Thomas l. Friedman, senior columnist-provocateur for The New York Times, has deployed his January 5, 2022 space of haranguement for the dual purposes of incitement and intimidation.

The online title of the latest Friedman  screeching screed is "How to Stop Trump and Prevent Another Jan. 6."  The title above the print edition of the column was somewhat more deceptive  in polemic tone: "To Save America, Don't Dismantle the Police or the Constitution."

Here is the incitement and intimidation passage: "if Donald Trump and his flock are able in 2024 to execute a procedural coup like they attempted on Jan. 6, 2021, Democrats will not just say, 'Ah [Friedman probably meant 'Aw'] shucks, we'll try harder next time.'  They will take to the streets[.]"

Obviously, this columnist-provocateur is signaling Democrats to prepare for "peaceful violence" if Trump gets the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.  But why wait until 2024?  Why not intimidate corporate America in 2022 to press the Republican Party to follow Cheney and Pelosi in denouncing "Donald Trump and his flock" — so as to keep Congress in thrall to the totalitarian-minded Democrats, and make more unlikely a Republican president in 2024?  Why this reference to corporate America?

Frantic Friedman declares that the leaders of corporate America can "save us" from  "Democrats ... who take to the streets."  Friedman calls on our leading companies to use the power of the withheld purse against politicians who have "voted to dismantle the police or dismantle the Constitution."  He hurriedly acknowledges (emphasis in original), "Yes, that's false equivalency.  Nothing is as big as the Trump cult [what happened to 'flock'?]'s threat to our constitutional order."  Enter the Big Lie.

After months of pondering the left's deployment of the Big Lie (endorsed, alas, by Cheney the Changeling) that Donald J. Trump is a threat to our republic and Constitution, I realize that that lie about baseless claims, false claims concerning the 2020 presidential election is — borrowing from John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist, January 4 — intended to silence Republicans, to intimidate Republicans from raising important questions as to what happened when the voting stopped, including this one.

According to the Census Bureau, some 69% of votes, in 2020, were mail-in or were cast prior to Election Day — compared to some 40% in 2016. 

 According to a January 4 report in The Tennessee Star, Georgia will now investigate the issue of illegal vote-harvesting in 2020.

Three paragraphs from the end of his latest expression in provocative political propaganda, Friedman comes up with his unique attempt at equivalency: "Individually in their hometowns — like mine, Minneapolis [suddenly Friedman, of Middle America] — business leaders have effectively pushed back on dismantling the police.  Now it is time for America's business leaders to just as forcefully push back on the Trump Republicans trying to dismantle the Constitution.

This is to put forward a rather different comparison: to declare that Donald Trump intends to dismantle the Constitution is like asserting, with supreme confidence, that the sun revolves around our planet.

Business leaders, Republican Party officeholders, indeed all people who support Democracy and the Constitution should declare: "Political malcontents, take to the streets to prevent peaceful elections, American's birthright, and you will be met with National Guard forces, who will be called out to put down the slightest hint at insurrection."

How dare Thomas L. Friedman raise the specter of leftist rioting to advance his aggrandizing cause?  Apparently, The New York Times has finally gone and, in the words of the late legal scholar Prof. Alexander Bickel of Yale Law School, "kicked over the traces."

Image: Adam Jones via Flickr (cropped).