He got MAGAs to believe that the 2020 election was stolen, in order to impose a dictatorial regime and implement voter suppression and further gerrymandering laws.
He got them to believe that “lawlessness is beyond terrible,” and that the top law enforcement agencies in the US are corrupt, in order to become an autocrat and turn the military loose in our country.
He got them to believe in the “Deep State” and the “Swamp” in order to pack the three branches of government with inept but loyal toadies and henchmen (yeah: probably almost all men).
Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
–Voltaire
Now, Trump’s doing it with his trials and the GOP is doing it with the vote.
MAGAs should learn how to read about and understand complex subjects, and how to ask good questions* Then, they should DO just that. MAGAs need to stop making it so easy for cynical demagogues to lie to them.
* I’m sure that Oklahoma and Louisiana are at the vanguard, what with requiring the teaching/display of the Bible/Ten Commandments and all. /s
Yep. Right wing populism is … well…popular among the less educated, etc. They want a quick and easy 'fix" to what they see as society’s ills. Often one of those “fixes” is blaming some minority- used to be the jews of course, but now it is dark skinned migrants. RW Populism can and has led to Fascism- Mussolini, Hitler, and even today- Putin.
But Netanyahu, Modi, and Milei are current RW populists in power- but there are others. There was Boris Johnson, etc and of course trump.
Nice quote.
The problem with RW Populism is of course those big promises never come to pass- and then the RW populist is voted out- trump for example. Bolsonaro is another.
Schrodinger’s DNC- at once so powerful it can fix elections and decide who is the candidate- and also so inept it cant do anything. of course- neither is true.
I predict that trump will go down in flames then die- ending that phase of American politics for a while. Of course it will come back, it always does.
Well, yes, Republicans are liars. That’s not news. Is there any actual evidence that Joe Biden (or any other Democrat in office) is taking any steps towards establishing a dictatorship? Or even talking about doing so?
Let’s not overreact to Republicans being silly.
By the same logic, if my next door neighbor is going to kill me, I’d be better off killing him first. But that train of logic breaks down as soon as you realize my next door neighbor has shown no signs that he is planning on killing me. So me killing him is not justified.
I’m not saying there’s no danger. It’s clear that there are more than a few Republicans (including Trump) who are thinking about dictatorship and wouldn’t mind heading in the direction. But it’s way too early to be arming ourselves for the resistance or to declare Taylor Swift Queen of America.
Right now, let’s focus on what’s been working. Let’s defeat Donald Trump the way we defeated him last time - by holding an election and voting against him. If that doesn’t work, then we can talk about revolution.
Let’s not lose sight of who the enemy is here. Donald Trump. He’s not Lenin or Hitler. He’s not even Mussolini. He’s a lazy moron. And his followers? These are people so dumb, they’re following Donald Trump. These idiots tried to overthrow the government once already and they failed. We just rounded them up and arrested them. We’ll do that again the next time they try it.
That was the premise in 2016, but that’s not what the data suggests. Trump’s support isn’t about the economy, and never was. It’s about culture and race and religion. Quite famously, Nate Silver said in 2016 that by far the single best statistical correlate for Trump support was Google searches for the N-word.
I think racism is a factor in what OldOlds described.
I’m not a communist or a socialist. But our political system has gone too far towards the other extreme and it’s not designed to make billionaires richer. And what’s even worse is it’s designed to make billionaires who inherited their wealth richer. You no longer need to create wealth to be rich; you just have to be the grandchild of somebody who created wealth (like Donald Trump is).
The result of this is everyone else is fighting over a shrinking share of the pie. And the majority of us are feeling it. To divert us from the real problem, billionaires need to misdirect attention away from themselves. So they tell working class white people that their problem is black people and immigrants who want to take what they have.
People like Donald Trump are riding to power as a reaction to problems that were caused by people like Donald Trump.
I’m a pessimist by nature, so here’s another thought that occurred to me. For those of you who might be tempted to reply “By what mechanism? How would that be legal?” let me prematurely answer by no legitimate mechanism and it wouldn’t be legal, but that doesn’t mean someone might not try it.
How long before some state governors try the same argument? Governors need to be immune from prosecution for state crimes because they need to be free to make unpopular decisions and take bold action, yada yada bullshit. Don’t tell me DeSantis isn’t already thinking about this. Since it’s now precedent at the federal level, and Magats are all about states being more powerful or more legitimate than the feds, I’m more than half expecting him or Greg Abbott to come out with some kind of declaration (never mind a court decision) at the first opportunity.
What you’re describing is what the facists say. The enemy is both strong and weak. I have never said that the democratic party is strong, I have always contended that they are useless. They are staggeringly, unbelievably inept for one of two major political parties in the most powerful country in the world who should have access to our best and brightest and funding to the tune of billions of dollars a year.
Of course political parties have the ability to influence their own internal primaries, they control the rules and the procedures. If the democrats rig their own primaries, that does not make them competent (I did say inept, so what’s the opposite of that? ept?), especially when it leads to them losing the general election that primary is for. That actually works more in favor of evidence of their incompetence.
You’re trying hard to prove some sort of inconsistency, but saying “the democrats are a really incompetent political party and they influence their own internal primaries to their detriment” is not a position that’s conflicted.
I have never in my entire life said that the democratic party was competent. There is no “Schrodinger’s DNC”. I won’t continue this hijack further.
Yeah, because you were proven wrong- like because Biden is our president, not trump, and the Senate is controlled by the Dems, not the GOP. Nor is it a hijack, it goes along with the theme of the OP.
I never said you said it- but many others did.
The dems are no more incompetent than the GOP is. In fact as the RNC has just been turned into a trump tool, the RNC is now useless.
