I've noticed an interesting patten that after particularly egregious moments of moral transgression by the Trump administration (Charlottesville, family-separation) there's a brief, but intense media focus on why mobilization *against* these transgressions has Gone Too Far.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 25, 2018
Unlike so many of their recent hires, Michelle Goldberg is an excellent addition to the NYTimes opinion pages:
… Whether or not you think public shaming should be happening, it’s important to understand why it’s happening. It’s less a result of a breakdown in civility than a breakdown of democracy. Though it’s tiresome to repeat it, Donald Trump eked out his minority victory with help from a hostile foreign power. He has ruled exclusively for his vengeful supporters, who love the way he terrifies, outrages and humiliates their fellow citizens. Trump installed the right-wing Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat that Republicans stole from Barack Obama. Gorsuch, in turn, has been the fifth vote in decisions on voter roll purges and, on Monday, racial gerrymandering that will further entrench minority rule.
All over the country, Republican members of Congress have consistently refused to so much as meet with many of the scared, furious citizens they ostensibly represent. A great many of these citizens are working tirelessly to take at least one house of Congress in the midterms — which will require substantially more than 50 percent of total votes, given structural Republican advantages — so that the country’s anti-Trump majority will have some voice in the federal government…
Faced with the unceasing cruelty and degradation of the Trump presidency, liberals have not taken to marching around in public with assault weapons and threatening civil war. I know of no left-wing publication that has followed the example of the right-wing Federalist and run quasi-pornographic fantasies about murdering political enemies. (“Close your eyes and imagine holding someone’s scalp in your hands,” began a recent Federalist article.) Unlike Trump, no Democratic politician I’m aware of has urged his or her followers to beat up opposing demonstrators.
Instead, some progressive celebrities have said some bad words, and some people have treated administration officials with the sort of public opprobrium due members of any other white nationalist organization. Liberals are using their cultural power against the right because it’s the only power they have left, and people have a desperate need to say, and to hear others say, that what is happening in this country is intolerable.
Sometimes, their strategies may be poorly conceived. But there’s an abusive sort of victim-blaming in demanding that progressives single-handedly uphold civility, lest the right become even more uncivil in response. As long as our rulers wage war on cosmopolitan culture, they shouldn’t feel entitled to its fruits. If they don’t want to hear from the angry citizens they’re supposed to serve, let them eat at Trump Grill.
justawriter
Can we stop calling the Federalist Society (and its ilk) right wing and call them what they are … anti-American?
jl
From what I’ve read, forcing humans to eat at Trump Grill, by any means, even recommendation, let alone through public opprobrium, is very uncivil.
EBT
@justawriter: Why not both? Americans have a very skewed idea of how our political parties actually compare to the planet. (speaking to our elected officials) Dems are Tories or Christian Democrats, or Progressive Conservatives. Repubs are UKIP, Golden Dawn, or Freedom Party of Austria.
TenguPhule
@justawriter:
Sure. Getting the media to follow suit? A bit harder.
Dorothy Winsor
Didn’t the Rs used to be against civility? They called in political correctness, as I recall.
TenguPhule
@Dorothy Winsor:
I’m sure one of the jackals kept a “Fuck your feelings” receipt.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@justawriter: They are right-wing; they’re just far-right. The terminology I object to ceding to them is “conservative”. They aren’t, at all. Jennifer Rubin is conservative. The mainstream Republican today is reactionary at best, if not fascist or – let’s not mince words – an outright Nazi.
trollhattan
Typographic artists look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign design and like what they see
Can we take a nice long break from red, white (tough, that one), blue, stars and stripes on each and every political campaign graphic?
Yutsano
@TenguPhule: Oh honey, I kept that receipt like fucking Joan Collins!
*snaps fingers*
TenguPhule
Someone wants to play both sides of the field. Someone is going to be sorry no matter which side wins.
trollhattan
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Yes. They long ago stripped conservative of its meaning and now ironically tag actual conservative principles (such as, hey, resource conservation) as faux, out of touch or worse.
TenguPhule
Trump’s private threat to upend global trade
I’ll let Adam explain this one to us while I go hide in that bunker over there.
B.B.A.
@justawriter: The Federalist (batshit right-wing website) has nothing to do with the Federalist Society (“respectable” right-wing lawyers’ association), other than both being full of evil fucks.
NotMax
Correctly and succinctly identifying what someone stands for or advocates by word and deed is not uncivil.
B.B.A.
@TenguPhule: There is only one thing worse than being in the WTO, and that is not being in the WTO.
jeffreyw
Republicans in disarray! Huge and widening split between the two wings: the Nazis and the Birchers!
NotMax
@trollhattan
One successfully elected person here has been using hot pink on a black background for ages.
J R in WV
@justawriter:
Oh, honey, you’re only half right, They are Anti-American~!!~ But you’re leaving out the best part. They’re Anti-American Fascists — not just Anti-American. Or perhaps the German abbrfeviation: NAZIs; Anti-American NAZIS !!!
We don’t want to leave out the best/worst most descriptive part.
Peale
@TenguPhule: Pete King is not like that Iowa King at all. He’s been more of a soft spoken moderate on the key issues of our time. And hasn’t been prone to overreacting.
NotMax
@J R in WV
Shamiltonians.
TenguPhule
Goddamnit, tripping over Russians every fucking where these days.
Via Star Advertiser.
B.B.A.
@J R in WV: Sadly, there’s nothing more American than fascism. The Klan invented fascism here long before Hitler and Mussolini were shitting their diapers.
You know what else is American? Nat Turner and John Brown.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@B.B.A.: Mister, we sure could use a man like John Brown again.
(We passed through Harpers Ferry earlier today, but unfortunately due to reservations couldn’t stop. Maybe we’ll hit it on some future trip.)
NotMax
@Peale
(checks credits in Playbill)
Peter King is the IRA nutjob
Steve King is the nativist ‘lily white or die’ nutjob. The Tom Tancredo of Iowa.
A Ghost To Most
@J R in WV:
QFFT.
Mnemosyne
Our division had a kitten adoption event at lunchtime today where you could snuggle and play with the kittens.
Man, did I need that after this week. ?
TenguPhule
Courtesy of Wapo, we now have a name for the Trade War with Canada.
The Ketchup War.
TenguPhule
@NotMax: At this point I assume all of them are nutjobs and just rely on my fellow jackals to tell me which nuts they specialize in.
Can’t tell them apart without a program any more.
NotMax
@TenguPhule
Not even a nod to subtlety.
Some local news sources have regularly been publishing lists of names and hometowns/countries of those arrested in the kapu areas.
NotMax
@TenguPhule
54-40Heinz 57 or fight!;)
TenguPhule
@NotMax: Well played.
TenguPhule
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
We’re going to have to fucking fight this shit AGAIN.
EBT
@(((CassandraLeo))): Perhaps tempted with a master strategist and tactician. Say Smedley Butler?
EBT
@TenguPhule: Sooner or later (sooner) stuff like my SSI will go away.
NotMax
What hath DARPA wrought? Yet another thing GM left out of their Futurama exhibit.
Calouste
@(((CassandraLeo))): I think there is a simple line between conservatives (Tories in the UK, CDU in Germany, etc.) and the current GOP, and that is that conservatives subscribe to democracy and recognizing the results of elections. The GOP obviously does not. The shitgibbon was pretty explicit before the election that he would not recognize the result if he lost.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@EBT: Another personal hero. War Is a Racket should be required reading. In fact I should read it again myself.
Steeplejack (phone)
@TenguPhule:
Ah, the universal paradox: “My congressman is great! It’s all those other assholes who are the problem.”
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Calouste: That sounds right to me. I don’t follow foreign politics that well, but I find it difficult to imagine Theresa May accepting foreign interference on her behalf to win an election – in fact, I doubt the idea would even occur to her. A lot of other awful ideas clearly can and do, but I’ve never heard her or anyone from her party talk like they wouldn’t accept the results of an election.
UKIP, on the other hand…
(As a person who barely remembers any German I am probably even less qualified to comment on Angela Merkel, but the idea is ludicrous when applied to her. I could as easily imagine her rounding children up into camps. And note here the idea of a Jew saying this of a German chancellor while the American president does exactly that. I’m so fucking tired of this timeline.)
(((CassandraLeo)))
@(((CassandraLeo))): note also the irony. I hate phone “keyboards”. (Can’t seem to edit.)
NotMax
FYI.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Dorothy Winsor:
Apparently, “Fuck Your Feelings” is the height of civility now.
Brachiator
Yep. Irony has truly died when conservatives kiss the ass of the most uncivil president ever, and insist that liberals must watch what they say and act nice.
@(((CassandraLeo))):
The Conservative Party is oddly silent on how it benefited from the fruits of Russian interference in the run-up to the BREXIT campaign.
Mandalay
A couple of days ago someone I had never heard of named Tom Nichols wrote a click bait article titled Outrage works for Trump. If Democrats abandon civility, it will backfire
The Post described him as “a professor at the Naval War College and the Harvard Extension School” but Wikipedia reveals him as “a senior contributor at The Federalist“. Strange that Nichols being a RWNJ was not mentioned.
The more the right and the 1% tell keep telling Democrats to drop their incivility the more I am convinced that they are shitting their pants about it.
Citizen Alan
I think I figured it out. Civility means that no one should ever do anything to hurt a Republicans feelings. The media supports this fully. On the other hand, the suggestion that Republicans shouldn’t do things to hurt the feelings of other people is political correctness. Our media despises this and wants to see it stamped out.
Cacti
Trump fans are shooting up schools, restaurants, churches, mosques, and newsrooms.
But Chuckles Schumer and Wilmer are worried that Maxine Waters isn’t being polite enough, or that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant.
It’s almost like some people want to lose.
TenguPhule
Fuck you Five Supreme Court Traitors. This is what your fucking ruling “The President can do anything under national security” has wrought.
Patricia Kayden
@TenguPhule: Putin’s Puppet is doing just fine in Making Russia Great Again. And in a few weeks, he’ll be meeting with Putin to get that much deserved pat on the head and attaboy.
@Mandalay: I believe that Tom Nichols poses as a Never Trumper. I’m really not sure how much trust to place in rightwingers who claim to hate Trump but dare to lecture the Democrats about not being civil enough to bigots. Trump and his supporters are owed nothing by liberals/progressives/Democrats. Representatives Waters and Wilson, two Black Democratic women, have been threatened to the point where they’ve had to cancel meetings and hide out and yet we keep being told that we need to be civil.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule: The internet was nice while it lasted.
MaryL
@TenguPhule: There’s no way McConnell would be stupid enough to bring in another tax bill right before the election.
A Ghost To Most
@Mandalay:
And the more inclined I am to say ‘Fuck civility. Get back to me when you relearn how to say Democratic Party’.
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
Someone at Wapo is saucy.
Aleta
@NotMax: Sounds like one of those hoax experiments secretly intended to provoke horrendous reactions in the unsuspecting subjects.
TenguPhule
@MaryL:
McConnell: Hold my beer.
/There’s no way X Republican will do Y. Inevitably, X does Y.
Patricia Kayden
@Cacti: What really angers me is the silence when Rep Waters is being attacked and threatened. I don’t hear any Democrats condemning the attacks on Rep Waters or demanding that Trump take responsibility for them. Way to support one of your most loyal demographics, Democrats. This is one of the reasons why I vote for Democrats but wonder if they have the back of their supporters. They can’t even support one of their own political colleagues.
TenguPhule
@Patricia Kayden:
Incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.
I wish I was being sarcastic. Yeah, the reaction is both slow and infuriating.
Dorothy Winsor
Have you all seen the reports of this odd call between Trump on AF1 and Stuttering John, a radio prankster who claimed to be Bob Menendez? Stuttering John asked about his Supreme Court pick and Trump laid out the timeline.
Just when you think you’ve seen everything.
Calouste
@Brachiator: Brexit was a Tory intra-party fight. Some Tories benefitted from the win, some didn’t. David Cameron sure didn’t,
Mandalay
@Patricia Kayden:
Right, and that message is being pushed by EVERYONE at the top. All Republicans, all senior Democrats and everyone in the media. The boat of the 1% is being rocked, they feel threatened, and they are not happy about it at all.
Schumer and Pelosi have both been remarkably weak and ineffective at attacking Trump over the past 18 months, so for them to now choose to go after Maxine Waters is contemptible.
SiubhanDuinne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I will miss all the dogs.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Awe ?
Cacti
@Patricia Kayden:
Your anger is well placed. Maxine Waters knows how to fight. But rather than learn from her, they run to the GOP to beg forgiveness.
TenguPhule
A patriot’s guide to shopping during a Canada-U.S. trade war
On a lighter note.
TenguPhule
@Calouste:
Cameron learned the hard way “Be careful what you wish for.”
SiubhanDuinne
On topic to the OP: I am convinced that Michelle Goldberg wrote that column with David Brooks specifically in mind.
debbie
@trollhattan:
Love the colors and the designs, especially the button. My only issue with the posters up top is all that small type. People won’t read all of it while walking by or passing a yard.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Bullies hate it when their victims start hitting back. ?
Calouste
@TenguPhule: I’m pretty sure that currently you can’t buy any computer or telecom equipment that is 100% made in the US. I’m only slightly less sure that it is no longer possible to make that kind of equipment with 100% US parts.
debbie
@Dorothy Winsor:
Stuttering John is/was with the Howard Stern show. Trump made many appearances on it. I’m surprised he wouldn’t have recognized the stuttering, if nothing else. Buy yay! for making Trump look foolish.
piratedan
@MaryL: I could see McConnell doing it if they thought that they had the election rigged no matter the consequences…. and based on all of the signalling being done by the GOP, I fully believe that is what they intend to do… after all, who’s gonna stop them? The courts?
TenguPhule
Breaking Wapo.
Paging Adam Silverman. Stat.
SiubhanDuinne
@TenguPhule:
Oh Jesus Christ and FFS and srsly??
danielx
@B.B.A.:
A distinction without a difference.
Yutsano
@TenguPhule: They would have (at most) five weeks to pass it before Congress closes for final campaigning. And they still are nowhere near any sort of budget for well anything. And going into a possible shutdown right before an election? Yeah that always goes over well.
Taobhan
It’s well and good that we resist every day the cruel and abhorrent behavior of the Trump administration and its Republican enablers in Congress. We have to do this constantly to lay down markers that we see what’s going on and we strongly disagree with it. But none of this will make a difference if we don’t show up at the polls in November 2018 and register our discontent with our votes. Democrats have been frustratingly indifferent about mid-term elections and that has been key in the Republicans getting the upper hand the past decade. The upcoming mid-terms will be a battle for the soul of our nation and if we don’t show up in larger numbers this time, all the screaming we do between elections means nothing because we will have failed when it really could have made a difference.
Yutsano
[email protected]TenguPhule: @SiubhanDuinne: Dear General Mattis: it’s time for you to step up to the fucking plate here. Dolt45 does this you’d better resign mofo. This would be handing Vladdie Europe on a silver platter
Mandalay
@Citizen Alan:
There is more to it than that since Democrats and media figures are also calling for civility.
A few years ago someone confronted Bill O’Reilly at the end of his driveway when he was picking up his paper. Who ran to O’Reilly’s defense, saying that such things should not be tolerated? None other than MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who hated O’Reilly with the heat of a thousand suns.
And now who is running to the defense of Sarah Huckabee Sanders when she is refused service in a restaurant? Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who vilify her every day on their show.
Why would that be? It’s certainly nothing to do with being offended by incivility since Olbermann, Scarborough and Brzezinski spew rage and anger every time they open their mouths.
The reason is that they realize that if O’Reilly and Sanders can be confronted in the public then so can they. Those at the top are terrified that the genie leaves the bottle, and confronting public figures becomes normalized. They only want the anger and the rage to be permitted to come from the safety of their studios, and the little people (i.e. the other 99%) need to respect their betters, and leave the protesting to the professionals at the top who are getting paid for it.
smintheus
Trump is a bully. Everything else follows from that.
I went to a bullying hell hole of a school and quickly learned that too many people (lickspittles most of them) enjoy watching bullying or are eager to be on the right side of bullies. Even more will supinely fall into abject silence in the presence of bullying rather than objecting or stopping it. But the strangest insight was to find out during those 8 years that the one thing that will arouse people to indignation or anger is – not brutality or cruelty – but for someone to push back at a bully. It’s especially true of those who have real authority and power to control bullying; they are prone to be aggressive and confrontational toward anyone who refuses to be passive victim of bullying. And the reason for that was obvious to me even at 10 years of age, because they don’t like being embarrassed over their failure to do their duty.
That’s what’s going on with the shaming of people who stand up to the Bully in Chief and his lickspittles.
B.B.A.
@TenguPhule: Is this a deliberate strategy to fuck up everything at once, so we’re spread too thin to unfuck anything?
Mary
@TenguPhule: He’s a strategic thinker. There is no advantage to him to passing another wildly unpopular tax cut right before the election, unless he’s completely convinced that he’s going to lose the Senate and wants to get in one last hurrrah.
TenguPhule
@B.B.A.: I’m not sure Trump is even thinking at all.
Mary
@piratedan: Then why not wait until after the election? It only makes sense if he’s sure he’s gonna lose.
TenguPhule
Hillary Clinton says Trump’s family separation policy ‘worse than her worst fears’
Starfish
Who was it on NPR with Matthew Yglesias calling Ocasio-Cortez the Venezuelan wing of the Democratic Party? NPR has had some true nutters on some shows lately.
Elizabelle
@J R in WV: I am thinking The Fasciralist Society.
A mishmash, to be sure, but they are enabling fascism by those sweet corporate souls, the predatory capitalists.
Have been staying off the internet, but I am hopeful we can, maybe through massive public protests, hold this new USSC appointment off until after the midterms.
I think we can outvote them, and we have time to make the voter contact to ensure registration and proper ID.
TenguPhule
@Mary:
Not unpopular to their base. If it gets his voters to the polls, McConnell will do it.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Taobhan: There are two competing hypotheses for off-year elections in this country: “Democrats don’t show up” and “the president’s party doesn’t show up.” The preponderance of the evidence currently suggests that the later is correct. I’m much more worried about Russian interference in the vote tallies (I’m an IT major and I’m not even exaggerating by saying that many of the electronic voting machines still used in this country have literally zero security), though that doesn’t mean we should be complacent about showing up, making sure our friends show up, volunteering to make sure others show up, etc. But the anger is on our side this cycle, and it wasn’t in 2010 or 2014.
Elizabelle
@TenguPhule: There is a finite limit to those who can vote for Republicans.
I don’t think they are going to have as much success finding voters as we are. Yes, the evangelical churches in the worship of mammon may inspire a few more to go vote against healthcare and humanity, to save their mortal souls.
But they’ve lost the young, the middle class is waking up, and people are laughing at Trump and Republicans.
Don’t assume the GOP is stronger than they are.
debbie
@TenguPhule:
It will be interesting to see how many Congressional Republicans support this move.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Please don’t abandon us here. The marquee needs every bright light, and you are certainly one of them.
Still present here (front pagers and commenters) are those who manage to wedge in non-forehead banging stuff to keep the joint hopping (albeit at a reduced frequency). The repetitious singing to the choir and “no sh*t, Sherlock” tropes which crop up do get tiresome, admittedly. We are in need of no convincing. We know getting the vote out is important without exhortations every five minutes.
Jager
Sent a note to my MAGA hat wearing, farmer cousin this afternoon.
Trump and Senator Grassley are discussing having the government buy your soybeans to lessen the ass kicking that’s just around the corner, And here I thought you were one of those “tighten your belt” kind of a guys. Sad.
Here’s the deal, cuz…If that happens, I’m going to be buying your beans, the beans you used to sell to China. Unfair.
I suppose you thought voting for a guy who knows less than your 5 year old niece about International trade wouldn’t result in getting your hair mussed and maybe a small trickle of blood from your nose? Not smart.
Maybe you can sell your beans to the Russians? Your senator is going to be over there on the 4th of July, maybe he could bring your plight up with Vlad. I heard the senator is “hopping” with excitement.
Have a nice holiday,
Your Cousin from the Peoples Republic of California
BTW your mom posted a picture of you at the trump rally, you looked euphoric, what did you do smoke a little bud before you went in to chant with the rest of MAGATS?
patrick II
@piratedan:
The other side of that is that, if they think the house is already lost, they may want to pass another tax cut before that.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle: Not saying that at all. But if it will get their current voting base to the polls, I fully expect McConnell to try pretty much anything at this point. Its not as if more tax cuts are the stupidest thing ever done by the GOP.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: Thank you. Very kind, and I needed my spirits raised.
A little burned out. I think it’s going to be a historic summer.
Elizabelle
New thread by Adam, about personal security at tomorrow’s marches.
WRT this thread: I heart Michelle Goldberg. This column is a keeper.
NotMax
@Jager
SegregationTofu today, tofu tomorrow, tofu forever!:)
Next time you contact him, perhaps mention there’s an enormous difference between hero worship and zero worship.
John Revolta
@Mary: The tax cut won’t hurt the Repubs. It may even juice them up, because THIS one is gonna be THE ONE THAT DOES THE TRICK!! THE TRICKLES GONNA COME A-TRICKLIN’ DOWN!!
J R in WV
@B.B.A.:
No, they’re too stupid to have a deliberate strategy. It’s just what they’re doing, each of them has a few hot buttons that they hit over and over. Since there are so many of them, there are a lot of hot buttons getting hit every day.
Also on other comments about bullying, I agree. The people jumping to defend Possum Queen Huckleberry-Sanders are very afraid that people will suddenly feel free to cry SHAME at them!
And bullies hate being pushed back, they hate it really hard. If you are being bullied and smack the bully hard from behind, he will be so astounded and upset he won’t hit you back. I’ve been there, back in about 1964 or ’64, or so. I told the SOB to think about a baseball bat and his knee, from behind. He never touched me again.
Jager
@NotMax:
I plan to beat him up daily, I’ll use your slogan(s) Thanks
John Revolta
@J R in WV: I dunno. The Gish Gallop is the closest thing they’ve had to a strategy since Obama got in (well, that
and NONONONONONONO) and I’m pretty sure that’s what all this is, even if some of ’em ain’t aware of it.
Steve in the ATL
@NotMax: I used to play an obscure band named 54-40 on my college radio show, until Hootie and the Blowfish covered one of their songs. They got rich from it but I quit playing them as they were now sellouts to the man, so equally good and bad for the band.
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
So you drew the line and gave them no latitude?
;)
Jeffro
Michelle Goldberg’s article is as awesome as when I read it/posted the whole thing here a couple days ago. She is succinct and also right to the point ;)
Steve in the ATL
@NotMax: well played
boatboy_srq
@Peale: He was elected as a conservative back in the day. What disturbs me the most about the GOTea’s race Rightward is how elder statesperson conservatives have become moderates without changing a single perspective or position.
J R in WV
@Elizabelle:
I think not. I believe they will move ahead with confirming whoever the fascists move to the Supreme Court,
It isn’t that big a deal, the court has been 5-4 for a long time, and still will. It’s a shame Obama and the nation got screwed, but racists and fascists have been screwing African-Americans for a very long time. I imagine he was somewhat shocked by McConnell’s improper act!
After the election and the end of Mueller’s investigation, then we shall see. I would hope that McConnell and Ryan and all the little fascists will be bankrupted by their legal bills, and then go to jail. Trump may not, but I expect once a big handful of his minions are jailed he will either have a health incident or run away!
zhena gogolia
@smintheus:
Insightful comment.
J R in WV
@Jeffro:
“Michelle Goldberg’s article…”
I think it was a column, as in opinion which is as opposed to an article, which is news reporting, supposedly without opinion. The other things published would be reviews and editorials. Reviews are opinions about things cultural, like art, books, movies and plays.
Editorials are unitary opinions of the newspaper’s editorial staff, as opposed to less formal individual opinions in columns. Does this make sense?
Jeffro
@J R in WV: Hang on a second, I’m trying to look up “pedantic” in the dictionary…I think it’s right next to “missing the point”…
Steeplejack
@J R in WV:
But, as I believe burnspbesq pointed out, the “swing” (middle) vote will now be Roberts, which moves the “middle” a good bit farther right. So more 5-4 bad decisions and fewer 5-4 good decisions.
Taobhan
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I hope you’re right about that because we certainly have the numerical advantage if we use it. I do sense more fire among Democrats this time around and Kennedy’s untimely retirement has effectively put the question reproductive rights on the ballot. Maybe that will raise the temperature even higher. In the meantime, I have a march to participate in tomorrow – not technically a vote in an election but I’m hoping for a good turn-out to pull Trump’s feet closer to the fire.
Bill Arnold
I read that linked Federalist piece by Jesse Kelly. Was amused to wonder whether Jesse-the-right-wing-Marine knows that the Lokota are traditionally a matriarchal people.
Lakota People Have Always Been Matriarchal (Vi Waln, 2017)
Comments on Patriarchy vis-à-vis Matriarchy (Russell Means, 2005, fun read (male to male).)
(Any Lokota reading, please correct me; not a native american. (OK, maybe 1 ancestor 5 generations ago))
Matt McIrvin
@(((CassandraLeo))):
538 did an analysis of multiple election cycles a while back and concluded that both were true, to roughly equal degrees. The effects compound when a Democrat is President, and cancel out when a Republican is President. But Democrats still have a small advantage on top of that just from being more numerous in the first place.
Still, it means that Democratic midterm landslides are rarer. I frankly suspect this one isn’t going to be as good as 2006 because the Republicans are jazzed up to turn out too. We still might retake the House but it will be a near thing–the gerrymandering disadvantage is such that I’d really like to see the Democrats ahead by double digits, and they’re not.
Matt McIrvin
@J R in WV: I think we’re coming very close to the point where the administration is going to try broad general crackdowns on civil liberties: restrictions on travel for the general public (it’s already hard for some people to fly, of course, but they’re experimenting with ICE checkpoints on highways that could be used to put a crimp on all interstate travel), shutdowns of the Internet and non-compliant broadcast media, maybe mass arrests of Democrats and dissident journalists. A lot depends on whether the states cooperate with them. So taking back as many state governments as possible is important, if we can.
Matt McIrvin
@EBT: Our political parties are broad. At least, the Democrats are. The Democratic center may be center-right by Northwest European standards, but the ideological breadth of the party covers everything from the leftier Tories to an actual left party.
Matt McIrvin
@Steeplejack: At some point, Trump will probably get to appoint enough hacks that we start seeing the really crazy 5-4 or 6-3 rulings, ratifying legal reasoning out of all-caps Facebook rants. There’s already a popular conservative idea, for instance, that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment means that proper parentage is required for citizenship; we could see that become established law. Or 14th Amendment personhood of zygotes, thereby criminalizing some types of menstruation. Or Trump’s idea that the citizenship of flag-desecrators can be revoked. Or… anything you can imagine, really.
Matt McIrvin
@smintheus: Exactly that happened at my junior-high school. Bullying was completely out of control and winked at by the gym teachers, but the administration cracked down hard on fighting, after a series of disruptive high-profile fights that gummed up the locker commons with spectators. So if you fought back against a bully, you’d get in trouble. A friend of mine got detention for it, and, as I recall, actually gave them an earful with a speech about how if they didn’t defend him he would defend himself.
Taobhan
@Matt McIrvin:
This is another reason the 2018 mid-terms are so crucial. In 2008, the Republicans cleaned-up on down-ballot races and took over of a lot of governor seats/statehouses, which they used in 2010 to control redistricting. Turning this trick gave them the chance to gerrymander the hell out of their states for 10 years. We need to have that kind of success this November. I’m a bit encouraged by the fact so many Democratic newcomers have entered these down-ballot races in reaction to the horrors of the Trump administration. It helps the Democratic Party to have so many new, young and enthusiastic candidates on our side. I just hope our voters turn out to elect them to office. I’m not crazy about gerrymandering but I’ve swung around to believe we need to play the political game as tough as the Republicans do.
Bill Arnold
@J R in WV:
His heart health is not as good as he claims, and he’s not helping matters with his diet and stressful Fox-watching including live tweeting of Fox and Friends. (MATTHEW GERTZ January 05, 2018 [0]) So it’s quite reasonably possible. (As ever, be careful what you wish for.)
I vote for “run away”; if he worked at it he could preserve his dignity.
[0] Mathew is a bit late with this, though much better than never. (This pattern has been … observable since roughly Jan 2017. Maybe earlier.)
sukabi
@TenguPhule: well he could have left the ZTE sanctions in place instead of letting them off with a kiss and undoubtedly promises for another fucking trump hotel or golf course.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
Good to see somebody else worried about the increasing plausibility (on a capability level at least, political level is another game) of these sorts of crackdowns.
—-
Movie scenario: Trump gets ICE powers enhanced as demanded in this tweet.
Enterprising crypto-anti-Trumper ICE officer who knows that Mar-a-Lago is in a border area realizes that he can unilaterally declare that DJT is an illegal alien, detain him, and deport him, perhaps to Russia. Hijinks ensue.
Bill Arnold
@Bill Arnold:
Sloppy, sorry.
Taobhan
@Taobhan: I’m not crazy about gerrymandering but I’ve swung around to believe we need to play the political game as tough as the Republicans do.
Matt McIrvin
@Taobhan: Historically, going back many decades, Democrats have been as fond of gerrymandering as Republicans. The law on this sort of proceeded with the understanding that there was a practical limit to how effective it could be. Unfortunately the information technology to make gerrymandering an absolutely crushing advantage arrived at a historical moment when the Republicans were on top in most state governments (the aftermath of the 2010 midterm landslide), so they locked in their advantage. We can go hard with it too, but it’s unlikely to ever put us on top, because they have the head start.
cleosmom
@B.B.A.: If you’re going the invention route, you’d have to cite the ancient city-state of Lacedaemon, a/k/a Sparta.
cleosmom
@Steeplejack (phone): Not to mention the firestorm of “unreal” conservatives. There’s not only a sucker born every minute, they’re born everywhere.