Part One:
BEWARE OF THE PARAMILITARY
We speak with Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight, co-author of “How Trump And COVID-19 Have Reshaped The Modern Militia Movement.” First, we begin with a warning written by Yale’s Tim Snyder shortly after Trump was elected president:
- Watch out for the paramilitary – when the men with guns, who have always claimed to be against the system, start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.
Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux explains the frightening ways in which Snyder’s warning has proved prescient. She traces the growth of the modern militia movement, and placed it in the context of other similar movements that have emerged in Trump’s America. His divisive, hateful rhetoric and his damaging, chaotic actions have filled Americans with feelings of fear, anxiety and precarity. These feelings make it easier for extremist views to develop.
Trump then nourishes those anti-social views and encourages them. (“There are good people on both sides” of the demonstrations in Charlottesville.”) Social media have helped these militiamen connect with each other. Some of these people were loners until they came together For example, Kyle Rittenhouse – the 17-year-old who allegedly murdered two young anti-racism protesters in Kenosha – was not an actual member of any group, either long-term or even forj ust that one night’s action. Individual militiamen just show up and band together to do whatever they think they “should,” without any pre-analyzed “plan.”
Why are people attracted to these groups? Some are attracted by the PR – “You can have a role to play (when you’re isolated and feeling useless) – you can be in this protector role.”
Amelia quotes Lawrence Rosenthal – from the Univ of California: “With Trump, the fringe [elements] came out.” Trump is anti-government (even though he has been the leader of the government for 4 years), and he elevates these fringe actors to respectability and legitimacy. He makes them feel like they are the “good” Americans, not crackpots like people have been calling them over the years.
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Part Two:
TRUMP’S LIES.
We assess the current state of the world with Bill Curry, former Clinton White House and two-time candidate for governor of Connecticut.
Trump’s lies have never been more important in real time. People are hemorrhaging in ways they never expected. Whether it is almost 200,000 Americans dead of COVID-19 or the massive destruction taking place amidst California and Oregon’s wildfires, Trump’s lies are killing people right now. And lest we forget, California is not merely “a state led by a Democratic governor.” It is the food basket of the US. Most of our fruits and vegetables are grown in California (and, by the way, they are tended and picked by “essential workers” who are often immigrants and/or people of color).
KEEP IT SIMPLE, DEMOCRATS. YOU’VE GOT THIS.
We discuss Bernie Sanders’s (public) advice to Joe Biden that the candidate focus his campaign more on bread-and-butter issues. (“It’s the economy, stupid.”) Americans are hurting a lot. Many have lost their jobs and their health care. Their families are trying desperately to avoid COVID-19, and many of them have already caught it. Climate-related catastrophes are ripping people’s lives apart, whether they be out-of-control wildfires, devastating hurricanes, or droughts.
Curry agrees with Bernie that Biden’s path to victory is clear: the issues and the facts are clearly set on the table, before the entire country. What the Democrats have to do is simply to tell the people what our program is, tell them what Trump’s program is — just the simple reality.
Curry makes clear that the Democrats don’t have to advocate any “new” proposals that weren’t set forth in the 2008 Obama-Biden platform. We don’t have to come up with new programs that go beyond that written platform. All we need is “a president who says it and means it.”
