The crux of his argument is that the GOP’s core principle these days is fighting the Democratic (Socialist) takeover of the country, something that’s been at the heart of American foreign policy since 1946. The Democrats and these “socialist” policies are the real threat to America and the preservation of democracy secondary in this crisis.
The piece is kind of an Asahi wet dream but I don’t think it’s without merit.
I do. I think Trump would like to win because he considers himself a winner but, if he loses a close election (and due to the Electoral College it will be close), he will walk out of the White House tweeting the whole way about how the Democrats and the Deep State and the Ukrainians stole the election from him. He won’t do anything else about it because this is the guy who, while in charge of probably the largest investigative forces in the world, has repeatedly tweeted and bloviated about how someone should look into Hillary’s e-mails or Nasty Nancy or Liddle’ Adam Schiff. He doesn’t want anything to happen, he just wants to complain about it and have crowds cheer for him. Remember, in 2016 he was gearing up to start a television network to compete with Fox and to give him a bully platform to literally be a bully from. He is an idiot. Full of sound and fury.
The establishment Republicans will be the same. If Trump wins, great, they get to continue stacking the courts. If Trump loses, great, they don’t have to answer questions about his bizarre ramblings anymore or worry about angering his base. The Republicans will announce how it is their Constitutional duty to oppose and obstruct the Democratic president who stole the election - totally unlike what they did to President Obama.
Now as to whether the Trump worshipers go along peacefully or not, I don’t know. I just know I wouldn’t want to be in charge of security at the 2021 inauguration.
So but then they’re NOT worried about the US election system being overtaken by foreign powers. But they ARE worried about “socialism” without being able to even define what’s wrong with it except trying to scare constituents with arguments against a vague boogeyman, like we’ll turn into Venezuela if we pass national health care.
Although, I am skeptical of using “understands” in any sentence where the right wing are the subject. And their behavior suggests not so much “rearguard", rather they are behaving almost exactly like a cornered animal.
The Intelligencer piece explains much of what Republicans decide to do these days. The enemy is domestic socialism first and democracy if it enhances the spread of domestic socialism second. They’ll be happy to beat it democratically if they can but the cause is so important to them that they can live with subverting democracy as a sacrifice to the higher cause.
The author made a throwaway comment about the American right not really being interested in universal democratic participation for the entirety of the nation’s history and it’s difficult to argue with him about that.
I’ve been kicking this thought around lately – patriots, or people who claim to be patriots, talk about the American dream, the American experiment, the success of democracy and self-governance. And to me that means this idea that we can take this thing that we tried in America a couple hundred years ago, and we’re so confident that it’s the right way to do things that we can drop this system onto any culture and it will work just as well. YOU get a democracy, and YOU get a democracy, and YOU get a democracy! Certainly this was the concept during the cold war, and a pillar of America’s foreign policy to this day.
To me, that implies that the system of America is more important to our success than the people or the culture of America. That is, our institutions are greater than the sum of the people who make them up. And while I think other countries have improved on the American system in several key ways, based on our example and 200 years of learning from our mistakes, I still believe that the American experiment was an important first step.
But what you see from conservatives is an odd lack of faith in the institutions they profess to love. We can’t let immigrants in, they say, because they’ll change America. We can’t let people vote the way they want to vote (if that means voting Democrat), because it will ruin America. It’s such a small way of thinking about our country.
Only in a “YOU get a coup, and YOU get a fascist sycophant, and YOU get a banana republic where you’ll vote for our guy or YOU get a military coup !” sense. Can you think of one (1) actual democracy US military interventionism, open or covert, has brought about during the Cold War ? Or since ?
“…Trump has been ordered by a New York State judge to pay $2 million to a group of nonprofit organizations as part of a settlement in a civil lawsuit stemming from persistent violations of state charities laws.
…
“I direct Mr. Trump to pay the $2,000,000, which would have gone to the Foundation if it were still in existence, on a pro rata basis to the Approved Recipients,” Judge Saliann Scarpulla wrote.
The lawsuit filed by the state’s attorney general accused President Trump – along with his children, Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka – of conflating charity with politics, repeatedly using charitable donations for personal, political and business gains, including legal settlements, campaign contributions and even to purchase a portrait of Trump to hang at one of his hotels…”
The FoxNews story on that also includes this: “As part of the settlement, Trump admitted to misusing Trump Foundation funds and agreed to limitations placed on future charitable work”
I have trouble believing that he admitted to anything.
In general I think the people pushing these interventions were naive but well-meaning. I’m sure there were also plenty of people looking to cash in on foreign adventures, but the fact that it never really worked out so well, I think, I doesn’t negate the fact that people really though US democracy was the answer to the world’s problems. I think the alternative is to think that people were pushing US-style democracy in these places while deep down believing it wouldn’t work without real American ™ voters.
eta: And I fully realize that this may make me naive as well.
The Individual 1 campaign has been running multiple contests for contributors to have a meal with Individual 1. Popular Information, Judd Legum’s news letter, hasn’t been able to find anybody who has won these contests who actually has gotten a meal with him. UPDATE: Trump campaign contest to win a meal with Trump was a fraud?
There were always two groups. The True Believers, who thought that “the exact way I do things is the only correct way to do things”; the current versions is all those people, from SJWs dinging countries on “not having a law requiring internet board admins to call the police when they suspect child abuse” (countries whose requirements about calling the police are a lot wider than that), to the ones who believe that not having a 2nd amendment mean that people in other countries cannot own any weapons (and who generally think that it’s not a weapon unless it includes some sort of barrel), who still hold to that belief that “the exact way I do things is the only correct way to do things”. The idea that principles need to be adapted to local cultures rather than the other way 'round, that some of those principles you think of as having been invented by you had already existed in other places for hundreds of years, or that other ways of structuring those principles can be perfectly fine, never cross their narrow minds. And for some reason, they never think of “what would be my reaction if someone did to me and my country what I’m doing or pushing to do to that people, that country”.
These are also the people who, while not assembling the bubbles, live in the extremes of them.
And the Dark Ones. The ones who barely bothered paint a bit of oligodemocracy atop Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, the Philippines…
These are the people who are perfectly happy to build any bubbles. Fear and hate drive up sales of castle moats, you know.
He released an official statement about it. It starts with “I am the only person I know, perhaps the only person in history…” so you know it’s going to be SO presidential.