So THIS is what history feels like…
— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) July 1, 2024
Response, from Osita Nwanevu:
all of conservative legal theory in a single headline pic.twitter.com/Ck1OiopPQk
— Sen. Lemon Gogurt ugarles.bsky.social (@Ugarles) July 2, 2024
Happy, if impractical, thought:
Ordering Trump's assassination seems like it could be a gray area, since the constitution doesn't give the president assassination powers. However, if he promised to pardon anyone who killed Trump, that seems airtight.
— Shadow Of The Nerdtree (@agraybee) July 2, 2024
Hey, look — an optimist!
But Trump is NOT getting his wish on the POLITICS of this — the case is not going to disappear and suddenly drop out of the headlines.
There will likely weeks — if not MONTHS — of hearings on the "official act" questions.
This summer and fall, right as the election nears.
— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) July 1, 2024
Bill Barr is another ‘practicing Catholic’ who, assuming what I learned in twelve years of parochial school is true, will *not* be going to Heaven…
To be clear, Barr’ hope for a Trump second term is that Trump either won’t have people ready to carry out his kill orders or that he’ll still be dumb enough to be talked out of it. But that assumes there’s someone there to talk him out of it. Good luck. https://t.co/HC8BhSJoKe
— Jason Karsh (@jkarsh) July 2, 2024
Shut UP, Ralph:
Maybe Biden can learn from Trump's "boil the frog" strategy and drone a few guys nobody will miss first before moving up to the big guy himself. https://t.co/6BHGRbkcEb
— Open Source Stupidity (OSSTU) Starfish (@IRHotTakes) July 2, 2024
Go {curtsy} yourself, Kirsten:
I was just thinking it couldn’t get worse than Nader weighing in but here we are. https://t.co/uzR4KonivZ
— Jean-Michel Connard ??? (@torriangray) July 2, 2024
Our failed major media, another Jake Tapper edition:
Still nothing about Trump bragging about (or pleading for) a deal with Putin not to release Evan unless Trump is made president… https://t.co/HTtbynlHUs
— XLProfessor (@XLProfessor) July 2, 2024
War for Ukraine Day 860: Compare and Contrast
Jay
Teh Stupid, it burns.
eclare
Wow. Jake is lower than dog shit. Thank you for revealing yourself, Jake, now I know.
As always, Anne Laurie, thank you for these tweets and post.
eclare
I am an idiot, who is the person in the first tweet?
Splitting Image
@eclare:
Francis Fukuyama, who wrote a book called The End of History back in 1989 or so.
NotMax
“We’re still waiting on delivery of the package of bonesaws.”
//
eclare
@Splitting Image:
Thank you! Never heard of this person.
eclare
@NotMax:
Why doesn’t Joe just cancel elections, declare himself President for Life? Get a nice uniform with epaulets?
Splitting Image
@eclare:
You’re not missing out on much. He had his 15 minutes of fame when the Soviet Union collapsed, but faded away pretty quickly. It was difficult to become a mainstay on cable news when people had to introduce him as “The guy who said history ended 10 years ago, or is it 15 now? 20 years already? Wow.”
eclare
@Splitting Image:
Hahaha. Full service blog.
Ukai
At this rate, a Baud/Giant Meteor ticket may actually poll pretty well by Labor Day.
Damien
I’ve said it in previous posts and I’ll say it again: at some point we’re gonna have to meet these people where they’re at, and it sure seems like they’re in cloud cuckoo land.
NotMax
@Splitting Image
Jeane Dixon had a better track record.
Mike E
@Ukai: That meteor will get halfway around the world before Baud gets his pants on, good luck!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Sinema is so dumb she doesn’t realize it was McConnell who got rid of the filibuster during Gorsuch’s hearing.
eclare
I can’t sleep. Watching Bernie, great little comedy. Telling my brain to ignore the news and please do not pick up an earworm.
Odie Hugh Manatee
As a thoroughly lapsed Catholic and unmolested former altar boy, I think most Catholics will be going to Hell. Heck, most Christians are going to go there too so they won’t be alone!
YY_Sima Qian
Putin is not the only malevolent actor sowing chaos & aiding reactionary forces around the world, the American “conservative” movement is probably just as impactful, has been at it for even longer, & have converging interests as Putin. Worth reading the WaPo article in whole for a taste of how that influence operates. The Anglophone West has been particularly vulnerable.
Furthermore, the US “conservative”movement has not been the only American force exerting influence in allied/partner countries. A lot of foreign policy/national security think tanks in these countries receive substantial funding from the USG, US based MIC, & US think tanks (the “Blob”), & often cross-post personnel w/ US think tanks. Unsurprisingly, they tend to advocate for policies that help defend US primacy, promote militarist/interventionist narratives, & fan the flames of Great Power Competition. How such advocacy benefit the US in the short is obvious, how they benefit the host countries sometimes less so. This is more of a bi-partisan effort.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Ukai:
I’m more for a Meteor/Baud ticket. Let’s just get it over with now.
YY_Sima Qian
@Splitting Image: You are giving Fukuyama too little credit. He became an influential neoconservative thinker, a founding member of now defunct the Project for a New American Century, helped to make neoconservatism respectable in the mainstream intellectual discourse, culminating in the invasion of Iraq in ’03.
He later disavowed any support for the Iraq War II, though.
tobie
I keep on wondering what triggered John Roberts’ final transformation from a very conservative jurist committed to deregulation, denying institutional racism, and upholding executive power for Republicans into a radical, fire-breathing MAGA judge a la Alito willing to torch the Constitution to save Trump’s neck. Roberts voted to hamper Obamacare but not to jettison it and to restrict abortion rights but not to end them. Was it the protests after Dobbs and the fence around the court that he labeled the saddest moment in US history? Was it seeing a Republican ex-Pres on trial? I’m curious what’s turned this guy into an utterly unprincipled hack and haven’t seen a single news story about this.
Chet Murthy
@tobie: It was Will To Power. Before TCFG came along, he didn’t see a way to lock in G(r)OPer power for good. But now he sees it: TCFG is the horse he’s riding to that paradise where rich white men rule and everybody else tugs the forelock, or else.
ColoradoGuy
I wonder how much Leonard Leo has changed over the decades. The Seven Mountains are now in sight, and Putin is quite happy to have the USA drift into a religious war.
tobie
@Chet Murthy: That sounds plausible to me. Fed Soc members are so close to achieving their dream of restoring America to what they believe was the golden age of the founders. This makes me fear that SCOTUS will overturn any close election in which Trump doesn’t win. I need to hold that thought in check. Defeatism is not what we need.
JWR
Tuesday evening’s PBS News Hour gave Heather Cox Richardson a very short segment, but it’s good. Here it is on Youtube:
zzcool
Why can’t congress pass a law that in essence says: no act performed by the president, which would be considered criminal for someone not in the role of POTUS, can be considered an “official act”?
Princess
@YY_Sima Qian: When my kid was in a rural
part of New Zealand, he happened across an area full of massive gated compounds for the rich. He figured billionaires were building bolt holes there. They are probably pumping lots of money in already to affect elections/policies.
Princess
@tobie: I’ve said for a long time that the Fed Soc Opus Dei goal is not a return to the founders but laying the groundwork for a Franco/Salazar type Catholic dictatorship — here, more broadly Christian than purely Catholic of course. But same kind of national religion. I was not surprised by the SCOTUS ruling on immunity.
TBone
Seeking immunity for crimes committed is an admission of guilt on its face.
TBone
@zzcool: we don’t have the votes right now.
TBone
@ColoradoGuy: I wish I didn’t have to agree.
TBone
@tobie: I don’t much care why (unless
briberygratuity is involved), I just want them impeached and the history books written so as to be an everlasting stain on their legacies. Indelible ink.TBone
@YY_Sima Qian: Curse his name! *spits
eclare
@tobie:
Please put some on to crisp the skin!
Aussie Sheila
@Princess:
Indeed. Your current scotus reminds me of the breakaway right wing Catholic movement that were expelled from the Australian Labor Party in1954 and worked hard to ensure conservative political victories for 18 years afterwards. This movement, called the ‘Movement’ by its adherents wreaked devastation on Australian social democracy for 20 years. Once they were defeated in 1972 they slunk away, but their descendants infect our media to this day.
Their Party vehicle was called the Democratic Labor Party.
Hint.
It wasn’t democratic and it wasn’t a Labor party. It was a revanchist, semi fascist force that worked hard to fuck Labor movement politics for a generation.
Your political institutions appear to be going through the same process we went through, except as well as revanchist Catholics you have the segregationist evangelical South to contend with together with an anti majoritarian Constitution and a surfeit of idiotic pundits and commentators who have never run a campaign for dog catcher let alone anything more important.
I am also critical of the weak Party system in the US. I know the Republicans appear ‘strong’, but that is because they appeal to constituencies that are easily mobilised by conservative (racist/misogynistic etc) sentiments.
Traditional US Democractic constituencies are harder to mobilise, I get that , but discipline and focus is its own power.
The lack of it speaks of weakness and opportunism to the very constituencies you are trying to mobilise.
Less preaching, more partisan organising, and above all, less hyperventilating at the latest media fest that is above all a business for clicks and ‘likes’.
YY_Sima Qian
@Princess: & some of those billionaires (such as Peter Thiel) are the same ones funding reactionaries to build their techno-libertarian (for themselves)/techno-authoritarian (for everyone else) paradise. I guess it’s Plan B in case their experiment fails.
satby
Via Twitter, friend of the blog Valdivia:
Valdivia @TheCorollary 9h
There it is. This is what this is all about. The media feeding frenzy will then turn into a misogyny racist fest. And yes I can imagine it. She’s tough as nails you racist ahole.
Quote
David Sacks @DavidSacks. 16h
Imagine going through the Cuban Missile Crisis with President Kamala Harris.
Baud
@satby:
LOL, Trump would have let them store the missiles at Gitmo.
Princess
@satby: I wish Valdivia still commented here. She’s about the only person I miss since leaving Twitter.
The Thin Black Duke
@satby:
Matt McIrvin
@tobie: I’m not particularly scared of that since if the Supreme Court were going to overturn the election to reelect Trump, they’d have done it in 2020. It was the same lineup of Republican appointees and Trump was actively pushing for them to do it.
No scenario in which Trump loses particularly worries me; it’s the ones where he straight-up wins. Trump is obviously going to be gunning for revenge and he’ll think he’s invulnerable now. It’s quite possible that this time we’ll see some of the stuff I expected last time–mass arrests/executions/disappearances of Democratic politicians and people who irk Trump, the National Guard just machine-gunning crowds of protesters, all that Dirty War stuff.
There are a few things that did occur to me though.
WereBear
Our conservatives are letting their version of the freak flag, fly. All those years they pretended to give a damn about principles and law. They will just seize power and not feel so moody and clueless all the time.
So every slimy power fantasy any of them have was unleashed by Donald Trump’s example. That’s the cult he’s running.
Is the Republican Party even a party anymore? How much of what the party is doing, right now, is against — not custom — but actual law?
It’s the Republicans who should be having this discussion, but if no one else is making this argument, why can’t WE?
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Most important of all, Nach Trump, uns.
Rusty
@tobie: I watched a couple of older white men travel the path from run of the mill conservative to fire breathing MAGA nut. I won’t claim to have anywhere near a complete answer, but there really is a right wing media bubble that will completely submerge the follower, and even more general sites like YouTube have algorithms that will feed you ever more extreme content because that boosts engagement. I also think they were people suseptible to resentment, and the right wing messages feed on resentment. I do think in most cases they are completely gone, they will never return to even moderate conservatism, which I find the most sad of all.
Aussie Sheila
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes. I’m not worried about trump does if he loses in November . He can do squat except run squealing to the Courts until the Electoral votes are in. This time he doesn’t control the Justice Dept or anything else.
If he does win the US will become even more ungovernable than usual. The partisan Dem constituencies will go apeshit.
Understandably.
However the best plan is to ensure he doesn’t win.
That requires discipline, partisan focus and above all ignoring all msm in favour of relentless organising in places where the Dems have to win in order to win the big one. And the big one includes the Senate. I’m confident the Dems will regain the HoRs.
Matt McIrvin
@WereBear:
I used to sometimes read the right-wing alternative campus newspaper when I was at William and Mary in the 1980s (there were a succession of them with different names). They’d interview guys like Cal Thomas and R. Emmett Tyrell, and those guys were always like that when you got them in a safe space. They’d immediately start bragging about how conservatives could beat up liberals and that everyone would be sorry when the gloves really came off. And that God agreed with them.
It was a different dynamic, I guess, because the Republicans had a supermajority in presidential elections that today’s version can only dream of, but Democrats still controlled Congress… but, on the other hand, there was way less polarization there and a lot of the Dems were conservatives who would gladly meet them halfway, so it wasn’t as if their side lacked real power. Somehow, they didn’t just grind liberalism into nonexistence by force. But they may have felt less threatened too.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
I’m not sure what you’re implying by that comment. It is extremely foolish if you mean it literally, and if you mean it ironically it’s extremely offensive. It’s also historically illiterate.
Lapassionara
@Matt McIrvin: I wish “their cultural support is tenuous at best” were true. The “Moms for Liberty” types are taking over in several school districts, and the war against treatment of transgender folk is just getting started and its cruelty seems to have a strong following.
I wish I would see strong pushback from Democrats on these latest attacks, but I don’t.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
It’s none of those things.
Baud
@Lapassionara:
Agree that Dems think they can emote freely without affecting the broader culture.
Matt McIrvin
@Lapassionara: Like I said before, I think that’s a lot like the backlash against gay rights that happened in the late 70s/early 80s. It’s not as if everyone was tolerant before, it’s just that they thought of gayness as this marginal thing that was way off the radar, and suddenly there was visibility that caused a moral panic.
Small comfort if you’re in the crosshairs.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: Good points there.
EarthWindFire
@Princess: Lack of surprise doesn’t equal lack of rage. Wish it did. I’d sleep a lot better.
Rusty
@Lapassionara: I’ll disagree a bit with this. Even here in New Hampshire, libertarian stronghold, the right wing crazies amd Mom’s for Liberty lost almost all of there races for school boards. There are enough moderate conservatives left that want people to run their schools, not make a scene at every board meeting. The same folks will vote for Trump and for the conservative state legislator advocating school vouchers, but they have limits.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: The conservatives have been starting moral panics constantly. It’s about time we stopped this one.
Because they won’t stop. They can only be stopped. That’s how we all have to think, because our grassroots are real. We only wish we had crazy billionaire money.
All the Democrats have to do is make a place for people to run to when they realize they aren’t just saying this stuff to get elected. They have reached the point that what they promise their base seems to exert a repulsive effect on anyone who was still under the impression this election can be tuned out until after Labor Day.
The MAGA keep breaking through that happy shell of people who share the libertarian delusion about roads: that all this stuff just runs itself, somehow.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Well what’s your point then? Pointing to the idiocy of Weimar internecine left politics might be amusing in some contexts, but it’s entirely irrelevant to the urgency of current US politics.
Quoting a 90 year old saying from Weimar Germany incorrectly in the context of the idiotic meltdown of the last week or so by centrist melts because Biden had a bad day during a debate which will be forgotten by this week end appears idiotic and is precisely the kind of nonsense available on twitter that undermines confidence and morale.
Just what the trumpists want.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
I don’t need to explain myself to the snarkless.
OzarkHillbilly
We assassinate people all the time, Bin Laden being the most famous. And the presidential oath says to defend the constitution from all enemies, domestic and foreign. So the silly 6 have given Biden a green light to assassinate trump or anybody else he wants.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Winning is always better than losing. But I figure that, given the way party control in the US historically alternates, even winning now just pushes this crisis out a few years. There’s simply no way we can keep winning everything until “the fever breaks”–that doesn’t happen. The whole Republican party is more openly antidemocratic than it used to be, because they’re the party of straight Christian white guys, and people with any subset of those attributes, who are worried that they’re not the automatic lords of America in a democratic election any more.
So we need to think about how to deal with openly autocratic takeover in the US regardless. The weird fragmentation of power in this country actually helps us in that case and I expect them to try to centralize it once they’re in control, because their love of “federalism” was always a sham. But it does produce friction.
nevsky42
I saw that crapweasel Carville weighed in, and I’m just trying to remember, was he ever useful? I never saw that documentary but even in the ’90s every time he weighed in on something I wanted to blow my head off. I’ve always thought he just glommed off an incredibly successful politician and pretended he had something to do with that success.
He reminds me of all that crap music that came out in the ’60s because somebody worked with the Beatles once and they got a record deal out of it…
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: I agree. We need to break the habit of waiting for a savior or some other sort of magic moment that fixes everything.
WereBear
I would really really like to know how many of those Fortune 500 CEOs really grasp the wonderland of capitalism that would actually ensue, since so few of their concerns, like fizzy sugar water or cheap consumer junk relying on marketing and lies.
So far, they love it, but like Elon Musk, someone must have a job to pay for their sugar water and crappy apartment, or no one is keeping their consumer economy afloat.
Hey, that’s always the part they forget. And so you ask yourself, why do they need bolt holes, and condos in Dubai?
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: Blame Hollywood. Too many people think that’s how politics works in the real world.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes and no. They’ve given Trump a green light, because of course they have. With Biden, they’d determine whether his “official act” was actually that, or if it was just him doing something mean because he wanted to (or however they would phrase it).
I can envision an officially sanctioned way Biden could get around that, but with the Sinister Six doing all Calvinball, all the time …
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke: Yeah, people seem to want a Hollywood ending to things, a happy ending within a few hours time.
Aussie Sheila
@The Thin Black Duke:
No, blame a serious lack of ideological focus by Dem party leaders and a consequent lack of partisan focus by many parts of their coalition. The fondness for Hollywood and its liberal/left tropes by Dems is that it performs the kind of broad ideological work that the Party itself is unable to perform more broadly in its constituent parts. That’s why the Right is so fond of the ‘politics is downstream of culture’ trope.
In its narrow way it’s true. But it ignores politics as culture, as has the Democratic Party.
sab
@nevsky42:I know! I have detested him for many years, and yet I somehow got on his email list and cannot seem to block him.
Chris Johnson
@WereBear: Absolutely we can! We are.
OzarkHillbilly
Nah, the only thing they would be determining is what color of gray their cell was and how thick the glass is in their lone 6″x6″ window.
Barry
@Matt McIrvin: “The SCOTUS ruling basically just perpetuates the immunity that the President already effectively had while in office (something I vehemently disagreed with, but it seemed to be the legal status quo). That removes an incentive for Trump to try to stay President forever. In fact, I think Alito brought that up in the hearings for this case. It’s a pathetic reason to give a President immunity, but it does make it marginally more likely that Trump will accept the Constitutional term limit and not try to do the President for Life thing.”
I consider that to be a small margin. Why would Trump pull that needle out of his arm?
Ken
I’ve often thought that’s part of the reason the filibuster keeps going. People hear the word and think of Jimmy Stewart giving an impassioned 24-hour speech on the Senate floor, all very dramatic and surely an essential part of American democracy, so there’s no great public outcry. Where the real thing, now, is one guy says “I don’t consent” and they all just go about other business.
(Mind you, it’s a small part; the main reason is it gives each of 100 borderline or outright narcissists a chance to make it all about themselves.)
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fair point. But given the remaining Justices would all be liberal squishes, they’d probably say that incarceration is cruel and unusual punishment etc etc.
Or maybe they’d say “Thank FSM! Those psycho mofos are gone! Now we can get back to doing real law-giving!”
Chris Johnson
@Matt McIrvin: Nonsense. The Republican party is masking deep divisions, and nobody is more fiercely opposed than the apostate Republicans who dare go against the authoritarian monarch, and they’re armed, and all the laws are being revised in a way to support them as if they were just good little followers of the god-king but they are absolutely not.
Republicans can be sneaky. They don’t have to be like ‘well, I was a Haley Republican, but I guess I will just either change my whole mind or I will openly continue to lament the loss of my way of life. And I certainly never would plot dirty tricks and fuck over the people I think are betraying my truth. That would be dishonest!’
You don’t get to assume the Republican coalition is healthy and entirely dedicated to fascism. It ain’t true. There are breaking points some have reached. Not all those who broke off are those we’d consider nice people.
Baud
@Ken:
If you think Congress is corrupt, and that’s all it is, then the filibuster sounds like a good thing because it stops things from happening.
OzarkHillbilly
If they know what’s good for them….
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes, the President’s initial declaration that the Federalist Society is a terrorist organization could be expanded….
The Thin Black Duke
@Aussie Sheila: No, blame a citizenry that refuses to become engaged politically until it effects them personally.
Ramalama
@eclare: You mean Rick Perlstein? Amazing writer and historian. Specializes in Conservatives but is himself a Lib-tron.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: I like how you think.
Geminid
@Baud: Or, if you think like some Independents that both parties are corrupt and need to be restrained, the filibuster could look like a good thing. This may be a reason why Democratic Senate candidates in battleground states don’t seem to center filibuster reform in their campaigns even though it ranks high as an issue for many Democrats.
Baud
@Geminid:
Right. But how is that different than what I said?
Matt McIrvin
@WereBear: Trump has an economic isolationist streak, wants super high tariffs and his fans are falling in line saying tariffs won’t hurt the economy or cause higher prices. Sure Jan. I’m not a dogmatic free trader myself but it’s interesting how their dedication to neoliberal economics has these odd limits.
Geminid
@Baud: Not really different, just expanding the point as it relates to practical, electoral politics.
JML
@Matt McIrvin: Here’s the thing though: right now the GOP is in a Cult of Personality mode. If you beat the Cult Figure, it will likely implode, because that sort of thing isn’t transferrable. Sure TFG might try to install one of his idiot sons as the heir apparent, but they have no chance at holding things together and maintaining support. The scramble for power and control is a good way to fracture the GOP.
There’s no coherent ideology other than grievance, and that can easily turn against them if the Cult fails to deliver. They sold themselves to TFG to try and hold/gain power and they will flail a LOT once he’s gone. And this will be his last shot.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Can you really take anything they say at face value though?
They seem to have done a good job of getting people to accept that they’ll say anything and that people should just project onto them the idea that they’ll really do what the people want.
Baud
@Geminid:
Gotcha.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris Johnson: Even the Never Trumpers are basically authoritarians; they just see the Trump phenomenon as evidence the booboisie are too stupid to govern themselves. They can be useful but watch your back around those guys.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I think there’s a latent authoritarian streak in our own camp as well. We’re just not as good at projecting it, for various reasons.
Authoritarianism gets fashionable in times of rapid change.
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: The judiciary has placed certain tools in my hands; who am I to refuse to use them?
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: Will the Never Trumpers use this convention to seize back power?
Sure, it will be a shell of its former self, but they will be greeted as heroes, etc.
And it will be their shell, again. Why share with the rabble? Give them a tRump “get out of it” card.
One of the rare bright sides of this is how the Cheney’s were left holding ashes when the base went Golem on them. Tap the nostalgia.
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’re confusing it with some other oath. The entire Presidential oath is in Article II of the Constitution, at the end of Section 1. It reads:
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Cf. all the ha-ha-only- serious talk in this thread about Dark Brandon using his new immunity to go apeshit. I *feel* it too, yeah.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, it’s fine when it’s done in fun or as catharsis, but some people take it seriously.
Also, too, the constant panic is a version of it IMHO. It stems from our inability to control what other voters will do.
SFAW
@Baud:
Maybe there is — I don’t think so, but not enough to start an argument over it — but it’s nowhere near as prevalent as in the GQP. And even if TCFFG were to kick off tomorrow, that prevalence would not disappear for at least a decade. [Meaning: it’s endemic, not Trump-based. His presence just amplifies/exacerbates it.]
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: well, and the people on the other side openly bragging that they’ll send death squads after us, that’s part of it too.
OzarkHillbilly
@lowtechcyclist: Thanx for the correction and yes, I am quoting a different oath, possibly the congressional oath or maybe the military oath. They’re all so similar…
@Matt McIrvin: Who is being serious?
lowtechcyclist
@The Thin Black Duke:
Should we blame the government, or blame society?
Or should we blame the images on TV?
Your morning earworm. ;-)
Baud
@SFAW:
Completely agree. That’s really one of the main differences between conservatives and mainstream liberals. We seek to check authoritarianiam through various structural mechanisms, they seek to enhance it because they believe concentrated power is good for society.
3Sice
Re: The Heritage Foundation. That’s not a flex you make if you are winning the culture war. Trump has converted their believers and is booting them out of the RNC. That clown had the dead inside look of someone parroting Putin’s current line.
SFAW
@Baud:
But only if they are the ones in power, of course.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I am pretty sure the eventual definitive biography of Trump will be titled “Bullshit Land”.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t really think so. The right is more subjectively fearful than we are of societal changes. The violence is a symptom of that. Also their cultism. Our response is just more varied, and often conflicts with each other.
CliosFanBoy
@zzcool:
Like ordering Seal Team 6 to kill Bin Laden? Or, for that matter, sending a diplomatic team to negotiate a peace treaty like the Dayton Accords in the former Yugoslavia. Both would be illegal for you or me.
I see where you’re going with your idea, but the POTUS has legal powers that the rest of us do not. The problem is that the SC removed all of the guardrails that kept a republican president* at least somewhat contained by those guardrails.
* because you know that they’d never have made this decision had they been applying it to a Democrat.
Baud
@SFAW:
Of course. We’re the threat that an authoritarian government needs to protect society from.
Geminid
Merih Demiral (sp?) scored both of Turkiye’s goals in their Euro match against Austria, but now the UEFA has commenced a disciplinary investigation of the Turkish defender for flashing the Grey Wolf sign on the pitch. Demeral was blatant, flashing the sign with both hands raised high.
The Gray Wolf sign is made by extending the index and pincky figures like ears and bringing the thumb and two middle fingers together like a wolf’s head. It’s banned in some European countries including Austria because of its association with violent ultra-nationalist Turkish gangs. UEFA will likely fine Demiral and the Turkish team.
Baud
@Geminid:
That’s a downer.
CliosFanBoy
@Baud:
It’s a LOT smaller since the Dixiecrats switched parties. And ours is more of the “if I were a dictator I’d make sure the poor were fed and had medical care” while theirs is more “If I were a dictator I’d deport all the w**b**ks and put all the (insert slur) in camps where they’d know their place.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It was noted during the War of Terror how the American Fundamentalist and the Islamic Fundamentalist enabled each other.
CliosFanBoy
@nevsky42:
He was a useful attack dog in the early Clinton years, but that’s it. His book “We’re Right and They’re Wrong” was a nice anti-republican diatribe.
Since then. Blech.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: The GOP these days are not dedicated to neoliberal economics, they are eagerly embracing military Keynesianism (always have, especially Reagan & GWB) & economic nationalism, because such policies resonate & cohere quite well w/ their Herrenvolk & authoritarian/militarist politics, they all reinforce each other.
The problem is, Biden & the Dem mainstream have also bought into the natsec Keynesianism & economic nationalism framing, as short cuts to try to assuage the anxieties, soothe the anger, & win the allegiances, of the disaffected White working class. Unfortunately, Dems cannot & will not win that race to the bottom, all they have done is to legitimize natsec Keynesianism & economic nationalism into the political & policy mainstream, such that they now dominate the bipartisan discourse in DC.
The natsec Keynesianism is primarily justified by the Great Power Competition w/ the PRC, but the economic nationalism is pointed toward all other nations. These feed into the xenophobia, “Yellow Peril”, “Red Scare” moral panics that inherently favor the reactionaries. Hence, you have Katherine Tai (Biden’s USTR) speaking approvingly of Robert Lighthizer (Trump’s USTR), & Biden coming out against the purchase of US Steel by Nippon Steel.
That is why I say the Nov. is but a rear guard action that must be won, nothing more, nothing less. Winning in Nov. does not solve all or even any of the structural issues that everyone is highlighting. Dems will need to address these structural issues, such as the reactionary & activist SCOTUS, filibuster & other tools of gridlock in the Senate, reactionaries of all stripes in the US military as well as the federal/local law enforcement, dark money in politics, gerrymandering, disinformation in MSM & social media, etc. Much more challenging, the Dems will need to start shifting away from domestic & foreign policy frameworks that inherently feed the reactionaries: pursuit of primacy in an increasingly multipolar world, hegemonic/militarist/interventionist thinking, excessive investment into war making as economic/technological stimulus, favoring incumbent large corporations over fostering competition, autarkic & exclusionary industrial policy, excessive financialization, bloated healthcare/legal/financial services. Dems will have to look at social democratic & perhaps even socialist policies, even if you find the Leftists/Socialists/Socialist Democrats insufferable. The citizenry has to push the elected Dems on all of these fronts, & that starts by shifting the Overton Window on all of these policy spheres back Left.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
The main thing about the filibuster is that it breaks the connection between having Congressional majorities and being able to pass legislation.
People don’t understand how the filibuster works, so they can’t see why the Democrats don’t pass all that stuff they ran on when they get solid Congressional majorities like they had in the first two years of the Clinton and Obama administrations.
It’s hard for people to strongly identify as Democrats if they feel like the party promises a lot, but mostly lets them down.
If we win the trifecta in November, getting rid of the filibuster is essential in order to end this disconnect.
Baud
@CliosFanBoy:
Sure. Our dictators would be more benevolent. But the dictator dream, if it affects enough people, affects how we interact with the political process. That’s where the harm is IMHO.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Complete agreement. But all that requires some degree of voter trust.
If we get a trifecta and pass a lot of good things by getting rid of the filibuster, I give even money of a backlash compared to voter endorsement.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Like the Tannery court, desperation. Short of a right wing dictatorship 2016 was the last presidential election the GOP could win.
YY_Sima Qian
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You see the same dynamic between Bibi & Hamas, until it blew up in Bibi’s face. Too bad so many Gazans & Israelis have to pay the price.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin: Do remember what happened during Trump first term; his admin spent most of their time stabbing each other in the back with plastic sporks.
Only one man gets to be dictator and the one man in that scenario is a such a fuckup he went bankrupt running a casino in his prime. Trump is both lazy, terrible at giving instructions, values subservience over competence, and demands his staff lie to him.
Geminid
@Baud: UEFA is handing out a lot of fines this tournament, and this will be one more. I don’t think Demiral be suspended.
This incident sparked a lively controversy on social media. Demiral’s defenders pointed out that the Gray Wolf sign has been part of Turkish culture for ages, and its appropriation by some violent right wingers is no reason to ban it.
They provided a photo of an ancient stone carving in a Japanese museum that showed some nomad chief flashing the Gray Wolf sign; also, pictures of children in colorful native dress making the sign in tribute to Bozkurt, the mythical wolf who lead the Turkic people out of their original world into this one.
Various Greeks, Kurds and Armenians responded that Turks have no culture and it’s time to send this nomad trash back to Mongolia.
trnc
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
 
I assume she’s talking about the original 2013 deal headed up by Reid that killed it for all but SC nominees. Of course, that was done because Obama was having trouble getting nominees through the senate, and if we still had the filibuster today, Biden would have a record nomination rate of zero percent.
I fucking hate glib assholes like her.
lowtechcyclist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
True, but there are large chunks of our government and our policies that are totally off Trump’s radar, and the Heritage goons he appoints to handle those agencies and policies will have free rein.
trnc
@Matt McIrvin:
They’ve been a lot more bold in the last couple of years about making outcome-based rulings. I think immunity wouldn’t even have been taken up by them in 2020, and if it had, the ruling would have been more narrow.
They smell blood in the water and they’re going for it.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They’re trying hard to be more prepared this time and are much more intent on ending democracy. They know that they’ll have to work around Trump himself.
nevsky42
@CliosFanBoy: Thanks for the reminder! Credit where credit is due, after all…
But all I remember from Carville back then was when he was on shows with his wife and they were all like “I’m a liberal and she’s conservative oh the fun we have together hurr hurr!”
As you say, blech.
Betty
@Splitting Image: That was not Rick Perlstein who has been writing a series of books on the descent into madness of the Republican Party.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: speaking personally, I am extremely fucking scared of THEM, more than of anything else in the world. Probably because of a youth spent unsuccessfully trying to cope with violent rednecks. Somewhere in my 7th grade mind I know they’re coming for me sooner or later.
Uncle Cosmo
Who among other things convenietly forget (if they ever knew) that “nach Hitler, uns” actually came to pass. Twelve and a skosh years and 30-35 million deaths** after der böhmische Gefreite‘s rise to power, in the eastern third of what was left of Germany. for over 44 years***, but nevertheless.
** 20 million from the Soviet Union alone. Just FTR.
*** A lifespan over 3x that of the Third Reich. Also FTR.
Citizen Alan
Very disappointed to learn that ralph nader is still alive.
satby
@Princess: she left during the redesign before last, when that delightful, sweet Tommy threatened to dox those of us who weren’t his fans. I doxed myself, then got his deets as insurance in case the police needed to get involved.
People are too gullible everywhere on the internet, and that includes here on this blog. And that’s all I’m saying about that.
brantl
@Citizen Alan: If you can call that living.
LanceThruster
“[T]he Constitution doesn’t give the president assassination powers.”
[stares in Anwar al-Awlaki]