Voters have already been discouraged, for example in Philadelphia, from voting by mail. And Trump has said he will recognize only those ballots cast in person. He has a plan to “disappear” mail ballots, too. I hope law enforcement know what his plan is, but he does a plan. But Trump has been highly critical of his FBI director recently, stating that the focus should be on antifa after Wray told Congress right-wing militia were the threat. There is a multi-pronged plan to suppress the vote.
Today’s arrests will lead some, as they did me, to Google Trump Militia and discover the CNN article from Oct. 6, and the Forbes report from Sept. 21. Now, how is this possible?:
It's illegal in all 50 states to engage in militia activity. Still, militia members will almost certainly appear at some polling places this election cycle.
Perhaps the loophole is that while it is illegal to engage in militia “activity,” showing up at polling stations armed and shouting pro-Trump messages at voters is not “militia activity”? Same effect by whatever name.
This is why I gyrate between poles. In any “free and fair” election Trump is going to be humiliatingly repudiated and then arrested. But this is not going to be free and fair and I can only grope in the dark and “give” Trump an extra, purloined, ~230,000 “strategically placed votes”. That is narrowcasting at actions taken at individual polling sites. Today’s reports are broadcasting—everyone in the country is going to be made aware, and the specific, quantifiable effect is unknowable by everyone, even the FBI.
There are people who have been planning for this. Some, like today's Trump Militia cell, doing so too publicly. Like the former client who called me twice in 2019, once over police vigilance at his handing out homemade fliers calling on people to arm themselves to outside diners at restaurants, once over his son's arrest for violence at a League of the South demonstration. There are others, though, who are doing their thing more quietly, who have been arming themselves in anticipation. “I got all the ammo I can handle." Like Mark Schumacher, 67, "a retired corrections officer and minor league umpire who has a yard full of Trump décor." And there are others right now, sitting in their basements, their dens, their living rooms, who keep their own counsel, who plan on acting alone--"People on his street described him as a 'good neighbor', friendly if quiet, and were shocked."--How many times have we read that? It only takes one. For many, many people on both sides there is a growing uneasy sense that the country is headed toward some kind of violent break no matter who wins in November.
All of this is on Trump and he has been doing it since before he got the GOP nomination in 2016. Now, he's on steroids lol. How's that going to turn out do you think.
