According to Matt Glassman’s Twitter feed, though, there’s an element of truth in Flyer’s first post. McConnell technically can’t stop a bill from being brought up with enough votes. The deference to him is more custom than actual rule. Glassman went over this with the bill to protect Mueller’s job last year.
For the French Revolution, a majority of French people were literally starving. Other revolutions generally occurred when a majority had only subsistence-level wages and served an unelected autocracy.
In the U.S.A. OTOH, only a smallish minority is actually going hungry. A still-large middle-class voted for the autocrat, owns smart-phones for their amusement, and owns … guns. If people in ghettos or drinking unsafe water stage riots, expect Trump (abetted by McConnell) to amuse himself by ordering soldiers to shoot at black and brown people.
[quote="WillFarnaby, post:34, topic:827577"]
There would be a brief disturbance, but the private sector is capable of keeping planes safe in the air. They already do 99.9% of that job as designers, manufacturers and maintenance providers.
[/QUOTE]
Wrong; and wrong. The other day in another thread you posted two sentences back-to-back that were both true and useful! I was amazed; I should have framed it.
[off-topic] @ **Will** — Have you ever decided whether the police in Farnabytopia torture suspects? Or don't exist at all? We don't expect you to dot every I and cross every T in your summaries of Farnabylosophy, but there seems to be a big gap between two possible roles for police. *But sincere thanks for linking to Rothbard's "solution" to external costs.* **Wow!** Where did he get his PhD? Trump University?
That is, “our” God.
That is, a very specific version of “our” God.
That is, his extremely narrow interpretation of a very specific version of “our” God who approves of the things he likes, prohibits the things he doesn’t, and hates the same people he hates.
The Framers of the Constitution, this Biblical guide of Enlightenment era thought that we refer to whenever we can’t solve the political problems of our time, created a government with the understanding that the legislative process could be obstructed. The Framers were concerned with mob rule, and deliberately made our political institutions more resistant to popular passions.
In the intervening 2 centuries, we’ve become a more inclusive society, a fairer society, and we’ve observed in examples such as the late Weimar Republic how obstruction can lead to the very tyranny the Framers from too much democracy. McConnell’s relentless obstruction serves to undermine the remaining faith people have in our democracy to deliver the goods on matters such as immigration, healthcare, and our general welfare. We’re never more than a crisis away from a radical solution to this problem.
The article is a fantastic summary of events leading up to the shutdown and it also examines other times that Trump has tried to use zazz to win points. It winds up by noting:
I would hazard a guess that for these shit-heads, their preferred alternative is a kleptocracy, with themselves as the recipients of the money that is stripped from the country. They like having an authoritarian strong-man in charge, and think that the role of this dictator is to punish those that they do not like.
Their motto is “The weak are meat and the strong do eat”
Many thanks to both of you. I suspect you’re on target, but if it’s not too much trouble, I’d prefer to let Mr. Flyer’s own words convict him of, well, whatever shitheadedness he espouses.
Ted Cruz was clearly calling this the Schumer Shutdown today on Meet The Press. He must not have seen Trump’s brilliant meeting/photo op where he believed he was going to intimidate Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.
Ted knows that now is the time to lie, lie and lie again. Lie big and lie often.
Of course Trump said very clearly that he would own the shutdown.
Matters not to Ted and his ilk. They will simply lie about Trump’s words that were recorded and widely broadcasted. “Never happened”, Cruz will be happy to look straight into the camera and declare.
It simply cannot occur to a basically honest Republican that one of their leaders would lie straight to their faces so egregiously.
Which differs from what is going on now in what way? Are you incapable of analyzing a situation, or are you falling back on buzzwords for fear of what you can see?
Donald Trump is a faux-populist demagogue, not someone bred to rule. He is interfering in the workaday running of the government, not replacing the mob with an aristocracy. Trump is not a poster child for the good an anti-democratic state can do, but for the functional failure of a democratic republic when handed over to a stupid peasant.
If you were really anti-democratic but gave a flying fig about this country, you’d be backing the “Deep State” against this clown.
What I want is the best form of government ever devised; the form that the Founders gave to us; a REPUBLIC.
A republic is a melding of other forms of government, taking what is good from each one, without any of the bad parts. From monarchy, it takes the idea of of a central authority figure–thus, we have the Presidency. From oligarchy, it takes the idea that sometimes many heads working together are better than one–thus, the Congress. From democracy, it takes the idea of direct participation in government–thus, voting; petition of the government; the right of protest; etc.
But in a democracy, majority rule is the only rule. A republic is careful to protect the rights of the minority–thus, the Senate filibuster; a super-majority for amending the Constitution; the Bill of Rights; the Electoral College; etc. If this country were the democracy that you people are so eager to have, then (for example) the “progress” that has been made in recent years allowing gay marriage could be stripped away by a simple majority vote of the people.