While I slowly work up a longer post Cole asked me to do on the real point of the Durham Special Counsel investigation, which keeps getting pushed father and farther back because of actual work, I wanted to just briefly remark on the veiled and not so veiled threats made yesterday by House Republicans in regard to the censure of Congressman Gosar (R-AZ), who is an avowed anti-Semite and white supremacist, as well as his being stripped of his Oversight Committee assignment. Charlie Pierce has already done a longer piece on this, and I recommend it because he’s great to read and he’s right, but I want to focus on the threats made by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and others that if/when the Republicans retake the majority in the 2022 elections that they will do to the Democrats what the Democrats have done to them. This was, of course, met with some skepticism on the claims that Democrats don’t tweet out videos showing them killing their Republican colleagues, or threatening them, or trying to rile up their supporters to attack them, so there isn’t really anything to worry about.
This is the wrong way to look at the threat. And it is the wrong reason to look at the threat because we know what Republicans do when they get a solid House majority and believe they won’t ever have to give it up. Back during the Bush 43 administration, as Karl Rove was working his plans for a permanent Republican majority, or at least control of the Federal government even if they didn’t really make up a majority in the US through extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression, and one patriotic war per term (Iraq was supposed to be term 1, Iran term 2, then 9-11 happened and we got Afghanistan and Iraq in term 1 and, fortunately, no Iran in term 2), and Grover Norquist was talking about gelding the Democrats in the congressional minorities like farm animals, Republicans actually acted out despite having nothing to retaliate for. Democrats were locked out of committee rooms. Committee meetings would be officially scheduled in one place, when the Democrats showed up, they’d find empty or locked rooms, while the Republicans ran the meetings without them somewhere else. Democrats would schedule minority committee member hearings and find the microphones cut and/or the lights turned out on them.
In 2005, the Republicans had nothing to retaliate for and they retaliated anyway. What we’re seeing now with the House and Senate Republican caucuses, let alone the legislatures and governorships they control in 23 states and the legislatures or governorships they control in several others, is not something new. It isn’t something we’ve never seen before. It is just a more extreme form of the extreme behavior they have been demonstrating since the late 1990s.
Doing what has to be done, doing the right thing, is the only thing that matters right now because worrying about what the Republicans will do if/when they win in 2022 is a trap. We already know what they will do, especially if they get a large enough majority in the House. If their majority is large enough they won’t just censure Democrats or prevent them from serving on certain committees, they’ll just expel them. All while crying crocodile tears that they were forced to do this by the overreach of Speaker Pelosi in 2021. They’ve been telegraphing who their targets are. Frankly they’re doing it not to indicate what they’ll do to them in terms of censure or preventing them from serving on certain committees, they’re doing it in the hope that one of their loosely tethered to reality supporters will get the message and rid them of those meddlesome members of the Democratic caucus. Congressman Crenshaw* set Congresswoman Omar up for assassination several years ago. Congresswoman Boebert, whose white supremacist, anti-Semitic campaign manager was raided by the FBI yesterday, and who has more arrests all by herself, let alone in conjunction with her convicted of domestic abuse and lewd exposure to a minor husband, then your average career criminal, did it again last night. She also set up several other Democrats in her one minute of hate.
This is why finding a way to get the voter rights and electoral reform bills through the Senate are so important. If they aren’t passed soon, let alone at all, then the Republicans will retake the House just as a result of the extreme gerrymandering they’re doing right now. Not to continue to be a downer, but you cannot out organize the extreme gerrymanders that are being put into place in NC, Ohio, Florida, WI, and other states with either complete GOP control of the state government or where an extreme gerrymandered Republican supermajority in the state legislature has stripped the Democratic governor of their power to veto legislative redistricting maps. The Republicans continue to preview through their House and Senate majorities, as well as in the 23 states where they have complete one party control of the state government, what they will do if they come back to power in Congress, let alone Congress and the presidency. We don’t have to speculate. We’re watching it in real time.
Open thread!
* There’s only one former Navy SEAL in the House of Representatives:
Another dude I worked with at a different command, a newlywed at the time, spent half of his deployment fucking hookers and the other half blaming his techs for his own poor work ethic.
He's now a US Congressman fwiw.
— aspiring peasant (@aspiringpeasant) November 16, 2021
Richard
Yep. They’re going to keep hitting us until we rob them of the power to do so.
Which we appear not inclined to do.
AxelFoley
Exactly. We need to show them what is best in life.
Brendan in NC
We certainly are. And, as a North Carolina resident, I get to live it. My 2021 elections were postponed until 2022 due to the redistricting cases. The issue I have is that we’re letting the dynamic duo In the Senate control the timeline. They’ll gladly push it back until it’s too late, and there are too many Dems in “safe” states that don’t see the urgency.
zhena gogolia
Crenshaw
Sorry, should have read whole post first.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: Yep. That’s who the former SEAL tweeting about SEAL shitbirds is talking about in that tweet.
Omnes Omnibus
Evers vetoed the GOP plan for WI today.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Good. Do Vos and whatshisname have the votes to override the veto?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: No, it will go to the courts.
The Dangerman
I don’t think Rittenhouse gets convicted of anything (shit, they couldn’t get a guilty verdict on him being a minor in possession of a gun when he was admittedly a minor in possession of a gun)…
…but, if he does, we are gonna have a problem. The Right lives in a different reality and if it’s one thing all of them jerk off imagining, it’s being the Good Guy with a Gun killing some minority and/or liberal that gives them the excuse to do so. Hell, Rittenhouse is going be making bank like a mfer, another fantasy they all share.
bbleh
I think it’s also worth noting that a lot of the threats are posturing for their base. We’re tough guys and we’re not gonna be pushed around by no wimmin! Thus also Gosar’s retweeting of the video, etc.
Republicans are basically ODD-afflicted teenagers. They should be treated as such.
Roonieroo
I think it’s pretty much a guarantee that Republicans will retake the house and likely the Senate. Mainly because I don’t see the D’s as being capable to get voting legislation passed into law in time. In 2023, they will impeach Biden for whatever. Guarantee that.
Josie
@Adam L Silverman: Boy, have I hit the trifecta. I not only have Cruz and Cornyn for my senators, Crenshaw is my representative. I must have had a wonderful time in one of my past lives.
Another Scott
+1
ObPopehat, ICYMI –
Cheers,
Scott.
dww44
Without reading all the thread yet. I must weigh in as Todd just come on my tv ( I’m recuperating from the first part of a root canal that was cut short because the infection must be dealt with first). I don’t normally sit and watch in the middle of the day,.
Classic both-siderism from Todd to Garrett Haig: “Did Democrats go too far in the way they went about the Gosar censure?” He’s so very bad. We liberals need a better pundit class. And I need to be less angry when I hear people like him..
zhena gogolia
@dww44: He’s not a liberal pundit. None of them are. That’s our problem, but it’s unsolvable.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
By the same token, wouldn’t them doing so piss off a significant number of our side?
Soprano2
It’s hilarious to me that the right-wingers got all bent out of shape when Kathy Griffin did her TFG head bit, acting like she actually threatened to kill him, but when a sitting representative makes a cartoon death threat against another rep and the president, it’s all “why can’t you libs take a joke, hahah”? I agree, their threats are no reason not do to things, because they’ll do those things anyway.
Cameron
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): True, it would. The Democratic outrage would be so great that someone might write a stiff note of protest to the NYT!
dww44
@zhena gogolia: I think there are definitely some liberal pundits… like nighttime MSNBC. We have a very long road ahead to have parity with right leaning media voices, but we have to try.
p.a.
It’s already started: human shitstain Sarah Palin posted Gabby Giffords’ name in a reticle, remember?
stinger
We can’t do it without organizing. I’ve tossed another $10 into the Four Directions pot. It bothered me that the thermometer went 24 hours without an increase. (When I went to ActBlue, it had increased by $1000!)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cameron:
I’m pretty sure the outrage of someone like AOC being expelled from the House would be more significant than that
cain
Even if they have the house permanently, they don’t know how to govern, it’s going to be nothing much govt overreach for everything – they will rollback every progress we’ve made in the past 40 years. But to continue to keep power they still have to keep going on the crazy train. Eventually, they’ll have to go up against their paymasters because at some point the economy is going to take a dive and there will be no Democrats to blame.
They can keep that house as long as the economy is running well – but the moment it dives – and remember the only thing they have is tax cuts nothing else after all govt cannot be shown to work. Maybe this is what we deserve for awhile.
What was that quote – sometimes the tree of liberty needs to refreshed with left wing social media posts occasionally, kinda sorta?
SiubhanDuinne
@The Dangerman:
Prolly helped that the judge threw out the charge of being a minor in possession of a gun.
But I’m not worried about Kyle Kyle the Cryin’ Chile. Matt Gaetz has offered him a job as “intern” in his Congressional office. He’ll be just fine.
Cacti
@Cameron: Yep. The other side is a full blown fascist movement now, and Dems are still trying to win good sportsmanship awards.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cacti:
Oh for Christ’s sake!
Martin
You cannot win Republicans over. You cannot appease them. Opposing and fighting us is foundational to who they are now. We are their sworn enemy regardless of what we do. We might as well do what we think it best – which I should note is what the progressive caucus seems to understand and what Manchinema still seems to be deluded by.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T but this seems big: the Governor of Oklahoma has just granted clemency to the Death Row prisoner who had been scheduled for execution just a couple of hours from now. Sentence reduced to life in prison. I’m very very glad to hear this. Know nothing about the OK Gov, but my opinion of them just went up several notches.
rikyrah
You are correct. Democrats already know what’s up with them. Been there, done that. Trying to get them killed and pretending that they didn’t….yeah, I think the Dems are over them.
Richard
@The Dangerman: If Rittenhouse walks it will embolden a dozen other chicken hawks who have only not murdered their neighbor for fear of Prison.
Princess Leia
@SiubhanDuinne: And Kudos to all the kids that walked out of school in protest of the execution.
Kent
When was the last time any GOP legislature or politician dialed back on the crazy for fear of “retribution” or “backlash” from the left or center?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
[crickets]
rikyrah
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I am sure that AOC was one of the ones they wanted dead on January 6th.
SiubhanDuinne
@Princess Leia:
Had not heard about that protest. Absolutely! Good for the kids!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Expulsion takes 2/3’s of the House, ain’t gonna happen even in the worst case.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So for some reason, I decided to review the big moment of the Army-McCarthy hearings, and was stuck at how a milquetoast bit of pushback was taken as a pitched confrontation that withered McCarthy.
As a gigantic prick, I can say that
1. I’d have been insulting and belittling, and dared a contempt citation. I’m harder on judges than that any given day.
2. That milquetoast pushback wouldn’t have impressed me at all. Had McCarthy not been so clearly drunk, he’d have simply reassert Ed his position and gone forward.
Ersatz politeness and deference is an English parliamentary trick, and helps no one in getting at truths.
Barry
@cain: “Even if they have the house permanently, they don’t know how to govern, it’s going to be nothing much govt overreach for everything – they will rollback every progress we’ve made in the past 40 years. But to continue to keep power they still have to keep going on the crazy train. Eventually, they’ll have to go up against their paymasters because at some point the economy is going to take a dive and there will be no Democrats to blame.”
They are assuming that they’ll have enough power that ordinary stuff will not matter. Voter suppression, gerrymandering and throwing out election results means that so many things are irrelevant.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t think so. It’s extraordinarily hard to accept that the GOP has made this turn. A LOT of voters, even liberal voters, still cast the GOP at least vaguely in the mold of Reagan and Bush and others and believe that they at least have some good faith interest in governing. Its hard to get past the denial stage when the conclusion is that the US is on the brink of political collapse.
I mean, that’s why other nations fall so hard and suddenly here. It’s not that the Nazis weren’t broadcasting the hell out of what they intended to do, it’s that the broader populace couldn’t conceive of those intentions actually coming to pass until it was too late. I think that’s even more true when liberals think of the US as a defined by a set of ideals and current conservatives think of the US as defined by authority of a very specific culture. We think those ideals will always eventually win out over the desires of that culture, that the long arc of history will unavoidably bend toward justice, but if the GOP is sufficiently committed to this culture war as they seem to be, that they are willing to tear down all of those ideals in defense of it, including the institutions that we use to steer history. At that point, there’s really no going back. We’re in a ‘burn it down until we get to start over’ situation, because the mechanisms are now lost. Elections are the absolute last institutional checkpoint before violence and the GOP is openly embracing the idea of tearing them down. If they start declaring election winners independently of what the vote actually says, there’s nothing left. And that idea is too much even for most of the people on this board, let alone most democrats.
I know a lot of you get irritated with Adam for being Debbie Downer, but he’s trying to open your eyes to a very real potential present. He saw something like Jan 6 coming and people didn’t want to hear it. But you cannot hide from the fact that it’s happening, and failing to engage with it doesn’t make it go away. It’s not AOC being booted out of the House that will happen, it’ll be her murder, as has recently happened with two UK politicians. Gabby Giffords – and to be fair, Steve Scalise. Republicans keep exploring extermination rhetoric and some Democrats are going to respond to that threat as if it’s real, because it’s more real than not real right now.
It’s not that Dems won’t wake up, it’s that when they do wake up, the die will already have been cast.
Ksmiami
@Richard: hitting back is also a good plan.
VeniceRiley
I would clap back “WE REMOVED CATHY GRIFFIN FROM ALL HER COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS IMMEDIATELY!”
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Sure. What’s our side going to do about it? If they have the votes, they have the votes.
Hoodie
@cain: The only things they care about is having power and using it to (1) kill or otherwise screw over people they don’t like and (2) steal shit. They’ve kind of reached a point of no return. Now that they’re all in on voter suppression and election stealing, they don’t need to worry much about electoral accountability. They’re also not worried about the paymasters. The paymasters are cowards; that’s why they pay others to do their dirty work. The paymasters are like the nice republican senators and congresspersons who have all folded when faced with the need to confront Trump.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes, some hipster in Brooklyn might be so startled that they drop their kombucha.
Ksmiami
@Martin: to the barricades then…yes we need to fight as though our country and our lives are on the line. Because they are. The messaging shouldn’t be the good folks in the GOP- it should be the fascist Republicans want to take away your freedom. Truth can be more devastating than lies if told the Rt way
Ksmiami
@Adam L Silverman: arm up?
Martin
@rikyrah: She is. She is featured more often than Pelosi in their propaganda. Remember this?
Nancy is at least a white openly practicing Catholic who is old enough to not be a political variable for too much longer. AOC, like Obama, is representative of a future culture that they are convinced mean the end of America – where minorities have governing authority. Their relative youth meant that they would be on the stage for a long time, and their ability to win office meant that the coalition that opposes them is no longer strong enough through cultural pressure. Time for stronger measures. They fear both AOC and Ilhan Omar more than anyone else in the Dem party.
It’s part of why I like AOC so much. It’s not that I’m necessarily on board with her on her policy ideas, but she is future America in congress today and I can’t help but be inspired by that. She’s representative of liberals winning, provided that we don’t permit the GOP to flip over the table.
Adam L Silverman
@Ksmiami: Eventually your arm will fall asleep if you hold it up for to long.
zhena gogolia
@Martin: No one here thinks that what Adam is saying is invalid. We get wearied by the constant down-ness (and for me it’s not Adam, it’s the commenters; I feel that as a front-pager, Adam gets balanced by more optimistic front-pagers, so it works out well for my informational needs, and his posts are based on facts, not just general doom feelings).
It’s the general population that doesn’t get it, not the people here.
Cameron
Well, I guess it’s a good time to rally the true patriots against the fascists:
https://youtu.be/vtDTDwe_4KQ
Stacib
@Ksmiami: I think Martin’s point, and I agree, is that most people will not allow themselves to even accept the ugliness of the Republican party right now even though it’s right in their face. There is an almost nonexistent chance we can convince them of the horrors to come when enough of the red states take over the vote. By the time folks realize that it’s not just minority votes at risk, but entire cities, counties, states – it will be way too late to repair the damage or ward off even further damage.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: Everyone will be depressed now or I will post again immediately!!!!!//
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
And you don’t think her murder would galvanize people to stand up?
I don’t think this is true. Nothing is set in stone. It’s not a fait accompli.
I can’t speak for anybody else, but I get irritated when predictions are treated like a fait accompli and we’re all doomed no matter what we do. Who wants to read that?
@Adam L Silverman:
There’s lots of things our side can do about it, like making their lives a living hell at the very least
And the left isn’t just a bunch of Brooklynite hipsters like you seem to believe
Gravenstone
@?BillinGlendaleCA: If the current iteration of Republicans ever gets a 2/3 majority in the House, things will have well and truly gone to Hell in a handbasket at the national (and multiple states) level. The expulsion of one or more high profile Democrats under those circumstances will be a quaint irrelevance.
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman: Don’t worry, I’m depressed. I looked at some of the Repub speeches on Gosar.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: great news!
Martin
@SiubhanDuinne: Don’t give them that much credit. They’re in damage control mode because this is what the headlines over their death penalty process are looking like:
Oklahoma Tortured John Grant to Death Because He Wouldn’t Commit Suicide
Oklahoma has veered into territory we always knew were human rights abuses, but now are probably threatening other Republican goals around issues like religious liberty. I mean, the Supreme Court can defend a lot of bad faith rulings, but there are limits to how hard even they can tip the scales. Let’s not give OK credit until they really show they deserve it. This was a political decision, not a change of heart or policy.
WaterGirl
@stinger: That $1,000 was angel #6 putting in his $1,000 – we just hit the $1,000 of matches a little bit earlier today. I’ll be putting up a post later.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: Not really. The Republicans and their dark money backers have worked very hard to turn Wisconsin’s courts, especially the Court of Appeals and the state’s Supreme Court into partisan institutions controlled by Republican appointed or elected Federalist Society judges.
https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/07/29/the-organized-takeover-of-wisconsin-courts/
thalarctosMaritimus
@SiubhanDuinne: I had to eat my words from last night to Mom and Dad about Oklahoma’s bloodlust. I’m very happy to be wrong in this case.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Dems talk about the urgency of the moment but also distract themselves with dozens of other activities. I mean, I understand the desire to get paid maternity leave. It’s important, it affects a lot of things, but it’s also for naught if you pass it and allow Trump to return to power because you didn’t move heaven and earth to hold the coup plotters accountable and didn’t shore up the institutions to at least make it harder next time.
It doesn’t matter that you fought to save the family photo album from the house fire if you die in the process. It feels like that’s where we are. Dems rhetoric is that the house is on fire, but Dems actions don’t reflect that.
oatler
As I said earlier, it’s guerilla warfare, one corpse at a time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: There is already a suit file in Federal court that is stayed pending the state court proceedings. Oddly, voting rights people in WI aren’t just sitting around.
Ruviana
@Martin: I appreciate your points but I don’t care that this was a political decision. I’m just glad his execution was commuted.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: It’s great news when any piece of the puzzle stands up and does what’s right.
It would have been terrible news if the governor had shrugged, so it’s foolish not to see it as great news when he stands up against abuse of power.
It’s a great thing to have a Dem governor. Celebrating what we can doesn’t mean that there aren’t further steps in the process that could go to hell.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Was Jones put to death or not?
dww44
@SiubhanDuinne: Don’t need to give him too much credit though. He commuted with life in prison and no chance of parole. The clemency board there had recommended that he be given the chance of parole . He has been stalling forever.he would be vilified if he had not shown a bit of mercy.
Old School
@Omnes Omnibus: Oklahoma did not kill Julius Jones today. He was granted clemency about three hours before the execution was scheduled.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gravenstone: “If” is doing a lot of work here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
Fine, but what’s to stop the conservatives on the Supreme Court from simply declaring any voting rights legislation unconstitutional overreach (because you know there will be lawsuits) by the federal government against states deciding how to run their own elections? And yes I know there’s a line in the Constitution that gives Congress the right to decide how federal elections are administered but do you think they’ll honestly care? They’ll probably find some other procedural bullshit way to invalidate it.
I mean I don’t know, I’m probably not making a lot of sense atm. Sometimes this stuff really gets to me. I guess if things are as bad as you say, then what good would voting rights legislation do if it can be invalidated by a hostile SCOTUS?
Omnes Omnibus
@Old School: I know that.
Old School
@Omnes Omnibus: OK. I misunderstood your question.
WaterGirl
@Old School: It was more of a statement in the form of a question. :-)
Ruckus
@Martin:
Those two want a congress like what they studied in HS US history. Which of course was a very cleaned up version of reality. Even back when a lot of republicans weren’t trying to create a version of Germany in 1939, this is what the republican party has been for my entire life, people desiring to live in a very controlled utopia, which always ends up over controlled and nothing utopia like.
Geminid
@Martin: I don’t think Republicans fear Ocasio-Cortez and Omar. The more gullible may hate them. The shrewder Republicans value them as symbols they can use to caricature the rest of the Democratic party as radical socialists. They want gullible independents to fear them. That’s why Republicans talk Ocasio-Cortez and Omar up so much.
Gravenstone
@?BillinGlendaleCA: As intended. Should we come to that unsavory state of affairs in a future time, things will be all manner of fucked up.
Martin
@Ruviana: I am as well, but don’t think that Oklahoma isn’t planning on killing more people. They absolutely are once they can figure out how to do it without undermining other horribleness.
Just because a plan didn’t come to pass in this instance doesn’t mean they’ve given up on the plan. Battle won, war still ongoing.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
Actually I think republicans do fear them.
Conservatives have a pretty good thing going for them, a least the wealthy ones. Their party demands that we all bow to them as the parents that know that the stick is a far better motivator than success. They just know it. Why is it that they need force to have success, while liberals like actual participation? Because they are the spare the ruler spoil the child party. They want control and obedience. Of the entire population. They are Scrooge McDuck with a strong masochistic bent, money and pain are their only concerns. IOW they can’t steal all the money if we are in charge because we want to pay for better, and they want all of us to pay them without any complaining or rules/laws/roadblocks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Given that the death penalty is still on the books in OK, they certainly will keep trying. But they didn’t get to kill this guy. This a good thing.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): No, you’re making perfect sense. You are also pretty accurately expressing where we are. Your faith in institutions is shaken. You see them as fragile as a result. And they are, and they aren’t getting stronger, in part because people are’t being held accountable. I think there’s a case for impeachment of Kavanaugh for lying to Congress during his confirmation (you know, the thing we can send people to prison for doing). I’m under no illusions of the Senate having those votes, but I’d sure as shit like to see everything brought into the open. Kavanaugh promised retaliation against Democrats, and I think he’s personally done less damage than feared, but look at how it’s affected your faith in the court at all.
The problem is that when people lose faith in the institutions (usually because the institutions fail to follow through on the things they are empowered to do, like holding someone accountable for lying to Congress), then we resolve our problems with violence, and that process has already begun. It does not feel like we are doing enough to reverse that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: Yeah, Republicans broadly speaking fear a multi-cultural future, but that’s something different. That’s a future that Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump will not live to see. If McConnell and the surviving Koch or the Mercers didn’t try a rat-fuck draft of AOC to primary Schumer, I’d bet a large amount of money they workshopped it.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
You need 292 votes to expel a member of congress (ie a super majority).
Ruckus
@Martin
We, the political parties are on opposite sides of this. If you read political history the point of conservatives is to retain as much of everything they can, power, money, control. The point of liberals is to make life better for all, even convicted felons. (OK some liberals want that) But we have arrived at a point that humanity has too many people and too powerful of weapons to survive conservative governing, the costs are way too high. We are in the fight of many centuries, that of the old ways and the better ways. Can we win over those who think that history has been hunky dory with all the wars and deaths for a little power and control? Likely some of them, but can we do this on the scale necessary or is this our moment of loss? Because I see that’s where we are, at a moment in time, at the political crossroads of history. We have likely gone as far as we can, fighting for a country based upon control and hate or the concept that what’s better for the many is actually better. Both sides have to choose what we actually are as a country. Some of the conservative side have made a choice, control and hate. Some of the liberal side have made the opposite choice, to actually have a democracy of, by and for the people. It’s the squishy middle, on both sides of the divide, that have to see that we have reached that split in the road and haven’t decided upon which fork to take.
J R in WV
deleted, too depressing
Martin
@Geminid: They fear what AOC and Omar represent. That’s why they feared Obama. Obama was evidence that white christian supremacy was not assured, because a black man got elected against their wishes. It wasn’t Obama that they feared, it was the loss of cultural authority that historically was powerful enough to ensure that a black man couldn’t get elected. He was just a measure of the thing they fear.
AOC and Omar are similar measures of what they fear. This is why I think we have a lot of the Trump dynamic backward. Republicans don’t give a shit about Trump, they really don’t. But Trump was the purest distillation of the kind of cultural authority that they want. He wasn’t a pure example of it, but he was a pure champion for it. He didn’t hold back on his views of the inherent superiority of white Christians and the inherent inferiority of anyone who didn’t get in line with the cause, and if they couldn’t win an election even with all of those cultural forces in full alignment, then it meant that white Christian culture was no longer dominant. And because that is a future that they cannot accept – literally cannot conceive that it might be true, then the only conclusion must be that the election was stolen, because that allows them to have cultural authority. All else derives from this – opposition to masking, vaccines, climate change, gun culture, etc. They’re all a kind of world-building to prove their own cultural power, and why the excuses for why it’s not working get all the more fantastic.
It’s why Trump is such a perfect vehicle because it’s a kind of cultural narcissism. The right is so unable to come to terms with the reality of the state of the US culture and their loss of authority over it that they need to fabricate this alternate reality that denies large swaths of evidence that they just can’t accept. People like Obama and AOC and Omar are walking, talking manifestations of the rights cultural failure that are really difficult for them to constantly deny, because they keep showing up on TV over and over to remind them. The only way to end that is to exterminate them, not unlike the process of exterminating the reality of covid or the necessary decision making behind vaccine mandates and so on. Basically they are trying to unlearn the existence of Covid because it’s existence and everything that flowed from it serves as evidence of their loss of cultural authority. We pushed for universal masking and got it. We pushed to close public events and schools and got it. Those weren’t legal wins, they were cultural wins. They want to unlearn Obama and AOC and Omar because of what they represent, and all three of them are pretty good about not giving them the chance to do that despite the constant threats being levied toward them.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: I agree with you. As does former Balloon Juice front pager Dennis Green.
This is what he has to say about the Squad.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I think I may have missed a day or two of class….
Kent
@Geminid: This. They don’t fear AOC or Omar in the slightest. Nor do they think they can defeat them in their highly Dem districts. They don’t care about any of that.
What they are trying to do is paint the Democratic Party in the image of say Omar, a black Muslim in a headscarf to potentially influence rural voters in swing districts in places like rural PA or WI who might be uncomfortable with that image of a party.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Freddie de Boer–remember him?– wrote a piece in the NYT the other day teased with the promising title (as I understand, those are written by editors) :
It’s hard to read because de Boer is both a bad writer and and completely caught up in the typical persecution fantasies and delusional personality cults around Bernie et al, but it does contain this nugget of lucidity
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
So, let me make sure I grasp the consensus: we’re fucked, it’s too late, and while we can all make ourselves feel better by doing some pointless shit for some other doomed candidate or cause as a form of therapy, ultimately the fact that we can’t pass voting rights legislation, or that, if we do, it’ll get shot down by the court means that we might as well give up. Good to know.
Martin
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Or what happens? Yes, there is a rule. It’s in the Constitution. And if they ignore it? Then what? How do you hold the Speaker accountable apart from the will of the membership who a majority are sufficiently on board to not hold him accountable. What army does the Supreme Court send in to restore order should McCarthy not relent to pressure? What army does the White House send in should the Supreme Court wave it off as not their problem?
This is what I’m trying to get across about institutions. If Congress ignores that, and let’s not pretend the GOP aren’t ignoring a whole bunch of lesser rules as it is such as responding to subpoenas, then what happens? Who forces them back into compliance? If McCarthy kicks AOC out, does AOC refuse to go? Does the Sgt of Arms who works for McCarthy refuse his/her instructions? How does this play out?
Institutions aren’t real things. They are just collective, often unwritten understandings as to how things should be ordered. They exist as measures of faith. We have faith that courts will be just, not because there is some literal mechanism that forces them to be just, but because we have a faith in all of the bits and pieces and individuals that participate carrying the same faith in the ideals of that institution that we do. Normally those are quite powerful because they are so foundational to everything in a society, But ultimately it’s a chain of trust, and ultimately it’s only as strong as its weakest link. As soon as a key link breaks, it’s broken, utterly and completely because that collective faith in the check and balance and intentions of the people that form the institution are shattered. We’re witnessing this happening on the right. We can make excuses for why it shouldn’t be happening, but most republicans believe the last election was stolen and all of the institutions that exist to protect elections have failed. As such, that collective understanding above is no longer in effect. Democrats may have it, but Republicans don’t share it, and there is a risk that should they get to power they will substitute a different collective understanding – their collective understanding – for the current one. One where the way to restore institutional faith is to purge the system of those who don’t share their view of things. Remember, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, but that cuts both ways. If they believe the current trajectory is suicide for the nation (which they do seem to believe) then the Constitution can be ignored to restore things. Hell, Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus because he felt the survival of the nation depended on it, and we put his grill on a mountain. Don’t extend power to the Constitution that it doesn’t possess. It can (and frequently is) ignored.
Geminid
@Martin: If I were a Republican and a practical politician, I would fear Democrats like Katie Porter (CA) and Chrissy Houlihan (PA) more. They flipped red seats, something Ocasio-Cortez and Omar did not and never could do.
ian
@Martin:
Not arguing with your broader point, which I mostly agree with, but…
These were public health measures that had been done 100 years ago last pandemic. They came into effect at the start of the pandemic because that’s what public health officials recommended and they were not cultural signifiers.
Imagine if a brand new spanking virus hit us right now. We would not have public masking anywhere near 100% nor massive public school closures. That is not a ‘cultural win’ that is us moving dramatically backwards on what legal and health frameworks we have to protect us.
Furthermore, not all of us “pushed” to close schools. Early on the pandemic, much of the arguments in favor of other public closings was so that schools could stay open. It was not a ‘win’ for liberals for schools to close. If anything, that hurts our cause- short-term and long-term. Closing schools happened because public policy makers didn’t see an alternative, not as some big liberal victory.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: Hey. Adam! This is what many people take from your threads and particularly the comment sections. And this take is what some of us are trying to push back against. We aren’t pushing a Pollyanna view, but we are saying there are things that we can and should do to combat the problem.
schrodingers_cat
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: No one can predict the future. Probabilities are not certainties. Yes the Rs have stacked the deck against us.
But the election is a year away. Had any predicted a pandemic in 2020 the likes we had not seen in one century in November 2019.
Martin
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: I’m not saying that. I’m saying that we need to shift our focus much more to the existential problems and put aside less existential stuff that hold us back. The election stuff – shoring up the integrity of the voting systems and appointment of electors doesn’t require dealing with dark money. Yes, it’s a problem, but its a soft problem. It can wait if that’s what it takes to get Manchin on board.
A lot of the legislation Dems are dealing with was crafted prior to Jan 6 and they don’t want to let go of that effort, even though Jan 6 exposed a much more urgent set of problems.
I mean, there’s a potential remedy in the 14th amendment but it’s in tension with Article I and has some unresolved questions.
Article I says you need a ⅔ vote to remove a member of Congress, but th 14th amendment says that if they gave aid to insurrectionists, they aren’t even qualified to hold office, suggesting a ⅔ vote isn’t needed, which sort of begs the question – who has a definitive say on what constitutes an insurrection and providing aid and comfort?
Dems don’t seem interested in exploring any of this, even as members of congress continue to be active threats to other members of congress. I’m not saying they’ll win, but the act of trying does restore some faith that the institution at least understands its own role.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Whether intentional or not when someone tells you that you are doomed and there is no way out, it functions as voter suppression.
Ksmiami
@Adam L Silverman: actually I’m predicting a bad Covid winter in the hinterlands so we may have a huge ally in the fight
stinger
@WaterGirl: I figured it was something like that. Just happy to see it tick upward!
Chief Oshkosh
@bbleh:
It seems to me that a lot of elected Dems have been doing this for a while. It’s the press that refuses to fairly report it.
Ksmiami
@Stacib: then the country evolves into something else once we grind them into powder.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin:
A majority of the House.
Chief Oshkosh
@SiubhanDuinne:
He’s a shitbird, so more than likely he’s calculated that executing this one person at this one time would be a net negative to his political career.
Chief Oshkosh
@Martin:
It’s not that I think Adam is a DD, or you, for that matter. I grock it. What I want from you and Adam is the magic solution. If organizing and voting won’t cut it, what are our action steps? I mean, other than making sure our go-bags are stuffed with Benjamins and we have our private jets idling on the the tarmac? ;)
paul w, chicago
@The Dangerman: anyone who isn’t exercising their own 2nd amendment rights in this atmosphere is delusional.
just sayin’
Martin
@ian: I disagree, simply because cultural authority is mostly a battle of will. Who gets to set the rules of polite society? Whether those rules are justified or not is rarely material to this. Remember the bullshit fights with Obama – flag pins, wearing a tie in the Oval, whether it was appropriate to wear a tan suit. None of them were consequential of anything – it was just a matter of ‘can we disapprove of arbitrary thing stronger than they can approve it’ such that it becomes a part of conventional wisdom that it deserved approval or disapproval. It’s a way of measuring who can bring the larger cultural army to the battlefield, which is the thing they most care about and the thing that at least now, we kind of don’t because we feel relatively secure in our cultural victories. Gay marriage had been a hill to die on, until we won that, and now they mostly don’t care because it doesn’t affirm the thing that matters to them – that they can convince the majority of the nation that it’s wrong.
See, we suggest masking as a common sense remedy, but that’s not front of mind for them. For them, it’s who gets to decide if masking is right or wrong. Had Trump backed it, it would have *obviously* been the right thing to do, but if Dems push for it, as is what happened because Trump opposed it then it *obviously* must be unamerican, because they didn’t push that not masking was inconsiderate to others.
We and they are playing entirely different games by entirely different rules, and we keep getting bewildered because we don’t recognize their rules. We don’t have to agree to them, just understand their motivations. It’s not that they’re anti-science as if thats their motivation, it’s that they care so much about winning the culture war that they’ll accept or ignore science to meet that larger agenda. They could just as easily have gone the other way on masking if it played out differently in the culture war. We can’t imagine prioritizing things that way and they can’t imagine not prioritizing them that way.
Why did trans kids participating in sports become such a widespread issue on the right? It has almost no actual impact – but it’s a battle of who gets to define ‘fair’. It has a lot of cultural value even though it’s totally not an electorate demographic necessary to win over or signifier of other legal fights. It’s just a way of saying ‘we’re going to watch my show instead of your show because I’m bigger and stronger than you’. It’s not a referendum on the merits of the different shows. But we keep trying to see it as such because we don’t recognize the expression of dominance as the thing that’s important, so we assume it must be the merits of the shows.
This is why they can seem to be so hypocritical, because they aren’t interested in building a consistent philosophy which allows people to predict future decisions. Their philosophy is ‘we do it our way because we’re more deserving of setting the rules’, and the only way to predict future decisions is to predict who has control over the cultural levers – which include political power, but also media control, which is why we’re back to banning books for the umpteenth time and for Tucker Carlson to maintain his grand wizard role.
If they have cultural authority, then they are more likely to align the thing they support with the thing that makes sense to do. The less cultural authority they have the deeper into the weeds they go against what makes sense. I mean, Trump from the WH podium talked about injecting bleach and putting light bulbs in people for fucks sake. Dems said ‘yeah, that stuff Fauci is saying makes sense, lets do that’ even though he worked for Trump really kind of broke the rules of their game, so the GOP did the only thing they could and said ‘no to all of that’ which pulled Trump in the same direction. That’s why Fox News has all kinds of vaccine mandates but dare not admit that to the audience. They understand how this works. The trope that Dems should support the thing we don’t want actually has a kernel of truth to it.
cain
@Barry:
Even Republican voters are going to get grumpy – but if they can’t change things – I guarantee you that once someone takes out a gun and then it gets suppressed – it’ll turn into a full ass riot.
The GOP will have to take away the guns – fascism will need to take that away from them. Let’s see if it they riot or will it be like a frog in a increasingly hot water. (we still save the frog though)
Martin
@Chief Oshkosh: I can’t speak for Adam, but part of how I approach problems is by accepting that some problems don’t have good solutions, and doing nothing is itself a choice whose consequences you own.
Sometimes all you can do is pick the least bad solution and learn to live with it. That allows me to explore problems and solutions in ways the people around me rarely can, because any solution they’ve identified as ‘bad’ is one they believe they can avoid, and I don’t process things like that. Sometimes you just have to cut off your arm to save your life. You don’t have to like it, you just have to live with it.
I’ll admit that the solution space that avoids violence seems to me to be getting very small. I don’t want violence, but we may not get a say in whether or not it happens. I’m of the view that violence is worse than breaking norms, and so my preference is to break norms. I’m fully in favor of 4 more court justices. I’m in favor of taking much harder lines on the advocates and participants in political violence. I believe more in avoiding violence than protecting free speech. Comity in the senate doesn’t win over ensuring that our democratic institutions function. Is there something that Trump can be indicted for? Then do it. Stop deferring to the dignity of a former president. Bigger things are at stake.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: So the House could have unilaterally removed Trump in the 2nd impeachment hearing? Or could remove a member of the Senate who participated? Or a member of USSC? Or a general?
I don’t think that’s how it works in practice.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Martin:
you better switch to decaf
Geminid
@Martin: I am all for Donald Trump being indicted. He certainly deserves to be for high crimes, and for low crimes like money laundering as well. I am not sure, though, that this will be very consequential as far as next year’s midterm elections go. I don’t think it will deter Republicans trying to subvert the elections.
And you have to actually win elections to keep them from being subverted. Fortunately, Democrats like Tim Ryan trying to win the open Ohio Senate seat, and Elaine Luria trying to hang on to the VA-2nd Congressional seat, will have positive accomplishments to run on. And hopefully, a prospering economy.
Bill Arnold
Re that Crenshaw video link at the end of the post, the Democrats unexpectedly won both those Georgia Senate seats. Crenshaw-The-Former-SEAL lost that engagement, in real Reality, defeated by Stacy Abrams and many others. Also, punching through the outside of a windshield is not trivial, and then you scrape your arm through broken glass. (From inside, yeah. Broke (well cracked) a windshield once that way in a lapse in self control, was pretty embarrassed, and that was pre-martial arts training.)
tybee
@Omnes Omnibus:
Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean.
Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win.
That’s just the way it is.
Chief Oshkosh
@Martin: I was just kidding about demanding a magical solution from you and Adam, but thanks for your thoughtful reply. I enjoy and find useful your posts and Adam’s. Thank you.
StringOnAStick
I just sent hair on fire emails to my Senators Wyden and Merkley. I contribute monthly to Fair Fight, Four Directions, and Democracy Docket. At some point I’ll likely just give up and commit suicide, but I figured that would come once global climate change means I can no longer afford to survive; maybe it will be sooner because I have no doubt that the R’s plan to make Orban’s Hungary look like a liberal paradise in comparison.
Omnes Omnibus
@StringOnAStick: I hope the suicide talk is hyperbole, but if it isn’t please reach out to someone.
StringOnAStick
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve already reconciled myself to not living to the full end of my life because of climate change. Sooner because I’m living in the fifth Reich isn’t much of a difference.
E.
Adam is not giving us pointless doom, he is showing us the instruments of power that are being deployed against us. He wants us to see this clearly. His posts have helped me understand how power and ideology are being used so effectively. I think these posts are vital.
Ksmiami
@tybee: I’ve been mean for awhile …
tybee
@Ksmiami:
keep it up
Citizen Alan
@StringOnAStick:
I think you mean the Fourth Reich. Unless I missed one while taking a nap or something.
StringOnAStick
@Citizen Alan: Does it matter?