We better hope the Republican Party isn’t fascist, because the Democratic Party is too pathetic to ever mount any meaningful resistance.
The party doesn’t need to be, they just need to mix a desire to win all battles and to make poor decisions when courting an electorate.
The Republicans are paying for their southern strategy and cannot risk alienating that segment of their voter base and we had a confirmation of a SCOTUS judge today that was actually pushed over the edge by concerns about that base.
As Newt actually made it forbidden to even socialize with Democrat colleagues and they have sold their electorate on some silly hard line, no compromise stance they are stuck and will only be able to block a fascist movement by committing political suicide.
Mix this in with both parties dealing with major voting blocks which are purely single issue voters and the current fear based movement in our system is easy to drive by a small number of ignorant terrified bigots who dream about “better days”. Which is how fascism rises.
Democrats will never drop hot button issues like gun control based on cosmetics, because court decisions limit their ability to deliver anything more to that electoral base and the Republicans will never drop their xenophobic white genocide pandering to the supremacists because it will cause them to lose.
As all parties are far more interested in winning battles and not the war it will require something way past those groups to prevent yet another downfall and spiral. The wedge issues are just way too emotional to meet in the middle. Without the people or some unknown unifying event or personality we are in trouble for the existing system.
But don’t kid yourself, the Republicans are not “brave” they are acting purely out of childish fear and are just as spineless.
Lol “collusion”.
Lol “the branches of the government are changing”.
Another sheltered sanctimonious Boomer clown.
I would desperately like to agree with that, but it doesn’t seem to match what I’ve seen. Trump was elected because of, not in spite of, his open bigotry and sexism. He expressed support for Nazis in Charlottesville, and his supporters are apparently fine with that. He endorsed Roy Moore after the stories of Moore’s sexual misconduct came out. Republican support for Kavanaugh increased after Ford’s testimony. And so on. They’re not poor, misguided souls trying to do the best they can; they’re trying to stick it to the strawman caricatures of liberals they’re imagining. I’m busy too— everyone is— but even with a busy career, I’ve managed to avoid supporting any Nazi apologists.
Honestly, I have a little hope. I’m in the middle of Texas now visiting inlaws who are normally rabid trump supporting republicans. They used to have banners up. They have taken those down and it seems, they don’t want to talk about the thing in the White House. I sure don’t bring it up, they usually do, but don’t anymore.
The rich have always been richer than the not-rich; it’s all a matter of degree.
In 1776, the future United States of America had the least income inequality of anywhere in the Western world. The U.S. continued to offer a relatively good compromise of prosperity and equality throughout most of the 19th century. Inequality rose somewhat during the Carnegie-Rockefeller era but at least these great industrialists were increasing the total pie, even if they took a large share of it. America became the leading world power. (Arguably, in the 1990’s Gates, Jobs and even the Waltons have also increased the pie. 21st century billionaires, OTOH, get their wealth through exploitation and shenanigans.)
Inequality peaked during the Roaring 20’s and then declined steadily for five decades, partly due to social programs, e.g. those of FDR and LBJ. Obviously America’s world leadership did not suffer as GINI declined.
The quote I excerpted at the top of this post would equate the socio-economic status of the U.S. in the 1960’s and 1970’s with the status of the 1920’s and 2010’s. :smack: I’m glad we’re in the Pit so I can say quite frankly: That quotee doesn’t entirely know W.T.F. he’s talking about!
GINI was only .40 when Reagan took office, but almost .46 when Clinton took over; perhaps .48 after two more decades, and now may be soaring again. Just to be clear, the difference between a GINI of 0.40 and 0.49 is HUGE.
(Different sources will show different GINI numbers — but I’m trying hard to compare apples to apples. Don’t denounce any one of these GINI’s above, unless you have a source that shows 2 or 3 of them.)
Really? Got any tips for the home gamers on how you managed to pull that off?
But seriously, I may be in denial. I’m willing to hear you out. But if the alternative is advocating for some kind of 21st century gulag archipelago, I’ll just stay there.
Nope, we pawned the handbasket for the tax cuts for the rich. We are slowly meandering aimless towards hell while cold, naked, hungry, and alone.
Actually, that would be wrong, as more people voted for Clinton than Trump. It is a bit sad that as many pope in our country take so little interest in the governance of the country they live in to allow it to be hijacked by those who don’t give a shit about them, but it is still a minority that supports such policies.
Unfortunately, a minority is all that is needed for republicans to claim that they are the legitimate rulers.
Yeah, I avoid talking to my family about politics, as they are all fairly staunchly republican. By avoid talking about politics, it mostly means avoiding talking to them at all, as they like to bring it up. During Obama years, what that muslim kenyan was doing to ruin out country now, and now during the trump years, what that darling boy from brooklyn is doing to make our country great again. there have been very, very few visits that did not result in someone or someones trying to bait me into a conversation with snarky little comments.
My last visit, earlier this week, they didn’t really have anything to say. Maybe they have seen what it is that they are supporting, and have come to the realization that they can no longer support it.
Not to hijack the thread, which focuses exclusively on the political situation, but a little Steven Pinker might cheer everybody up some.
Of course. They’re actively, gleefully trashing the government to get back at the liberals because safe spaces transgender bathrooms MeToo kale chips etc. They’re as much trolls as Trump himself is.
Have they actually changed their minds about Trump? I wouldn’t be surprised if they nevertheless continue vote for him and his preferred candidates through some rationalization about Supreme Court seats, tax cuts, and so on.
The Republican system has been lacking in tact for quite a while 
Noticing that those standards could be violated without consequence, let alone actually implementing such violation, requires (I believe) at least a touch of sociopathy.
I’d suggest that the administration of a well-regarded psychological test would find a significant difference on the sociopathy scale between Congressional Republicans and Democrats.
Perhaps such a difference might be something voters would like to have better information about.
I think that’s correct.
Humans react to incentives, and the current incentives for members of Congress lead them to behave in ways that harm both the institutions and the citizens of the USA. And that won’t change until the incentives change.
It would be an extremely hard sell because it would require people to act against their immediate self-interest, but the only way to change the current dysfunction is some combination of term limits and strictly-enforced prohibitions on lobbying jobs, post-term.
Because now, members of Congress are motivated to act without a particle of integrity. The rewards for so doing are massive.
As opposed to what point in American history?
Until the 1970’s bipartisanship was the typically the rule, now it is the exception.
This is not all the Republicans fault to be clear, but the hard divide was firmly cemented by Newt.
A good example is the Democrats after the Citizen United decision. They lost sight of the fact that their goals, despite their validity, did not justify setting a precedent where citizens had to sacrifice some rights in order to exercise another. They resorted to partizenship at the cost of their ideals, and were willing to throw away protections that allowed the civil rights movement to happen to do so.
Term limits are another example, where people are frustrated by the lack of political turnover and are willing to reduce a body that does need institutional knowledge and expertise into a system that will be run by amateurs which would be easy pray for special interests.
While citizens don’t have power of Senate rules which are largely responsible for this outcome we obviously have no problem destroying our long term future to make up for the fact that we are pretty bad at being an educated and involved electorate.
I’m not sure that lobbying was as massively lucrative fifty years ago. My guess is that it was not. (If you have stats to the contrary, they are welcome.)
At some point the US Congress system became ‘you shall be as a godling’ lucrative. And then we got Newt Gingrich putting an end to all bi-partisanship and all compromise and all getting-things-done, in his scorched-earth mid-nineties reform of the code of conduct for congressional Republicans. And my surmise is that this would not have happened had it been the case that–in a hypothetical alternate–citizen legislators served (by law) two terms and then went back to their home districts (to work or retire there).
All asahi has ever inspired me to do is cower in a closet with a shotgun. I don’t see how that’s any more useful. What specific thoughts and acts do you hope asahi to inspire?
I also don’t see anyone in this thread normalizing anything Trump has done (except the conservatives, I mean) or saying that what’s going on now isn’t insane.
Taking any sort of action, including violent revolution, requires a certain amount of hope (ie optimism).
Since two of the last three Presidents have all but stolen “If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait 'til I get through with it,” that’s a pretty good choice.
I’ve previously linked to an article about Paul Manafort in The Atlantic. Not only did the whole lobbying/consultancy business go through a dramatic (and corrupt) expansion a few decades back, but Paul Manafort — whom I’d never even heard of until recently — had a great deal to do with that expansion!
The real problem is that by the 1990s, we were a good generation or two removed from the Great Depression and WWII - the times in American history in which we embraced collectivism and individual sacrifice. In the 1930s and 40s, the Greatest Generation, read patriotism as sacrifice of the individual toward a greater collective goal. We don’t have that now.