Countdown 57 Day Election

California 27 days until early voting

TRUMP’S FEAR CAMPAIGN THEMES

 “Law and Order”

Trump’s primary focus is on “Law and Order” and crime prevention.  I cannot understand someone that flaunts the law, and is known to break the law, and was impeached as a result of his attempted extortion can claim the mantle of “law and Order.”  The 10 instances of obstruction of justice in the Muller Probe, the Michael Cohen (Trump’s personal attorney) indictment which names Trump as individual one in a scheme which Michael Cohen as found guilty and went to prison.  How about the charity he and his family bilked the contributors and was forced to disband and forbade the family any participation in any charity in the future.  Oh and Trump University bilking students and being ordered to make restitution.  We know about the ways he abuses the law aspect, look at the order piece.  How do you claim order when you support dividing the public with the us vs them mantra with the “Deep State” and Fake News.”

Trump’s rhetoric of Crime and dystopian urban centers

Trump’s apocalyptic description of the urban street crime dystopia is not supported by the facts.  Take new York, shootings and murders have increased sharply since last year. Murders are up 35% and shootings are up 87% since last year.  The spike in killings and gun violence comes after a seven years of relative calm when murders dipped below 300 for the first time since 1950.  The 7 year dip is attributed to Bill de Blasio.  Is the rash of police actions, with the corresponding racial injustices, and the effects of isolation due to the virus to blame for the uptick in gun violence?  Or is it trump’s divisive racist and white supremacist incendiary rhetoric or a combination of all of the above?   Most of the violence, at their base, can be attributed directly to Trump’s actions and in his tenure.

My opinion is the gun violence is an aberration for the crimes in New York due to the factors mentioned above.  The surge in gun crimes is accompanied with a drop in other major crimes to prove my point.  There was a 2% drop in overall reports of all major crimes (including gun violence).  Rape reports are down 25%  grand larceny dropped 20%.  The current murder rate in New York is still well below the 8 years Rudy Giuliani was mayor.

Richard Rosenfield, a criminologist at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, said crime this summer has nor spread across cities in the same way as 30 years ago.  The current crime sprees seem to be concentrated in poor neighborhoods.  He stated: “Cities are not awash in crime.”

Other big cities trends are similar with murders and gun violence is rising sharply often from record lows with the overall rate of major crimes has dipped.  During the first 6 months of 2020 overall crime was down 5.3 in 25 large cities, relative to the same period in 2019.  Violent crime was down 2% .  Murders rose in these cities by 16.1% over the previous year.  Murders in Chicago rose 22% and 44% in New Orleans in the first half of the year.  This trend is not limited to democratic cities.  Tulsa, with a republican mayor, had a 300% increase in in June compared to June 2019.  Crime and mayhem is calm when compared to the high crime rates of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Voter suppression and distrust in Mail in ballots

One of his most prevalent assaults comes from Trump’s sustained verbalizations on the integrity of the mail-in Ballot process,  all without any evidence.  Trump has asserted that mail-in voting: “is going to be one of the greatest scams.”  He also said: “millions of ballots” have been sent to dead people, and dogs and cats.  In California if someone has used the mail in ballot system and dies, yes he or she may receive a ballot, however for someone else use the ballot they would need to match the signature and if caught felony fraud charges and mail tampering with serious consequences would ensue.  What happens with the confusion is people do not know what to believe anymore concerning the election. In the 2016 election 36% felt when polled by NBC Wall Street Journal poll the votes could not be counted accurately.  That was before the Trump disinformation campaign on mail-in voting in 2020.  The same poll revealed that now 49% of those polled felt the votes could not be counted accurately.  It’s obvious with this conspiracy theory evidence does not count.  That’s the beauty of a demagogue is that he has a platform that can repeat and reinforce lies daily.  Over 20,000 lies by Trump to date but who is counting?  The Washington Post.

Aided by Soviet bots taking the Trump fake news of voter fraud and sewing distrust in the mail in system to create confusion.  Is the result they are seeking extreme lines by having voters that voted with mail in ballots voting once and then going to the polls and stand in line potentially causing individuals wanting to vote becoming discouraged?  This will generate a potential situation of a Covid-19 spreading event. Delays will occur while poll workers provide provisional ballots and give instructions delaying voting in the polls. 

In the 2016 election the Soviets used information they generated internally to provide the disinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories.  In 2020, Trump is providing the fake news, conspiracy theories and other disinformation spewing from Trump to the Soviet’s. The disinformation being amplified by Trump’s sycophants in congress either knowingly (in most cases since congress was briefed) or unwittingly have amplified the fake news of mail in ballot rampant fraud with no evidence.  Russian state media and Trump are in lock step with their propaganda when it comes to the mail-in ballot fraud spreading lies.

Suburban invasion

Trump attempts to stoke fear in the suburban woman voter by using racial tropes and white supremacy language and of “fear of the other” scenarios.  In 2016 it was the caravans to fear of the brown rapists and murderers coming to take your daughters and force them to be sex slaves.   In 2020 it’s the fear that the black influx into the suburbs will lead to lower property values and along with that crime with the influx of low cost housing to house the homeless on the streets. 

Simple fact are counter to the Trump’s campaign obsession of the dangers of the people of color, especially immigrants or left-wing extremist.  This ignores reality in that right-wing extremists have committed the most terrorists attacks since the 1990’s. To stoke fear Trump’s campaign, he conflates the peaceful anti-racist protesters with the violent interlopers saying they are all deranged criminals out to destroy the country.  This serves two purposes, one to discredit the peaceful protesters, and to instill fear of protesters coming to your peaceful suburban neighborhood.

Trump Spreading distrust

One of Trump’s trusted ploys is to spread distrust in his opponent.  Trump is willing to say or do anything to achieve his goals.  Lying has been his behavior for decades and it is so blatant that when you think its over the top there is no consequences.  Take John McCain nothing happened in 2015 when Trump questioned his status as a war hero for getting shot down in Vietnam. 

Trump has derided and kneecapped the FBI, the CIA, The Defense Intelligence Agency, Congress, the press, military leaders, former members of his own cabinet with terms such as losers and incompetent.  Fake news is another of his tropes to label anything counter to his false narrative as fake news.  It seems that sewing distrust is Trump’s no.1 goal.

The classic distrust is the birther movement.  Trump would not let go of the conspiracy as punishment for his teasing him at the correspondence dinner.  Trump has lied and has spread falsehoods for decades, and now he has found his biggest audience the American gullible ill-informed public.  “I heard today that she doesn’t meet the requirements” Trump said of Kamala Harris who was born in California. 

Trump’s favorite tag line for casting doubt is: “there’s something going on” with the insinuation that something dark and sinister is going down.  Another trope is that he: “hears something,” never saying from whom.  Or that “many people” are saying the same thing. 

Trump is now attempting to sow distrust in Biden calling him slow initially, and when Biden showed more vim and vigor trump had to change his tune.  The next theme was he was in lock step with the far-left AOC crowd it flopped as well as Biden has been known as middle of the road pragmatist working both sides for decades. Trump now wants Biden to take a drug test because he is not performing as Trump expected.   Trump thinks because he gave a lucid speech with complete sentences with both subjects, objects and verbs.  For that, Trump thinks Biden must be taking performance enhancing drugs.  With Trump’s penchant for projection let us see if that’s actually Trump’s problem with drugs with his slurs, incoherent speech patterns, repetitions, and incomplete rambling sentences.  Trump most recently said Biden was stupid in a press conference in the White House residence.  More of a political campaign event. Biden ought to challenge Trump to show his SAT results.  Oh that’s right he had someone else take the test because he was afraid of failure.