The fact is, I didn’t do much about my upcoming Portugal trip yesterday. I was busy tending to the more mundane aspects of my life – mowing the lawn, etc. – and didn’t get much done. And, of course, there is the recurring thought in the back of my mind, “Should I really do this in a time when the Delta variant is wreaking havoc everywhere?” Then I read something and it kind of jarred me back to reality and the little voice in my head came back with a resounding and emphatic “yes!” I still understand that this whole COVID thing can cause things to change rapidly and I know that all of my planning is subject to change and/or cancellation at a moments notice but for now I will press ahead.
Two things happened yesterday that reinforced my belief that it is time to continue this exploration of becoming a full or parttime expat. First of all, I finished the book, “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year”, by Pulitzer Prize winning authors, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. As I stated in a previous post, anyone who believes that Trump is in any way, shape or form qualified to be president, should read this book. It paints a devastating picture of this narcissistic, vengeful and frankly, not very intelligent man and the chaotic and reckless way he makes decisions. It was truly frightening.
In addition to the dangers that Trump himself poses, he has surrounded himself with a whole cadre of truly frightening people. Don’t forget that around 20 of Trump’s associates have been indicted since he took office and now that the tax returns from the Trump organization are being scrutinized by prosecutors, I’d be willing to bet huge sums of money that there are more indictments to come. The book truly reads like Tony Soprano took over as president.
I’m sure there are those who read some of my blog posts last year when I was railing against Trump and wondering why I’m continuing now even though he is out of office. After all, Biden is president, Trump no longer has access to Twitter and Facebook, Democrats control the House and the Senate so what is there to worry about? Which leads me to the second thing I read which helped calm my concerns about moving down this expatriation path now.
I saw an interview with Richard Hasen, a law professor at University of California Irvine, in which he said he was “scared shitless” thinking about the 2024 elections. It went on to explain that given all of the voter laws being passed in Republican-controlled states it is entirely possible that the popular vote in a state could go one way and if the state legislature does not agree with the choice of the people, they will have the ability to override it. This is exactly what Trump was asking states like Arizona and Georgia to do in this last election. This is without precedent in this country, but could very well happen in the 2024 presidential election. The very thought of that should scare the shit out of any citizen of this country who believes in the Constitution and the very foundations of democratic rule. The fact is, I have voiced the very same concerns raised by Hasen and so his interview really hit home.
A large number of Republicans seem to have bought into ‘The Big Lie’ and believe that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected and the election was ‘stolen’ from Trump in spite of zero credible supporting evidence and losing multiple lawsuits across the country. This has all of the makings for another, even more volatile election cycle next time around. And while I fully support the prosecution of anyone who participated in the January 6th attack on the Capitol, my guess is that even those convicted of felonies will emerge and be better armed, better organized and primed for even more violence in 2024. All one has to do is review Hitler’s rise to power (Wikipedia summary included below) to understand that the undermining of democracy does not normally occur overnight. It happens over a period of years. Trump may or may not run in 2024 but the radicalization of the Republican Party will not stop and it is quite likely that whoever the Republicans field as their presidential candidate in 2024 will be more ‘Trump’ than Trump. And unless the Federal government enacts legislation to counter all of the anti-democratic election laws being passed at the state level, the Republicans will reclaim the White House – fairly or unfairly. As I have said previously, anyone who thinks, “this could never happen in America” is not paying attention.
“Adolf Hitler’s rise to power began in Germany in September 1919 when Hitler joined the political party then known as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – DAP (German Workers’ Party). The name was changed in 1920 to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party). It was anti-Marxist and opposed to the democratic post-war government of the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles, advocating extreme nationalism and Pan-Germanism as well as virulent anti-Semitism. Hitler attained power in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month, giving expanded authority. President Paul von Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues. The Enabling Act – when used ruthlessly and with authority – virtually assured that Hitler could thereafter constitutionally exercise dictatorial power without legal objection.
Hitler rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Being one of its best speakers, he was made leader after he threatened to leave otherwise. He was aided in part by his willingness to use violence in advancing his political objectives and to recruit party members who were willing to do the same. The Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923 and the later release of his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) expanded Hitler’s audience. In the mid-1920s, the party engaged in electoral battles in which Hitler participated as a speaker and organizer,[a] as well as in street battles and violence between the Communist’s Rotfrontkämpferbund and the Nazis’ Sturmabteilung (SA). Through the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazis gathered enough electoral support to become the largest political party in the Reichstag, and Hitler’s blend of political acuity, deceptiveness, and cunning converted the party’s non-majority but plurality status into effective governing power in the ailing Weimar Republic of 1933.
Once in power, the Nazis created a mythology surrounding their rise to power, and they described the period that roughly corresponds to the scope of this article as either the Kampfzeit (the time of struggle) or the Kampfjahre (years of struggle).”