What’s the thinking here? Bad as he is, any Democrat is worse? I’ll vote for any white supremacist? It’s fun to piss off the libs? Controversy sells books? I’m a dumbass?
Bill Barr is emblematic in the lack of difficulty that Republicans in general have in simultaneously holding mutually contradictory and counterfactual views as long as it satisfies their objective to “win”, even if “winning” means cutting your foot off.
Stranger
Barr is, as those on his side of the aisle like to put it, a cuck.
OP, you’re talking about the guy who had a press conference full of bullshit about the Mueller report just to establish the bullshit talking points before the report could be digested by the masses. All of these guys who enabled Trump: I’s just bullshit on top of bullshit and all the way down.
What I mean to say is, don’t look reason from any of them.
He said that in so many words.
“Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party, it’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee,” Barr responded.
Straight dope in this interview:
Quote,
I certainly have made it clear, I don’t think he should be our nominee and I’m going to, you know, support somebody else for the nomination.
But if he is the nominee and your choice is Trump or whoever is running on the Democratic side, would you vote for him?
Because I believe the greatest threat for the country is the progressive agenda pushed by the Democratic party, it is inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee."
~Max
ETA: ninja’d hard
He is a small man full of hate. That is what is consistent, that’s his guiding star.
How fucked up do you have to be to believe that Joe Biden is the greatest threat to the United States? I understand disagreeing with someone’s goals, but he seems to honestly think if the other party gets their agenda the nation is in peril. I don’t even think that about Republicans, and they have some seriously flawed ideas.
You’re talking about the guy who was material in covering up the Iran-Contra scandal, in which a presidential administration did a deliberate end run around Congress and then had multiple people lie under oath to the Senate about it. Do you think Bill Burr has the capacity to feel shame?
“If you want a presidential cover-up, Barr is your guy.”
Stranger
This is tantamount to saying, straight out, “I am a partisan hack, guided by partisan dogma, and when I served in the one cabinet position that must avoid partisan politics and administer justice for all, I felt free to disregard that principle.”
Good to know.
Somehow, a large number of people - even smart ones - in the country seem to have all missed the fact that you can leave a blank spot on the voting ballot.
I do. Because Barr isn’t even close to being the worst of them.
This is why I started this thread. Look at the chart referenced in the OP – it’s not that far down from the top. You don’t have to read the article.
The article referred to:
Here’s the chart itself:
Just came across this chart from someone else
That’s the chart showed to me in school, with both Romney and Obama almost next to each other in quadrant I, about halfway up the line to authoritarianism and a bit more than halfway towards the economic-right edge.
I placed in quadrant II, almost all the way to the left edge and and maybe 3/4 of the way towards the top.
~Max
Okay, but that chart is wildly inaccurate. For one, Democrats don’t consider themselves to be very far left. For another, “more government” is not a measure of authoritarianism. The size of the government is not the issue. It’s how responsive it is to the people that determines authoritarianism. Hence why, say, trying to manipulate the vote or trying to stay in power after losing an election is authoritarian.
That reads to me like it was made by a libertarian, one of the “both sides are just as bad” mentality and can’t imagine there are things further left than liberals and progressives, or even things to the right of conservatism. It also explains mentioning economics, but not considering how much corporate interests are in control of both parties.
No real political compass gets you results like any of these maps.
I’m not sure you can even say that “how responsive it is to the people…determines authoritarianism”; the US Democratic Party as a whole has certainly become less responsive to its traditional constituency as it has sought election financing from business interests, but that is corporatocracy (the influencing of policy by corporate and business interests) rather than authoritarianism (the de facto or de jure elimination of competing ideologies or interests by the weakening of protections such as separation of governing powers, judicial impartiality, free access to the voting franchise, et cetera).
The Democratic Party as a whole is by any legitimate measure a center-right party largely beholden to corporate interests, and in particular finance, agriculture, and military-industrial complex, while the GOP is a sort-of pseudo-conservative position that once once on a pragmatist-corporatocracy but is increasingly becoming a proto-fascist party that is largely driven by an ideology of hatred, resentment, and fear and is centered around a cult of personality. While there are “Progressive” elements within the Democratic Party (not including Bernie Sanders, who is not actually a registered Democrat except when it suits him to run to make a Presidential run), they are actually pretty middle of the road by European “Social Democratic” standards in just pushing for basic social protections. Even the hated-by-Fox-News “The Squad” are scarcely comparable to fringe progressives in most industrialized nations.
It is hard to say what Barr is actually is actually afraid of with regard to (his words) “progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party” because he has never expounded upon what he means by that, but the notion that it is somehow a greater threat than a Chief Executive who—by Barr’s own admission—initiated an insurrection against the valid electoral certification because he was unhappy with the result of the election shows you exactly where his priorities lay, which should not be a surprise with even a cursory review of Barr’s career.
Stranger
This may be off topic, but this raises a question I’ve seen asked elsewhere, and I’ve been thinking about occasionally ever since: why does it matter how left or right America’s parties are compared to Europe?
It is a comparison to other industrialized liberal democracies that have similar per capita income, rates of economic growth, quality of life and personal freedom indicies, et cetera. It is well accepted that functioning liberal democracies with broad representation of political views tend to serve the interests of their own citizens or do not engage in wars of conquest outside of their borders because these acts are in contravention to the general principles, whereas nations that hew toward authoritarianism (i.e. a restriction of views to a narrow portion of the political spectrum) tend to engage in more internal persecution and military adventurism, so making this kind of comparison serves as a general indicator for whether the United States is becoming more or less ‘democratic’ or egalitarian (in the political science since, not in specific political leanings).
The United States had tended toward the more progressive since the 1920s with some notable exceptions (the Viet Nam conflict, the late1940s/1950s ‘Red Scare’), but starting with the Reagan era veered hard to the right with respect to labor, civil rights, the ‘Drug War’ (started under Nixon but became a casus belli for military and paramilitary intervention under Reagan), the use of FISA courts against American citizens (again, predating Reagan but vastly expanded in the 1980s), and of course executive corruption to the highest level (the Iran-Contra Affair) that despite being fully exposed to the public didn’t result in anyone involved suffering any criminal penalties. At the same time, the post-WWII liberal democracies of Europe have become very fiscally successful with some of the highest overall quality of life indices in virtually every measure and reduced wealth inequalities. European liberal democracies still have representation for social and fiscal conservatives and they play a role in the overall governance without insisting that they are being silenced or ‘cancelled’, and without shutting down the entire government in a fit of pique.
Stranger
I’ve started thinking it’s no longer about liberals vs. conservatives. It’s about authoritarians vs. small d democrats. And Barr is definitely an authoritarian.