Now that machine seems to be sputtering a bit. The New York Times reports that the Trump campaign is in a cash crunch. This matches up with circumstantial evidence, such as Trump pulling much of his television advertising, even as Biden widely outspends him. From January 2019 to July 2020, Trump raised $1.1 billion, but has already spent $800 million. The Biden campaign and the Democratic Party raised a combined $364 million in August—setting a record—but Trump has still not reported August numbers.
Yeah, I remember at the time thinking how completely bizarre it was that they’ve raised a billion dollars and they’re pulling back advertising in key states. Definitely a ‘What the hell?’ moment.
Meanwhile, this tweet by Garry Kasparov, got my attention, and not in a good way.
To follow up on that a little, Kasparov has pointed out in the past that regimes like Putin’s function by basically criminalizing everyone around him. They force them to commit illegal acts, whether it’s to gain access to power in the party, get contracts, or whatever else. They can then use those to punish them later. He has said that this is what Trump’s administration is turning into: a criminal enterprise that purports to be a regime. They suck others around them into the vortex so that they all have something to lose if they lose power.
It’s hard to keep up with all the clusterfucks this week, but I could not find this one anywhere in this thread:
Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Thursday that President Donald Trump is “aiding and abetting” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to sow doubt about the American electoral system.
At any other time, this would be huge. This is not a partisan Democrat saying this. This is not a low level Republican saying this. This is not someone with little knowledge of national security saying this.
Those who do not seem all that concerned about our democracy ask, “You think that people will commit crimes to help Trump?” Completely ignoring the point that they have already committed crimes, and the only way for them to stay out of jail is to keep Trump in office.
I mean, I get it – a large part of me is in denial as well, even as I comment and occasionally hyperventilate over every little thing the administration does illegally or unethically. Even now, there’s still something in my mind that won’t quite believe the unthinkable is possible until it’s actually visible and undeniably in motion (i.e. election night).
It’s only when you think about everything that the administration has done already, and then compare it to how less stable regimes around the world behave, that you realize what we consider to be hypothetical is actually already happening now. The question isn’t “Will the Republicans try to subvert or undermine our political system” - that’s happening now. You could even argue they were doing that even before Trump arrived, actually. The question is, how far can this continue, and what will the consequences ultimately be in the long term? Are we just going to go through a period of destabilization before we eventually recover, or is this the beginning of a much longer, more gradual, but much more profound loss of democracy?
This might be paywalled, but I found this to be a short yet informative read on QAnon. Although they’re not the proud boys, the QAnon thing has gone from 4chan troll community to real world political activism.
You did have a tendency to do some ranting and raving, but you weren’t wrong. I was called a fool early on when I said that I was concerned about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. Essentially many variations on the “it can’t happen here.” theme was the response.
Now, I did have a bit more confidence in our institutions to hold Trump in check than I should have, but even I was calling for vigilance at that time. That vigilance was not manifested.
You were called a chicken little, and I said you were more of a canary in the coal mine, for which I got quite a bit of shit, mostly from a poster who got himself banned, though he’s probably still here under sock #27.
Exactly, the only question is whether we will let them succeed.
I think you and I (and no doubt others) have talked about this before, but I think people on both sides of the political spectrum (and political optimism spectrum) focused too much on Trump the personality, rather than what he represented.
I’ve never seen the danger to our democracy as Trump himself, as in him having some sort of supernatural ability to play chess and score a checkmate against the combined strength of our institutions. If that’s what someone believed I was saying, then it’s no wonder they thought ridicule was appropriate, because that’s indeed a ridiculous proposition.
My concern, possibly going back to 2003 but definitely by 2009, was that there was something really wrong happening with America’s institutions, and not just strictly at the political level. I’m also talking about the institutions that support democracy, like the media, the flow of information, the discourse in society, and political activism.
What we’re seeing now - from the maskholes to the conspiracy theories - has its genesis sometime earlier than now or even 2016. One of my gravest concerns has been our inability to live in a world of shared truth, to agree on what truth is. Consequently, that impedes our ability to cooperate on a social and political level. It’s disastrous. Refusing to wear masks and actually physically fighting someone in a grocery store aisle because someone simply asked you to wear a mask is a breakdown of civic values, and it’s happening on such a wide scale now that this is not something we can just dismiss as a fringe element. This level of non-cooperation is toxic now but it was getting bad when Sarah Palin was calling Obamacare death panel legislation.
I’ve never forgotten the pit in my stomach when the GWB cabal aggressively started the “You’re either with us or against us!” meme after 9/11. There was no room for debate about whether or not it was the right decision to support GWB in his quest to invade Iraq – on the basis of the flimsiest of “evidence.”
I remember sometime in the late 90s hearing someone assert that we were founded as a “Christian nation.” I felt like someone had slapped me. I realized in that moment that this person had received an education far different from my own, and they no longer understood or valued the true basis upon which this nation was founded.
Fox “News” has frightened me from its inception. I stopped watching Lou Dobbs before he left CNN to join Fox, because it was obvious he is a terrible racist. At Fox, his views were elevated and celebrated.
People need very little framework upon which to hang their ignorance, prejudices, xenophobia and racist impulses. Fox has given them legitimacy and equality in the public square, and this is all they needed. If we don’t find a way to destroy the alternative news media, we are finished.
Sadly, this nightmare has been in the works for a very long time. Few have recognized the dangers.
I love this image of Stepien looking at Trump, as if he’s thinking “What the fuck was I thinking by joining in this shit parade?” Or “I’m about this close to going full-on Parscale.”
And that is what people keep thinking that is being said when the dangers of Trump are pointed out.
I’m pretty sure that I described him back then as an ooze or a slime mold that was going to seep through and test the cracks of our democracy and its structures.
Before that, as there was Fox News, and even before that Rush Limbaugh and the other right wing radio personalities.
Though, as they have molded their audience into greater levels of toxicity, they have followed suit and raised their toxic levels as well. The Fox News of 1996 was a more or less respectable institution, they certainly had bias, but they had enough integrity to not just outright lie.
When I was 15, and working in a kitchen, my boss listened to Limbaugh. I didn’t really know all that much about politics, but I was raised republican, so I assumed that he was one of the good guys. I would listen, and some of what he said would make sense, then he’d say something that just didn’t seem to comport with sensible rationality. Those were the times when my boss would nod his head vigorously.
In 2001, Fox did the “Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the Moon?” program, and I got into fights with a number of people over this. I spent a few minutes looking at their claims, and was able to dismiss most of them offhand, and the few others, with a slight amount of research, followed suit.
This was one of the most debunked hours of TV in history, and yet, it still had people believing it. My sister told me haughtily, “Well, it’s my opinion that we didn’t go to the Moon, and opinions can’t be wrong.” As though that settled it. I hadn’t heard the official rebuttals to such yet, like, “You are entitled to your opinions, but not to your own facts.” or Asimov’s, “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”, so I instead replied with, “Well, it is my opinion that opinions can be wrong.” which should have blown her mind, but instead just made her angry.
And it’s not one sided, either. Not to equivocate or bothsidesism, but the 911 truthers tended to be democrats. Sure, the right tends to make a conspiracy out of anything that they don’t like, but 911 was a big enough deal, and it was a Republican in charge, so it gathered opponents of the administration. I know I took more of a look at their claims than I would have were I not politically motivated to find fault with the Bush admin.
I don’t know that we even speak the same language anymore. We mouth the same words, but a different understanding is had. Not to get all biblical, but the bible does tell stories and allegories, some of which are useful, and I do sometimes see our current society as being analogous to the story of the Tower of Babel. I used to be fairly religious, and studied the bible extensively (which is probably why I no longer am), and I always came back to that story, wondering how they could all end up losing a common language.
But now I’m living it. I’m not sure that I understand it, but it does seem as though if you get enough people together to do great things, then you have enough people for misunderstandings to occur, and then become self perpetuating and even intentional. If a group has a vested interest in not understanding the other group, then they will go to great pains to make sure that they don’t, reinterpreting the words of the other in the worst possible way, and even just inventing whole new meanings for words, both for their use, and for their understanding.
That was definitely my last straw with Republicans. I had become disillusioned towards them by then, but when I was called a terrorist sympathizer when I disagreed that invading Iraq was a wise course of action, I took a number of steps to the left.
They’ve always said that, as long as I can remember, and even when I was a Christian, I questioned it. I’d point to the first amendment, and say, “Doesn’t that mean that we don’t have a national religion?” but that didn’t seem to convince those who believed otherwise.
Don’t need to destroy it, just inoculate against it. If people weren’t watching it, it wouldn’t exist.
Education and critical thinking is what is necessary, not censorship.
Your words are more precise than mine. I have always thought education was they key to pushing Fox, et. al out of the public dialogue. People in this country used to be better at discerning truth from fiction, and it has everything to do with learning critical thinking and having a well-rounded education. “Destroy” was my mistake.
@asahi makes a good point about the 9/11 truthers. That was another milepost along the road that shocked me: I have a friend who started spouting that lunacy not long after 9/11, and while he claimed to be of a libertarian bent, he tended to lean socially liberal. Another slap-me-in-the-face moment when he argued with great fervor on this issue. No amount of logic or reason I could present would touch his certainty, even when he was reduced to saying – like your sister – “well, it’s just what I think.”
And that brings me to another upsetting aspect of our current circumstances: People unwilling and unable to admit when they were mistaken, or didn’t have sufficient information. I’ve always appreciated times when someone points out where my facts are incomplete or wrong. I welcome the opportunity to learn from others. That’s just… gone now.
I’ve always had a perverse admiration for hired guns who could separate their beliefs from their work. A long time ago, when I was working in the trade association field, I met people who were like that. My association/field was very politically conservative. I assumed that I was one of the few who was merely a libertarian and wasn’t outwardly also full-on Bible spanking conservative until I started meeting more association management professionals, many of whom were like me, willing to push aside their own attitudes and just do a job. That’s probably a lot harder to do now than it was in the 1990s, but it surprised me then that those people existed - and apparently still do even now.
Will say, @k9befriender, if you want a historical analogy to our situation today, review early modern history from 1400-1700, where the printing press completely broke society, destroying medieval Christendom and giving rise to the modern era, with especial focus on the Reformation.
It took Europe a minimum of 150 years, more like 250, to shake out the implications of the press, to relearn how to distinguish truth from fiction, reality from fantasy… at least among the educated elites, of course.
And, just as the Reformation started around 60 years after Gutenberg invented the press, here we are, about 60 years after the invention of ARPANET in the same Tower of Babel situation. Modernized to the ‘Servers of Babble’, let’s say.
This isn’t over. It isn’t even the beginning. It’s the prequel.
