A WARNING AND AN OPPORTUNITY

This blog is about a warning and an opportunity. (The picture is of Emily Pankhurst).

      The warning is about what could reasonably-be-anticipated to happen , given the actions to date of the Trump administration, and the opportunity is how that possible outcome could be a unique rallying point to anticipate/combat the current rapid decline of the U.S. into a police state and a dictatorship.

      The speed of Donald Trump’s radical changes over the past six months has left the democrats totally lost and disorganized – some would say they were that before January 20, 2025, but now it’s infinitely worse. If they are doing anything positive at all, at this point, it is merely reacting (feebly, in my opinion) to Trump’s avalanche of new initiatives with no united direction, organization, leadership, or effect. They seem incapable of looking beyond the ends of their noses in a forward direction, and concentrating, instead, on looking backwards and crying. There have been suggestions that the democrats should just wait out the time until the mid-term elections and hope the people will vote them back in control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. I hate to tell them, but, in eighteen months, Trump may have cancelled all future elections and be dictator-for-life, all supported by a Republican Party that has lost all concept of integrity and balls.

      Currently, we are stuck with the Democratic Party as the opposition, pathetic as that seems to be. So, I have a suggestion that could become a rallying cry if someone in the Party had the guts, and the money (unfortunately necessary) to exploit it, unashamedly, regardless of whether it could happen or not. I should add that I happen to think that the scenario I am presenting is quite likely, and it may even be hidden in the small print of Trump’s Project 2025 game plan.

      DISENFRANCHISING WOMEN IN THE U.S. ELECTORAL PROCESS!

      I can hear you say, “That’s ridiculous, the country wouldn’t stand for it”. I would ask you, “how many times have you said that in the last six months and nothing has happened?”. It is a logical progression from what Trump has done so far, and falls neatly in line with the evangelical movement, which is the philosophy behind Project 2025 – even evangelical women seem to endorse the idea that the husband is the head of the family and the decision-maker – a major generalization I agree, but we talking about politics here, and major generalizations and lies seem to part of the current daily political fabric). If that is true, why should women have the vote? Stop for a minute, before you scream at me for making such an outrageous statement, and think how many families there are where this is true – the women rule inside the home and the men outside. It is part and parcel of the evangelical doctrine and, unfortunately, part of Hispanic patriarchal culture as well, and they are a significant percentage of the voting population.

      I would suggest that launching a major, sustained, well-funded, campaign that specifically highlights the Republican/Trump path towards disenfranchising American women would put the democrats ahead of the game, for once, instead their current role of trying to play catch-up. With such a strategy, they would stand a chance of mobilizing over 50% of the population in one fell swoop…minus evangelical women of course – but even those might rebel if real disenfranchisement became a potential political reality.

      There is no defense against such a strategy. Denial, as we all know from our current experience, only fortifies and validates the public image of any movement, however inane, and this is definitely not inane. It is a real possibility. It doesn’t matter whether you really believe that it could happen, as a political strategy, it would work and stand a good chance of producing a strong and viable movement that could destroy Trump’s current wrecking ball approach to government. All fair in love and war, as they say, and this is definitely a war.

      I have been thinking about this for a while now, but it was brought into sharper focus by the rumor in Washington that Trump might invalidate the U.S. citizenship of people born in Puerto Rico. Strictly speaking, in a legal sense, people born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens as a result of the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917, which makes them Statutory U.S. citizens, not Constitutional U.S. citizens. That means that the U.S. Congress could revoke that citizenship, which they can’t do with Constitutional citizenship. If that move is under consideration, which it apparently is, then disenfranchising women isn’t far behind. As a note to myself, I should read every page of the Project 2025 manifesto to see if such a proposal is in there. I’m sure it is, in some form.

      I therefore formally propose this strategy as a win/win for the U.S. Democratic Party, and democrats everywhere. All it needs is someone who can constructively build a bombshell warning with an entrepreneurial approach to political campaigning. Where are you?