In the “Hostages” thread below, in response to a comment I made about Israel under Netanyahu, Adam outlined how healthy democracies take on authoritarian traits and/or devolve into illiberal, managed “democracies” (scare quotes mine):
(Israel) ceased to be a democracy when Bibi started pushing the reforms legislatively in the spring. Having hundreds of thousands of citizens in the street protesting, the bulk of the fighter pilots in the Israeli Air Force, and the bulk of the Israeli Special Forces resign in protest is not actually a sign of a healthy, vibrant democracy. They are the signs of a state that has crossed the threshold into authoritarianism because you have lost the ability to use the normal political process to achieve your goals. In this case blocking Bibi’s judicial reforms.
It is the same dynamic here. The fact that 6 JAN 2021 happened is the same type of indicator. As was McConnell’s blocking Obama from appointing a Supreme Court Justice. As is 30 states having GOP trifectas and, as a result, being managed illiberal democracies where the will of the majority of voters do not actually matter. As is having to get a court order to keep polls open in majority Black districts in Mississippi because they ran out of ballots within an hour of opening and still never had enough ballots for everyone to vote. As is every extreme gerrymander and extreme voter suppression scheme.
All the extra hard work everyone has to do to just barely eke out competitive victories in the US is not a sign of a vibrant liberal democracy. All of this extra effort and work and expense are signs that the US has already gone past the tipping point. Far too may people – elected officials, the news media, elites, notables – either refuse to recognize what has happened and continues to happen or refuse to admit it out of fear of what happens when they actually tell everyone the truth.
The US was an imperfect pluralistic liberal democracy from the late 1960s through to 2016. Prior to that at the municipal, state, and federal level it was an illiberal managed democracy. The backlash to the period that was the late 1960s through 2016 was strong, relentless, under reported, ignored, pooh poohed, and, as a result, succeeded in pushing the US back into what it has been for the majority of its existence. Which is not a liberal democracy.
I was unhappy with that response. Not because I don’t believe it’s true but because I think it is.
Later I read an essay by Josh Marshall at TPM that struck me as a piece of the same puzzle clicking into place. It didn’t seem that way at first because the topic of the essay is Elon Musk and his frivolous lawsuit against Media Matters.
But then Marshall mentioned how an agent of an illiberal state, the crooked attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, slithered forth to help Musk silence a media outlet. And how other agents of illiberal managed democracy states followed suit. That’s when it clicked:
This isn’t merely opportunistic. Of all the “ideas” and “policies” backfilled into the fetid carcass of Trumpism this one stands out. That is the belief that the marketplace of ideas or the literal marketplace can no longer be relied on to keep America pure and right. The ‘culture’ is slipping away. What is necessary is to gain state power and use that power to coerce culture and society back in a conservative direction. With all the Trumpite ‘think tanks’ and organizations popping up to support a second Trump term, this is the one overriding idea and aim: state power to change the direction of society and culture.
Certainly conservative principles to the contrary were as often as not in the past honored in the breach. But the change is real. It means new kinds of state action and a much more antagonistic relationship with major elements, though by no means all, of the business community. But most important. and underlying all the rest, it is premised on a basic belief that conservatism is not popular. Cultural and social change left to their own devices are running against it. State intervention is required to change it.
We’ll see that in abundance if Trump retakes the presidency next year. We’ll continue to see it at the state level even if he doesn’t.
In both scenarios, on every front, the hard-right is leveraging state power to undermine democracy. Speaking only for myself, I don’t think it’s too late to tip the balance back — to recover the imperfect pluralistic liberal democracy that prevailed from the late 1960s until 2016.
But I also don’t think it’s pessimism to acknowledge that it’s going to be a long, hard slog to do so and that the outcome is uncertain. In fact, I think acknowledging that is essential because if we can’t accurately define the stakes, if we treat this as business as usual, we’ve already lost.
I’m probably preaching to the choir here. I suspect most of us feel in our bones — and have for years now — that the country is on a knife’s edge. That feeling didn’t go away when Biden was inaugurated, and it won’t dissipate if, dog willing, he’s inaugurated for a second time.
Some of us are already living in authoritarian fiefdoms within a federal system where democracy is increasingly tenuous. If we can’t begin to turn that around at every level, the most chilling slogan from the flailing DeSantis campaign, “make America Florida,” may come true regardless of what happens to the ridiculous Pudd’n Boots himself. Let’s not let that happen, okay?
Open thread.
Chetan Murthy
Well-said, BC. Well-said. Thank you for so clearly declaring what’s at stake.
satby
Great, thought provoking post Betty, thank you. I also hope it’s not too late to turn it around.
H.E.Wolf
I agree. Let’s not let that happen. And it won’t, if we persevere as Sherrilyn Ifill describes below.
“I don’t know of anything in the history of Black people in this country in which I’ve read some account in which it ended with, ‘and then they gave up.’ That’s just not what we do. I know we work for the future of our children and our grandchildren and their children.” – Sherrilyn Ifill, 2020.
Baud
Agree with everything. I think the believe that if they can use the state to force people to change, they won’t get much resistance because the people want to change and are looking for leaders who will drive it.
Kind of a domestic version of “we will be greeted as liberators.”
Baud
@H.E.Wolf:
Nice quote.
Juju
That feeling of being on a knife’s edge did go away for me, with the inauguration, but returned when I saw the picture of Kevin McCarthy kissing the Cheeto dusted turd’s ring at Mar a Lago.
cain
@Baud:
The change they are driving is basically state supported white male patriarchy. It’s to turn back the clock. I dont’ think people are going to give up the rights over the past 80 years that we’ve fought.
But also to make it happen they would have to also ignore every judicial ruling as well that allowed us to have those rights.
Baud
@cain:
They’ll just change those rulings.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I agree with this completely. I think the thing that has consistently frustrated me about the anti-Democratic party leftists is that they would be the first ones beaten or imprisoned if the fascists have their way. I don’t know how they can’t get this. If everything blows apart, they won’t get a socialist paradise. They will lose their freedom or their lives.
MattF
The real RW plan for abortion policy is to stop being ‘nice’ about it. Put those images of aborted fetuses on billboards and on TV. Put people in jail. Use the power and resources of the state to make people think twice about exercising their rights.
Professor Bigfoot
I am very much reminded of Redemption: the backlash against Reconstruction after the end of the Civil War.
Democrats are now perceived as the party of Black people, and are being attacked both literally and physically in the same way “Democrats” attacked “Republicans,” 1865-1876.
Or to put it more simply, the way conservatives attacked liberals.
narya
@cain: One of the taglines of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast is “Stare decisis is for suckers,” and they back that up, often, by showing in detail how the current court just makes shit up when they want to overturn/ignore a precedent. And, really, Dobbs should bring that home to people if nothing else does. They also make up doctrines (“major questions”), and they have been insisting on “historical” precedent, especially around gun laws, in ways that are just insane. The one good thing about all of their corruption is that it is bringing negative attention in ways that their batshit crazy decisions are not (other than Dobbs). Frankly, if they’d done with Dobbs what they’ve done w/ the VRA–step by step, carving pieces away–the outrage would be more muted, I fear
ETA: and the 4th Circuit just overturned a MD handgun licensing law, thanks to the SCOTUS decision.
CarolPW
@MattF:
I fucking wish they would put actual photos of the most frequently aborted fetuses on billboards. They look like bits of cotton balls.
piratedan
@Professor Bigfoot: I can see the parallels where liberals are the new “abolitionists”, which is to say, allies in name, and in deed, but not as constant and steadfast and somewhat divided on the details.
bbleh
Agree with pretty much all of it, but I’d suggest two other things.
One is, the Right have been working the legitimate levers of democracy hard for a long time. It’s no accident that a lot of state legislatures, and county councils/boards/whatever, and even school districts, went pretty hard-right over the past few decades — let’s say since the Gingrich era, plus or minus. They’ve been whipped into a fear-frenzy for decades — we all know by whom and via what changing cast of issues — and they’ve organized / been organized, and they’ve responded. And the result is legislatures that now have ample power, which they are happy to use, to subvert democracy entirely by things like gerrymandering, and state officials who are happy use powers of the state to intimidate, suppress, and harass political opponents (and legislatures who won’t stop them). Like it or not, we got caught napping (yeah yeah, shame on us for assuming that our political opponents wouldn’t be willing to subvert democracy overtly), and we’re still playing catch-up.
The other — somewhat countervailing — is that, in my humble opinion as an Old, the electorate have been particularly prone to being manipulated by the Right in the last few decades because they/we skew old, which often means technologically unsophisticated (social media are terra incognita for very many of them; to be on Facebook is almost the height of sophistication), increasingly closed-minded (I find many of my contemporaries are simply bewildered by even the concept of Trans people), and, yes, easily scared. Combine that with the rapid economic changes that have left many smaller towns essentially large-scale retirement communities / future ghost towns, and you have a big chunk of reliable voters who are prone to revanchism and authoritarianism. And they/we are gonna start dying off pretty fast. (You’re welcome.) I think that alone will start to bring us back to the “normal” fraction of hard Rightists, which as has been widely observed hovers around 25 +/- 5% of the population in most industrialized democracies, which in turn will (FSM willing) cause the present tide of Crazy to recede.
featheredsprite
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Sister, Sister, Sister. I know that you are chafing under the reality that I may be different from you, but the Left as a whole is not the enemy. Many of us work very hard to GOTV and other projects.
I’m going to gently accuse you of prejudice because you don’t seem to be disturbed by the ant-Democratic Party centrists, like Manchin, Senema, Kennedy, etc.
We are family. [hug]
Alison Rose
@CarolPW: Or put up images of the results of literally any other extractive medical procedure. What do these people think a gall bladder or kidney or uterus looks like plopped onto an exam table? Everything inside the human body will look nasty as fuck outside of it.
When I lived in SF and volunteered as a clinic escort at PP, our usual group of protestors were pretty chill. They’d sit across the street knitting and reading the Bible, and their signs typically had the sort of “fetus as drawn by Anne Geddes and Thomas Kincaid together” quality. But sometimes extra protestors would show up and stand on our side with the gross-out signs and try to gloat in victory if we turned away from them, like that was A SIGN THAT WE KNEW ABORTION WAS WRONG!!!! rather than just “wow blood ew”.
Maxim
Yes, this is exactly what they want. To seize power at every level and use it to enforce their vision of a christianist white male supremacist country. They will lose even if they win — but let’s not let them win.
TheTruffle
I’m really glad David Hogg and other young activists are getting that state-level races are just as important as federal races. That’s why Dems were so happy with Virginia’s election results.
It’s also heartening that Moms for Liberty candidates lost in a big way. And after the Dobbs decision, I think it is a case of the dog catching the car for the GOP.
However, there are enough people who love the Abbotts, DeSantises, and Paxtons out there. I’m no optimist, but I do hope that there are enough pissed off voters for at least some portions of the country to regain some sanity. Whatever form the USA takes–or even if it stays the USA–there are millions of everyday people who don’t share the MAGA vision.
UncleEbeneezer
I hate this because I agree with every word. However I do take a lot of hope from looking at the way Black, Native/Indigenous People etc., have found the strength to keep fighting, so we can too.
oldster
Cf also the “Flight 93 Election” manifesto of Michael Anton, in which he argued that preventing Hillary Clinton’s election — and elevating Trumpism + patriarchy + white christian nationalism — was so important that it justified crashing the entire country if that’s what it took.
They are radical extremists. They know it and we know it. It’s a pity that the entire mainstream news system is dedicated to preventing average Americans from knowing it.
Martin
Yeah, this has been my view for a while now – perhaps poorly expressed. White christians have had cultural control of this country literally since the first settlers. They maintained it through slavery and genocide, through the suppression of any and all other cultures they decided was a threat. They had the benefit of a population majority to support it, and control of two political parties. They had absolute control over one after the Civil Rights movement, and soft control of the other until Obama. Not coincidentally, that’s when white christians fell into the population minority. But institutions lag demographics. The prior group in power holds that power for some time after. Sometimes a long time as minority groups figure out how to form coalitions to gain and wield power. This is why the GOP obsession with courts – federal courts preserve that power through lifetime appointments – you can get another generation or two of cultural veto power by filling the courts the right way. This is why USSC feels so off right now. We’re accustomed to courts and legislatures playing catch-up to public sentiment – popular support for gay marriage hits 60+% before the legislature gets on board – but we’re not accustomed to popular support trending in one direction and the court going the other way. That’s a sign something is very wrong. It’s a measure of authoritarianism – the right knows which way the culture is going and rather than respect that, they’ve put forward very deliberate obstacles to it.
I think everyone is pretty clear that nationally in popular terms, white christianity has lost control, but there are enough antidemocratic institutions in the US that you can hold on. The courts, but also the Senate if you can shift that white christian control to the state/regional level. So Texas and Florida picks up where the federal effort is failing. And well, that can go on for a long-ass time, as we saw in the fight against desegregation.
The issue is what the end-game is. If white christians are fighting to retain/restore cultural authority despite a falling share of the population, there are only a few mechanisms to do that:
3 isn’t going to happen, because outside of Russia and maybe Italy, almost everyone else has embraced some form of multicultural democracy. There just aren’t enough white supremacists running around any more. And the GOP is doing both 1 and 2. But the intensity of the effort keeps growing because they have so little room left to operate. White christians were estimated to be under 45% of the population by this upcoming election. They’re losing ground rapidly because they are age-stratified. They’re old, and each year removes a lot more from the ranks than it produces.
Interestingly, they are picking up a potential new group – young men, who are turning away from feminism. They aren’t buying the white christian business, but they are buying the patriarchy stuff. Expect the GOP to lean in harder to anti-women rhetoric, stripping women of voting rights, etc.
But because the end-games are so wildly unlikely, and their efforts aren’t backing off at all – they do truly, deeply believe that the US was created by the founders to be a white christian refuge, and that ‘all men are created equal’ should be correctly interpreted as ‘all white christian men are created equal’. We know that the founders didn’t actually believe all men, because they allowed slavery, and women couldn’t even vote for another century and half so their interpretation may not be entirely wrong from a historical view. And if they believe it that deeply, I don’t think they’ll just walk away from this. I think they’ll increasingly turn to violence when other efforts fail. That’s been the trajectory thus far, and I expect it’ll get a lot worse.
I don’t buy the ‘conservatives used to support democracy’ argument. I think they only supported democracy when the choice was two white christians, because both could be trusted to maintain white christian culture. I leave women out of this because I think patriarchy is even more deeply rooted and even if the US gets to something resembling a multicultural democracy, will still struggle with male domination tendencies. That’s a whole additional fight, that might get some relief in the process, but only some.
Jeffro
Democracy only works when a) the rule of law is upheld by all parties and b) the ‘feedback loop’ (of voting/participating) produces tangible results for the majority.
It’s important to the fascists that b) not happen, so it needs to be doubly important to us to point it out whenever, wherever it occurs. Otherwise, the fascists blame us for the gridlock and dysfunction, and then it’s easy for people to lose faith in the whole system.
Daoud bin Daoud
@CarolPW: They will post pictures of Uvalde-style young victims of gun violence and claim they’re photos of abortions.
Citizen Alan
@Juju: It never went away for me. As I see it, the basic problem we face–which is almost to horrible to even contemplate–is that slightly less than 50% of voters belong to a literal death cult. If Stephen King wrote a novel about literal demons taking over the country and infecting ordinary people and turning them into blood-thirsty soulless monsters, I don’t think I would feel any different about it than I do about the current GOP. I wish someone in the media would just pull the blinders away (maybe put on their Roddy Piper They Live sunglasses) and start polling questions like “Do you think Liberals should just be taken out and killed?” and see what sort of response they get.
Matt McIrvin
I interpret Adam as saying we’ve already lost. We can’t not let that happen, and what we need to do is arm up for civil war, which, sooner or later, is coming.
But that seems futile too. It’s like we say to the gun fetishists: you think your guns will actually work against an American military? A total war, conducted without restraint, these days, means aerial saturation bombing, maybe nuclear. Cities vaporized. So maybe we just get the hell out of North America if we can.
I live in Massachusetts, which is still a vibrant democracy, if anything more of one than it has been at any time in the past. But Massachusetts is small and militarily weak. One 300-kiloton warhead centered on Faneuil Hall or thereabouts could reduce us to a political irrelevancy in a millisecond.
It’s probably my Cold War kid cast of mind that this where my mind automatically goes.
BlueGuitarist
All the feels.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@featheredsprite: I know there are plenty of leftists who do good work and vote for the lesser of two evils, despite the fact it frustrates them. We are a big, disgruntled, but functional family. I am not criticizing all leftists.
My criticism is based on a few particular people I personally know who seemed to be laboring under the illusion that if the Democratic party went down in flames, the US would become a progressive paradise, instead of a fascist hellhole.
Mike in NC
The media recently reported with great fanfare that Gov. Abbott of Texas endorsed Trump, which came as a surprise to exactly nobody.
Hoodie
You’re probably correct regarding the aims of the right and the means they are using to achieve them, but I wonder if the project will run out of gas in achieving hegemony because this country simply does not have the type of ethnic or cultural homogeneity of other countries that have succumbed to fascism, e.g., there isn’t a deep and widespread Catholic or other conservative tradition or some notion of a motherland, etc. This is, of course, one reason why the right is so anti-immigration, as they instinctively know they’ll struggle trying to indoctrinating new waves of people coming into the country (hence Trump’s recent rants about making sure immigrants “share our religion’). And unlike, say, the old Soviet Union, you don’t have vast numbers of poor people who can be easily dominated using force. Places like California will only take so much shit before they think of heading to the exits, or at least start ignoring laws or Supreme Court rulings. Colorado basically ignored federal law on weed and got away with it, and other states have followed suit. A nationwide abortion ban might suffer a similar fate, e.g., some states might simply decide to ignore it. I think you can trace a lot of this to the spread of the TV/big-box form of evangelical Christianity in rural and exurban parts of the South, Midwest and West, but I think there are limits to how far that can permeate society as a whole. It gets magnified because of the fucked up structure of our federal system, e.g., Senate, electoral college, etc.
SuzieC
How do you think the Right might try to strip women of voting rights? I’ve wondered whether the Theocratic Six on the USCC might try to use the specious argument that the Founders didn’t allow women to vote, so the 19th Amendment is invalid. I’ll bet some ultra right lawyers are gaming it out.
Chetan Murthy
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: “nach Biden,
Palestineuns”Hungry Joe
Sobering. Depressing. And … accurate.
Fortunately I just experienced a soul cleansing: Saw (HEARD!) The National last week at the San Diego State amphitheater. Sublime, spectacularly smart and quirky Sad-Dad power rock. Audience was in ecstasy. (Not “Ecstasy.” Although …) Singer/songwriter Matt Berninger walked right by me during one of his crowd wanderings; I had a big, goofy smile on my face. Felt like I was ten years old.
They we’re on Colbert/Late Show last night.
CarolPW
@Daoud bin Daoud:
Right, the “post-birth” abortions potato-head is holding up our military promotions for.
Martin
I’ll add, there are ways that capitalism becomes instrumental to this system, and ways in which it’s a bit helpful to see how it’s going. When you see big national advertisers embrace same sex couples or mixed gender couples or a black couple where it would be equivalent to show a white couple, you can be pretty sure that economically, white christians have lost the game. Trust advertisers to follow the money. This is why the right is so upset about advertisers and are boycotting everything, because either advertisers are a measure of the state of the nation (not in their favor) or they are showing preference for minorities because [insert conspiracy of how liberals are bullying multinational corporations – shorthanded as ‘woke’]. And because they so deeply believe that they MUST be the cultural majority of the nation, because that’s what this nation was intended to be, they always go with the latter. They always assume that they’re being cheated, because they cannot accept that they have lost cultural control.
I think this is why I’m so uneasy about Israel because its charter almost requires that they maintain jewish cultural control of the nation, which almost forces the nation toward the right, toward minoritarian policies if only out of fear that they will get outvoted. It’s unsustainable as it’s set up. I support the world being safe for Jews, but Israel is almost predetermined to slip toward fascism unless they work extremely hard to fight it.
But capitalism’s ability to concentrate economic power in the hands of people favored by the system – almost exclusively white christian men – is another way that cultural power is preserved past the point it should be lost. Musk can push against multicultural democracy for a long fucking time with that kind of cash, which is exactly why GOP strategists pushed for him to buy Twitter, because social media is one of the places where minorities can express themselves – unlike TV where you probably need to get some white christian male’s permission to produce a show, or air a segment, or even invite on a guest. Eventually that’ll break, but it’ll take a while. Social media is permissionless – anyone can create an account and express their cultural view. That’s pretty dangerous to the right who increasingly rely on those permission systems to retain control.
zhena gogolia
I agree with this:
It’s not too late. We have to get Biden/Harris elected at all costs.
Chetan Murthy
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: It’s hard to tell how many of them are there. (some of) The Squad have not been covering themselves with glory of late. As if TFG will do better for Palestine than Biden will. As if. I read that a lot of young people don’t see a difference between Biden and TFG. And …. I’m just …. my flabber is gasted.
I want to believe that there are very few of these idiots. And hell, I’m far to the left of Biden on most issues, so sure, I’m voting strategically. Hell, if Bernie hadn’t been such a goddamn idiot when it came to choosing friends/spokespeople/campaign leadership, I might have supported him. But I vote strategically, b/c I don’t like tire rims and anthrax. A chain of thought that, from reporting, seems to be beyond a lot of the leftier-than-thou.
KrackenJack
The politicians are the symptom. The network of billionaires and corporations funding conservative caused and spreading propaganda are the real danger.
hrprogressive
Whenever you hear Alito or their ilk talk about “Originalism” in their logic,
Understand that what they mean is they want this country to look as it originally did.
Where only white men, of means, had any say in how anything was run.
All the memes about “turning back the clock” don’t go far enough.
These people want to completely erase the entirety of the progress – flawed and imperfect as it is – this country had made in the couple of centuries it has existed.
They don’t, and never have, wanted “full participatory democracy”. Ever.
They Want to Rule, not Represent.
And, as much as a lot of left of center spaces don’t wanna hear it, I agree with the poster above me who mentioned preparing oneself for violent conflict. I fear it is practically inevitable, at this point. No amount of “voting blue” is likely to stop that, I’m afraid.
Will
The reason I am depressed is because I am not sure if the fight is worth it. The GOP is a party of complete shit and hate. The only freedom of speech they care about is their speech, if it’s not what they agree with, then it needs to be shut down because of freedom or something. Not to be whataboutism, but I see the same signs starting to pop up for Democrats. They are like fifteen years behind the GOP, but the signs are there. Because I ask questions about Israel/Hamas, I’ve got someone that I’ve blocked on Twitter that will make a new account every now and then to just randomly start responding to my tweets that I want to murder every child and drink their blood because I am evidently pro genocide. I went to a local meeting for the Oakland neighborhood, I agreed with almost everything said except I spoke in favor of a commercial development that was going to bring a bunch of new units to the area. Was told afterwards when we were all leaving by a fellow attendee I should just keep my mouth shut cause a white man doesn’t understand the truth.
I just feel society at large is becoming unhinged. Everything is a life or death struggle and because of that we become radical and just learn to hate each other for the smallest of differences.
Martin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: There are leftists that think that anti-authoritarianism or anti-capitalism is a goal rather than a process. If you listen to any of the people who actually study and advocate for leftist policies, they are unanimous that this is a process with an indeterminate goal. Leftism is like having clean floors – it’s something you do forever, rather than something you achieve, and you always accept some sort of equilibrium, where you made it better knowing it’ll never be perfect.
Many leftists just want people to try. The act of trying matters.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh:
It’d be nice to think so, but I’m also haunted by the idea that they could simply start killing people by the millions to bring things back into line, by force. The seeming inability of the Crazy to organize anything might be a saving grace.
They thought COVID was going to do the trick. It seemed to oblige for about the first year or so before it turned on them instead, thanks to their terrible ideas about vaccines and public health.
And then, of course, there’s the antifeminist hate recruitment among young men. I don’t see that alone reversing the demographic tide–the people who use it as evidence that “demographics won’t save us” are never quantitative about it. But it’s a sign of a persistent chronic infection.
Chetan Murthy
@Will:
Two thoughts:
Sure, if I hadn’t seen the change in the 2022 and 2023 elections, and all the special elections, I’d still be pretty dour. But at least, it seems like we have a fighting chance. I was not convinced of this on 3 Nov 2021 (day after the VA gubernatorial).
TL;DR “It’s a damn sight cheaper than becoming an exile/refugee”.
Martin
@SuzieC: They’ve already established that standard in Bruen – the 2nd amendment can only be interpreted using pre-civil war historical facts. Now apply that to the 19th amendment. Apply it to the 14th and 15th amendments.
I mean, Bruen will find itself on the list of worst Supreme Court decisions in time, but it’s a design pattern for what this court is looking to do. They can’t make the 19th unconstitutional, but they can make it unenforceable.
Matt McIrvin
@SuzieC: Some of the neo-Confederate types basically believe all the Constitutional amendments after the first 12 are invalid.
TheTruffle
@Will: I hear ya. I’m not going to say, “I’m not sure the fight is worth it.” But I sometimes wonder if this country will go the way of North and South Korea.
Chetan Murthy
@TheTruffle:
The fight to define that dividing line
willwould be cataclysmic.Citizen Alan
@Martin: And yet … when an older, mostly moderate Democratic President achieves more left wing policy goals than any actual “Leftist” in my lifetime–from ending the Forever War to guiding us through the Pandemic to huge reductions in poverty especially among minorities to the biggest labor gains in decades–the guiding voices of “The Left” just bitch even harder. I will never forgive the people on the Left who demagogued Hillary over being “warlike” but don’t give Biden the slightest credit for getting us out of Afghanistan. Never forgive.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: Absolutely. I am an optimist because I think we can and will do it. I have never said it wouldn’t require hard work.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@TheTruffle:
The fight is worth it.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: I’ll add, other challenges like climate change cannot omit the US. Yes, it might be nicer in Norway, but Norway will still drown if the US doesn’t come around. The US cannot fall to this.
SuzieC
@Martin: I wonder whether the Bruen majority would dare go that far. I believe they would if Trump is elected.
Suzanne
@cain:
Yeah, they’ll do that. Don’t fool yourself.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: I say this as an expatriate Southerner — the North should have killed us all. The Confederates were an evil people, and nothing would ever make them and their descendants give up trying to destroy America.
Chetan Murthy
@Citizen Alan:
How does it feel? Are you getting used to it? Isn’t it great? I know that when I have to visit TX (or other Souther states, e.g. FL), I just don’t feel ….. like I can breathe, the way I do when I’m in SF (and CA).
bbleh
@Will: yes the fight is worth it yes yes YES! What’s the alternative? Give up?!? That ain’t gonna result in a nice quiet peace (except perhaps that of the graveyard, at least for a lot of us, and no I am not exaggerating.) It ain’t pretty or easy or guaranteed of success, but the alternative is worse.
I almost can’t conceive of what the Ukrainians have managed. Surely we can at least go some more rounds against a bunch of domestic Fascists, a large number of whom likely would struggle to get out of their chairs.
@Matt McIrvin: as noted, there will always be a hard Right, and it will always include a large number of woman-hating young men; to quote Mr. Natural, ’twas ever thus. And it will include religiostic fanatics, and angry Olds, and sociopathic plutocrats, and a large number of all of them will happily entertain the idea of mass extermination of their enemies, who are legion and who oppress them continually!! (I admit to reveling a bit in how I live in their minds.)
Fortunately, such people have always been among us in large-ish numbers, and the Republic has survived. We get back to more of a historical norm, I’ll be a lot happier. (THEN we can worry about the collapse of the Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves, the inundation of the coasts, the mass starvation and forced migration, the resulting political upheavals and wars, and all of that.)
You may call me Mr Sunshine.
Josie
@Mike in NC:
What they failed to point out is that Abbott went to the border with Trump partially to cover up the fact that he lost big time in his fight for school vouchers. The Dems in the Texas House, combined with Republican reps from rural districts, held together to defeat his voucher amendment to the public school funding bill. This is kind of a big deal in Texas and bodes well for working across the aisle on important issues. It also enlarges the wedge between the two sides of the Republican party here.
BlueGuitarist
I just clicked on the Four Directions Montana thermometer and contributed $25 which through WaterGirl’s organizing skill and the generosity of a Balloon-Juice angel, will become $100 for Native American organizers putting “moccasins on the ground” to get out the vote in Montana to help Jon Tester hold a crucial US Senate seat and Monica Tranel pick up a US House seat.
No one should contribute more than they can afford, but lots of small contributions is how we balance a few large contributions on the other side.
Chetan Murthy
Well, Cassidy Hutchinson’s journey has brought her to a good place: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/21/2207220/-Cassidy-Hutchinson-keeps-it-simple-A-vote-for-Trump-is-a-vote-against-our-democracy-s-survival?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_2&pm_medium=web
ETA: I don’t like that she’s leaving the door open to endorsing a GrOPer candidate (implicit in her first sentence) but at least she finishes on the right side.
Sister Golden Bear
Speaking of which, Florida Republicans are giving yet another preview of what they’ll do nationally if they gain power.
cmorenc
@cain:
…The current 6-3 RE SCOTUS lineup is perfectly willing to ignore, perversely distort into a pale shadow of its former intended self, or outright overturn said previously established rights.
For example:
– overturn of roe v wade
– near-nullification of voting rights act, contrary to the clear language of the 14th & 15th amendments
– piece-by-piece dissolution of the separation of state and religion, despite clear language of 1A and “original” history of why said separation clause was written int the 1st amendment
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: How very free speechy of them.
SiubhanDuinne
@bbleh:
“The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.”
— Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
An utterly different context, but this line was the first thing I thought of when I read your comment.
Betty Cracker
@Citizen Alan: Oh FFS. Piss off with that histrionic horseshit.
Albatrossity
I’m beginning to think that we should abandon the term “Trumpism” and replace it with a more accurate term.
Fascism.
Hungry Joe
I have Horseshoe in-laws who continue to insist that Biden is as bad as Trump, Elizabeth Warren is a corporate tool, Bernie is a sellout, and Obama is a war criminal. They’ve been all in for (in order) pre-“sellout” Bernie, Jill Stein, Tulsi Gabbard (???), and now RFK Jr. Any evidence contradicting their garbled reality is Deep State propaganda. They’re even convinced that the government controls the weather. I see interviews with nonsensical Trumpers and think, They’ve got nothing on my guys.
Betty Cracker
@Albatrossity: Agreed.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: Everybody needs to have a connection with Russia for a few decades.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Golden Bear: Stomach-turning. This is also the roots of the Ukraine invasion.
BlueGuitarist
@cmorenc:
Re: “The current 6-3 RE SCOTUS lineup”
This is the only time in US history when a SCOTUS majority has been nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote (all Rs except Thomas) or confirmed by Senators representing a minority of the people (all Rs except Roberts) – the Electoral College, the US Senate, and the Supreme Court working to enable minority rule.
Fight for 15! – for which we need Democratic majorities in House and Senate and Biden re-elected.
Also, too, DC statehood.
CarolPW
@SiubhanDuinne: And that made me fondly remember the Peter Beagle book.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Golden Bear: Fucking hell!
AnonPhenom
…we always knew they never believed this, from their obsession with what people did in the privacy of their own homes to insisting their favorite holy book should be the last word in all matters, they only objection has been that they weren’t the only ones allowed to wield the ‘cudgel’.
pat
Just look at Wisconsin. 50% Dem, 50% repukes, basically, but through gerrymandering the legislature has majorities in both house and they are not going to give that up! They have already talked about impeaching the woman elected to the “supreme” court because she is a democrat.
Geminid
I heard on the radio that the head of Binance pleaded guilty today to crimes relating to money-laundering, and the company has been asessed $4 billion in penalties. Attorney General Garland made the announcement.
Burnspbesq
Interesting juxtaposition with an article from this morning’s Austin paper. Apparently two-thirds of Texas residents live in the four major metro areas. One wouldn’t mistake Dallas – Fort Worth for Santa Monica, or Houston for Boston. But maintaining right-wing crackpot control without extreme anti-democratic measures will become increasingly difficult. Abbott’s inability to get “school choice” through the legislature will likely trigger additional moves in that direction.
Next spring’s Republican primary is likely to be bloody. But Dems are poorly positioned to take advantage.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Chetan Murthy: I respect where you are coming from.
BlueGuitarist
@Hungry Joe:
Yikes.
Do they not see from his actions that Biden is the most pro-worker president in US history or do they hate the working class?
Harrison Wesley
First they came for the registered Democrats/And because I was not a registered Democrat, I said nothing…………then they came for the purist ideologues/And there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin
@Citizen Alan: Of course they do. What part of ‘it’s a process’ don’t you get?
Do you think that those in power back off once they accumulate power? Of course not. That’s why Marx called it a struggle, not a goal, because it never ends. Ever. There will always be those that seek to consolidate power and they have to always be resisted.
They would argue that Democrats care more about the pat on the back, on ‘scoring a win’ even if that requires conceding a lot to call it a win. A lot of people here are pretty invested in calling the IRA a win, and in some ways it is, but it’s also a hell of a lot of taxpayer subsidization for one of the US’s largest industries (that unions just striked against) with the purpose of entrenching that industry through subsidies to the upper half of society over alternatives that inarguably would have been better for the climate, for low income people, and for the economy overall. But a lot of Democrats wave off that criticism because it makes it feel like less of a win, and they want the win more than they want the things they say they want the IRA to do. And as a result a lot of the time Democrats get their win and then just fucking walk off into the woods, ignoring that the ‘win’ didn’t actually achieve the things they set out to achieve. It might have moved the needle a bit more in that direction, but that’s not the time to walk away. How many times have Democrats gotten a political morsel for people of color and then been shocked that people of color stayed home in an election because Democrats rejected every person of color on the ballot, or opposed something that would have had a greater impact but would have made the lives of middle class white liberals marginally less comfortable? The IRA is taken as a big policy win, but the majority of the money in it goes to upper middle class suburban whites though the EV subsidies. That doesn’t help anyone in inner cities, or people who can’t afford a new car (over ⅓ of the Democratic voting base), or generally people who live in multifamily housing. Helps me though – in the suburbs, in a house with a garage, and enough wealth to buy a $50K+ car. And it does a worse job of climate mitigation than transit, which would have helped more of the democratic base and helped the environment more, and provided a societal investment for the future, rather than a personal, private investment in a vehicle. But man, white middle class liberals love the shit out of EVs, and they gifted themselves a big ‘ol coupon for one and masked it as something else completely. Shit like that is why leftists get mad, and why even when Democrats do get a win, they keep yelling – because it was in many ways actually counterproductive.
Burnspbesq
@cain:
They have no problem with that. See, e.g., the ridiculous Eighth Circuit decision stating that there is no private right of action under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Professor Bigfoot
@Martin:
Yep, that’s what the history of Reconstruction and the Redemption shows us.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: Reconstruction could have had way sharper teeth but you don’t genocide your way to democracy. That’s some of the thinking that got us in the mess in the first place.
Dan B
Bibi has stated that the war will continue. I don’t have major media confirmation yet. He would be against a cease fire.
raven
Keep your powder dry.
VFX Lurker
For what it’s worth, Postcards to Voters recently lit the Bat Signal for a special election in Florida on Dec 5th. I mailed out six postcards this morning, and I hope to write more tonight. It all helps.
Professor Bigfoot
@Chetan Murthy: And it would be a source of *constant* warfare.
Bleeding Kansas redux.
Tim C.
1) The last few days have been a hit on my mental health. That’s not a complaint to anyone and I appreciate Adam and Betty for being clear and honest about what we face at an electoral and legal level. It’s a good thing with a capital G to do that. But I want to encourage anyone doom scrolling right now to take a mental health break if they need it and breathe deep. The months and years and even decades ahead may not be good, but you, yes you! reading this is already more aware and helpful than about 95% of your fellow citizens. Your anxiety and depression are weapons being used against you. Those feelings are their weapons.
2) The greatest thing you can do isn’t directly political. It’s to be kind and good and engage whenever you are up to it. That’s always true. It’s to check in on your fellow patriots who want and desire America to be a real democracy and not slide back into the darkness of the past. So help them. Check on them.
3) Beyond that, there’s nothing else I can offer, other people say it better and see it better. But please even if things get as dark as we fear, you can help in so many ways. Endure, survive, offer help and support to those they will try to hurt. And whenever one of “them” repents and comes to join us, do not turn them away. We will need every ally we can get.
BR
@Martin:
I wonder if anyone is actively trying to stop the tide of young men getting sucked into the various new forms the alt right has morphed into these days. I would expect they’d have to be met where they are, which is on social media and gaming platforms (which are increasingly one and the same) among other places, and so it might be hard to see such outreach / counter-narratives from the outside. But is it even a focus of any Dem-aligned groups?
Geminid
@Dan B: This prospective ceasefire has always been understood to be a temporary one of four to five days duration, so this is nothing Netanyahu probably was talking about the war continuing when this ceasefire ends.
But I think the ceasefire will be agreed to by the Cabinet if it hasn’t been already. That doesn’t mean it will come off though. We probably won’t know for a day. The first hostages are supposed to be handed over
Professor Bigfoot
@Citizen Alan: I’ve often said that if every Confederate officer above the rank of colonel had been hanged as traitors, if Davis and Stephens and the rest of the high ranking political Confederates had swung, we wouldn’t be dealing with this shit today.
Subsole
@cain:
I dunno. A great many people with more knowledge and vastly deeper experience than me keep pointing out that this or that community is going to abandon the coalition and stay home. Not just some hothead online, actual professionals with lots of experience of the wider world.
That, more than anything, makes me feel American democracy is finished. You cannot win a war if your army cannot be depended on. And I keep hearing that our army is perfectly content to hand the world over into fascism because all of their needs were not yet met to the finest particular two years before they cropped up.
And you know what? I hope their spite is a wonderful tonic to their spotlessly righteous souls as everyone shuffles off to the camps.
Hope I live long enough to choke their stupid fucking asses with it while we’re all assembling hinges in the Patriot Aryan Jesus Bible Labor Camp.
Yes. I know. The polls are unreliable. I am not talking about polls. I am talking about the words out of these people’s mouths.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Martin:
And I’m sure you get that the tiny morsels are sometimes the only things that can get done because they are the only thing that can get through virulent right wing opposition. I think those party folks would like credit for trying, which they rarely receive.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud:
Yep, they are doing just that. However, cain is also correct: it’s nearly a full-time job of the USSC to ignore precedent.
Baud
@Subsole:
Don’t trust them. Give people the opportunity to do the right thing.
ColoradoGuy
What gives me pause is the new alignment of spanish-language Univision TV with Trump, combined with a corporate takeover of local affiliates newsrooms, so all the Univision outlets follow the Trump line. At a stroke, the largest Spanish-language network in North America is now Fox Spanish.
And both Netanyahu and Hamas are on the side of Putin more than democracy, and both thrive on chaos and violence (as fascists do everywhere). Is the KGB/FSB behind all this, or is this just the usual Fascist Alliance working together? There seem to be a lot of coincidences here.
japa21
The subtitle of this excellent post should be..
And Why Trump Doesn’t Matter
As you have definitively outlined, this really is a ground up problem. If Trump hadn’t won in 2016, it might have been more controllable. But his election basically gave the red light to all the mini Mussolini’s ad Hitler’s in state and local governments to have their authoritarian orgasms. There is not a single one of the candidates for the Republican nomination who don’t believe the basic concepts and wouldn’t try to install an authoritarian government.
The problem is that, if Trump died tomorrow, whoever came out on too in the primaries would have an excellent chance of beating Biden, because a good portion of the voters would say, well, the big danger is gone. In actuality, it would actually be magnified.
This post should be in every newspaper in the country and on every website of every television and radio station.
bbleh
@Subsole: … this or that community is going to abandon the coalition and stay home.
Based on what I’ve seen and read, I disagree. Exit polls — polls of actual voters — suggest that the idea that democratic governance itself is at risk is salient in voters’ minds. Reproductive rights — an issue that affects some of us very strongly but that most others arguably could ignore — have been highly salient in multiple elections, which speaks to solidarity. And notably to my mind, there has been broad and sustained pushback against hostility to Trans people, a small and to many people unfamiliar group that right-wing political operatives considered easy to marginalize and target, which pushback perhaps was not as broad or forceful as we might wish but is a welcome change from the way the LGBTQ population generally was treated as little as a few decades ago, even by Democratic Presidents. Democrats are not abandoning our people.
Also, do not put much credence in carefully staged and highly publicized events designed to illustrate “cracks in the Democratic coalition,” nor to media reports eager to exploit them (eg the recent Univision fluffing of TIFG hosted by network operatives in Mexico City). Look instead at Democratic victories recent elections, beginning in 2018 — 5 years ago! — and continuing almost uninterrupted since then. Look in particular at the resounding defeat of the most extreme Republican candidates (eg the routing of “Moms For Liberty” candidates for multiple school boards.) We’ve won, and won, and won again. Don’t worry; fight!
Omnes Omnibus
@bbleh: Eh, worry if you must. Panic if you have to, but fight anyway.
Chetan Murthy
@Professor Bigfoot: @Chetan Murthy: I’m sure you’ve seen my spittle-flecked rants about The South (and specifically East Incest, TX). But ….. there’s simply no way what you wish for could have come to pass in any way, shape, or form. No way, no how. Martin van Creveld [well-respected military historian/military affairs guy] laid it out: short of absolute genocide of the white population of the South (which the North was most definitely not prepared for) there was no way to impose the North’s will on them, since the white Southern population insisted on continued subjugation of their Black population. If the North had tried, what it would have gotten is an ineradicable guerilla war lasting generations.
What I took away from his work, is that there’s only one way to solve the problem: out-populate them. And on that tack …. well, immigration is our friend. Yes, some of those immigrants think “I got here the right way” or “I’m one of the good ones” or “I’m an honorary white” but overall, nonwhite immigrants to the Red areas are going to turn them Blue. The trick is keeping the natives from, y’know, deciding to start a civil war before the process is complete.
Martin
@BR: There are groups, but they don’t really have any solutions to offer.
The strongest thesis I’ve seen for why this is happening is that men were promised something by society – a career that could support a family, a dependent partner, a large degree of agency in their lives, and those things are either not assured, or have been taken away. So having been lied to by society – by cultural tropes in media, by advertising, by politicians – they either turn left and recognize they’ve been lied to or they they turn right and demand the thing they were promised, with guns serving as an adequate agent to reclaim agency.
This is one reason why I dislike a lot of popular media – it often unintentionally feeds into this sort of stuff. And even seemingly innocuous shows like Big Bang Theory intentionally fed into it.
bbleh
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m fine with panic; what I don’t want is despair.
Omnes Omnibus
@bbleh: We are on the same page.
japa21
@bbleh:
To paraphrase Adam “Despair is not a strategy.”
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh:
Yes, but half of them think we are the ones trying to destroy it, and the authoritarians are the real guarantors of democracy.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh:
that made Paul Campos freak. out.
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie:
A couple of thermonuclear warheads on the San Francisco Bay Area, three or four on Greater Los Angeles, maybe one on Sacramento for good measure, and they’re done.
Of course they wouldn’t really need to go nuclear–the point is that California can’t beat the United States in an actual armed conflict, particularly not if the US is led at the time by people who don’t have any concerns about nation-building or looking like the good guys. They don’t even really have an army like, say, Ukraine does.
People think I’m nuts when I start talking like this. Maybe I am.
Chetan Murthy
@bbleh: I want to make it clear that I am not despairing *now*. But I was in early 2022.
First, imagine that Russia had in fact taken Kyiv (and organized Ukrainian armed force had collapsed) and had implemented their genocidal plans (including filtration camps for pretty much anybody who so much as *twitched*, and killing anybody of any stature whatsoever — political, intellectual, cultural, even just village elders): sure, there’d have been a resistance, but there would also have been a mass exodus of Ukrainians into the EU: to stay in Ukraine would have been a death sentence.
People have to have *some* reason to hope that sacrificing their lives will matter: stupidly throwing them away when there is no reason whatsoever to hope isn’t something that people usually do in large numbers. So when you say that you don’t want despair, I would put it to you that if conditions are sufficiently dire, then you’re going to get despair. If we end up the timeline where TFG wins in November 2024, and the Blue States haven’t stood up in open defiance, I think you’re going to see a lot of people voting with their feet, *regardless of the cost*.
We look at Ukraine and think “gosh, they resisted, why can’t we?” and it’s been pointed out that in fact, Syrians tried that, and …. were crushed like ….. well, crushed. The difference was that there was *organization* to the resistance in Ukraine (Ukraine’s government and civil society, but most importantly, their government and armed forces, which did *not* fall apart). If all the Blue State governments just roll over and play dead, there won’t be that organization, and [as we say about gunhumpers] anybody who tries to resist will find out that a well-trained Army fire team can take them apart in minutes.
If you don’t want despair, then you need to show people that there’s a reason to hope. For me personally, it was the 2022 election (and then, of course, the 2023 election).
You cannot ask people to fight when it’s a lead-pipe cinch they will be defeated and die.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Go outside. Play with a pet. Take a deep breath.
Omnes Omnibus
Well, it isn’t.
The Truffle
@Chetan Murthy: How so? A bunch of red staters are itching for a national divorce and secession is in the platform of the Texas GOP. This is one of the most conservative states in the US where a major party has it in their platform.
Basically, if unless you are a white, straight Christian, you are in danger in these types of states. They want to leave and if that happens, they are taking you with them.
I have friends—a same sex couple—moving out of Texas for the reason I mentioned above.
Basically, the Trumps could become the Kim dynasty of the West.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Once again, for the economy seats.
JaySinWA
@Daoud bin Daoud:
They were retroactive abortions. Against the will of the parents. Post birth abortions if you will. Abortions that conservatives refuse to do anything to stop.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Me too. He says we’re beyond the tipping point.
If I bump this glass on the table next to me, and it goes past the tipping point, it falls over and my drink spills out all over the table. Once it’s past the tipping point, it’s gone.
I don’t believe we are past the tipping point. The bad guys are obviously in control of a lot of our institutions, from the Supreme Court to far too many of our state legislatures. So it’s going to be a difficult fight to hold on to our country and bring it the rest of the way back. But as Gandalf said, we don’t get to choose what sort of time we live in: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Chetan Murthy
@The Truffle: Two thoughts:
Again, I left TX and have made it clear I will not set foot again without a large personal security detail. I make sure to tell brown friends why I left, what damage growing up in that hellhole did to me, and why they should never subject their children to it. So I agree with you about your friends.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus:
As it turns out, I agree with you. But it wasn’t so clear on election night in 2021. At least, not to me. It wasn’t even clear to me that “we outnumber them.”
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
One last extraordinary intervention can often prevent the worst from happening, even in these situations.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: I know. I was here. I read what you wrote. I disagreed.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m glad you were right, and am putting my donations behind that position. Rather than to preparing for emigration.
Subsole
@Mike in NC: Man, I am going to laugh myself to death when that miserable fucker goes home to Satan.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Adam is an expert in the things in which he has expertise. On this particular subject, he is just another person talking on the internet.
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie:
This is why “white” was invented. It’s a quasi-ethnic identity our fascists can use that is completely synthetic and be expanded to accommodate enough people to have a bare majority.
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: Sorry, but maybe you are. A lot of those guys who would be dropping bombs are from California. The fallout from the bombs would contaminate half the country. The bigger risk than some sort of wingnut dictatorship is chaos, the breakup of states and cities from states. Sure, you could have, for example, some sort of fascist regime across the South, but it would wracked by widespread civil disorder (in its cities) and economic dislocation because of disruption of interstate commerce. This isn’t a small country like Hungary.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
The military will be busy trying to figure out how to support themselves and their families when us bureaucrats who actually know how things work screw up the pay systems when they tell us they’re pushing us out the door, and those direct deposits cease. They aren’t going to attack California for free.
Subsole
@hrprogressive:
The New Axis ca, I think, best be understood as a Romanticist backlash to the Enlightenment.
Alito and his ilk are very much like Franco’s Carlist allies in the Spanish Civil War. They seek to save humanity from ‘the dangerous mania of thought.’
bbleh
@Chetan Murthy: well, not to regress into the elf-stuff again, but as Gandalf said, “despair is for those who see all ends; we do not.”
And it’s probably obvious, but my reason for mentioning the Ukrainians is that — as you suggest — if anyone had a reason to despair, it might have been they, and they did not.
I have stopped reading Steve M. precisely because I’m tired of Eeyorism. The rightists are enough of a problem. We have both reason and hope to fight, but I wish they for whom those aren’t enough wouldn’t actively undermine the rest of us.
bbleh
@lowtechcyclist: LOL, I *JUST* barely saved my nearly-full pint from tipping onto my keyboard.
It is a sign, I tells ya, a sign!
Martin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: A big criticism of the left against Democrats is that Democrats DEMAND that we always defer to a set of norms out of fear that Republicans will break those norms, when Republicans break those norms all the fucking time whether we defer to them or not. Democrat really want there to be this perfect machine that spits out good outcomes rather than have to do the messy work of contextualizing your efforts to the situation on the ground. So the claim of ‘this is all we can get’ falls on its face. Dobbs was an example of this because Democrats simply let Mitch McConnell deny Obama a USSC seat instead of fight for it. Why defer to norms when the norms are already broken. After the Senate said they wouldn’t confirm a candidate, Obama should have seated Garland anyway and fought it out rather than just deferring to McConnells norm breaking. It’s not like it could have resulted in a worse outcome. And Garland, then having been through that process, does the same goddamn thing with Trump lawbreaking after 1/6.
So Trump tries to steal an election and Democrats generally take Biden sitting in the WH as the victory, ignoring the risk of not holding accountable the people who set this up. Same problem back in 2008 with Obama not going after the bankers. Democrats are really committed to the bit that voters will decide, right up to the point that the fascists only allow half the country to vote, because Democrats didn’t throw every goddamn thing they had to stop the fascists.
Republicans are serious about this shit, and Democrats are not. I don’t mean to pick on Betty here, but this whole thread starts out with the realization that ‘you were serious about that?‘. Yes, they are absolutely bug fuck crazy serious about this being a white christian ethnostate. They have been serious about this my whole fucking life. The Speaker of the House hangs a white nationalist flag outside his office. The GOP is best case flirting with fascism or openly fascist.
And it’s not like this is particularly new to this community either. ‘Tire rims and anthrax’ is a recognition that you cannot compromise with the GOP. So you get morsels because you keep trying to compromise with them instead of trying to crush them. You want to change their mind, and they want you dead. What fucking outcome do you think you’re going to get? You can’t negotiate with fascists.
So the wildfire is coming, you’re scrambling looking for a mop, the leftist are screaming ‘what are you doing’ and your response is ‘I’m trying’. What the fuck do you mean you’re trying – it’s a wildfire – a mop won’t do shit. Wake the fuck up and recognize what’s actually coming and do something relevant to the problem.
Maxim
@ColoradoGuy: Oh, I hadn’t heard about that. That is very bad indeed.
Chetan Murthy
@bbleh:
They had a functioning government. I live in CA: as long as the CA state government stands in defiance of Teh Fash, I’m confident we’ll survive and eventually prevail. But if the state government goes supine, then there’s little that individuals can do.
The counterfactual is to imagine that RU had actually succeeded in bribing enough of the UA hierarchy to turn traitor. Then you’d have had no organized resistance, and they’d have been grass for RU’s lawnmower.
Captain C
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: When the Nazis rounded up the leftists, the Communists in the camps focused their energy on attacking the Socialists who were rounded up with them.
frosty
@Chetan Murthy: Especially since the dividing line is urban and rural and not on State or County lines. It makes it essentially impossible to split the USA. It would make Partition in 1947 look like a day in the park.
Subsole
@Matt McIrvin:
And they’re not entirely sold on the other 12, if we’re being blunt…
Subsole
@TheTruffle:
No. Rwanda.
Or the Congo.
Maybe Serbia.
Lebanon.
Not division. Splintering.
Subsole
@Citizen Alan:
This.
If The Unblemished Avatars of the Noble Proletarian are tired of getting tuned out, they could always, oh, I dunno, learn a different song.
Y’know, for novelty’s sake.
Because I gotta say: unceasing abuse always and forever? That crap makes a damn poor motivator. And for a lot of the Louder Left, that’s all politics is: an excuse to heap abuse on the Insufficiently Left.
Eyeroller
@Martin:
One big problem here is that most of our reliable voters are “normies” who love this bipartisan and “norms” crap.
The right labored for decades, grinding away, keeping its goals in sight, even in the face of losses. The left flounces off if Democrats are too nice or don’t throw enough bombs or don’t solve all problems in a week or two.
I think there’s been enough of a shift in the base that Democrats are moving to be more assertive, but there’s a reason for the “defensive crouch.”
Maxim
@Chetan Murthy:
I’m not endorsing genocide; but that’s very nearly what we got anyway.
@Martin:
You say intentionally, but on the topic of shows having unintended effects, my housemate rewatched The X-Files recently, and it struck me that the show’s wholehearted and repeated endorsement of conspiracy theories, as well as the notion that the government is part of the conspiracy / is lying to you, laid a ton of the groundwork for all the QAnon garbage we’re dealing with today.
Omnes Omnibus
No. A lot of Democrats insist on deferring to a set of norms because we believe that those norms have value. We don’t want to become a mirror image of the GOP even as we recognize that that does tie one of our hands behind our backs. Being the good guys isn’t always easy. I could go sentence by sentence through your comment disagreeing with each point, but I don’t enjoy typing as much as you do so I’ll just leave it with “I disagree.”
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: and why leftists argue that Democrats need to fight capitalism, because authoritarians will accrue power through media outlets and other critical parts of the economy and leverage that to get political power. See also: Twitter.
Even if you win politically, the mere existence of billionaires will threaten your ability to hold that win.
Subsole
@Tim C.:
Thank you for the kind and encouraging words. Hope you are in a better headspace.
lowtechcyclist
@Chetan Murthy:
We’ll see how eager the VA gunhumpers are to secede when they find out that nobody in Texas or West Virginia is getting any Federal money any more – no Social Security checks, no Medicare or Medicaid, highway construction stopped because no Federal dollars, etc.
Matt McIrvin
@Eyeroller: I’ve become much more partisan. That’s different from going further left, though by Democratic Party standards I was always pretty left.
I think a lot of the American left’s trouble is its centrifugal tendency: the centrist and the far-left wing both mistrust and disparage partisanship, even if it’s just to complain the DNC is not a wartime consigliere or whatever. They’re constantly threatening to split. And if anything the centrists are worse about it. They’re the ones whose elected politicians actually do sometimes defect from the party, not just in name.
The Republicans actually don’t have this problem, even when they’re at each other’s throats.
Matt McIrvin
@Maxim: I think the general left paranoia about Diebold and electronic election-rigging in the 2000s unintentionally fed into it too.
The thing is, most of the concerns were genuine. I don’t want elections carried out with electronic voting machines without a paper trail. (But I suspect the bigger issue with them was just that so many districts seem to use them to suppress the vote just by undersupplying certain precincts with machines so the lines get long. With paper ballots you can just add more cubbies.)
But you had people like Greg Palast bringing up actual issues but then giving every threat a maximalist interpretation to give the general impression that most elections were rigged, and a widespread belief that Kerry really won in 2004 because the tally disagreed with encouraging early exit polls, and people on the Internet using “One word. Diebold” as if it were a killer argument against anything you might want to assert.
The insistence that the DNC rigged the 2016 primary was that chicken sort of coming home to roost against the Democrats. And the Trumpist lie about Dominion Voting Systems is basically just the same thing with the parties flipped.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Norms are a form of mutual consent. They’re the result of all parties agreeing to play by the rules. It’s why a white line on a football field works – because everyone agrees what the line means. Once one team says ‘but that line didn’t actually stop me, so I’m free to keep going’, then the other team adhering to the norm just makes them idiots.
Once the norm is broken, it ceases to be – at all, whether you believe it has value or not. If you refuse to recognize that the norm only has value if all parties consent to the norm, then you are delusional.
The only question that matters is ‘how do I get the other party to consent to the norm again’. Usually it involves hurting them badly enough that they give in. That can be physically – bombing them. That can be economically – sanctions. That can be politically – sweeping them out of office, etc. But there’s a reason they don’t consent and you can’t simply choose to not engage with that, which Democrats do all the fucking time because it’s a hard thing to engage with. It’s a VERY hard thing to accept that the other group has rejected democracy. If fascists win, you don’t remove them by voting, because that norm goes away. You only remove them by actually killing them. With a gun, with a trigger you pull. If that sounds horrifying, and it should, then pick a different path.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”
Adhering to a norm that no longer exists because one party no longer recognizes it is equivalent to doing nothing. You can always restore the norm once you win. You can even improve upon it. But if you lose, you better be ready to break norms you never thought you could. That’s where Ukraine is now. They are not the bad guys because they are shooting Russians. 2 years ago that was a norm they wouldn’t break. Now their life depends on it. Using cluster munitions was a norm they wouldn’t break, now it’s critical to do so. And should this end with Ukraine’s victory, I have no doubt they will be stronger advocates for those norms than they were even before the war. Their actions today doesn’t make them the bad guys. What they aspire to is what makes them the good guys. The actions today are just the necessary means to get there.
You may think ‘voting harder’ will fix this, and yeah, maybe. If we’re lucky. But they aren’t relying on voting. They’re relying on a whole charcuterie board of norm and law breaking to win and Democrats response is more or less to just write postcards (which helps, don’t stop doing that!).
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it took a black woman in Georgia to bring the very obvious RICO case against Trump and the GOP. Where’s the rest of the Democrats? Afraid of politicizing the situation because that would break a norm? Bitch, they came to the Capital with guns and kicked the door in.
Martin
BTW, California is not going to walk. California’s whole attitude is that it can force the hand of the federal government in ways no other state can. Should California leave, that role would fall on Texas, and then the US would be truly fucked.
Another Scott
This, and the first dozen or so comments I’ve read thus far, is too pessimistic for me. Adam’s been gloomy about the course of things for a long time. But, even with his expertise, he doesn’t know the future any more than anyone else.
Remember – TIFG had most of the levers of power in 2020 and January 2021. He still lost. He’s been losing pretty much continuously ever since. He has less power now than then.
Of course we have to fight like hell and it will not be easy. And we are going to have a much more difficult time than reason would dictate. But they’re not going to take our democracy from us. When we show up, we win.
Hang in there, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@Professor Bigfoot: they should have been hung, the confederacy paved over and reformed in the image of the northeast. No question.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin:
FFS, they weren’t at war two years ago. The Ukrainians actually are perfect example of continuing to follow norms even as the other side isn’t. They are continuing to follow the laws of war. The Russians aren’t.
Becoming a mirror image of the GOP isn’t a victory. Part of what we are fighting for is how we go about pursuing our goals. I view that as non-negotiable. YMMV
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Neither Texas nor California is going to leave.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: “norms” != “laws of armed conflict”.
“blue slips” are a mere norm. We didn’t have to re-institute them.
Subsole
@Martin:
Which California, pray tell?
‘Cause homie, this Texan has been to the Central Valley and points east, and l fear you may be slightly overestimating the size of California’s Big Blue Liberal Dick.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: When Trump got in, my sister and her daughter went to DC to participate in the Women’s March. I admired that but I was also terrified. I didn’t say anything because I know that self-censorship because we’re afraid is how we lose in the long run. But I was seriously afraid the National Guard was just going to mow them down. Reduce the whole protest to hamburger.
I know Trump wanted to do that more than once. And he’s talking about that kind of thing again now.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
I certainly would not have all Confederates killed, but a few should have hung IMHO. Disgusting traitors usually received that punishment at the time. And Reconstruction should have gone on at least another decade or two. And don’t get me started on the Confederate mythology that still lives with us today. The Confederacy should be an embarrassment to all US citizens and never romanticized or praised. Ever.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: I see you have never taken an international law course.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: Martin, I agree with you about Dems’ prostration at the altar of “norms”, and disagree with Omnes about the gravity of breaking many of them. I mean, “blue slips”? fugeddaboudit. But maybe it’s worth remembering that our legislators (even the best of ’em) are a very conservative group, esp. in the Senate. They hear from rich people vastly more often than from poor people, from the powerful vastly more often than from the powerless. And the rich&powerful don’t want things shaken-up: it’s just their nature, since after all the way things were has worked out well for them.
It’s hard to demand radical change from people whose entire working lives have been predicated on servicing continuity.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: I was there too. Maybe I saw her. ;-)
It was a great day. I had absolutely no fear for my safety then.
We have more great days ahead.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: Show me the treaty where the “blue slip” rule is codified. Or the filibuster.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: I’ll give you blue slips and a few other things around the edges, but I won’t concede that procedural fairness should be thrown aside because that’s how the GOP works. We shouldn’t suppress their votes simply because they would suppress ours. At least not if one of the things we value is democracy.
@Chetan Murthy: JFC!
Ksmiami
@Martin: I agree. The Dems need to fight with fire at least rhetorically to start. Ie kick Tuberville out of the Senate for a time out and then block him from returning while you vote on the appointments.
YY_Sima Qian
Even though this is not the 1st time Adam has written on this subject, but I do want to thank Adam for the unflinching summary of the US polity as it actually was & is since its founding. I also want to thank Betty & all of the commenters for continuing the discussion in this post. Sometimes I do wish I lived in the US, so I could more actively participate in the discussion, rather than waking up to find much of it already occurred.
I don’t think Adam has ever claimed that the cause is lost & there is nothing to be done about the slide toward authoritarianism in the US, at the federal & state levels. He has been making clear, as is Betty here, the stakes the US is facing, the sources of the reactionary forces we are facing & need to overcome, &B just how ugly that struggle might become. The disconnect I see is that most of the US electorate, & certainly very few of its elite (political, business, media, academic, etc.) are not truly appreciative of the stakes. Even among the more energized D leaning voters who turned out during the 2022 mid-terms & stemmed the potential damage, my guess is a significant portion are motivated by direct threats to their parochial interests, & the Rs have been threatening the parochial interests of a lot of people not of the white Christian male demographic. That means they are vulnerable to being divided & conquered, if the immediate threat to their respective parochial interests are alleviated, as soon as the reactionaries figure out that. American Exceptionalism is so widely & deeply internalized that the vast majority of people & almost all of the elite are incapable conceiving the history & current state of the US polity as Adam described.
The disconnect is even more stark in foreign policy. The ROW, especially outside of the West, have no illusions about the nature of US polity past & present, but the US elites that drive US foreign policy are completely oblivious, their paychecks & positions of power require them to remain oblivious. The way the US elites conceive & promote its role in the world, w/ all apparent sincerity, is at odds w/ the way the ROW perceives the US. US allies/partners in the West are more motivated to try to paper over the differences to maximize their interests against their geopolitical competitors & rivals, & exceptionalism & a excessively rosy self-conception afflicts them as well, those outside of the West are far less motivated to do so. & then the US (& Western) elites are surprised & undignified when the ROW refuses to fall in line on matters that are priorities to the US (& the West), to the degree they are told. To be sure, exceptionalism & delusional self-conception is pervasive in the world, particularly among great & regional powers, but the US remains by far the most powerful nation in the world, maintains a network of alliances/partnerships that are enticed and/or coerced to follow its lead, its foreign policy is increasingly militarized, & the “public goods” it once provided are increasingly weaponized in service of geopolitical competition, so its capacity for causing good or ill in the world remains unparalleled.
I think the US & the EU would have done better in the Global South to generate support for Ukraine by couching it in terms defending inviolable sovereignty against naked expansionism, as opposed to defending liberal democracy against repressive authoritarianism. Most of the Global South do not believe the West have credibility on liberal democracy, many of them are sliding toward illiberalism, or are already authoritarian driven by ethno-nationalism, but they all believe in the sanctity of national sovereignty (& of course sometimes hypocritical in their beliefs).
Steve
I suspect any project to remake culture through state power will not only fail, but will will lead to profound cultural backlash.
But these folks are not merely culture warriors, they are plutocrats who want state power to protect their fortunes (and enlarge them), and simple authoritarians who want power for its own sake. And I fear that any cultural backlash will have little impact on the other two elements.
So if I had to offer a pessimistic prediction, I’d forecast a socially liberal plutocratic autocracy.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus:
If it’s not enough, and Teh Fash win, you can console yourself that you didn’t descend to their level, while you teach underground classes in IED fabrication, Omnes.
Ksmiami
@Martin: 100 percent. Burn the GOP to the ground, remove their media empire and just crush them.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
That’s probably almost all the media. Sounds like what Trump was just threatening.
Ruckus
@Professor Bigfoot:
Democrats are now perceived as the party of Black people
I do not disagree, just that this old white fart is several billion times more proud to be perceived as Black than to be considered within a billion miles of rethuglican.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: With that, I am done with this thread.
Martin
NO FUCKING SHIT! Until they were at war there was a norm of ‘don’t shoot the people from the other country’. And then one of them decided to ignore that norm. It’s a good norm! Ukraine agrees it’s a good norm! Should they continue to abide by that norm because it’s a good norm, or should they shoot the people from the other country?
WARS ARE A BREAKING OF NORMS. Definitionally, that’s what a war is – a refusal to recognize the norm of what a border is, a sovereign state, and so on. Ukraine is not so in the fucking tank about what Russia represents that they are refusing to fight back because of that norm. Yes, they are working hard to adhere a different set of norms, but one of those would have been the western prohibition on the use of cluster munitions, but pragmatism has put that norm aside, because there’s no honor in being a norm follower if a norm breaker kills you. You are no longer around to defend or advocate for that norm. They won. The norm is now gone, forever. The morally correct thing to do is to fight back so that you can restore the norm.
Democrats have this habit of not doing that.
How the fuck is it a mirror image? Democrats are not the ones breaking the mutual consent. If they were, then you’d have a point. But once the GOP has broken the rule, and says they did it deliberately and plan to do so again, Democrats are not ‘the same’ for fighting back according to the new set of rules.
Ukraine is not the same as Russia because they shoot back. The bad act isn’t the shooting. The bad act is being the first to shoot – of being the party that chooses to break the rule. Democrats seem intent on being shot at without doing anything in return because the optics would be bad.
Put another way, if you believe the norm is a good one, why are you afraid of your own ability to restore it should you win? You understand you have to win in order to get what you want in a negotiation right? Japan didn’t give us the conditions in 1945. We set them, because we won. And there are things we can be critical of the US on, but the US thus far has believed strongly enough its moral vision to set good international rules. But we only get to do that from a position of power. I think Democrats generally have a good moral vision to set norms, but they have to win to exercise that vision.
I mean, following a norm that the GOP demolished cost Democrats a Supreme Court seat. How’s that working for everyone? You feel good about that? You think women in this country feel good about that?
Ksmiami
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: no. Fox deserves to have its spectrum rights removed for blatant incitement, misinformation and propaganda.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: If one truly believes in establishing and protecting a process, then one *must* punish those who violate the norms of that process. I mean, it’s a basic Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma problem, and it’s clear how to solve it.[1]
To simply deny that solution is to surrender.
ETA[1]: the solution is “tit for tat”. Not “roll over and play dead”.
Bupalos
IS/ISN’T a democracy is a simply invalid binary. Democracy is a direction, not a place. It’s never all there and never all gone.
The entire globe (maybe without significant exception) is moving away from it right now. We need to change that. Is/isn’t language actually makes that harder. It makes democracy harder to see.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Martin: War is a local apocalypse; whatever else you were doing, planning to do, trying to do, is out the window because everything you can or will do will be dictated by the conditions of the war. It’s a lot more than norm-breaking.
I think people still view politics as more theater than real. People in general seem pretty oblivious of the dangers to democracy that we are so worried about. I don’t know what will change that.
Subsole
@Martin:
Actually, if you recall, a bunch of folks deciding not to vote for that bitchy email lady because the Liberals didn’t whip out their throbbing, veiny masculinities and beat the GOP into respectful submission like Masterchief John Halo while also giving the individual voter in question a gold-plated 24/7 blowjob-parade with free cocaine fondue is what let the GOP steal that seat
Edit: That said, I actually do agree with your point about having enough faith in the norm to have confidence in your ability to restore it.
Another Scott
Adam’s thread will probably be up about 3 seconds after I post this, but it goes well here too.
Meanwhile, … RFERL.org:
There’s an opportunity here.
We are not doomed.
The enemies of democracy are not supermen. We have lots and lots of strengths, including our ability to argue amongst ourselves and see lots of different points of view and can come to a consensus without being imprisoned if we disagree. They have lots and lots of weaknesses.
Hang in there, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
So is fascism.
TeezySkeezy
@Maxim: why necessarily would they lose if they win? There are plenty of authoritarian states that persist for a long time unless someone comes in to blow their shit up.
Subsole
@Subsole:
To expand on this a bit:
You cannot sit there and undermine people at every turn then complain about the soundness of the foundation. If the Dems are too weak for you, then ask yourself what you have done to strengthen them.
No, bouncing beer bottles off our heads while we fight to hold back the blood-dimmed tide is not, in fact, making us stronger.
Consider that perhaps we would be more open to folks’ very valid and well-articulated criticisms if they
a.) Weren’t buried in a flood of genuine abuse
b.) Were leavened with some approval or even just acknowledgement that this job is really, really hard.
c.) Maybe stopped telling me I am no different from the dude who thinks rape is a lie women tell people because they’re unable to compete honestly with men.
Because here’s a tip, hombre: when those kids say both parties are the same? That’s what they’re actually saying. They are saying I am as reprehensible as a Republican. Usually while also lecturing me on how I need to stop taking their support for granted.
That always kind of grated with me about the Left, frankly. All they ever do is whine about how they’re being taken for granted, and how we better not take them for granted, and if we don’t stop taking them for granted they’ll let the fash win and boyyy we’ll wish we hadn’t taken them for granted then…
Like…
seriously, my man?
You’re lecturing.
The Democratic base.
About being taken for granted?
This cornball-ass movement is gonna sit there and yell at black women about how it is tired of being taken for granted.
Really.
Lyrebird
@Subsole:
There are a number of folks not sfaik on thiis blog who imnsho should read your long-form comment a few times, and also those explainers on maskirovska or some word like that from Adam, because it does not help Americans a whole to go full purity pony, and it can help our genuine enemies.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Cheers,
Scott.
TheTruffle
@Chetan Murthy: Virginia, however, has DC nearby. That would be a difference. Texas is more distant from the capital.
Chetan Murthy
@TheTruffle: *grin* Two thoughts:
It’d be chaos, a war of all against all. The country depends critically on long-distance transport simply to feed itself. If there were actual secession/partition, I think that’d break down, and you’d get widespread starvation pretty damn quick.
Layer8Problem
@Another Scott: NYT Pitchbot (in my mind, anyway): Frenzied Democratic Party fundraising and unprecedented number of donations show increasing Democratic desperation.
BellyCat
Superb thread.
In Obama‘s first two years, we controlled both Chambers. However, this advantage was squandered by completely unsuccessful efforts to “reach across the aisle”.
I cannot shake the feeling that Biden was a big factor in this pussy footing. But, I will say, Joe seems to have learned a little from this fruitless experience.
Matt McIrvin
William Lloyd Garrison wanted the free states to secede from the Union, because the US Constitution was a “pact with the devil” that just enabled slavery.
Frederick Douglass decided that wasn’t the morally correct choice, though–it’d leave enslaved people in the South SOL and create one of those illusions of clean hands, which the North decidedly did not have.
I often think about that when people fantasize about breaking up the US. Garrison was basically right in principle about the Constitution. We in the North might be better off on this part of the continent today if the US had split up (though maybe not; I tend to think there would be bad consequences if the 20th century world wars came as they did; North America might have been a theater of war then).
But there would have been so much additional suffering in the South. What did happen wasn’t great but it’s nothing compared to what a persistent slave state in North America would have been.
Sean
@hrprogressive: I’m not preparing myself for violent conflict. If that happens, I’ll quickly be dead. I’m not fighting to stay alive in a world where civil war breaks out in the 21st century in America. That’s going to be a world where “victory” will only ever be pyrrhic.
StringOnAStick
@Sean: The only reason I’ve thought about buying a gun is not for self defense but to be able to personally check out of this planetary hotel instead of being tortured to death by fascists.
Paul in KY
@Martin: Well, that’s an optimistic recap…Probably all true, though.
Will Smirk 4 Food
For all the talk of leftists, liberal, minorities, and immigrants (both undocumented and otherwise) getting beaten, killed, or put into camps, we forget that before the suppression began, the autocrat’s potential rivals were killed. See: night of the long knives, and Stalin’s and Mao’s purges.
Marcus
@Martin: Its black women that save the democratic party all the time
Love the guy…but Obama made a terrible mistake by not by passing the senate and installing his pick …here is my prediction one day and it will come when the executive branch will go against the supreme court
Paul in KY
@Will: You have to ‘consider the source’ on these bozos who piss you off.
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: All CSA military personnel ranking Colonel or higher should have been executed. Various political higher-ups too.
Hindsight is always 20/20…
Paul in KY
@Martin: Anybody who thinks anybody in the USA is ‘promised’ anything is sooo fucking stupid. You are promised a death of some type. That is all.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: My 1st cousin went and said it was so cool. She loved every bit of it.
Westyny
In for $50.00.
The Truffle
@Chetan Murthy: Rick Perry was babbling about secession under Obama. Texas’s GOP has it in the party platform.
People say that a nation carved from red state America would be dirt poor and in shambles. It would still have Texas, though.