The fat lady is making loud rasping noises lately and some people aren’t sure whether it’s singing or not.
They didn’t know just how evil and partisan their own base was until Trump demonstrated it for them. They spent years using conservative media/echo chamber sources to make their base paranoid, outraged, and hyper-partisan, but even then, they still used dog whistles. They didn’t think they could just come out and say the most horrible shit imaginable and get away with it.
Remember when Trump was first a candidate, and most of the republicans talked about what a dangerous kook he was? Because he was doing all the stuff they were doing, except he said the quiet part out loud. He didn’t used dog whistles. He just came out and said and acted in the worst possible fucking way someone could act, and embraced the things they only hinted at. And they thought “well, fuck, this is going to cause a huge backlash against us since they’re just going to lay out bare how shitty a huge portion of our base is”, and hence, the NeverTrump movement.
And it turns out they underestimated their own base. They were horrible human beings beyond what they even cynically imagined. There were fewer people of principle who would reject what Trump was than they ever imagined. They were more cult-like, more “I will support my own tribe against the enemy tribes no matter what they do or how much it conflicts with any principles I have” than they ever imagined.
They were terrified that Trump would be the undoing of their entire dog whistle hint hint outrage mongering campaign of the last 20-30 years, but it turns out that he was the one that proved republicans were worse than even the most cynical republican politician who was pandering hatred to them ever thought.
It turns out there was no risk. 40% of Americans are on board with literally anything any republican wants to do, no matter how blatantly evil. And it also, just as importantly, turns out that the other 60% are fucking useless at stopping it. They blatantly broke all sorts of laws and norms, and suffered no significant pushback. They went into an alternate reality of conspiracy theories and just flat out denying reality, and there was no significant pushback. It got rolled up into the norms. News media just started talking as though living in a fantasy world where you draw hurricanes on maps in sharpie is just a normal part of politics now. They launched a deliberately planned violent insurrection that attempted a coup on the US government and suffered no consequences. Slaps on the wrists for the people who actually stormed the capital, and nothing for the people who planned and encouraged and facilitated it. Their official party line is The Big Lie, an ongoing, unambiguous attempt to break the democratic processes in the US… and no one is doing shit about it.
There are no consequences. They have no scruples, no principles, absolutely no moral or ethical or principled base to keep them in check. The institutions of justice in the US have completely failed to enforce either the law or the institutional norms of democracies. The opposition party is so wildly incompetent at stopping them that I can’t even comprehend it. They are living The Big Lie, they are in the process of a coup, and there have never been nor will ever be consequences. They win, because there is no goodness or decency inside them to stop them from using any evil tactic available to them, and because no one is at all willing to stop them. It’s already over.
Yet, he does not do that. Now, who was it that tried ruling by decree? Oh, yeah, way back in way back in July of 2017, I posted this tidbit. That particular jackass to which I referred thought that “Let it be written; let it be done” was the way to go.
Rule 2: Democratic leaders cannot fail, only be failed.
Gee, I’m fishing around for a word…a descriptive term…deplorables, maybe?
And yet, somehow, after allegedly “alienating” all these groups, they still pulled millions of more votes than Trump.
Gee, maybe the narrative that they’re alienating people isn’t quite accurate?
If Breyer stepped down, there is no way I would trust Manchin and Sinema to vote for a progressive Justice that would be needed. The conservative dark money will continue to buy them off and turn the process into a fiasco.
This and talk of “pendulums” swinging back and forth assumes no one jams the mechanism, and one US party is actively seeking to do just that.
The crazy will implode or be exploded at some point. But history shows that the crazy can grab power with both hands and not be stopped till after it has caused widespread carnage. And far too often it is only stopped by forces that are themselves dangerous.
I’m not saying that is going to happen in the US. The crazy may collapse before it goes that far. But you can’t assume that.
So we have lost. Therefore, we should…do what? We should be making major life decisions based…on what?
1930 is only my grandparents. My fam doesn’t rush our generations.
Overton Window-wise, where is it really? I’d say extreme fascism is the center of political gravity in the US, but only because I lack the vocabulary to define positions even further into sadistic revancism.
komrade, why do you hate America so much?
I’m watching the documentary Rigged on Amazon Prime and it’s very interesting.
Starting in 2008, the Republicans realized that the demographics in the US have shifted. The Hispanic vote was huge and growing. I believe they said that group makes up 25% of the vote. Added to other non-white voters, you’re now in a situation where you absolutely need the minority vote if things continue.
So you have 2 tactics…
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Get minorities to vote for you.
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Make it so their votes don’t matter (voter purges, inconvenience them, force in-person voting and make polls limited in minority-populated areas, and so on).
That first tactic hasn’t worked for Republicans so they’re trying the second one. But it can only stave off the inevitable. It’s a desperation move for them. They have nothing for the long-term as minorities continue to become less of a minority.
This thread title is accurate if it refers to the Republican Party. They’re a group that has been fatally wounded and are scrambling to stop the bleeding. It’s just a matter of time.
But that doesn’t mean that people can be complacent. The tactics they’re trying are harmful and should be dragged out into the light. We need to push for voting rights to be secured. Don’t let them take democracy with them. It does nobody any good if the Republican Party ceases to be and is replaced by a dictatorship. I don’t think that would happen but we can’t let there be even the ghost of a chance.
Sorry I missed this nugget:
In the Republican party right now we have anyone that voted for impeachment has been censured, and Cheney has gone from being leader of the republican house caucus to losing her republican party recognition in Wyoming.
She also needs round the clock security thanks to all the public villification by her colleagues.
However what’s really extreme is trying to persuade people with discussion, and making concessions. Those filthy Dems, is no tactic beneath them!?
Bolding mine. There in bold why you’re losing. The US is, at its core, a centre-right nation. The hard-right is getting bigger, but the majority of Americans aren’t racist, aren’t anti-poor and aren’t anti-democracy. They want a government that offers decent services, protects them from crime, provides a basic safety net, and let’s them get on with businesses and daily lives. But does anybody in America think that’s what the Democratic Party actually offers? Instead, they’re the party of big projects and big legislation, whether or not there’s any evidence the projects or legislation will be effective, and they kowtow to the hard-left. The same hard-left that denounces and insults anyone who doesn’t agree with their agenda - including other members of the Democratic Party. Why would anyone with a conservative outlook want to join that lot? The Democratic Party can’t succeed unless they appeal to the middle of the political spectrum, but they’re too scared of their left wing to make the party attractive to centrists. The only reason they’re doing as well as they are is because of the anti-Trump faction in the middle. If Trump ever disappears, the Democratic Party is going to have to reject its shift to the left, or they’ll be perpetual losers - and the party is already full of losers.
I have no idea what fantasy world, besides fox news, you guys could possibly getting this “kowtow to the hard left” non-sense. What’s the most progressive economic policy the democratic party supports? Absolutely jack shit. There is no “hard left” in America and the democrats certainly don’t kowtow to them, they give nothing at all to their progressive base.
Occasionally, as old people die off and young people are less hateful, they flip on social issues that rich people don’t care about like weed and gay marriage. But even those are not “hard left.”
And they give absolutely nothing that would empower or enrich the lower class.
I’ve been posting these here, particularly the first article, for years now:
The US right always describes the Dem’s position as too left, too socialist, pandering to commies etc. There is no point in even listening to any US right wing/Republican on the point. Whether it’s a cynical campaign strategy, or lack of perspective, or tribalism, or habit really doesn’t matter. It’s just the label they use, and that’s that. And because many Americans are triggered by the words “left”, “communist”, “socialist” etc, it works.
If there is a left-right scale from 1-10 and 20 years ago the Dems were at 4 and the Republicans were at 6, and now the Dems are at 6 and the Republicans are at 8, the Republicans are going to say the Dems are crazy left.
If Republicans go to 10 and the Dems move to 9.99, the Republicans will say the Dems are crazy left.
And the Republican response will be and has been to move the Overton window right so they are at 12 and they can call the Dems too left because they are now at 11.
Ask the question you just asked. What shall we do?
I dunno, I’m not the one with the opinion here.
I guess it sort of depends what exactly you think is gonna happen. I mean, if you think the results are gonna be severe enough, it could justify any one of some pretty heavy acts, anything from fleeing the country to going prepper in the wilderness to suicide to (probably multiple) homicide, possibly in the form of violent revolution. Suppose people hear your good word and are 100% convinced by them. What do you hope they do?
Back when the poster named after a Japanese beer was here, it’s something I always wondered about his insistence. If democracy in this country is doomed, what does that actually mean for me and my loved ones, for the way I live my life?
Right, but they don’t want a government that does that for other people.