Last week, a small boat was seen in international waters. No one knows who was in it, what it was carrying, or where it was headed. But the Trump administration declared – with no evidence – that they were Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members headed for the US with drugs, so Trump murdered them all, literally blew them out of the water.
Murder, just because Trump thought they were bad guys
This act crosses a red line and establishes a new principle in Trumpworld:
If Trump thinks you’re a bad guy, he can murder you.
Once society has accepted that principle as normal and justified, there is no telling what slippery slopes it will slide down.
I actually lived in the Philippines while Duterte was gunning down people he suspected of drug trafficking. Many filipinos supported these murders, arguing that Duterte was ridding the streets of drug dealers, just as many Americans support the deportation and torture of non-white people whom they consider, with no evidence or due process, rapists and murderers.
Gavin Newsom has irritated Trump. What might Trump do?
- He could simply order Newsom shot. After all, the Supreme Court has ruled that the President is above the law and could kill anyone he wants. However, I think that even Trump is more subtle than that.
- Trump could take lessons from his mentor, Putin. Newsom might mysteriously fall out of a window, and there would be no conclusive investigation. This scenario is quite possible, given Trump’s adulation of Putin. Still, it’s not very subtle.
- A MAGA cultist could shoot Newsom — perhaps at Trump’s behest, perhaps not — with the full knowledge that Pam Bondi and Trump’s personal Justice Department will not prosecute, and will undoubtedly lie to cover up the assassination. Or, as Jan. 6 showed, Trump will pardon him as a patriot. I see this scenario as a distinct possibility.
- Trump could declare Newsom a terrorist, would send in masked ICE thugs to kidnap him and ship him off in the middle of the night to an unknown country, never to be heard from again.
Now that I’ve brought up concentration camps in faraway countries, here is another scenario.
At present, many innocent people are being sent to these torture prisons for the rest of their lives. The conditions are so awful, I would guess the inmates don’t last very long there without dying. So, Trump and his partner dictators may reason that “we might as well assist the dying process” by installing gas chambers. A gas chamber at a concentration camp in the 45-degree Sudan desert would hardly be noticed. Those prisoners might even be grateful to be put out of their misery.
Al Dabbah desert, Sudan
Many Nazi concentration camps, especially Auschwitz, were located outside Germany. Let that sink in. Hitler shipped millions of victims (including not just Jews, but thousands of political opponents and critics of Hitler) out of Germany to be gassed. The German people had no idea what was going on.
Here’s the scariest part: Trump’s gas chambers may already be operational. Thousands of innocent people may already have been murdered in countries that few Americans could find on a map (Could YOU find El Salvador, Uganda, Sudan, or Eswatini?), without anyone in America knowing it. Any leaked information about them would be called ‘fake news’.
I feel that the US is closer to many of these horrible scenarios than people would like to admit.