Trump's Senate show-trial is the logical next step in the right wing's decades-long assault on American democracy

Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.

Back in 2016, Pew found that partisans weren't just divided on the issues, they were frightened of what would happen if the opposing party gained power.

More than half of Democrats (55%) say the Republican Party makes them “afraid,” while 49% of Republicans say the same about the Democratic Party. Among those highly engaged in politics – those who say they vote regularly and either volunteer for or donate to campaigns – fully 70% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans say they are afraid of the other party.

A functional democracy rests on the belief that losing an election isn't an existential threat to one's family or community. Fear of the opposite party achieving victory at the ballot box incentivizes various forms of electoral foul play, inspires fierce partisanship in well-adjusted people and results in sporadic acts of violence from the more unhinged among us.

It would be easy to lament how both sides have come to fear people who disagree with them as if those fears were equally unfounded. But just as our sharply increased polarization is asymmetrical, so is the basis of our anxiety.

Fox News and the rest of the conservative media relentlessly promote narratives of a violent left bent on destroying the country as we know it. In their alternative universe, mainstream Democrats embrace aborting newborns and are always on the brink of repealing the 2nd Amendment. They deploy millions of undocumented immigrants to tilt elections in their favor, and use the resulting power to persecute white Christians for their beliefs. The mainstream press aren't just "biased" toward Democrats, they think reporters literally invent stories out of whole cloth to damage the GOP. Every source of knowledge is against them--the academy, scientists, fact-checkers, watchdogs like the Congressional Budget Office and even The Weather Channel. As Jared Holt explained on last week's podcast, the lines between the discourse of brewing civil war in the fever swamps of the internet and mainstream conservative discourse are becoming increasingly blurred.

In contrast, Democrats have reason to be fearful. On policy, the GOP's rightward lurch threatens people's healthcare and economic security and results in children being kept in cages. White nationalism is a driving force in the party's politics. Their opponents dress like ISIS fighters and protest even modest gun control laws with assault rifles. Right-wing terrorism is a real and growing threat. Elected Republicans have plotted attacks against antifascist activists and speak openly about jailing or killing their opponents. They introduce bills that would define abortion as murder and subject doctors who perform the procedure to prosecution.

The Republican senators who debased Donald Trump's impeachment trial this week by refusing to hear witnesses and review necessary evidence may not be motivated by the same fears as their base, but they too fear for their futures in a country that is becoming ever more urbanized and increasingly diverse. It's true that they fear Trump's base--themselves motivated by baseless terror of being "replaced" by immigrants and ethnic and religious minorities--but they also approve of his no-holds-barred campaign to win re-election and maintain power, even if it requires coercing an ally to launch a sham investigation of a prominent rival. Fear of losing their grip on power is the ultimate source of the rot we saw this week. It's why they don't care about bucking public opinion or establishing troubling precedents for future presidents or facing charges of hypocrisy. Winning is more important than upholding democratic norms or protecting the separation of powers because in their eyes, the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.

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The old "midnight court filing..."

In related news, The Navy Times reports:

A Coast Guard lieutenant accused by prosecutors of being a domestic terrorist intent on committing politically motivated killings inspired by a far-right mass murderer was sentenced Friday to more than 13 years in prison for firearms and drug offenses.

Christopher Hasson, 50, had faced a maximum prison sentence of 31 years at sentencing by U.S. District Judge George Hazel.

The severity of Hasson’s sentence hinged on two starkly divergent explanations for the cache of weapons seized from his Maryland home and the disturbing material found on his computer at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington.

Hazel, who sentenced Hasson to 160 months, said he believes the Coast Guard officer was preparing to carry out a "mass casualty assault as a way to act out his white nationalist views."

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Internal emails obtained by BuzzFeed News revealed that "Trump’s fake hurricane map triggered panic, outrage, and an internal revolt among top officials at the National Weather Service and NOAA."

Trump (falsely) tweeted on September 1 that several southern states, including Alabama, were “most likely to be hit” by the hurricane after its deadly pass through the Bahamas. Three days later, Trump shared a fake map in which a storm track, seemingly drawn with a black Sharpie, showed Dorian moving toward Alabama. When a National Weather Service forecaster tried to set the record straight, its parent agency, NOAA, released an unsigned statement disavowing the correction — seemingly to appease the White House.

Trump’s fake map and the administration’s insistence on defending it despite evidence to the contrary — dubbed #SharpieGate on Twitter — shows how the administration has prioritized politics over science, even during a fast-moving, life-threatening situation.

Officials and scientists, both inside and outside the government, were horrified...

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Politico reports that "allies of Donald Trump have begun holding events in black communities where organizers lavish praise on the president as they hand out tens of thousands of dollars to lucky attendees."

The first giveaway took place last month in Cleveland, where recipients whose winning tickets were drawn from a bin landed cash gifts in increments of several hundred dollars, stuffed into envelopes. A second giveaway scheduled for this month in Virginia has been postponed, and more are said to be in the works.

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Vox's Dylan Scott explains Trump's stealthy new scheme to cut funding for healthcare for low-income Americans.

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But he may not be satisfied with an assault on public healthcare in this country, according to someone in position to know. The Guardian reports...

Donald Trump will put the interests of corporate America first and demand that the NHS pays higher prices for US drugs in a free-trade deal with the UK, the outgoing British ambassador to Washington has told the Guardian.

Kim Darroch, in his first interview since his resignation from his post in July, from where he spearheaded attempts to grow trade with the US, insisted that Trump would reward his backers in drug firms and farming communities by opening up British markets, while questioning where the UK’s gains would be found.

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We leave you this week with a bit of comic relief. You may have heard that a section of Trump's stupid border wall blew over in a strong wind this week but WaPo also reported that if Trump gets his new wall built, it will likely "require the installation of hundreds of storm gates to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over, gates that must be left open for months every summer during 'monsoon season' in the desert, according to U.S. border officials, agents and engineers familiar with the plans."