Nine months have passed, nine months, and the real perpetrators are still strutting around, pretending to be normal politicians doing "normal" politics... even pretending to be President... Thankful they're not in Saudi where they'd not have kept their heads for nine hours, thankful to be in a nation of laws (and shyster lawyers) which …
Nine months have passed, nine months, and the real perpetrators are still strutting around, pretending to be normal politicians doing "normal" politics... even pretending to be President... Thankful they're not in Saudi where they'd not have kept their heads for nine hours, thankful to be in a nation of laws (and shyster lawyers) which they can turn into Looking-Glass-Land, with a Looking-Glass President, a Looking-Glass Party of preening narcissistic pervert politicians, and a large Looking-Glass population that's fallen (or been misled) through the mirror.
Is America drugged? Why the hell can't the country wake up from this absurd dream and put its house in order?
Nine months. What other cosmic monster is coming to term?
The wheels of injustice are well-oiled, there's sand in the wheels of justice.
In this perma-putsch there are little green men everywhere, armed with... sand buckets...
Is the Republic suffering from dementia... that it suffers this subversion so long without reacting?
Are your media so drowned in money and virtualized unreality that they can't tell white from black, can't call a spade a spade?
This perfectly expresses my frustration and bewilderment with the current political morass in the US. How can the blatant thuggery and moral bottom feeding of a Trump and a Bannon continue to outmaneuver the sharpest minds in American politics? How can they still command such a large following? How can the authority of Congress be so feeble that the most serious threat to American democracy since the Civil War goes unpunished and the perpetrators brazen in their defiance? Can someone explain why the forces that would protect democracy against authoritarianism and a narcissistic and completely amoral leader seem so weak?
Totally agree with the "frustration and bewilderment" . . . for the life of me, I cannot understand why these criminals haven't been brought to justice.
Keep the faith, gentlemen. The forces of good often move slowly, and TFG has had a lifetime of "thrust and parry" maneuvers, public showmanship, and a network of thugs to cavort and distract attention from him. I think he's down on one knee if not yet down for the count. Meanwhile, the good guys are trying for airtight legal arguments. May they prevail.
It looks, to me, like Trump already has, indeed, "gotten clean away".
He is at Mara Lago riding around in his golf cart, once in a while standing for a few minutes, then back in the cart to go eat something to further expand his posterior.
In no way is Trump threatened with any significant limitations on his movements or freedoms in any way at all.
"got clean away" is what I am thinking.
In the meantime, while the Jan. 6 committee is invisible to most Americans,
"Let's Go Brandon"
has taken off in Social Media.
"Let's go Brandon" shows two things:
1) The very poor etiquette and manners and respect Americans now have for anything that smacks of responsibility, honesty and good intentions.
2) The inability for Americans to grasp or read or ingest anything the length of HCR's "letter".
"Let's go Brandon" took off all over America.
HCR has been writing this brilliant, informative, thoughtful letter for months and most Americans have never heard of her.
And therein lies the real problem in America. Americans themselves, not Trump. He is the symptom. Americans are the disease.
Americans. Americans are the world's largest problem now. Large consumers of food, junk, energy, etc., and low producers of anything except profane catch phrases that are disrespectful.
Americans are now too ignorant, too poorly read, too drunk and simply too lazy to sort the truth from fakery.
Now hold on, Mike S. Sweeping statements and broad criticism are unhelpful and unfair — and often sloppy and wrong-headed. Let’s pull back a minute and have a look at what’s going on.
We know, because we’re smart and read letters like HCR’s, that the wheels of justice turn s l o w l y. Annoyingly so. But as Dr Heather has so brilliantly laid out, those wheels ARE turning — encouragingly, maybe delightfully, so. We stalwart defenders of democracy, here in this HCR community and all across the nation, need to take heart: “Defending democracy,” however we’re called to do it, is how we will break the back of this powerful, disorganized tornado of rage and rebellion that’s sucking our energy and serenity.
We fight fascism with DEMOCRACY. It’s slow and it’s dull and it’s lacks the flash and pop and drama of Faux News and other propaganda tools. We fight fascist bullshit with “citizenship,” by sticking together, working together, relying on each other in our communities, forming unbreakable alliances with our neighbors. We can’t afford to get bollixed up and muddle headed with fear and anger and despair and blame. We have work to do, for God’s sake.
(Full disclosure and credit: I take these empowering, sustaining ideas from Teri Kanefield, Justin King, Heather Cox Richardson, of course, et al. And so grateful for them. And for all of you.)
In a less abnormal time, maybe we could all sit tight and wait for the wheels of justice to “grind slow, but grind exceeding fine”.
But I feel it desperately naive to be at this place and to like and believe in justice.
Trump landed on fertile soil when he ran for President in 2015. He uncovered a raw truth and exploited it - there are millions of Americans who are poor, who are deeply lonely and disaffected, who feel the system has trodden on them, who have been drowning deep sorrows in drugs and alcohol, who are poorly educated, who are mistrustful of expertise, who have no positive deep purpose in life, and who have found others of their ilk, in the sewers of social media.
None of Trump’s followers ticks every box of the above description, but many of those acolytes tick many of those boxes.
Trump, we can see now, exploded onto the scene in 2015-16., a supposed punchline destroying seasoned politicians with deep pockets of dark money with the ease of a man swatting flies away.
That should have been a warning that this country was going to spin on its axes in the near future.
What else can be added to this stew of toxicity?
A nation saturated in guns.
A country to whom fictional violence and the real stuff, up to constant war making is a part of the fabric.
A country with a never-exorcised racial problem and deep geographical fissures.
A border problem.
A once in a century pandemic.
Put it together and it is little wonder that you have deeply corrupt politicians, scum like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and their like soaring to the top because they say the most outrageous things to gain attention and win Trump’s favor.
You have a former President clawing against all possible logic that he won the 2020 election.
You have a seditious riot on Capitol Hill that has all the earmarks of being coordinated between foot soldiers and those who hold the levers of power.
You have a frantic race to the bottom where would-be politicians smelling the main chance are constantly trying to out-Trump the man himself by proposing ideas so wild they shouldn’t be given a hearing. Jordan wanting legislation to remove a mandate on ANY vaccine. Greene calling for an American divorce. A Texas législature, so feared that a school superintendent suggests that if the Holocaust is taught, equal time should be given to a mythical ‘other side’.
I am so so tired of white gloved Democrats, expressing horror at each event while placing an increasingly forlorn hope in the justice system to rescue us all. Savior syndrome is in the saddle, riding aimlessly around while days tick off the clock.
Are we to feel a burst of confidence in the DOJx, whose prosecutors of the 1/6 attackers have been recommending sentences so low that judges are totally flummoxed, and one has even meted out a punishment *higher* than what a prosecutor called for?
In my opinion, no.
We have a government willing to act in ways that would deeply benefit the American people, and perhaps save the planet in the bargain. But this government has much too small a mandate as has been ably demonstrated by President Manchin, for it is he who has the whip hand.
We have legislators in the most Trump-addled states returning racial rights to pre-1950 levels. And a Voting Act that will sink like a stone in this week’s vote.
In all of this there is one oasis of grit and determination - the House Committee on the events of January 6. They have clearly broken the glass and sounded the alarm. They are brilliantly organized and have the cold determination to take on a force which threatens to become invulnerable. And, at the same time, must be laughing at their feeble opposition.
I am so sick of hearing platitudes. I am so sick of being told to wait for justice to do it’s job while being granted the courtesy of moving just as slowly as they like. I am so sick of hearing what a great job Merrick Garland is doing.
I want the battle to be taken to the opposition turf. And as far as I can see, it starts with an arrest of DJT.
It continues with banishing President Manchin and his flaky comrade Krysten Sinema to an Independent role on the Senate benches.
We are losing there anyway. Neither is playing the role of a a Democrat. What positive difference do they make?
As our noble leader, HCR has pointed out many times, there is nothing new here; only a rehash of our politics born of racism and division, here as in other places, at other times. We are probably only going to move the needle a small grove in our time, but move it we will.
I agree with the determination and faith in your post, but see the situation a little differently.
The needle has gyrated wildly to the right and is flicking against that edge.
The job now is to move it far, far back in the direction of centre. This will require a non-violent but Herculean response which involves every possible shred of resourcefulness and wit the Left has.
We have somehow managed to turn the advantageous position following the elections and the horrific insurgent of January 6 into a state where we have almost run out of time and options to save America from being pushed into the abyss.
The needle must swing wildly back towards equilibrium before this job is done.
The former president's followers have the money to fly across the country in private planes to attend an insurrection. The former president's followers can afford to take vacations from their jobs to attend an insurrection. The former president's followers show up at his rallies in $70,000 pickup trucks and SUVs. The former president's followers have no problem shelling out $30 each for hats and t-shirts, and $40 and more for flags.
There's a narrative that the former president's supporters are the working poor. It's been debunked almost since it first appeared in 2015, and was further debunked after the 2016 election, but the media still pushes it.
I don't have any trouble believing those people are the majority of his supporters, I live in the middle of it. Of the ten SC counties with the highest household income, seven went to TFG in 2016 and eight went to TFG in 2020. The smallest margin of victory in all of those counties was 54.2%. These weren't 'squeaker' victories, he won going away.
Agree with Mike. t**** supporters are more dangerous than the man himself. That's been obvious since 2016 when tens of millions of voters elected him president. Even when tfg is gone, those supporters will still be here and the next person they support could be smarter, more dangerous and more damaging. Are there sufficient guardrails in our system to prevent that person from destroying our country?
Mike, thanks for the dose of sanity. What the fascists want is for us to give up and go away. The reason they're acting up is due to the fact that they recognize that they're outnumbered, and they're using these tactics to make us cower. We have to stop buying into their delusions.
Peter, it's not that I'm unconcerned about the threat, but our country isn't starving, with paralyzing inflation, as Germany was following WWI. TFG had his four destructive years, and has a rabid following, and so far, we've not gone fascist. I know our democracy is in danger, but am hopeful that enough people are turned off by the entire Repugnant criminalism that they will show up in force to obliterate his ilk, as they did during the pandemic. So far, they tried, but haven't burned the Capitol, as Hitler did the Bundeshtag in order to blame the communists and take over control. There is a great threat, and I'm not naive enough to think that foreign powers and tons of dark money from oligarchs have had nothing to do with the Orange Moron's rise, but we can't allow ourselves to become defeatist and cower in a corner and cringe while it happens.
True, Nancy. Nevertheless, there is one hell of a lot wrong with the country, and with too many other countries subject to the same economic and social forces: an economy disconnected from the common household, technology no longer prosthetic but autonomous and divorced from human minds and bodies, change at breakneck speed, accelerating... inequality, accelerating... The consequences?
I must have watched most of it. About the only worse things I recall having seen in a long lifetime are photos and film of Bergen-Belsen, photos of the Congo under Leopold II's company and a nightmare in which I actually witnessed an incident from the massacres at Sabra and Shatila when they were taking place, not from the outside but in the midst of the action.
There can be absolutely no question of cowering or cringing. This calls for resistance and all the courage that demands, otherwise we shall all find ourselves in a mafia state like today's Russia, or like China, the ultimate surveillance state, prisoners in our own country. While select oligarchs strip the place of everything that can be grabbed and our children wait to be taken over by the Chinese regime, along with whatever remains of the planet...
A worst-case scenario? Maybe. That depends upon us.
I am loath to urge people to join Cathy Learoyd's bold, courageous action and risk mayhem, loss of life, loss of livelihood, for this can only work as a mass movement. Not out of the question, but far from evident. Whatever individuals decide to do, this community must support her, otherwise it's just a talking shop.
#
I have written before in these threads of how, speaking in Manhattan nearly a quarter of a century ago, my Japanese friend who has since passed away said: "In this society, everything is on the surface and there's nothing behind it. With such a grave imbalance, the only possible outcome is illness."
The Europeans present got the message. The only Americans who understood were those who'd lived outside the country. Despite 9/11, despite the 2nd Gulf War, despite the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, despite mass psychosis and the TFG phenomenon, this still has not been understood.
Peter, I wholeheartedly agree that there is a tremendous amount wrong with this country, and believe it will get worse. Social media just complicates the fact that so many here are lazy intellectually, and will buy whatever trash is disseminated and treat it as fact. In my opinion, these people are being manipulated by the greedy power brokers and politicians on both sides of the aisle who do their bidding. None of us can afford to accept anything at face value. We all need to read behind the lines and ferret out the motivations behind events. As you say, the outcome depends on us, and it won't be easy.
Sure. A German Jewish judge driven into exile in 1937 whom I met as a young man insisted that AH should have been shot in 1923, after the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.
I think that HCR has traced quite clearly where the present-day GOP is coming from and where its policies (if one can use such a word) lead. The full historical context.
Absolutely, Mike. Blame it on the internet or Lazy-Boy entitlement. The Republican school of fish shifts at the wink of Trump's eye. It's ironic that in our land of so-call free thought millions have become unthinking lemmings. It is our leaders' duty to punish the guilty with a heavy hand or it will only get worse.
I have often been tempted by sheer irritation to write far worse things about your compatriots than you have here. (Note that I regard my own country as a sad sideshow in “a Barnum and Bailey world” and am left speechless by the degeneracy of England’s chosen… I could never have imagined such a comedown.)
However, while not doubting the former President’s hope of shooting someone on 5th Avenue as a preliminary to getting re-elected in 2024, I remain skeptical about him having “gotten clean away”, despite the excessive period of time during which he has been golf-carting (and even walking) free.
Nor shall I follow you in your sharp comment that the Trumpery is the symptom and Americans, the disease. Even if I feel you are close to the truth, a miss is as good as a mile. It is true that, just as Jung wrote of Hitler, “Without the German people he would be nothing,” so DT would be nothing without his millions of faithful disciples. Having said which, the man is nowhere near yet to his goal of capturing the American people. And even given the correct diagnosis of a very sick society, like some bombs, like some medicines, this particular infection is triggered by a combination of two factors: mass and misleader.
Even faced with the horrific reality of mass psychosis, we must beware of describing a human being, let alone an entire people as a disease. I am not shit, even if it is present in my gut, I am not disease, even if I may suffer from and carry the vectors of disease.
I want to insist on this because we need now to think beyond sickness if we are ever to gain health. And, even while remaining aware of the pathogens that incomers brought to America and which have since become endemic, we must never let ourselves get caught up with the far-right view of humanity as intrinsically evil. A view that entails a self-fulfilling mechanism, condemning our fellow human beings in advance—just as your would-be Fuehrer transforms the word “Mexican” into an insult and labels those crossing the southern border as “rapists and disease-carriers”. All of which tell us little about Mexicans but far too much about the speaker.
It is more than clear that the firebug ringleaders MUST be taken—and kept—out of circulation as soon as it can be done.
If treason is not to become “the new normal”.
Every day these people have been allowed to continue and increase their seditious activities has been a day too long.
... and undeserving of living in a democracy. The Constitution's framers knew that and that is why that compromise-filled document is not so democratic as it might have been.
Propaganda rules the fools. And we are awash in it. “The propagandists purpose is to make sure that one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley
Or wasting away incarcerated while waiting to be tried because you could not make bail. Or being murdered by a police officer for driving while Black or passing a counterfeit $20 bill
Democracy is being challenged in an unprecedented way right now. The real judgment on democracy will be the outcome of the J 6 investigation, how hard the committee fights and how determined they (or ultimately, maybe a protesting public) are to hold everyone of the guilty to account. IMO, we cannot judge democracy on the current conditions b/c we are having to fight new threats never met before.
Nine months have passed, nine months, and the real perpetrators are still strutting around, pretending to be normal politicians doing "normal" politics... even pretending to be President... Thankful they're not in Saudi where they'd not have kept their heads for nine hours, thankful to be in a nation of laws (and shyster lawyers) which they can turn into Looking-Glass-Land, with a Looking-Glass President, a Looking-Glass Party of preening narcissistic pervert politicians, and a large Looking-Glass population that's fallen (or been misled) through the mirror.
Is America drugged? Why the hell can't the country wake up from this absurd dream and put its house in order?
Nine months. What other cosmic monster is coming to term?
The wheels of injustice are well-oiled, there's sand in the wheels of justice.
In this perma-putsch there are little green men everywhere, armed with... sand buckets...
Is the Republic suffering from dementia... that it suffers this subversion so long without reacting?
Are your media so drowned in money and virtualized unreality that they can't tell white from black, can't call a spade a spade?
Unworthy. An obscene, shameful farce.
This perfectly expresses my frustration and bewilderment with the current political morass in the US. How can the blatant thuggery and moral bottom feeding of a Trump and a Bannon continue to outmaneuver the sharpest minds in American politics? How can they still command such a large following? How can the authority of Congress be so feeble that the most serious threat to American democracy since the Civil War goes unpunished and the perpetrators brazen in their defiance? Can someone explain why the forces that would protect democracy against authoritarianism and a narcissistic and completely amoral leader seem so weak?
40 years of Murdoch propaganda.
The long shell game come to fruition. Fox News distracting us while school boards and state legislatures were being taken over.
Faux News needs to be banned, or at least exposed as to who they are: Dangerous Propaganda!!!
Not factual news at all!!!
Yes, Jeri, thank you.
Propaganda. Americans believe only German citizens of the 30’s were so easily led. Hubris
Totally agree with the "frustration and bewilderment" . . . for the life of me, I cannot understand why these criminals haven't been brought to justice.
Keep the faith, gentlemen. The forces of good often move slowly, and TFG has had a lifetime of "thrust and parry" maneuvers, public showmanship, and a network of thugs to cavort and distract attention from him. I think he's down on one knee if not yet down for the count. Meanwhile, the good guys are trying for airtight legal arguments. May they prevail.
Their only strategy is to run out the clock and hope to be back in power.
Unfortunately, thats a strategy that works when dishonorable people can false filabuster
Exactly this.
Peter,
Yes,
It looks, to me, like Trump already has, indeed, "gotten clean away".
He is at Mara Lago riding around in his golf cart, once in a while standing for a few minutes, then back in the cart to go eat something to further expand his posterior.
In no way is Trump threatened with any significant limitations on his movements or freedoms in any way at all.
"got clean away" is what I am thinking.
In the meantime, while the Jan. 6 committee is invisible to most Americans,
"Let's Go Brandon"
has taken off in Social Media.
"Let's go Brandon" shows two things:
1) The very poor etiquette and manners and respect Americans now have for anything that smacks of responsibility, honesty and good intentions.
2) The inability for Americans to grasp or read or ingest anything the length of HCR's "letter".
"Let's go Brandon" took off all over America.
HCR has been writing this brilliant, informative, thoughtful letter for months and most Americans have never heard of her.
And therein lies the real problem in America. Americans themselves, not Trump. He is the symptom. Americans are the disease.
Americans. Americans are the world's largest problem now. Large consumers of food, junk, energy, etc., and low producers of anything except profane catch phrases that are disrespectful.
Americans are now too ignorant, too poorly read, too drunk and simply too lazy to sort the truth from fakery.
Now hold on, Mike S. Sweeping statements and broad criticism are unhelpful and unfair — and often sloppy and wrong-headed. Let’s pull back a minute and have a look at what’s going on.
We know, because we’re smart and read letters like HCR’s, that the wheels of justice turn s l o w l y. Annoyingly so. But as Dr Heather has so brilliantly laid out, those wheels ARE turning — encouragingly, maybe delightfully, so. We stalwart defenders of democracy, here in this HCR community and all across the nation, need to take heart: “Defending democracy,” however we’re called to do it, is how we will break the back of this powerful, disorganized tornado of rage and rebellion that’s sucking our energy and serenity.
We fight fascism with DEMOCRACY. It’s slow and it’s dull and it’s lacks the flash and pop and drama of Faux News and other propaganda tools. We fight fascist bullshit with “citizenship,” by sticking together, working together, relying on each other in our communities, forming unbreakable alliances with our neighbors. We can’t afford to get bollixed up and muddle headed with fear and anger and despair and blame. We have work to do, for God’s sake.
(Full disclosure and credit: I take these empowering, sustaining ideas from Teri Kanefield, Justin King, Heather Cox Richardson, of course, et al. And so grateful for them. And for all of you.)
In a less abnormal time, maybe we could all sit tight and wait for the wheels of justice to “grind slow, but grind exceeding fine”.
But I feel it desperately naive to be at this place and to like and believe in justice.
Trump landed on fertile soil when he ran for President in 2015. He uncovered a raw truth and exploited it - there are millions of Americans who are poor, who are deeply lonely and disaffected, who feel the system has trodden on them, who have been drowning deep sorrows in drugs and alcohol, who are poorly educated, who are mistrustful of expertise, who have no positive deep purpose in life, and who have found others of their ilk, in the sewers of social media.
None of Trump’s followers ticks every box of the above description, but many of those acolytes tick many of those boxes.
Trump, we can see now, exploded onto the scene in 2015-16., a supposed punchline destroying seasoned politicians with deep pockets of dark money with the ease of a man swatting flies away.
That should have been a warning that this country was going to spin on its axes in the near future.
What else can be added to this stew of toxicity?
A nation saturated in guns.
A country to whom fictional violence and the real stuff, up to constant war making is a part of the fabric.
A country with a never-exorcised racial problem and deep geographical fissures.
A border problem.
A once in a century pandemic.
Put it together and it is little wonder that you have deeply corrupt politicians, scum like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and their like soaring to the top because they say the most outrageous things to gain attention and win Trump’s favor.
You have a former President clawing against all possible logic that he won the 2020 election.
You have a seditious riot on Capitol Hill that has all the earmarks of being coordinated between foot soldiers and those who hold the levers of power.
You have a frantic race to the bottom where would-be politicians smelling the main chance are constantly trying to out-Trump the man himself by proposing ideas so wild they shouldn’t be given a hearing. Jordan wanting legislation to remove a mandate on ANY vaccine. Greene calling for an American divorce. A Texas législature, so feared that a school superintendent suggests that if the Holocaust is taught, equal time should be given to a mythical ‘other side’.
I am so so tired of white gloved Democrats, expressing horror at each event while placing an increasingly forlorn hope in the justice system to rescue us all. Savior syndrome is in the saddle, riding aimlessly around while days tick off the clock.
Are we to feel a burst of confidence in the DOJx, whose prosecutors of the 1/6 attackers have been recommending sentences so low that judges are totally flummoxed, and one has even meted out a punishment *higher* than what a prosecutor called for?
In my opinion, no.
We have a government willing to act in ways that would deeply benefit the American people, and perhaps save the planet in the bargain. But this government has much too small a mandate as has been ably demonstrated by President Manchin, for it is he who has the whip hand.
We have legislators in the most Trump-addled states returning racial rights to pre-1950 levels. And a Voting Act that will sink like a stone in this week’s vote.
In all of this there is one oasis of grit and determination - the House Committee on the events of January 6. They have clearly broken the glass and sounded the alarm. They are brilliantly organized and have the cold determination to take on a force which threatens to become invulnerable. And, at the same time, must be laughing at their feeble opposition.
I am so sick of hearing platitudes. I am so sick of being told to wait for justice to do it’s job while being granted the courtesy of moving just as slowly as they like. I am so sick of hearing what a great job Merrick Garland is doing.
I want the battle to be taken to the opposition turf. And as far as I can see, it starts with an arrest of DJT.
It continues with banishing President Manchin and his flaky comrade Krysten Sinema to an Independent role on the Senate benches.
We are losing there anyway. Neither is playing the role of a a Democrat. What positive difference do they make?
It’s time to go ugly. That is my cri de cœur.
As our noble leader, HCR has pointed out many times, there is nothing new here; only a rehash of our politics born of racism and division, here as in other places, at other times. We are probably only going to move the needle a small grove in our time, but move it we will.
I agree with the determination and faith in your post, but see the situation a little differently.
The needle has gyrated wildly to the right and is flicking against that edge.
The job now is to move it far, far back in the direction of centre. This will require a non-violent but Herculean response which involves every possible shred of resourcefulness and wit the Left has.
We have somehow managed to turn the advantageous position following the elections and the horrific insurgent of January 6 into a state where we have almost run out of time and options to save America from being pushed into the abyss.
The needle must swing wildly back towards equilibrium before this job is done.
The former president's followers have the money to fly across the country in private planes to attend an insurrection. The former president's followers can afford to take vacations from their jobs to attend an insurrection. The former president's followers show up at his rallies in $70,000 pickup trucks and SUVs. The former president's followers have no problem shelling out $30 each for hats and t-shirts, and $40 and more for flags.
These are not the working poor.
I have to doubt that people such as you describe make up the majority of his 74 million voters in the last election.
There's a narrative that the former president's supporters are the working poor. It's been debunked almost since it first appeared in 2015, and was further debunked after the 2016 election, but the media still pushes it.
I don't have any trouble believing those people are the majority of his supporters, I live in the middle of it. Of the ten SC counties with the highest household income, seven went to TFG in 2016 and eight went to TFG in 2020. The smallest margin of victory in all of those counties was 54.2%. These weren't 'squeaker' victories, he won going away.
Agree with Mike. t**** supporters are more dangerous than the man himself. That's been obvious since 2016 when tens of millions of voters elected him president. Even when tfg is gone, those supporters will still be here and the next person they support could be smarter, more dangerous and more damaging. Are there sufficient guardrails in our system to prevent that person from destroying our country?
We have to be the guardrails. It's essential.
What’s your game plan, GMB?
Mike, thanks for the dose of sanity. What the fascists want is for us to give up and go away. The reason they're acting up is due to the fact that they recognize that they're outnumbered, and they're using these tactics to make us cower. We have to stop buying into their delusions.
Rupert has had a 40-year head start, it’s why we have a cult, not a tribe or just differences of opinion.
I continue to insist that there are more of us than them.
I agree Nancy. I just wish "the more of us" would speak up.
That may be so, but those who do not vote don’t get counted.
And many who do vote don’t get counted. That’s why we need overwhelming numbers at the polls. Oh, and the Freedom to Vote Act.
Absolutely, on both points - especially the second one.
True. But this is not a matter of numbers. There were probably more non-Nazis than Nazis before Hitler came to power (or am I mistaken?).
Think Thermopylae. 400 against over 100 000.
Think Gideon's 300 dogs of war defeating the vast army of the Midianites -- the choice of the 300 makes a tale worth thinking about.
Peter, it's not that I'm unconcerned about the threat, but our country isn't starving, with paralyzing inflation, as Germany was following WWI. TFG had his four destructive years, and has a rabid following, and so far, we've not gone fascist. I know our democracy is in danger, but am hopeful that enough people are turned off by the entire Repugnant criminalism that they will show up in force to obliterate his ilk, as they did during the pandemic. So far, they tried, but haven't burned the Capitol, as Hitler did the Bundeshtag in order to blame the communists and take over control. There is a great threat, and I'm not naive enough to think that foreign powers and tons of dark money from oligarchs have had nothing to do with the Orange Moron's rise, but we can't allow ourselves to become defeatist and cower in a corner and cringe while it happens.
True, Nancy. Nevertheless, there is one hell of a lot wrong with the country, and with too many other countries subject to the same economic and social forces: an economy disconnected from the common household, technology no longer prosthetic but autonomous and divorced from human minds and bodies, change at breakneck speed, accelerating... inequality, accelerating... The consequences?
Take this horror, for example:
https://www.mc3.edu/news/2020/crisis-in-kensington-documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGyIEEyK3DA
I must have watched most of it. About the only worse things I recall having seen in a long lifetime are photos and film of Bergen-Belsen, photos of the Congo under Leopold II's company and a nightmare in which I actually witnessed an incident from the massacres at Sabra and Shatila when they were taking place, not from the outside but in the midst of the action.
There can be absolutely no question of cowering or cringing. This calls for resistance and all the courage that demands, otherwise we shall all find ourselves in a mafia state like today's Russia, or like China, the ultimate surveillance state, prisoners in our own country. While select oligarchs strip the place of everything that can be grabbed and our children wait to be taken over by the Chinese regime, along with whatever remains of the planet...
A worst-case scenario? Maybe. That depends upon us.
I am loath to urge people to join Cathy Learoyd's bold, courageous action and risk mayhem, loss of life, loss of livelihood, for this can only work as a mass movement. Not out of the question, but far from evident. Whatever individuals decide to do, this community must support her, otherwise it's just a talking shop.
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I have written before in these threads of how, speaking in Manhattan nearly a quarter of a century ago, my Japanese friend who has since passed away said: "In this society, everything is on the surface and there's nothing behind it. With such a grave imbalance, the only possible outcome is illness."
The Europeans present got the message. The only Americans who understood were those who'd lived outside the country. Despite 9/11, despite the 2nd Gulf War, despite the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, despite mass psychosis and the TFG phenomenon, this still has not been understood.
Peter, I wholeheartedly agree that there is a tremendous amount wrong with this country, and believe it will get worse. Social media just complicates the fact that so many here are lazy intellectually, and will buy whatever trash is disseminated and treat it as fact. In my opinion, these people are being manipulated by the greedy power brokers and politicians on both sides of the aisle who do their bidding. None of us can afford to accept anything at face value. We all need to read behind the lines and ferret out the motivations behind events. As you say, the outcome depends on us, and it won't be easy.
Didn't proof - "between the lines." not behind.
Sure. A German Jewish judge driven into exile in 1937 whom I met as a young man insisted that AH should have been shot in 1923, after the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.
I think that HCR has traced quite clearly where the present-day GOP is coming from and where its policies (if one can use such a word) lead. The full historical context.
Absolutely, Mike. Blame it on the internet or Lazy-Boy entitlement. The Republican school of fish shifts at the wink of Trump's eye. It's ironic that in our land of so-call free thought millions have become unthinking lemmings. It is our leaders' duty to punish the guilty with a heavy hand or it will only get worse.
That’s an unusual way of viewing democracy, Randy.
Not all though. You’re not. There is more.
Ah, I've succeeded! Here's the message:
Mike,
I have often been tempted by sheer irritation to write far worse things about your compatriots than you have here. (Note that I regard my own country as a sad sideshow in “a Barnum and Bailey world” and am left speechless by the degeneracy of England’s chosen… I could never have imagined such a comedown.)
However, while not doubting the former President’s hope of shooting someone on 5th Avenue as a preliminary to getting re-elected in 2024, I remain skeptical about him having “gotten clean away”, despite the excessive period of time during which he has been golf-carting (and even walking) free.
Nor shall I follow you in your sharp comment that the Trumpery is the symptom and Americans, the disease. Even if I feel you are close to the truth, a miss is as good as a mile. It is true that, just as Jung wrote of Hitler, “Without the German people he would be nothing,” so DT would be nothing without his millions of faithful disciples. Having said which, the man is nowhere near yet to his goal of capturing the American people. And even given the correct diagnosis of a very sick society, like some bombs, like some medicines, this particular infection is triggered by a combination of two factors: mass and misleader.
Even faced with the horrific reality of mass psychosis, we must beware of describing a human being, let alone an entire people as a disease. I am not shit, even if it is present in my gut, I am not disease, even if I may suffer from and carry the vectors of disease.
I want to insist on this because we need now to think beyond sickness if we are ever to gain health. And, even while remaining aware of the pathogens that incomers brought to America and which have since become endemic, we must never let ourselves get caught up with the far-right view of humanity as intrinsically evil. A view that entails a self-fulfilling mechanism, condemning our fellow human beings in advance—just as your would-be Fuehrer transforms the word “Mexican” into an insult and labels those crossing the southern border as “rapists and disease-carriers”. All of which tell us little about Mexicans but far too much about the speaker.
It is more than clear that the firebug ringleaders MUST be taken—and kept—out of circulation as soon as it can be done.
If treason is not to become “the new normal”.
Every day these people have been allowed to continue and increase their seditious activities has been a day too long.
Bravo
More true than not, I agree with you every time I turn on the tube. Milton Mayer said it best in “They Thought They We’re Free.”
... and undeserving of living in a democracy. The Constitution's framers knew that and that is why that compromise-filled document is not so democratic as it might have been.
This is so disturbing! Especially when the reporter blatantly lies about what fans are chanting while interviewing Brandon!
Propaganda rules the fools. And we are awash in it. “The propagandists purpose is to make sure that one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley
And then think about people wasting away in Prisons for selling Pot ?
Or wasting away incarcerated while waiting to be tried because you could not make bail. Or being murdered by a police officer for driving while Black or passing a counterfeit $20 bill
Even more infuriating!
Infuriating!
And the rest of the world sees this farce and drifts away from Democracy. We're not much of a role model.
Democracy is being challenged in an unprecedented way right now. The real judgment on democracy will be the outcome of the J 6 investigation, how hard the committee fights and how determined they (or ultimately, maybe a protesting public) are to hold everyone of the guilty to account. IMO, we cannot judge democracy on the current conditions b/c we are having to fight new threats never met before.