarely shown much interest in domestic politics --- unlike the Chilean and Argentine forces.

The Pentagon is not about to stage any coups. The bigger question is what it will do if Trump wins and attempts to mobilize them for support and for use against “the enemy within?”

There is no doubt in my mind that if called upon to support a dictatorial regime, American police departments would fall in line like dominoes and would demand some of those spiffy SS uniforms designed by Hugo Boss (yes he did that).

Designer: Hugo Boss—but no longer available at Nordstroms..

And that brings us back to the military.  They may indeed have no interest in setting up military rule – but would they simply “follow orders” issued by a deranged President?.  I don’t think the answer is an automatic yes, but I confess it certainly could be.

And if Harris wins and MAGA fascists move into action as expected to block certification, will they be put down by current government forces? I would imagine that the law enforcement response would be somewhat more efficient than on Jan 6 when the “patriotic” thugs were being encouraged by the Fat Ass in the White House to keep on trashing the Capitol and hunt down the vice-president.

Prepare for the storm either way. Don’t take what Trump says as empty bluster. Understand that Trump, Vance, Don Jr., Stephen Miller and Elon Musk will become a sort of ruling Junta with Trump at the top barking out the orders.

And do not become MAGA liberals. MAGA wants to return the country to 1955 while Democrats would like to go back to 2015 or even 2012.  Dream on.  We are at an historic inflection point and whoever wins – and may that be Harris!—America is not going back to “normal.”  And I don’t mean that as the Democratic slogan of We Are Not Going Back. 

I mean it to say the America we knew is no longer. We do have a future.  It might be a little bumpy and somewhat more violent and would continue with a flawed democracy that can be patched up here and there.  Or it could be a very long and very dark and very violent era that will last years. 

At least vote. AND protect those votes.  This whole chapter is not ending, we are just at the beginning.

P.S.  After Sunday’s horrifying rally, I have to wonder if Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Washington Post and LATimes are willing to show their mugs in public days after refusing to endorse the candidate opposing fascism. These two billionaires now deserve to be inducted into the Great Hall of Shame, right next to Elon Musk—hopefully when he is sober.. ++

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