https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-30-2024
"On Friday, speaking to Christians at the Turning Point Action Believers’
Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump begged the members of the audience to
“vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you
know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine…. In four years, you don’t have to
vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
The comment drew a lot of attention, and on Monday, Fox News Channel
personality Laura Ingraham gave him a chance to walk the statement back.
Instead, he said: “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever
again. It’s true.” “Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on November
5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care,
because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need
your vote anymore, because frankly we will have such love, if you don’t want to
vote anymore, that’s OK.”
Trump’s refusal to disavow the idea that putting him back into power will mean
the end of a need for elections is chilling and must be viewed against the
backdrop of the Supreme Court’s July 1, 2024, decision in
Donald J. Trump v.
United States. In that decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the
court’s right-wing majority said that presidents cannot be prosecuted for
crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties” and that presidents
should have a presumption of immunity for other presidential actions.
John Roberts defends the idea of a strong executive and has fought against the
expansion of voting rights made possible by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The
idea that it is dangerous to permit minorities and women to vote suggests that
there are certain people who should run the country. That tracks with a
recently unearthed video in which Republican vice presidential candidate J.D.
Vance calls childless people “psychotic” and “deranged,” and refers
unselfconsciously to “America’s leadership class.”
The idea that democracy must be overturned in order to enable a small group of
leaders to restore virtue to a nation is at the center of the “illiberal
democracy” or “Christian democracy” championed by Hungarian prime minister
Viktor Orbán. Orbán’s imposition of an authoritarian Christian nationalism on a
former democracy, in turn, has inspired the far-right figures that are
currently in charge of the Republican Party. As Heritage Foundation president
Kevin Roberts put it: “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative
statecraft but
the model.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
