Trump declared Political War. There will be civilian fatalities.

[Tom Rinaldo]

In his efforts to obliterate everything Barack Obama stood for and accomplished, Trump is assuring that people will needlessly die. It's not his problem, he doesn't care. But he knows that Democrats do, and he wants to take those lives ransom. As it is with Obamacare, so it is with DACA, so it is with Puerto Rico. So it is with anything that Democrats care about. Trump plans to turn our caring against us as a weapon, so that we can be blackmailed into complicity with both his larger agenda and his demand for deference to him.

What Trump is doing to Puerto Rico, the hell that he is putting "Dreamers" through, the suffering and death that withdrawing federal health care subsidies for many of the neediest among us, it all means lives in the balance. These will be the real casualties in the war Trump started. All war is horrific. All needless deaths are tragic. We did not declare this war nor initiate it. Yes there will be fatalities, but we can not let ourselves be blackmailed now. Because terrorists can not be appeased by capitulation, they can only be emboldened.

The fabric of our Democracy is being shredded. The very fabric that millions of lives have been lost defending over generations past. We did not seek this political war, but we can not avoid it. We owe this to our ancestors, and we owe this to our descendants. Democrats can not cut deals with a petty strongman which might save some lives in the short term, but which validate both his rule and his methodology. If we call Trump's bluff, people will die. If we don't call his bluff, people will die.

To the extent that there isn't any coherent thought behind what Trump is doing, it is the politics of brinkmanship. If we play ball with Trump, we lose and he wins. If we don't, we also lose, but he does also. That is what war looks like. I hate war, but yeah to answer the classic question, we had no choice but to oppose Hitler. Sometimes the stakes are higher than just the here and now.

The simple truth is that Trump will lose this war if it proceeds. The pawns that he dares us to let be sacrificed include many of the very voters he is dependent on to consolidate his power. If we "save" the bare threads of Obamacare for example, at a price we should not pay, it will be Trump's power that we help save. And he would then find other ways to kill us.

[eleny]

1. Imo, he's going to be personally responsible for more American deaths than Osama bin Laden

[L. Coyote]

2. Republicans declared "politics is war" long ago, enabling the rise of Trump.

The instilling of polarity politics in our culture and the rise of propaganda media to control culture creates an us versus them environment where our Asshole is always right no matter how great their Saint is. This process has been ongoing since McCarthyism and the Red Scare Paranoia that gave us V-P Nixon.

[Tom Rinaldo]

4. Yes, and though the "frog in boiling water" is a discredited myth

in that frame of reference the temperature that process is yielding is now approaching a terminal stage.

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. To expand on that a little further

You raise a basic point, is Trump an aberration or just a continuation a process long underway? I think both actually. Like with a virus such as the flu, there are constant mutations that can make this years strain more or less toxic than the one that preceded it a year before. Trump is an unusually virulent strain of pathogen in our body politic. As such I think he poses heightened risks.

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. I will add something I was remiss in not noting above

Trump is knowingly poisoning race relations in America. That too results in more deaths, both directly and indirectly. His presidency can not be normalized. It can not be salvaged or allowed to be propped up with horse trading away half of common decency in the hopes of preserving what is left.

[brewens]

6. I saw the "civil war" threat on my FB feed. An angry right-winger responding to a friends thread.

He threatened civil war of "our president" was impeached.

I doubt more than a few armed crazies would actually cause any deaths. Maybe a few standoffs like we had in Idaho with Randy Weaver at the end of the first Bush administration. More likely to get the women and children they like to hide behind killed than anyone else.

[Tom Rinaldo]

8. That would be moving toward armed rather than simply political warfare

Militias are out there etc. There are weapon stockpiles. I agree with you though. They pose less of a threat to us than the seizure of political power and all that entails by someone like Trump, or in this case, literally by Trump does. They would become their own worst enemies with the American public as a whole, much like Timothy McVeigh was. But yes, they too could cause deaths.

A point can be reached in America when the center refuses to hold. It is naive to think otherwise, but we not at that tipping point yet. A lack of clarity and resolve now though could push us in that direction.

[american_ideals]

12. That president was elected with help from Russia.

If Putin attacks Americans in Europe, will he go there to fight? Or does he want to go to our ally Ukraine and fight Putin there?

Putin is more of a threat to America than the president even.

[smirkymonkey]

7. He is an absolute monster.

I have written my congresspeople today asking them to do everything in their power to have him removed from office. It is long past time.

[Vogon_Glory]

9. There already are casualties

Those Central American mothers and children deported back to places like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras by Trump and Sessions and then murdered by drug gangs certainly qualify as casualties by my reckoning.

[Tom Rinaldo]

10. Absolutely. Anyone who Trump disparages is minimally his hostage and ultimately his victim

There are others also. I have no doubt that the signals that the Sessions Justice Department have been sending out to police department nationwide - and it's formal retreat from monitoring police behavior- will lead to increased police shootings of blacks.

Trump names a steep price on any Democratic party efforts to protect any of those whose lives we care about but he doesn't. And the terms he demands will still abandon most of them to a fate determined by him.

[Demtexan]

13. He wants the Democrats to beg.

There is no working with him.

He is playing chicken.

Any working with him gets the Democratic party blamed no matter what.

[Tom Rinaldo]

17. That is the crux of the matter for us now going forward

He will hold anything we care about hostage. That is one reason why I used to term war. In war, innocent people die. When defending oneself in a war, there is a certainty that there will be casualties on your side. That must be faced, we can't back down. Trump treats those who do like he did Chris Christie. He treats all his allies badly, it is just a matter of time. Winning favor with him has a shelf life of 14 hours.

[Demtexan]

19. Yep.

He has gone to far.

Killing Americans not good.

That is what he is doing.

[Initech]

11. And everyone who died in California as a result of the fires so far.

The fact that Trump has yet to acknowledge or deploy FEMA is only going to make him more enemies in the long run.

[Hortensis]

15. Now, no to that. Even in his own fantasies, Supertrump could not have

swooped in and saved people from fires changing directions and revving up to sometimes freeway speeds. Note that the state of California, including CalFire and county and local governments are all on it, all media issuing warnings.

Btw, FEMA's just a relatively small coordinating organization, and it and the big ones it coordinates are stretched kind of thin right now. Sure, Trump is committing great crimes, and I'm sure we'll learn of a lot more shocking omissions and unnecessary tragedies as time goes on.

But even if Obama and his director were still in office, FEMA and the rest would be falling short in face of the giant wave of climate change-fueled disasters that is finally unmistakable. We've never been here before.

[Hortensis]

14. Trump's presidency is a tragedy, but we knew it would be going in.

It's the big dark-money villains nudging him the directions they want, who'll still be directing and controlling much of our government when he's gone, who are a far bigger and more difficult problem.

[Tom Rinaldo]

16. The dark money villians AND the dark primal forces of xenophobia and racial fears

Trump gives full reign to both. It is a deadly combination, and both will have to be dealt with for the next decade or more. Likely much more.

[Hortensis]

20. I'm so afraid you're right. So many of us have become so warped in our outlook.

Even normally decent people have come to see public affairs as some kind of arena to battle the evils of the "other side" and bond determinedly with anyone who'll expand their numbers.

[GusBob]

18. Heather Heyer. Nt