I would absolutely love to throw Munchkin into my re-education camp. Munchkin is not a Democrat; he is a political survivalist. He will do whatever it takes to survive, get re-elected, and get rich off the taxpayer dime, and not a drop more. He wouldn’t for a moment hesitate to switch his party affiliation to R if he felt it would keep him in office.
What I am saying is that we’re staring right wing authoritarianism in the face as we speak. If the Democrats cannot unite as a party and stop Republicans from destroying the judiciary and rigging the vote, then that is what we will have. Currently, Democrats are not in a good position to win consistently because the working class is getting squeezed like never before. Moreover, we’re about to encounter the kinds of challenges that rattle and shake the foundation of a democratic society.
In order to deal with the kinds of threats that we are about to encounter. In the short-term we could be looking at stagflation but I’m more worried about the next several years - rampant inequality, political corruption, and a rapidly deteriorating environment. We need political intellect and efficiency more than we really need inter-faction consensus or compromise. We are going to need effective statecraft. Our current system will not be able to survive what’s about to be thrown at it.
Either the Democrats improve statecraft, or the Republicans will take over, and their value system is radically different, and they will respond to existential crises in ways that are quite contrary to how we’d respond. Banning mask mandates is schools is just the appetizer. Let’s wait to see how they handle water shortages and crop failures, and decide who’s worth saving and who isn’t.
This reminds me of those Hawks advocating a first strike against Russia in the Cuban missle crisis. They are going to hit us so we must hit them first. The problem is that no one wins a nuclear war. Similarly if the end result is a dictatorship, we have lost, no matter who is in charge of it.
Perhaps Asahi needs to play one or two (or 100,000) nice games of tic-tac-toe.
They’re playing a different game than we are. I know people are aware of conservative political tactics and spin, but I really don’t think people understand how truly dire this situation is. They are prepared for a total remake of the political system, turning it into a type of democracy in which it will be extremely hard, if not impossible, for the Democrats to win elections. It is not hyperbole; it is very real, and very serious. The Democratic party must unite to: a) end the filibuster; b) pack the Supreme Court; c) add more liberal justices at all levels of the federal judiciary; and b) pass sweeping new voting rights protections at the federal level. If they don’t do this within the next year, American democracy will die.
Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local GOP headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers. They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.
In Wisconsin, for instance, new GOP recruits are becoming poll workers. County clerks who run elections in the state are required to hire parties’ nominees. The parties once passed on suggesting names, but now hardline Republican county chairs are moving to use those powers.
ProPublica contacted GOP leaders in 65 key counties, and 41 reported an unusual increase in signups since Bannon’s campaign began. At least 8,500 new Republican precinct officers (or equivalent lowest-level officials) joined those county parties. We also looked at equivalent Democratic posts and found no similar surge.
In short, Democratic political activism relies on signing up more voters and hoping that they can somehow get them all to the polls to inch out another political victory and then maintain fragile, easily broken political coalitions once elected. Republican activism involves recruiting people to positions of power to change the entire makeup of America’s political apparatus.
You do not understand the game they are playing. If you did, you would be alarmed as hell.
That’s a pretty bold prediction. Are you willing to revisit that in a year? Or will this be another Mike Lindell situation where the goalposts keep sliding away?
When America ends it’s democracy in a year, then Kasparov’s quote will be very applicable.
Then again, I’m not saying you’re an alarmist. An alarmist is when you simply have unreasonable concerns. Your prediction is fucking batshit crazy. You left “alarmist” far behind.
I didn’t say that democracy would collapse in a year - you’re the one putting the time stamp on it. Your original statement was to ‘revisit’ the prediction in a year, which isn’t the same as saying that democracy will collapse in a year. The elections aren’t even until November 2022, so why would I suggest that democracy will collapse in a year’s time?
I don’t think you understand what’s going on. Your assumptions about how a democracy collapses are typical - you think that it all happens in one fell swoop, with an army that just overnight declares that it’s in control and tanks roll into town. That’s not how it happens, nor is it what I am suggesting.
So then you made a meaningless statement, that if they don’t act within a year, at some undefined future date (maybe 5,000 years from now?) democracy will die in the US.
That’s the opposite of bold, that’s just using weasel words,
It’s interesting, the dichotomy that I see here between @asahi with his “Forty years of darkness, dogs & cats living together” posts and most everyone else is spewing the variation of “I tell you, Krypton is simply shifting its orbit.”
I tended to not take @asahi seriously. Then January 6 happened.
I’m not sure that that’s what you’re really seeing. In fact, one of the biggest problems with vague melodramatic doomsday prophesying is that it can create a false illusion that the people who criticize it are oblivious or complacent or insufficiently alarmed about the seriousness of the problems. When in fact, it’s usually the people who take the problems seriously who most dislike having meaningful analysis cluttered up with vague melodramatic doomsday prophesying.
Serious, sensible, specific, meaningful analysis is a valuable way to talk about problems, and doesn’t mean that we’re trying to trivialize or minimize them. asahi’s vague melodramatic doomsday prophesying, on the other hand (and I should reiterate here that certainly not all of his posts fall into that category), mostly leads to nothing but talking about asahi.
What is “vague” about democracy will die? I’m not in any way being vague. The criticism seems to be that I can’t predict exactly when and how it will happen, which is a ridiculous way to criticize what I’ve said. I’m not claiming to be a Mayan prophet; I’m predicting that American democracy is increasingly in peril, and I see no way out of danger due to numerous factors, one of which is that there’s a potentially fatal complacency and lack of understanding of how democracies die.
