You mean, like, with a lasso? It's been one helluva week for MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, along with so many of her smug cohorts in the formerly safe ideological space known as the United States, since Donald Trump winning the election confirmed their long-held suspicion that they do in fact live in Amerikkka.
Doing her part to sound the alarm, a painfully earnest Maddow dragged out the heavy artillery Friday night and all but accused Trump of planning to emulate Hitler --
MADDOW: He's the only person we've ever had go this far in American politics who really did get here by threatening to jail his political opponent ...
By remarkable coincidence, he's the only major party nominee we've ever seen in American politics running against another major party nominee being investigated by the FBI.
MADDOW: ... by threatening that, unless he won the election, he would not recognize the validity of that election ...
Which misstates what Trump actually said while glossing over that it is anti-Trump leftists refusing to accept the results of the election --
MADDOW: We've never gotten this far in American politics by threatening to build a nationwide deportation force to throw millions of people out of this country.
Keep this in mind the next time you hear a liberal claim that deportations went way up after Obama took office.
MADDOW: We've never had anybody get this far who has proposed building a wall along one of our borders, who is apparently is still literally proposing to ban Muslims from being allowed into this country. ...
Imagine that -- a leader who wants secure borders for his country and hence, a country. This used to be a given on both sides of the aisle, until Democrats realized how important porous borders are to building up their base. As for the Muslim ban, Trump starts there in negotiations and settles on banning jihadists. Liberals will oppose him on that too.
MADDOW: We've just never had somebody like this at this level of American politics.
Aside from Abraham Lincoln (suspending habeas corpus, jailing political opponents during the Civil War) and Franklin Roosevelt (rounding up Japanese-Americans and locking them in camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor). Did I mention that Lincoln and FDR keep popping up on those best-president lists compiled by historians?
MADDOW: And maybe it's all been a game. And maybe he doesn't mean any of it. And maybe he will be a totally normal politician of a type that we recognize once he gets sworn in. But if we believe him, if what he says he's going to do is what he's going to do, should we be taking lessons now from countries that have lived under leaders who have rounded up millions of people? Should we be taking lessons right now from people who have lived in countries where they do jail their political opponents, where they do crusade against the press, where they do ban people based on their religions.
I mean, right now, we've never had somebody like this at any level of American politics. Should we shore ourselves up now and get ready by talking to people who have lived under that kind of strongman stuff before, from people who have seen it in other places and figured out best strategies for people with it. That's a thing we can actually do right now.
Wow, that was fast. Less than a week from love trumps hate morphing into fear trumps everything.
To bolster her case, Maddow spoke with Russian-American author and journalist Masha Gessen (who could easily pass for Maddow's even more deeply concerned fraternal twin). Gessen warned that Trump's malevolent intentions are already obvious --
GESSEN: The two things that he's on record as doing in the last 48 hours is not allowing the press to accompany him to meet with President Obama in the White House ...
That's odd, the video that accompanies this Huffington Post story on Trump meeting with Obama shows an Oval Office crowded with reporters and their camera crews ...
GESSEN: ... and blaming the press for the protests.
Agreed, Trump should have been more specific. He should have pointed out how MSNBC has aided and abetted the infantile malcontents who refuse to accept the results of the election with its breathless coverage of every raised fist in anger. Now it was Gessen's turn to climb over the top --
GESSEN: So the signs for his relationship with the media are terrible and that's the beginning of the destruction of democracy.
Definitely worth your time to read Gessen's article in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, titled "Autocracy: Rules for Survival." I especially like this observation --
One of the falsehoods in the Clinton (concession) speech was the implied equivalency between civil resistance and insurgency. This is an autocrat's favorite con, the explanation for the violent suppression of peaceful protests the world over.
Looks like we were heading for autocracy either way.
