Not at all germane to this thread, but this reminded me of this very funny moment from “The Big Sick.”
Punchline if you can’t watch: “It was a tragedy. I mean, we lost 19 of our best guys.”
It was a terrorist attack orchestrated by the president and largely supported by the Republican Party, who now are refusing to prosecute the man. A solid third of the country supports the attack, while another third are trivializing it. It was a fatal blow.
I would say the real problem wasn’t the attack itself, but the right-wing propaganda networks that get people in the mindset that everything ‘the left’ does is illegitimate. As long as Fox News, Sinclair, Newsmax, OANN, right-wing talk radio, etc. are allowed to propagandize and brainwash without their viewers/listeners being exposed to any rebuttal, this will keep happening.
At a minimum, the Fairness Doctrine must be restored and applied to cable as well as broadcast TV.
That wouldn’t stop ‘news’ shows that stream over the Web from continuing to do what they’re already doing, but at least it would throw a monkeywrench in Fox News, Sinclair, and right-wing talk radio’s ability to propagandize, and would prevent online streaming outfits from making the jump to cable, which would give them more of a patina of legitimacy.
I agree except not quite with the last sentence. I’m not fatalistic enough to accept that it is the end.
While there is life there is hope. It is a grievous wound, to be sure, one that is likely to fester and continue to do damage.
I’m not willing to give up all hope yet. If we accept that it is a fatal blow, then we may as well just go home and wait with our families till the end. I think that we can overcome this. I don’t know that we will, but we certainly won’t if we just give up and give in.
And more germane to what I am trying to say, Hitler was not on the ballot. And unlike Britain or Canada, the German system did not have the head of government selected by parliament. Hitler’s appointment as chancellor was a political move the conservative president to use the nazis to help fend off the socialists and communists. The elites were more responsible for the Nazi take over than the voters. Neither Hitler nor Trump could have gotten the power they had if a large chunk of the power structure hadn’t decided they could use them for own purposes. That is why we can’t just focus on the people waving rebel flags or dressed in battle gear. We have to hold the leaders who enabled Trump responsible.
And who will bell the cat? The Republican Party chooses its own leaders; the only way for the rest of us to hold its leaders responsible is to make sure that the GOP never holds power again.
The GOP politicians in 2016 who enabled Trump did so because they all wanted his voters. And now it’s even worse: it’s clear that few Republicans anywhere in this country stand a chance with the voters if they oppose Trump and Trumpism. Unless there’s enough evidence to expel them from Congress due to incitement of insurrection, we’re kinda low on means that I can see to hold them responsible.
There were reports of anti-government pigeons drinking in bars, saying ‘coup, coup’.
Stolen from Bill Hicks.
In Britain and Canada, the PM isn’t selected by Parliament. They’re appointed by the Crown, based on which party has the best chance of forming a government, which is usually the single largest party in a hung parliament.
As I understand it, the Weimar constitution followed the Westminster system on this point, with the President in place of the Crown, but with greater discretion than the apolitical Crown. The subsequent Basic Law provision for election of the chancellor by the Bundestag, combined with the constructive vote of non-confidence, was a post-WWII innovation designed to prevent the instability in the Weimar system which Hitler exploited. It is not found in classic Westminster systems.
But yes, the chain of events was an example of a coup by machinations of the elites in parliament and with the tacit support of the military that Hitler exploited, gradually gaining authority over the course of two years, from the elections of 1932, then the Reichstag Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 (passed only with exclusion, intimidation, and repression tactics aimed at non-Nazi members of the Reichstag), and the final merger of the positions of chancellor and president after Hindenberg’s death in 1934, (ratified by a “referendum” which was the result of voter intimidation and street gangs).
It was a slow coup, not a fast military overthrow, and it involved the gradual cooperation of other parties, coupled with intimidation tactics aimed at politicians.
Mob violence aimed at members of Congress, to intimidate them into subverting constitutional norms to keep the President in power, is a similar type of coup attempt.
And you wonder why we want you for the Governor General job?
Nothing to see here, right?
It will take a concerted effort. The Democrats, the media, the majority of the public that didn’t want a fascist take over of our government. We all have to acknowledge it was coup, it was a serious effort to overturn the government, and it is not over. If the public goes back to brunch, the Democrats pursue compromise with the instigators, and the media focuses on balance, the next coup attempt will be better planned and executed.
As I understand it today, the Crown appointment is, at least in practice, a pro forma exercise. As you said the Weimar president had a lot more control.
It varies with the jurisdiction and the context. HM did personality choose the UK PM on one occasion in the 1950s, before the Conservative Party had a well-established leadership process. And two of the Queen’s representatives at the provincial level in Canada have been influential in recent situations where the provincial assemblies had no clear majority.
But the monarch’s role is apolitical, unlike the Weimar president, who had more of a political role, as you say.
This is an excellent point: ethnonationalist, majoritarian populism is probably more often than not a top-down phenomenon. I don’t consider myself an expert on geopolitics but that seems to be what has happened in Poland and Hungary. Sure there’s populism but it’s the product of resentments stirred up from one of the ‘establishment’ parties. In the American South, it was moneyed interests that used racism to incite racial terror as a way to keep whites and blacks from unifying to collectively bargain.
I think the most likely and way out of this – at least in the near term – is to convince people that their government can work effectively. If Joe Biden can help mobilize an effort to beat COVID and bring back the economy, that would help. And then use federal police power and the justice system to prosecute the enemies of the state en masse.
Christ on a bike. Here’s an even more in-depth look (linked to in that piece):
Not only does this meeting appear to confirm that Trump’s team helped orchestrate the events of January 6, but that it participated in the calibration of those events to exert maximum “pressure” on members of Congress in the midst of them executing a grave constitutional duty. Moreover, it participated in that calibration in the presence of a member of the United States Senate, who was therefore—we can now conclude, from the reporting of the Omaha World Herald —working in private with the president’s team to advise Trump on how to generate that maximum pressure on his Senate peers.
It’s evident that the meeting participants did not anticipate that such “pressure” would come from political persuasion — but from the large, angry gatherings that Flynn and Piper had personally helped foment. Indeed, how could a “peaceful” gathering of Trump voters standing well off Capitol property possibly have exerted “pressure” on members of Congress to “object” to state-certified Biden electors inside the building?
The shitty part is that one major party (GOP) will be doing everything in their power to make sure that Covid remains with us and more people die, and also to make sure the economy does as poorly as possible.
They will let Americans die and try to crash the economy for political gain. This is who they are.
Indeed, they want him to fail and don’t care if people die for that cause. This is why people liken the GOP to a cult. Their value is destruction in the name of a leader, not cooperation.
Just a tiny for-instance of where the GOP stands on actually helping American workers: six workers got killed by a nitrogen leak at a Georgia poultry plant yesterday.
Now there are two ways to prevent stuff like this from happening: either you can have strong government regulation and enforcement with respect to safety issues like this, or you can have strong unions that fight for the safety of their workers.
The Republican Party doesn’t want either one.
Now I’ll admit that the Dems are often only lukewarmly for these things, but at least they’re in favor of both. The GOP is adamantly against them, end of story. They just don’t give a damn about people who can’t write big checks to them.
But they are in favor of FREEDOM! Why do you hate freedom?
For example, the workers in your example are free to work for a company that does not let their workers die. (Well, they’re dead now, but you get the point) Or if all companies treat workers like shit, they are free to be unemployed. But FREEDOM rings!