I can’t help wondering if there’s an identical thread on a Republico-Bizarro-world message board about how will you react when the Dems end democracy by turning the US into a socialist dystopia?
Many more of them, I’m sure. It flows naturally into the whole millenarian/survivalist/militia ethos after all. There have always been more catastrophist conservatives than liberals. One of, arguably THE, defining features of conservatism is opposition to change however defined and for many that stems from fear of change. It’s just a quick hop, skip and a jump from fear to extremism.
If that came to pass I, for one, would be happy if they retreated to the inaccessible parts of the Sawtooth Range and were never heard from again.
A slight hijack - out of curiosity, how did something I never posted get quoted?
Was it posted, then pulled?
No, not at all. It may be brilliant but it ain’t mine.
Bingo. Folks need to recognize that a paradigm shift has happened and that racial minorities are the canaries in the coalmine of democracy. What they get away with doing to black and brown folks yesterday, they’re do to Asian-Americans today, and, you, white folks, tomorrow.
To the button pushers and string pullers, we’re ALL “n words”.
RE “Will SDMB be shut down?” – and regardless of who said it, or did not.
As democracy fades, you typically see self-censorship. If new moderators pop up who still allow anti-GOP jibes, but draw the line at direct attacks on the Trump family, we will have gone in that direction.
If this sounds preposterous, it would be because the U.S. isn’t really close to an end to democracy.
This is weird. The quote originally appeared in the OP and was quoted in several posts, none of them by @velomont. Best I can guess, @PhillyGuy tried to quote velomont’s immediately previous post but somehow (perhaps in the process of editing it?) accidentally pasted a piece of the OP in place of velomont’s words, or some glitch caused that result?
It doesn’t look to me like the Repubs are totally trying to end democracy, at least not in the sense of establishing a Stalinist or Maoist or Hitleresque regime. (That can come later.) They are “merely” trying to establish total Republican control of all the levers of government in perpetuity; democratic elections be damned. That’s bad enough. The current fear is that the are this close → || ← to accomplishing that, and the upcoming 2022 mid-terms will determine if they succeed.
We’ve had past spells of Republican control. The nation didn’t implode, at least not totally. Those were bad times for human rights, civil rights, and the economy (unless you were very rich). But the pendulum swings, and periods of more enlightened and progressive Democratic control happened too. What happens when the Repubs take total irreversible control is that there won’t be any more swinging of the pendulum (unless it just keeps swinging further right).
What happened during past periods of Repub control was that American life went on, more or less, preferably if you were sufficiently White, Male, Christian, and Straight. Not so much for all the others.
But once Repubs get total irreversible control, they will be unobstructed in their further atavistic goals. Civil rights will be withdrawn. Obamacare, Medicare, SSI, SSDI, even Social Security will be on the chopping block. Those of us already on Social Security will probably be grandfathered, but this and other safety net benefits will be phased out by and by. The First Amendment will live, but under duress.
As for myself: As several others have said, I’m a bit too old (69 going on 70) to put up much of a fight. I think I will largely, but not entirely, keep my head down and keep my mouf shut. But I will resist where the opportunity arises, within the limits of my energy and enthusiasm. Perhaps I will join marches, etc. Perhaps I will volunteer my time for some kind of resistance movement. I will certainly grumble. I doubt that I would take up arms. Maybe I will surprise myself and become more active that I am envisioning here.
But I might also console myself, saying that we Americans collectively, by letting this happen, are no longer fit to live in a democracy anyway. Churchill reputedly said “In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.” Whoever said that, could it be right?
Or, for a similar quote: In the opening scene of Asterix and Cleopatra, this dialog happens:
Really? Because 'calm and reasoned" is exactly what I hear from Joe Biden.
He said “dialogue,” not “monologue.” It’s tough to win a game of chess when your opponent flips the board.
You have a point there…
But it is nice to turn on the TV and hear a grown up talking once in a while, isn’t it?
This CNN article is amazing:
Apparently WaPo predicted back in 2012 where the GOP was heading:
My hat is off to them.
I was just going to post that. I think I referenced that 2012 analysis on this board some years ago. It’s an excellent article, and things have indeed become much worse since then due to Trumpism and what appears to be an average 50-point drop in the national IQ. No one would have believed it in what now seems like the innocent times back in 2012.
a gop dictatorship will look like what happened in North Carolina or Wisconsin.
in Wisconsin things are so gerrymandered that the democrats have to win 60% of the vote just to break even in number of seats won.
the gop will gerrymander so people can still vote, but their vote doesn’t count and even if democrats win, the gop will just steal the elections. it won’t be like nazi Germany, they will still have elections. it’s just in between the voter suppression, gerrymandering and gop fraud that the elections will be foregone conclusions.
Also I feel the gop screaming about dominion etc is just so they can install their own truly fraudulent voting machines under the guise of ‘reform’.
I don’t know what we can do. would 80 million people be willing to do a mass strike?
I feel helpless to do anything. the sad part is 70-75 million Americans either actively want to destroy democracy, or they enable those who do.
I personally feel that we already live in a plutocracy. Do you really believe the Republicans will do anything to disturb the wealthy?
The Atlantic wants to know why Democrats aren’t more publicly outraged.
Paywalled (although The Atlantic allows four free articles per month to non-subscribers), but here are some key points near the end. This article is all about the filibuster.
…
The single greatest obstacle, though, has to do with the rules governing the Senate, and whether Democrats are ultimately willing to match their language of urgency with a strategy even remotely proportional to it. Due to the chamber’s filibuster rules, most legislation requires 60 votes to pass—an impediment that effectively empowers lawmakers representing only a tiny sliver of the electorate to block policies they dislike at will, including those designed to make American democracy fairer and more inclusive.
…Although Biden has mused about the idea of reforming the filibuster, he has ruled out its elimination. Manchin, predictably enough, is resoundingly allergic to the idea of change…
…Liberal lawmakers cannot, one the one hand, contend that a deliberate effort is under way to deprive citizens of the franchise while, on the other hand, preserving an archaic legislative convention specifically designed to limit the power of representative democracy. If Democrats plan to match their rhetoric with action, they must train public attention not only on the existential problem of the Republican assault on voting, but also on the need to eliminate the main obstacle to countering that assault. This means doing whatever it takes to bring holdout senators onside, in private or in public.
Even with the filibuster removed or substantially modified, H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would still face barriers to becoming law. But to simply accept these barriers is nonsensical, the product of a fraudulent and conservative “realism” that is really defeatism by any other name. What, after all, is more important: the death of democracy, or the preservation of a Senate tradition that has been leveraged for decades to protect conservative minority rule?
By this way of thinking, Britain was a dictatorship before the second reform act (1867). It was not.
Gerrymandering is stealing elections, not dictatorship.
Maybe it is just terminology, but I think saying that partisan district drawing is vote stealing will play better than saying we live in a dictatorship (I know, not quite what you said).
Democrats have also gerrymandered, even if not as often, and even if they aren’t good at it.
I think more likely a GOP dictatorship will look more like what happened in Belarus.