Keep writing and speaking the truth, LKT4. Someday, the folks who voted for single party rule in their states will be shocked to discover that they, too, have been stripped of the freedoms they foolishly thought they were preserving.
I want Democrats to hit back hard, and Pres. Biden to expand the supreme court. If not, the traitors will keep advancing their nazi tactics. In the meantime, they need to be voted out, all of them.
If this keeps up maybe citizens here will take to the streets in the millions like those in Paris and Tel Aviv are doing. This fascist beast needs to be put to rest.
I participated in the demonstrations in Tel Aviv. 200,000 people on a Saturday night is very impressive. We need to speak up that this radical minority is trying to take her civil and voting rights away from us.
Too many USians believe that Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and the rest were evil because they were evil. Or maybe they were evil because they were communists or fascists. This is only part of the truth (maybe), and if so, a fairly small part. What made them evil, and led them to do evil, was that they were 100% sure that they were right.
Rules and norms are no obstacle to people who are 100% sure that they are right. The ends they desire justify whatever means they employ. The current crop of Republicans are 100% sure that they are right, which is to say that they are 100% behind anything that will (they hope) get them what they want.
This is very, very hard to grasp for those of us who were reared on the assumption that no matter who wins the election, things will work out. They won't. These people are playing for keeps. Act like it.
Their certainty that they are right in all matters and circumstances is why we cannot get through to them with facts and reality. They are lost in their own cultish world and do not believe others disagree with them. As those white legislators left the TN House after voting out two black legislators, you could see the satisfaction with their actions on their faces. This is deplorable!
I hope you'll give this more thought, Susanna. I'm 100% sure I'm right about a lot of things we dicuss here. I think most of us are. If those cruel monsters are right, who'd want to be alive? That doesn't make us take action to become despots. So if believing they're right does't propel them, what does? Lust for total permanent power, perhaps? They are indeed "behind anything that will (they hope) get them what they want." Unlike them, we're willing to do all we can that's legal—like being election activists. I quite agree that they're playing for keeps. What else can we do about it?
I didn't mean to imply that *I* thought they were right. Did I? I said that THEY are 100% sure that THEY are right. You and I sure don't want to live in the world they want to bring into being (or go back to, whatever). Hell, once they get there, they may not either. I don't think this is all that unusual. I'm doing what I'm doing because I think I'm right, and because I think, I hope, it might make a little difference.
Of course I know you don't think they're right, nor would you ever write that they are. My point is that when each side is 100% convinced it's right the belief doesn't explain anything. Something else makes them so ruthless and relentless, and I'm asking what that is (my guess, authoritarian drive), and how we can respond.
That certainly computes, Gail, and is consistent with Susanna's insight. I think the authoritarian drive also factors in. We're willing to go to any length to convince opponents to do things our way; they won't hesitate to use force to get their way. Something in their backgrounds. A lot of us here grew up in military families and may be sensitive in that department.
That's an interesting question. Like Gail (Chicago), I don't believe they consider possible long-term consequences, or they don't do a very good job of it. You know who else tends to ignore possible consequences while indulging in self- and other-destructive behavior? Alcoholics and addicts. There also seems to be some herd mentality involved, or maybe "herd momentum" is a better way to put it. Once you're part of a stampede, changing course is all but impossible, and stopping short gets you trampled.
Funny—Replying to a ~shadowcloud~ comment, next lkt essay, I was just saying how much I loved a Stuart Stevens term that didn't catch on to describe MAGAts: Trump-drunk. I think you're both onto something.
Small, well organized minorities, who are laser focused on getting power can succeed, especially when the majority are half asleep and not paying attention to politics
Its hard to put it better than Lord Acton did, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I'm guessing that this bit of history is no longer taught in red states. A democracy simply quits functioning when one side views every issue as a zero sum game and will do anything possible to retain power.
I've been on a sort of binge reading about our Civil War over the last couple of years, especially how the antebellum and confederates governed. It appears very circular in terms of today's similar tactics. If these fascists lose they'll take their football home and burn down the house. I'm doing my best not to let that happen. I have too much stake in this nation.
Pay special attention to the 1850s. 1850 brought the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slaveholders to pursue fugitives into the North. Anti-slavery northerners who had so far gone along, at least outwardly, stopped cooperating. I see a parallel to the SCOTUS overreach in _Dobbs,_ and the history gods are laughing their heads off that one of the earliest signs of resistance was in *Kansas*. After that came the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The Whig party melted down not long after, and the Republican party -- which looked nothing like today's GOP -- began to rise. John Brown and his band of merry men attacked Harper's Ferry in October 1859. The resemblances to the insurrectionists of 1/6/21 might make you a little uncomfortable, but they aren't exact, so stay with it. As Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme, and we can learn plenty from those rhymes if we know how to read them.
Susanna, I son’t know if you follow Politics Girl but she may have an answer to making SCOTUS legitimate again. I know someone in the Biden admin watches her and a few others because they were invited to the WH. Lucian should also be invited, in my opinion.
I don't but will check it out. I'm not a big Twitter user and these days I check it even less often. Seems like every time I log on, Elise Stefanik is at the top of my feed -- and I don't even follow her.
I just read all Comments (so far). There is a lot of agreement on several points. The big one is that things have deteriorated so far that we now fear the continued existence of our Democracy is in real jeopardy. Another is that the Right is becoming more extreme and refuses to accept the outcome of any contest they don't win, and will do anything to prevail.
Basically the Right has rejected the national compact that makes a democracy work. No democracy can function if a sizable portion of the citizenry refuses to abide by any democratic norms that they don't like.
The culture war stuff, in concert with Fox "news" et al, keeps the GOP base enraged and engaged. With that support, the GOP has shown its cards. The fascism is out in the open now.
Republican leaders, while loathsome, are not stupid. They see every "win" their counterparts are racking up and take things a bit further the next time.
Biden and the Dem leaders aren't stupid, either. They know that our last chance to hold on to our democracy is the 2024 election. We have the numbers... Need to get out the vote any way we can.
This is an excellent new book by a wonderful writer, named Jeff Sharlet. He immersed himself in trump world and gives a riveting account of its delusional, cultish insanity:
Tennessee reps did to Nashville what Texas reps did to Austin years ago -- split it up into so many pieces a Democrat can not be elected and the city has no real voice in Congress (or at the state legislature). Every autocratic move the Republicans get away with in one state is soon duplicated in other states. Molly Ivins was right long ago when she declared Texas the national laboratory of bad government.
I had been thinking along the same lines but unable to put all the bits and pieces anywhere near such a concise and comprehensive manner. I will post it to Twitter and see if it sticks. Every Democrat should read this, and even the more reasonably minded rational Republicans if there are any anymore, because they should be just as concerned. Reasonable people would not want their party to resort to dirty tricks if they can't win on their merits because if the extremists obtain their goal democracy as we know it will have been destroyed. .
I thought it a bit odd because I think if a ban occurs people are told about it. I think in that one case there might have been a potential virus danger from one pf the photos from another site. Once or twice I have clicked on a link that seems genuine and probably was but my virus protection program will say Caution. etc. If it does I never proceed.
Thanks Lucian for summarizing our woeful state so well. For years the Rethugs have made it clear that the only votes they consider legitimate are votes for them, and the only legitimate president is one of them. Essentially they want power in perpetuity, a one-party system, and wherever they can they are making it a reality. Fascism is alive, but not yet dominant. In the absence of a legitimate, credible, SCOTUS, which is the current reality, sad to say, it will be impossible to put the Red states into play, and guarantee the right to vote to all who are eligible. The Rethugs have successfully manipulated our grievously flawed governmental structure in their favor, and won’t support the fundamental reforms we need: elimination of the Electoral College; weighted voting by population in the Senate; an expanded House; elimination of lifetime judicial appointments; establishing stronger national standards for federal elections, and on. None of that seems possible. A cold civil war it is, and anything that passes as democracy is at stake in all future elections. The fascists are determined to win. We are already two separate countries, and the enormous rift, IMO, will not be healed. Compromises will only inflame both sides. If what we have suffered now are only the opening shots in that civil war, what comes next?
I have one more: A citizens’ committee in all states to draw up legislative districts for state and federal legislators. That might eliminate some of the gerrymandering (only if the committees have members from both parties).
Do I have to repeat it yet again - "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it"? The state laws now being passed in the red states are similar to (but not all quite yet up to the level of) the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany - suppress voting power of particular groups; control education curricula and make it unlawful to teach certain things; ban books; control the medical care available to 51% of the population; expel elected and appointed officials (legislators, school administrators and teachers, librarians, etc.) who don't toe the party line; approve the murder of peaceful civil rights protesters by immediately pardoning the murder conviction of a white racist before the ink is dry on the verdict form, etc.
The only saving grace in all this is the hope that the sane citizens of red states really turn out in every election going forward and throw out and defeat every GQP and MAGA fascist and racist already in office or running for office, all the way down to dogcatcher. That, and the choices of Americans in every other state not to send their kids to college in red states, not to vacation in red states, not to do business in red states, etc. It won't be fair to the sane people in those states, but it may help spur them to the actions needed to get rid of the fascists and racists in power. And hopefully help keep the "cold war" from becoming a hot one.
What we hadn't considered before Dominion revelations is that their media are the tail that viewers are wagging. Those people go on the air not so much hoping to lead as to not offend the true believers.
Thank you for keeping us informed Mr TruscottIV. Our reality is that our Democracy is facing threats from within by the very people elected and sworn to protect it. 😡
Keep writing and speaking the truth, LKT4. Someday, the folks who voted for single party rule in their states will be shocked to discover that they, too, have been stripped of the freedoms they foolishly thought they were preserving.
I want Democrats to hit back hard, and Pres. Biden to expand the supreme court. If not, the traitors will keep advancing their nazi tactics. In the meantime, they need to be voted out, all of them.
If this keeps up maybe citizens here will take to the streets in the millions like those in Paris and Tel Aviv are doing. This fascist beast needs to be put to rest.
I participated in the demonstrations in Tel Aviv. 200,000 people on a Saturday night is very impressive. We need to speak up that this radical minority is trying to take her civil and voting rights away from us.
President Biden can't expand the Supreme Court. Surely you know that?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937
Are you willing to wait for that "someday" and hope that it will come? I'm not.
Too many USians believe that Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and the rest were evil because they were evil. Or maybe they were evil because they were communists or fascists. This is only part of the truth (maybe), and if so, a fairly small part. What made them evil, and led them to do evil, was that they were 100% sure that they were right.
Rules and norms are no obstacle to people who are 100% sure that they are right. The ends they desire justify whatever means they employ. The current crop of Republicans are 100% sure that they are right, which is to say that they are 100% behind anything that will (they hope) get them what they want.
This is very, very hard to grasp for those of us who were reared on the assumption that no matter who wins the election, things will work out. They won't. These people are playing for keeps. Act like it.
Their certainty that they are right in all matters and circumstances is why we cannot get through to them with facts and reality. They are lost in their own cultish world and do not believe others disagree with them. As those white legislators left the TN House after voting out two black legislators, you could see the satisfaction with their actions on their faces. This is deplorable!
I hope you'll give this more thought, Susanna. I'm 100% sure I'm right about a lot of things we dicuss here. I think most of us are. If those cruel monsters are right, who'd want to be alive? That doesn't make us take action to become despots. So if believing they're right does't propel them, what does? Lust for total permanent power, perhaps? They are indeed "behind anything that will (they hope) get them what they want." Unlike them, we're willing to do all we can that's legal—like being election activists. I quite agree that they're playing for keeps. What else can we do about it?
I didn't mean to imply that *I* thought they were right. Did I? I said that THEY are 100% sure that THEY are right. You and I sure don't want to live in the world they want to bring into being (or go back to, whatever). Hell, once they get there, they may not either. I don't think this is all that unusual. I'm doing what I'm doing because I think I'm right, and because I think, I hope, it might make a little difference.
Of course I know you don't think they're right, nor would you ever write that they are. My point is that when each side is 100% convinced it's right the belief doesn't explain anything. Something else makes them so ruthless and relentless, and I'm asking what that is (my guess, authoritarian drive), and how we can respond.
You know my answer: “immaturity which includes the inability to assess long term consequences of one’s actions”
That certainly computes, Gail, and is consistent with Susanna's insight. I think the authoritarian drive also factors in. We're willing to go to any length to convince opponents to do things our way; they won't hesitate to use force to get their way. Something in their backgrounds. A lot of us here grew up in military families and may be sensitive in that department.
That's an interesting question. Like Gail (Chicago), I don't believe they consider possible long-term consequences, or they don't do a very good job of it. You know who else tends to ignore possible consequences while indulging in self- and other-destructive behavior? Alcoholics and addicts. There also seems to be some herd mentality involved, or maybe "herd momentum" is a better way to put it. Once you're part of a stampede, changing course is all but impossible, and stopping short gets you trampled.
Funny—Replying to a ~shadowcloud~ comment, next lkt essay, I was just saying how much I loved a Stuart Stevens term that didn't catch on to describe MAGAts: Trump-drunk. I think you're both onto something.
Small, well organized minorities, who are laser focused on getting power can succeed, especially when the majority are half asleep and not paying attention to politics
Its hard to put it better than Lord Acton did, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I'm guessing that this bit of history is no longer taught in red states. A democracy simply quits functioning when one side views every issue as a zero sum game and will do anything possible to retain power.
I've been on a sort of binge reading about our Civil War over the last couple of years, especially how the antebellum and confederates governed. It appears very circular in terms of today's similar tactics. If these fascists lose they'll take their football home and burn down the house. I'm doing my best not to let that happen. I have too much stake in this nation.
Pay special attention to the 1850s. 1850 brought the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slaveholders to pursue fugitives into the North. Anti-slavery northerners who had so far gone along, at least outwardly, stopped cooperating. I see a parallel to the SCOTUS overreach in _Dobbs,_ and the history gods are laughing their heads off that one of the earliest signs of resistance was in *Kansas*. After that came the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The Whig party melted down not long after, and the Republican party -- which looked nothing like today's GOP -- began to rise. John Brown and his band of merry men attacked Harper's Ferry in October 1859. The resemblances to the insurrectionists of 1/6/21 might make you a little uncomfortable, but they aren't exact, so stay with it. As Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme, and we can learn plenty from those rhymes if we know how to read them.
And the anti-abortion states are pursuing women and their helpers who have to go out of state for abortions, as you mentioned with Dobbs.
Susanna, I son’t know if you follow Politics Girl but she may have an answer to making SCOTUS legitimate again. I know someone in the Biden admin watches her and a few others because they were invited to the WH. Lucian should also be invited, in my opinion.
https://twitter.com/iampoliticsgirl/status/1644094838315569152?s=46&t=0fqgIfW4gkZe58SfYjTotQ
I don't but will check it out. I'm not a big Twitter user and these days I check it even less often. Seems like every time I log on, Elise Stefanik is at the top of my feed -- and I don't even follow her.
Ugh on Stefanik! You can find Politics Girl on YouTube. I think you would like her. She makes so much sense.
I just read all Comments (so far). There is a lot of agreement on several points. The big one is that things have deteriorated so far that we now fear the continued existence of our Democracy is in real jeopardy. Another is that the Right is becoming more extreme and refuses to accept the outcome of any contest they don't win, and will do anything to prevail.
Basically the Right has rejected the national compact that makes a democracy work. No democracy can function if a sizable portion of the citizenry refuses to abide by any democratic norms that they don't like.
I totally agree with your summary, Bob. So what do we do about it? (Assuming we're not beyond the point of no return.)
Just when I think I can’t be any more surprised by the antics of the Republiqans, I’m proved wrong. And I’m always left speechless. 😡
The culture war stuff, in concert with Fox "news" et al, keeps the GOP base enraged and engaged. With that support, the GOP has shown its cards. The fascism is out in the open now.
Republican leaders, while loathsome, are not stupid. They see every "win" their counterparts are racking up and take things a bit further the next time.
Biden and the Dem leaders aren't stupid, either. They know that our last chance to hold on to our democracy is the 2024 election. We have the numbers... Need to get out the vote any way we can.
This is an excellent new book by a wonderful writer, named Jeff Sharlet. He immersed himself in trump world and gives a riveting account of its delusional, cultish insanity:
The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324006498?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
Sharlet was scouting obsessed traitors years before they started committing acts that no one could ignore. An independent patriot of the first order.
Sharlet wrote "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." God (?) help us.
Nail, meet hammer.
Thanks Lucian.
Tennessee reps did to Nashville what Texas reps did to Austin years ago -- split it up into so many pieces a Democrat can not be elected and the city has no real voice in Congress (or at the state legislature). Every autocratic move the Republicans get away with in one state is soon duplicated in other states. Molly Ivins was right long ago when she declared Texas the national laboratory of bad government.
And ALEC is the escaped killer virus spreading it to all states.
I had been thinking along the same lines but unable to put all the bits and pieces anywhere near such a concise and comprehensive manner. I will post it to Twitter and see if it sticks. Every Democrat should read this, and even the more reasonably minded rational Republicans if there are any anymore, because they should be just as concerned. Reasonable people would not want their party to resort to dirty tricks if they can't win on their merits because if the extremists obtain their goal democracy as we know it will have been destroyed. .
Musk gave up and Substack works again. He lied that it was ever banned, of course.
I thought it a bit odd because I think if a ban occurs people are told about it. I think in that one case there might have been a potential virus danger from one pf the photos from another site. Once or twice I have clicked on a link that seems genuine and probably was but my virus protection program will say Caution. etc. If it does I never proceed.
Thanks Lucian for summarizing our woeful state so well. For years the Rethugs have made it clear that the only votes they consider legitimate are votes for them, and the only legitimate president is one of them. Essentially they want power in perpetuity, a one-party system, and wherever they can they are making it a reality. Fascism is alive, but not yet dominant. In the absence of a legitimate, credible, SCOTUS, which is the current reality, sad to say, it will be impossible to put the Red states into play, and guarantee the right to vote to all who are eligible. The Rethugs have successfully manipulated our grievously flawed governmental structure in their favor, and won’t support the fundamental reforms we need: elimination of the Electoral College; weighted voting by population in the Senate; an expanded House; elimination of lifetime judicial appointments; establishing stronger national standards for federal elections, and on. None of that seems possible. A cold civil war it is, and anything that passes as democracy is at stake in all future elections. The fascists are determined to win. We are already two separate countries, and the enormous rift, IMO, will not be healed. Compromises will only inflame both sides. If what we have suffered now are only the opening shots in that civil war, what comes next?
I have one more: A citizens’ committee in all states to draw up legislative districts for state and federal legislators. That might eliminate some of the gerrymandering (only if the committees have members from both parties).
Do I have to repeat it yet again - "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it"? The state laws now being passed in the red states are similar to (but not all quite yet up to the level of) the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany - suppress voting power of particular groups; control education curricula and make it unlawful to teach certain things; ban books; control the medical care available to 51% of the population; expel elected and appointed officials (legislators, school administrators and teachers, librarians, etc.) who don't toe the party line; approve the murder of peaceful civil rights protesters by immediately pardoning the murder conviction of a white racist before the ink is dry on the verdict form, etc.
The only saving grace in all this is the hope that the sane citizens of red states really turn out in every election going forward and throw out and defeat every GQP and MAGA fascist and racist already in office or running for office, all the way down to dogcatcher. That, and the choices of Americans in every other state not to send their kids to college in red states, not to vacation in red states, not to do business in red states, etc. It won't be fair to the sane people in those states, but it may help spur them to the actions needed to get rid of the fascists and racists in power. And hopefully help keep the "cold war" from becoming a hot one.
Hitler could not have gotten away with it without his newspaper, Die Völkischer Beobachter. The GOP can’t do it without Fox “”News.”
What we hadn't considered before Dominion revelations is that their media are the tail that viewers are wagging. Those people go on the air not so much hoping to lead as to not offend the true believers.
Thank you for keeping us informed Mr TruscottIV. Our reality is that our Democracy is facing threats from within by the very people elected and sworn to protect it. 😡
they do anti democratic things cause that's who they are. they are power hungry frightened majority white men and the federalist society