Deciding to run this ad on one of the best Christmas movies of all time should be a reminder to anyone watching that Trump could usher in an era where the only people for whom it will be safe to say “Merry Christmas” will be members of his cult. For everyone else Trump will be the evil Santa telling all of us Ralphies that once he invokes the Insurrection Act (perhaps on day one) they’d better tow his line or risk having their eyes shot out.
Consider this:
Donald Trump has made clear that, in a second term, he would govern differently than any president in U.S. history. He has hinted at suspending the Constitution, building vast deportation camps, weaponizing the Department of Justice, and mass firing career civil servants.
Here’s one you might have missed: he reportedly plans to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use the military as a domestic police force, on his first day in office.
Brennan Center – read more here
Consider this passage from
Opinion A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.
By Robert Kagan
Americans might take to the streets. In fact, it is likely that many people will engage in protests against the new regime, perhaps even before it has had a chance to prove itself deserving of them. But then what? Even in his first term, Trump and his advisers on more than one occasiondiscussed invoking the Insurrection Act. No less a defender of American democracy than George H.W. Bush invoked the act to deal with the Los Angeles riots in 1992. It is hard to imagine Trump not invoking it should “the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs” take to the streets. One suspects he will relish the opportunity.
If you are one of the few people who haven’t seen the movie, here’s the Roger Ebert review.
As for the “shoot your eye out” line, here’s an explanation from Ebert’s review about Ralphie’s “passionate desire to get a Daisy Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action BB Gun for Christmas–the one with the compass in the stock, ‘as cool and deadly a piece of weaponry as I had ever laid eyes on.’”
Ralphie’s life is made a misery by that danger. He finds that nobody in northern Indiana (not his mother, not his teacher, not even Santa Claus) is able to even think about a BB gun without using the words “shoot your eye out.” At one point in the movie, in a revenge daydream, he knocks on his parents’ door with dark glasses, a blind man’s cane and a beggar’s tin cup.
If Trump operationalizes his revenge and control fantasies the weapons we will see soldiers carrying in our communities won’t be loaded with BB’s.
Hal Brown's Stressline 
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