Now on to the comments. It's not surprising that the January 6th stuff is irrelevant to a populace who thinks we're in a recession. The truth is, voters are not persuadable in the sense that voters care about anything resembling a coherent worldview. That's not how people are. Most voters decide who to vote for in the final month of an election. Which means everything before and after is just noise.
The problematic reality is that for all the talk of 'persuadable' voters, there really aren't any. At least, not enough to swing elections. Independents are growing in number, but not ideologically. What's happening is that more people are bucking the label of a party in favor of saying they're independent, while voting along party lines all the time. Because a true 'independent' would have to lack anything resembling a coherent worldview politically in order to swing between such ideologically opposed parties.
What this means is that ultimately, a lot of energy is expended on both sides over voters they want to exist but don't. Voters who are 'independent' or 'swing' tend to be those whose entire political process is to look up in a haze, make a gut check about how they feel, and then vote based on that. And because American voters are always, always unhappy, that usually means they vote against the incumbent. It doesn't matter if it's 2006 or 2010 or 2014 or 2018. Voters tend to always be unhappy.
Ultimately, that's what makes a lot of highly educated and media types really unhappy: that most voters don't really care about democracy and don't see a difference between the parties. To people who have the time and energy to actually pay attention, it seems insane that voters look at Trump and Biden, or Pelosi and MTG and go 'basically the same' but they do. And that's a problem for political types, and not the voters. Because just like in business, the customer is always right, especially when they're wrong.
I think one other thing we need to talk about is that for Americans, 'Fascist' conjures up Nazis. But not all fascists are nazis. In fact most of them aren't. The Imperial Japanese in WW2, Franco's Spain, Mussolini, Peron, ect were all fascists. And the current American right is absolutely fascist in the same vein. They're not nazis. But they are absolutely fascists. They are blood and soil nationalists who fetishize violence against political others and wish to establish a stronger volk over the country. You have Claremont and Lincoln fellows talking about Americans as not being Americans. At some point you need to call a spade a spade.
The fact that so many people are worried about what to call the thing, and not the thing itself, is part of the issue. The other part is that not a lot of people are as uncomfortable as we might hope with this sort of thing.
The final bit is that, as I and other people have been saying for a long time, Trump is not the movement. He is the leader of it, but he was a figurehead who could channel the movement. The crazy existed before him, and it will exist after him. The danger was never Trump himself, who was a buffoon at the best of times, but that the people around him would be dangerous and capable enough to engineer success through him. The real danger is whoever takes up the mantle after him. Because Trump was a grifter himself, and he saw the movement as a way to raise his own profile. But true believers want their crazy straight. And they'll go further than Trump would because they won't care about their own self interest in the same way. Revolutionaries aren't concerned about their brand.
"Warning: I'm Back" C'mon Charlie, this is the most welcome news yet of the new year!
On whether the Jan. 6 commission will have an effect on the 2022 midterms: Surely Liz Cheney speaks for some small percentage of people on the right. Democrats need to be messaging that they are the party of constitutional governance and Republicans are destroyers of same.
Can we get Charlie's Bulwark podcast nominated for this? https://www.podcastawards.com/ It's been going on 16 years and there is a politics and news category. Not sure how the nominations are made or when they need to be in.
"A year after a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol in the worst attack on the home of Congress since it was burned by British forces in 1814, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds that about 1 in 3 Americans say they believe violence against the government can at times be justified."
Really, the answer should be closer to 100% of Americans believe this, and I suspect that it is; after all, our nation would not even exist if it weren't for a significant percentage of colonists who believed that violence against the government was at times justifiable. And what of the Nat Turners and John Browns? Some find fault with them, but I don't. But, if violence against the government can be justified, that is why swimming in a sea of misinformation is so poisonous. If you believe in your heart that the government is running sham elections, then what recourse is there other than violence? And we're getting close to the point where Republicans are actually eliminating democracy, and justifying it by lying about how Democrats have already destroyed it. But for Republican voters, they don't see their side as the side that's lying, and we're in a bad place.
On the Rotner piece, he concludes by arguing that we need a Constitutional Amendment that requires states to hold elections for president and honor the results, which is pretty clear, and won't happen any time soon, if ever, and certainly not before November of 2024. But really, we just need to get rid of the Electoral College completely, if we're in the business of running elections and honoring the popular will. If we're going for an Amendment, that's the one we need. The EC is ridiculous.
Is there any desire to conjoin the various organizations which have sprung up to defend traditional Republican values? Is anyone confused by the now too similar names of Renew America Movement, Renew America, and the Center for Renewing America. I am sending small donations to Republican Accountability Project, and as well to Lincoln (yes, I am aware of controversies here), as well as to Adam Kinzinger and Country First. Does anyone else believe it would be useful if these organizations joined together? Or, would that just diminish the slightly different missions of each organization?
Wisconsin is still a purple state - when the National Divorce goes into effect will all our rural voters move to texas or florida? We're kind of far away from the mason-dixon line to make our succession easy .....
We often spend more time worrying about what to call something than worrying about the thing, itself.
Yes, words and definitions are important--but at a certain time, they are beyond the point and arguing about it is either about deflection, avoidance, or mental masturbation.
America has, to a large degree, already failed. We are at the tail end of it at this point. Things have been done that can not be undone and the emperor increasingly visibly has no clothes. Government and society have always been enterprises of collective imagination and perception--of the adherence to unwritten rules (that usually exist for very good reasons). Our increasingly materialistic and individualistic culture has led us to this inevitable breaking point--the totalitarian/fascist response we are currently seeing is, to a degree, an inevitable reaction.
Most of life seems to be (within the context of a pandemic world) going on normally. People are worrying about the normal things, doing the normal things, thinking the normal things. Many are willingly and willfully ignorant of a lot of the larger dangers we face--because it hasn't affected them yet... and, indeed, may never really noticeably affect them. The larger questions of politics and philosophy are beside the point--until they aren't (awareness of which usually comes too late).
We have avoided talking about and dealing with a number of things over the last few decades and the chickens are coming home to roost--while we still try to avoid talking about and dealing with them.
Happy new year. I suspect that Morning Consult poll about the select investigative committee suffers from the same biases that afflict all non-election polls. It's easy to imagine those in favor of the committee, and republicans in favor of the committee in particular, being more inclined to respond to pollsters than those opposed. So until I hear that Morning Consult has solved the polling problem, which I probably won't believe until after a correctly predicted election, I take that 40% Republicans in favor number with a lot of grains of salt.
RE: Cheap Shots | The 147 Republicans Who Voted to Overturn Election Results - The New York Times
Happy New Year Charlie! The uphill battle begins now. Do you or anyone in The Bulwark community know of a "Liz Cheney" somewhere in AL05? I learned that Alabama is an open primary state. The filing deadline for someone to challenge the AL05 incumbent in the primary is January 28, 2022.
Happy new year, Charlie. We got Covid for Christmas; from ages 8-81. All vacced and eligible boosted. We are fortunate that symptoms were mild and non threatening. As this is the case for *most* vaccinated individuals, it's time for the messaging by the CDC and medical establishment to reflect this. The declining trust in public institutions Moynihan describes will only further erode the longer the CDC and medical establishment mucks along the idea that covid will ever be zero risk. Everyone will get it, but the vaccines are working. An off-road for masking must be paved. A tolerance for this must be discussed. If not, the lost trust may not ever be regained, and the institutions forever undermined. This does not secure our collective good now or in the event of future disasters.
The pandemic was arguably Trump's undoing, and now it is helping to prejudice voters against the Democrats. Moreover, Big Science, like every other institution, has been badly damaged by increasing transparency, as familiarity breeds contempt. The public has lost the childlike faith in government it had after WW2. Normally that would seem desirable, but the dangerous side effect is a belief that there is no such thing as reliable fact, and - go figure - the infantile cult of Trumpism.
I'm reduced to hoping Omicron accelerates the mitigation of COVID allowing voters to regain a degree of the normalcy Biden prematurely promised, in time for 2024, if probably not the midterms.
Welcome back!
Now on to the comments. It's not surprising that the January 6th stuff is irrelevant to a populace who thinks we're in a recession. The truth is, voters are not persuadable in the sense that voters care about anything resembling a coherent worldview. That's not how people are. Most voters decide who to vote for in the final month of an election. Which means everything before and after is just noise.
The problematic reality is that for all the talk of 'persuadable' voters, there really aren't any. At least, not enough to swing elections. Independents are growing in number, but not ideologically. What's happening is that more people are bucking the label of a party in favor of saying they're independent, while voting along party lines all the time. Because a true 'independent' would have to lack anything resembling a coherent worldview politically in order to swing between such ideologically opposed parties.
What this means is that ultimately, a lot of energy is expended on both sides over voters they want to exist but don't. Voters who are 'independent' or 'swing' tend to be those whose entire political process is to look up in a haze, make a gut check about how they feel, and then vote based on that. And because American voters are always, always unhappy, that usually means they vote against the incumbent. It doesn't matter if it's 2006 or 2010 or 2014 or 2018. Voters tend to always be unhappy.
Ultimately, that's what makes a lot of highly educated and media types really unhappy: that most voters don't really care about democracy and don't see a difference between the parties. To people who have the time and energy to actually pay attention, it seems insane that voters look at Trump and Biden, or Pelosi and MTG and go 'basically the same' but they do. And that's a problem for political types, and not the voters. Because just like in business, the customer is always right, especially when they're wrong.
I think one other thing we need to talk about is that for Americans, 'Fascist' conjures up Nazis. But not all fascists are nazis. In fact most of them aren't. The Imperial Japanese in WW2, Franco's Spain, Mussolini, Peron, ect were all fascists. And the current American right is absolutely fascist in the same vein. They're not nazis. But they are absolutely fascists. They are blood and soil nationalists who fetishize violence against political others and wish to establish a stronger volk over the country. You have Claremont and Lincoln fellows talking about Americans as not being Americans. At some point you need to call a spade a spade.
The fact that so many people are worried about what to call the thing, and not the thing itself, is part of the issue. The other part is that not a lot of people are as uncomfortable as we might hope with this sort of thing.
The final bit is that, as I and other people have been saying for a long time, Trump is not the movement. He is the leader of it, but he was a figurehead who could channel the movement. The crazy existed before him, and it will exist after him. The danger was never Trump himself, who was a buffoon at the best of times, but that the people around him would be dangerous and capable enough to engineer success through him. The real danger is whoever takes up the mantle after him. Because Trump was a grifter himself, and he saw the movement as a way to raise his own profile. But true believers want their crazy straight. And they'll go further than Trump would because they won't care about their own self interest in the same way. Revolutionaries aren't concerned about their brand.
"Warning: I'm Back" C'mon Charlie, this is the most welcome news yet of the new year!
On whether the Jan. 6 commission will have an effect on the 2022 midterms: Surely Liz Cheney speaks for some small percentage of people on the right. Democrats need to be messaging that they are the party of constitutional governance and Republicans are destroyers of same.
I beg2differ; fascism is a word journalists have been too hesitant2use … #TrumpismIsFascism
Can we get Charlie's Bulwark podcast nominated for this? https://www.podcastawards.com/ It's been going on 16 years and there is a politics and news category. Not sure how the nominations are made or when they need to be in.
"A year after a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol in the worst attack on the home of Congress since it was burned by British forces in 1814, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds that about 1 in 3 Americans say they believe violence against the government can at times be justified."
Really, the answer should be closer to 100% of Americans believe this, and I suspect that it is; after all, our nation would not even exist if it weren't for a significant percentage of colonists who believed that violence against the government was at times justifiable. And what of the Nat Turners and John Browns? Some find fault with them, but I don't. But, if violence against the government can be justified, that is why swimming in a sea of misinformation is so poisonous. If you believe in your heart that the government is running sham elections, then what recourse is there other than violence? And we're getting close to the point where Republicans are actually eliminating democracy, and justifying it by lying about how Democrats have already destroyed it. But for Republican voters, they don't see their side as the side that's lying, and we're in a bad place.
On the Rotner piece, he concludes by arguing that we need a Constitutional Amendment that requires states to hold elections for president and honor the results, which is pretty clear, and won't happen any time soon, if ever, and certainly not before November of 2024. But really, we just need to get rid of the Electoral College completely, if we're in the business of running elections and honoring the popular will. If we're going for an Amendment, that's the one we need. The EC is ridiculous.
Is there any desire to conjoin the various organizations which have sprung up to defend traditional Republican values? Is anyone confused by the now too similar names of Renew America Movement, Renew America, and the Center for Renewing America. I am sending small donations to Republican Accountability Project, and as well to Lincoln (yes, I am aware of controversies here), as well as to Adam Kinzinger and Country First. Does anyone else believe it would be useful if these organizations joined together? Or, would that just diminish the slightly different missions of each organization?
s/b retromingent guano sniffers
Wisconsin is still a purple state - when the National Divorce goes into effect will all our rural voters move to texas or florida? We're kind of far away from the mason-dixon line to make our succession easy .....
We often spend more time worrying about what to call something than worrying about the thing, itself.
Yes, words and definitions are important--but at a certain time, they are beyond the point and arguing about it is either about deflection, avoidance, or mental masturbation.
America has, to a large degree, already failed. We are at the tail end of it at this point. Things have been done that can not be undone and the emperor increasingly visibly has no clothes. Government and society have always been enterprises of collective imagination and perception--of the adherence to unwritten rules (that usually exist for very good reasons). Our increasingly materialistic and individualistic culture has led us to this inevitable breaking point--the totalitarian/fascist response we are currently seeing is, to a degree, an inevitable reaction.
Most of life seems to be (within the context of a pandemic world) going on normally. People are worrying about the normal things, doing the normal things, thinking the normal things. Many are willingly and willfully ignorant of a lot of the larger dangers we face--because it hasn't affected them yet... and, indeed, may never really noticeably affect them. The larger questions of politics and philosophy are beside the point--until they aren't (awareness of which usually comes too late).
We have avoided talking about and dealing with a number of things over the last few decades and the chickens are coming home to roost--while we still try to avoid talking about and dealing with them.
Thank god you’re back!
Welcome Back Charlie -
Happy new year. I suspect that Morning Consult poll about the select investigative committee suffers from the same biases that afflict all non-election polls. It's easy to imagine those in favor of the committee, and republicans in favor of the committee in particular, being more inclined to respond to pollsters than those opposed. So until I hear that Morning Consult has solved the polling problem, which I probably won't believe until after a correctly predicted election, I take that 40% Republicans in favor number with a lot of grains of salt.
Also: a comments section? This should be fun!
RE: Cheap Shots | The 147 Republicans Who Voted to Overturn Election Results - The New York Times
Happy New Year Charlie! The uphill battle begins now. Do you or anyone in The Bulwark community know of a "Liz Cheney" somewhere in AL05? I learned that Alabama is an open primary state. The filing deadline for someone to challenge the AL05 incumbent in the primary is January 28, 2022.
Happy new year, Charlie. We got Covid for Christmas; from ages 8-81. All vacced and eligible boosted. We are fortunate that symptoms were mild and non threatening. As this is the case for *most* vaccinated individuals, it's time for the messaging by the CDC and medical establishment to reflect this. The declining trust in public institutions Moynihan describes will only further erode the longer the CDC and medical establishment mucks along the idea that covid will ever be zero risk. Everyone will get it, but the vaccines are working. An off-road for masking must be paved. A tolerance for this must be discussed. If not, the lost trust may not ever be regained, and the institutions forever undermined. This does not secure our collective good now or in the event of future disasters.
2022’s burn of choice is definitely “Guano Sniffers.” 😂 Missed you, Charlie!
The pandemic was arguably Trump's undoing, and now it is helping to prejudice voters against the Democrats. Moreover, Big Science, like every other institution, has been badly damaged by increasing transparency, as familiarity breeds contempt. The public has lost the childlike faith in government it had after WW2. Normally that would seem desirable, but the dangerous side effect is a belief that there is no such thing as reliable fact, and - go figure - the infantile cult of Trumpism.
I'm reduced to hoping Omicron accelerates the mitigation of COVID allowing voters to regain a degree of the normalcy Biden prematurely promised, in time for 2024, if probably not the midterms.