God bless America, Land of the free!

Whitewavemark2

Mike Pence?

Yes, Trump was in such a bad mood that Pence would not agree that the election he was quite happy to throw him to the dogs in the Capitol.

It's disgusting what Trump supporters said against Mike Pence. His life was threatened and much had Trump backing
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/16/mike-pence-40ft-from-mob-january-6

correct, "that the election was lost"

A comment from a Canadian FB page (I should really put all of it into italics to show that it is a quote, butI haven't)

posted by Lionel W. F. Rudd
A view from north of the border
ROBERT REICH
JAN 24

Friends,
From time to time I bring you views about what’s happening in the United States from writers and journalists in other countries. The following is by Andrew Coyne, a highly respected Canadian columnist with The Globe and Mail, Canada’s most widely read newspaper.
*
Trump’s Election is a Crisis like No Other, Not Only for the U.S. But For the World
Andrew Coyne
Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.
There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.
The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.
At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric.
At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.
The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.
Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fueled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.
Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.
We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?”
Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.
All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.
All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.

An interesting and well written perspective by the Canadian journalist.Doesn’t mean it will pan out in that way of course or at least not entirely, a week is a long time in politics, but some worries still remain.I have never been an admirer of the US so don’t expect too much from any Presidency.I guess you have to be a citizen of the States to know how individuals feel about what’s to come, some scared and others welcome it.

Elegran I have an Aunt, Uncle and three cousins in Ottawa and I have a very old school friend in Saskatoon, we are hoping to visit them in the Summer.

They too are alarmed and a little worried.

I’m afraid I agree with everything this Canadian has stated and fear for our little country as well as others.

Wow!

Thanks for posting this Elegran.

There are no more words to say

Oreo

An interesting and well written perspective by the Canadian journalist.Doesn’t mean it will pan out in that way of course or at least not entirely, a week is a long time in politics, but some worries still remain.I have never been an admirer of the US so don’t expect too much from any Presidency.I guess you have to be a citizen of the States to know how individuals feel about what’s to come, some scared and others welcome it.

Yes, only the citizens still living in the USA can have a realistic view, the rest of us can only look on as observers.

Almost 75m of them did NOT vote for Trump.

It needs the growth of organised and coherent opposition so people don't feel so isolated they give up and let it sweep over them.
Early days - so many "edicts" all signed at once.

Thank you Elegran a very erudite and interesting article. We love visiting Canada and truly hope it survives the Trump administration.
We watch and wait.

Some ex-military Americans on the QM2 asked us to pray for them if Trump got in.

That's an excellent article Elegran but it ain't half depressing!

I refuse to believe things will be as bad as that or that it will be a self fulfilling prophecy.

I have a cousin in Boston who is as anti Trump as anyone on earth and there are many like her.

I do miss the sane Alistair Cooke and his Letters from America at times like these.

The Canadian site that appeared on had a lot of comments from non-journalist ordinary Canadians, who voiced fears very similar to those in the article. They are so close to the USA that they will feel results faster than countries further way. I meant to put a link to it, but by the time I returned from copying and posting that quote, FB had moved on, and I hadn't noted the name of the site. If I see it again I'll share it.

However, here is a link to Robert Reich's Facebook page
www.facebook.com/RBReich/