Thank-you.
From tonight’s PBS news broadcast:
It’s not the turnover rate that’s important; it’s the turnover itself. Trump is remaking the federal bureaucracy and the Executive branch in his own image, putting people in positions of the highest power who have similarly conspiracy-theorist worldviews.
This country has never been here before. The Republic as we know it is in grave danger.
Genuinely curious (no snark)
Any examples of the “conspiracy-theorist worldviews” or people who abide by them?
I suppose I can see what you mean to a degree but I am trying to understand further.
Hyperbole. Every president replaces the cabinet completely (which is kind of itself a recipe for problems), so putting nutballs in the highest positions is de-rigger, really. And, quick frankly, some of what flowed through previous Republican administrations can charitably be described as rancid sewage. As bad as our current situation is, it is no more than marginally worse than what we have seen before.
You couldn’t be more wrong; what we’re seeing now is the greatest danger to the republic since the Civil War, and possibly in this nation’s history. Trump now has someone at the helm of the criminal justice system who has openly encouraged him to defy the rule of law and who has even advocated defying court rulings. Moreover, this same attorney general has now basically asserted legal standing to take possession of the nation’s intelligence gathering apparatus, and now the Senate seems poised to confirm an intelligence director who will coordinate and share intelligence – domestic intel you can be sure - with said attorney general. This is a prospective intelligence director who has gone on record as saying that the attorney general will find and prosecute former Obama officials with crimes, which doesn’t take a genius to see where that could, and probably will, lead.
We’re talking about one political faction using its powers under the constitution, and likely claiming and asserting others that are either more vaguely defined or not at all defined, to attack and punish its enemies. We’re seeing, in real time, a collapse of modern democracy and a downward spiral into…well, let’s call it something other than democracy for right now.
Let’s start with the attorney general’s suggestion that law enforcement and intelligence officials “spied” on the campaign, knowing the implications of that term and knowing that this was a legitimate national security and criminal justice investigation. I could go on but I don’t have the time.
Yeah, the MAGAsses I see on Facebook are licking their chops at the prospect that Barr & Co. will be going after the “Real Criminals”–Comey, Hilary, Peter Strzok and his lover Lisa Page, and the rest of the treasonous Deep State. The Steele dossier–which, in their view, started all of this–was Russian disinformation planted with Trump-hating Steele to smear Trump.
See, the real collusion was between Hilary & the Deep State, and Russia. And now that they failed in blocking the election of America’s savior–Donald Trump, the Witch Hunt is, in reality, an attempted coup to remove our duly elected president. Don’t you know? Trump is never at fault and always the victim.
Of course, this discounts the fact that the FBI didn’t say anything about Trump and Russia publically before the election, but Comey did announce the reopening of the investigation into Clinton’s emails days before the vote. So…, the Hilary camp stole the election from themselves…?
It all projection with Trump and the Republican Kool-Aid drinkers. A real witch hunt would be going after career federal officials for investigating all of Trump and his circle’s ties to Russia and campaign interference, and obstruction of justice after these ties have come to light.
Winning!
And your point is? Your original post seemed to suggest that there was no difference between Lynch and Barr except which side the speaker is on. Which is classic both-siderism, and why you are getting such strong pushback. Now I don’t actually think that that was what you were trying to say, but I’m not sure what conclusion you want us to draw or action you want us to take based on your observation that Republicans strongly believe their delusions.
My point is that one side is willing to kill the other to get what they want. If that side is large enough, IMO, that side will win; i.e get what they want. And I don’t think it takes an extraordinarily large number of people to effect that win.
FFS read what I wrote: it’s about perception. The Right is just as convinced that their positions/opinions are correct as the left. The difference is that the Right regularly threatens and uses violence to get what they want. That’s the point, not:
Here’s the conclusion you should draw: they will kill you. Is that clear enough? What will you do about that? They are so strong in their perception that they are correct and what they want is good and what you want is bad that they will kill you and other people to get what they want. They will and have banded together in armed groups and defied the federal government, with largely no consequences.
How much do you want what you want?
And if they aren’t killing people, they’ll be doing what they can to make as many lives miserable as possible. Regulations, extra-legal detention centers, laws that deny people rights… these things are already happening. When would you be outraged enough about people being rounded up in detention centers and held unlawfully to go and tear down a fence around such a place? Because the other side is enraged enough that they put up the detention centers and the fences already, and they guard them with loaded weapons.
You don’t have to answer now; I just think the Left should really start thinking about this in realistic terms. Trump’s backers are not about to stop what they’ve been doing for the past 4 decades or so, not when they are so close to the tipping point, setting us down a path which we cannot stop traversing until they are fully in control. They have more support in the general population now than they ever have before and they aren’t about to waste that momentum: they’re swinging the wrecking ball like tweekers with a piñata. And they will kill to keep on that path.
Plan for the worst; hope for the best.
What will you do when Trump loses the election in 2020, cries fraud and refuses to vacate the White House, wth military and police protecting him and the Senate backing him?
I do think that the number of tough as nails internet warriors is at least a few orders of magnitude greater than those who will actually pick up their guns and risk their lives. These little outbursts of violence like the white supremacist who attacked the garlic festival are the sort of things that these cowards can muster. Shitty, and people do die and get injured, but it is not something that is going to overthrow our govt.
I don’t think that the military will back him, nor the police for the most part. There will be some police that back him, but they will be rural sheriffs, hundreds of miles away from DC and from each other. If McConnell wants to back him and take up arms against his country, then that’s just one more charge we can add on for his trial for treason.
The Great Decider
https://twitter.com/EamonJavers/status/1156239591575306240/photo/1
I am curious to know which direction China decides to go with Trump. If they believe that he’s the beginning of the end for the US, they might decide that they don’t care about the US market and have no interest in gaining access to it except on their own terms. But if they view him as an aberration and that the US will continue to be a giant market for the long term, they might try to get a trade deal with him just before the election, knowing that he’ll accept a bad deal for America so long as it gives him something that (at first glance) looks like a win, just before people head to the voting booth.
The trade war gives China immense ability to swing the 2020 election.
Some of the weather forecasting may turn out to be incorrect, but I think you’ve accurately described the political climate, generally speaking. The signs are there: we’re a country that is fighting over how to define America and on whose terms we should live by. One side believes in egalitarianism and shared power; the other believes in supremacy. In many ways, we’re still a house divided, and what was true in 1860 is true now: this divided house cannot stand indefinitely.
Yes ? I mean at this point if his supporters haven’t honed their doublethink to a razor edge already…
I can name two armed insurrections in the past 5 years, one that ended with the federal government backing down completely and one that resulted in virtually no repercussions for the insurrectionists.
Further, I can point to an insurrectionist threat against law enforcement officers from an elected official that happened just a few weeks ago.
I’m not talking about “internet warriors”; I’m talking about people with weapons who have threatened to use and have used them.
The division is just a part of how it’s broken, tho. The foundation is also being drilled through, pounded into dust, set on fire and dynamited, all at the same time, while a wedge is driven into the middle just to help things along.
By the way, meet the new acting head of the Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley:
Pendley is the guy who decided to get rid of a central HQ for the BLM in Washington, DC and instead just spread everyone out all over the western US.
He’s also a total jackass.
Now Trump belongs to the rages.
You can name two, but they both have the same name, Bundy.
I will note that there actually were some repercussions for one of the idiots that took over the refuge.
Yeah, Obama backed down as he didn’t want the optics of shooting first at civilians, armed or not. But had the Bundys and friends opened fire, they would have been annihilated. It was not a problem of ability, it was a problem of whether it was worth killing over this chunk of land.
Personally I am of the opinion that it was worth killing over, if they gave no other choice as to how to remove them, and that Obama wussed out on it, but had they killed the Bundys and friends, then there’d be some consequences from idiots like McVeigh who choose to commit terrorist acts because they disagree with a govt action.
Talking about Oregon? Yeah, that’s what I am talking about, all talk, no action. Lotta internet warriors talking a good game about shooting up cops, but no one showed up to protect the congressmen from doing their job.
As am I, and I do think that the many of those who are willing to take up arms against their country have already done so, we saw them on the news hanging with the Bundys. There will be more, sure, but in similar numbers as the Bundy standoffs.
Now, I could be optimistic as to the nature of my fellow man, and be completely wrong, but I am saying that the rhetoric that you see online is mostly made by cowards that would never espouse their hate if they thought that they might have to face consequences for it.