Linker’s original column posited that liberal opposition to DeSantis is based on policy disagreements, which simply isn’t so. The basis of liberal antipathy to DeSantis lies in his authoritarianism, not his conservative politics. Mocking the liberal fear of fascism--something everyone but fascists *should* fear--doesn’t change the fact that DeSantis is doing everything he can to centralize power in Florida his person, and that he has enthusiastic assistance from a compliant legislature. Why would anyone believe DeSantis would do any differently as President? Why is the question of whether he is worse than Trump even relevant? It’s a red herring, and nothing else.
"Whether DeSantis would actually do more damage to American democracy in office than Trump could remains hard to say. Perhaps, perhaps not. But we should recognize that he is not putting himself forward as a critic of Trump’s authoritarianism. He is promising, on the contrary, to exceed it."
I'm with with Jonathan Chait on this one. But my quarrel with Charlie and the others is with the question - who is worse? The relevant point is that BOTH would have a huge detrimental impact on our democracy and our Institutions, perhaps taking generations to overcome. Isn't that the most important thing?
The biggest problem I have with the "DeSantis isn't as bad as Trump" argument is that it seems to me to be the nose of the camel into the tent for anti-Trump people to justify voting for DeSantis so they don't have to do the right thing and vote for the Dem nominee.
TB has received a lot of pithy, fact-based pushback to Damon’s op-ed. Why not quote that instead of the hysterical screed from the NYT critic?
Can we drop the word “triggered” for either side of any debate? It’s old and tired and hackneyed.
Listening to Paul Ryan made my teeth hurt. I didn’t have any quibble with the questions, but I wish there had been one additional: “Fox is an immoral organization. By its own admission, its hosts and the organization promote lies for profit. It promotes conspiracy theories and polarization, again for profit. How do you morally justify staying on the board of an immoral organization?”
Perhaps it would have been a waste of words. He likely would have claimed he’s the adult in the room.
Ryan is rich, worth at least $10M. He married well and inherited a family business. He doesn’t need the Fox job. He wants to be in that corrupt environment.
“The word despicable doesn’t go far enough. This is a “have you no shame?!?” moment for the MAGA clown car”
Thank you Charlie. That was not a “cheap shot” - it‘s just a fact. Makes me so proud to hear you say it so unequivocally in public. I doubt it will do any good, but it needed to be said.
Dominion should get the $1.6 billion, but the scapegoating of Suzanne Scott is grotesque. And it won't improve the health of the public discourse.
If I were Dominion, I'd be willing to take a reduction in the dollar amount of the reward if Fox agreed to fire Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham, Bartiromo, and Pirro, and make a public statement as to why they were being fired, and a public statement that attempts to repair the reputational damage they've inflicted on Dominion. And if that's too much, then just fire Hannity and/or Carlson.
“I think Trump 2.0 would try to do many of the same things a President [deSantis] would"
Trump 2.0 would have nowhere near the patience or personal interest to do the things DeSantis wants to do. A CS Lewis quote springs to mind "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Damon linker got out into unknowable land and rather than acknowledge that, assures us that he alone is brilliant enough to know the future. He should stfu about this now rather than embarrass himself further.
Linking up the who-is-worse debate to the FOX News scandal, the obvious insight to garner is that the right wing masses are the problem. They crave lies and conspiracy theories to justify their fanaticism. Right wing politicians and right wing media figures will "succeed" only if they feed the beast.
Will Saletan nails it again. Scott Adams has been a leading pseudo-intellectual for a long time.
I wish Rasmussen would do a similar poll replacing "It's ok to be white" with "Black lives matter". There would certainly be a significant number of white respondents who disagree with the statement. This does not mean that all of them believe black lives to be without value. The phrase itself has become a culture-war signal and how they feel about the phrase has nothing (or little) to do with their feelings toward other people in real life.
I’m with Jonathan Chait on this one. But it really is six of one.
And I recommend WaPo’s Alexandra Petri’s superb comparison of the film ‘Cocaine Bear” and Ron DeSantis’ turgid tome, which lulled Petri to sleep... BUT, “then you jerk awake, realizing that Ron DeSantis has just said, in the most convoluted way possible, that the CONSTITUTION HAS ALREADY LAPSED & THAT HE IS THUS JUSTIFIED IN IMPOSING HIS WILL ON THE PEOPLE because he is right and they will thank him for it!”
(Will we, though?)
So there you have it. On the one hand, Trump, a tried and true despot willing to overthrow the Constitution; and on the other, DeSantis, a despot wannabe, who thinks the Constitution no longer applies. Have a dozen of the other.
"This has, apparently, triggered some folks on the left."
Yeah the nutty far Left is triggered just as easily as the nutty far right. And they are just as nutty. The major difference is that the nutty far left isn't in power. As a member of a political club with a mainstream liberal orientation, I am doing what little I can to keep it that way.
"I came pretty close to dropping an f-bomb on live television."
That would be totally unprofessional. Nonetheless, I would have painted my TiVo gold, saved the recording forever, and put it in my will that I wished to be buried with it.
The RD/DT debate is like the SouthPark episode asking which do you want, a giant douche or a turd sandwich, but on steroids. Can I have neither, please?
If I grant that Ryan is sincere about reshaping/restoring "conservatism" after it passes through the valley of shit called MAGA, where does that leave him (and the party)?
1) He isn't currently doing anything to help bring that to pass.
We have what has become (by now) the standard narrative that I have to be in place in this mess as one of the adults in the room, so that it can be saved.,, while you basically stand around and do nothing but build a paper trail to cover your ass when the indictments come down or the civil suit hits.
2) What power does this guy (Ryan) have to actually do anything? Who, in GoP land, is actually listening to him or cares what he thinks, besides a few people who live in deep denial about the current state of the GoP (none of whom have any power, either)?
IOW, how the F does Ryan expect to save/restore the party? And to what? Is he still the largely thoughtless and idea-less disciple of Ayn Rand he was when he was in office? Where is THAT going to lead you and who among the GoP base is REALLY into that anyway?
Linker’s original column posited that liberal opposition to DeSantis is based on policy disagreements, which simply isn’t so. The basis of liberal antipathy to DeSantis lies in his authoritarianism, not his conservative politics. Mocking the liberal fear of fascism--something everyone but fascists *should* fear--doesn’t change the fact that DeSantis is doing everything he can to centralize power in Florida his person, and that he has enthusiastic assistance from a compliant legislature. Why would anyone believe DeSantis would do any differently as President? Why is the question of whether he is worse than Trump even relevant? It’s a red herring, and nothing else.
The DeSantis v. Trump argument is interesting, but the bottom line is that both would be terrible for the country if elected.
"Whether DeSantis would actually do more damage to American democracy in office than Trump could remains hard to say. Perhaps, perhaps not. But we should recognize that he is not putting himself forward as a critic of Trump’s authoritarianism. He is promising, on the contrary, to exceed it."
I'm with with Jonathan Chait on this one. But my quarrel with Charlie and the others is with the question - who is worse? The relevant point is that BOTH would have a huge detrimental impact on our democracy and our Institutions, perhaps taking generations to overcome. Isn't that the most important thing?
The biggest problem I have with the "DeSantis isn't as bad as Trump" argument is that it seems to me to be the nose of the camel into the tent for anti-Trump people to justify voting for DeSantis so they don't have to do the right thing and vote for the Dem nominee.
Damon slowly paddling backwards is marvelous.
TB has received a lot of pithy, fact-based pushback to Damon’s op-ed. Why not quote that instead of the hysterical screed from the NYT critic?
Can we drop the word “triggered” for either side of any debate? It’s old and tired and hackneyed.
Listening to Paul Ryan made my teeth hurt. I didn’t have any quibble with the questions, but I wish there had been one additional: “Fox is an immoral organization. By its own admission, its hosts and the organization promote lies for profit. It promotes conspiracy theories and polarization, again for profit. How do you morally justify staying on the board of an immoral organization?”
Perhaps it would have been a waste of words. He likely would have claimed he’s the adult in the room.
Ryan is rich, worth at least $10M. He married well and inherited a family business. He doesn’t need the Fox job. He wants to be in that corrupt environment.
“The word despicable doesn’t go far enough. This is a “have you no shame?!?” moment for the MAGA clown car”
Thank you Charlie. That was not a “cheap shot” - it‘s just a fact. Makes me so proud to hear you say it so unequivocally in public. I doubt it will do any good, but it needed to be said.
Dominion should get the $1.6 billion, but the scapegoating of Suzanne Scott is grotesque. And it won't improve the health of the public discourse.
If I were Dominion, I'd be willing to take a reduction in the dollar amount of the reward if Fox agreed to fire Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham, Bartiromo, and Pirro, and make a public statement as to why they were being fired, and a public statement that attempts to repair the reputational damage they've inflicted on Dominion. And if that's too much, then just fire Hannity and/or Carlson.
“I think Trump 2.0 would try to do many of the same things a President [deSantis] would"
Trump 2.0 would have nowhere near the patience or personal interest to do the things DeSantis wants to do. A CS Lewis quote springs to mind "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Damon linker got out into unknowable land and rather than acknowledge that, assures us that he alone is brilliant enough to know the future. He should stfu about this now rather than embarrass himself further.
Linking up the who-is-worse debate to the FOX News scandal, the obvious insight to garner is that the right wing masses are the problem. They crave lies and conspiracy theories to justify their fanaticism. Right wing politicians and right wing media figures will "succeed" only if they feed the beast.
Will Saletan nails it again. Scott Adams has been a leading pseudo-intellectual for a long time.
I wish Rasmussen would do a similar poll replacing "It's ok to be white" with "Black lives matter". There would certainly be a significant number of white respondents who disagree with the statement. This does not mean that all of them believe black lives to be without value. The phrase itself has become a culture-war signal and how they feel about the phrase has nothing (or little) to do with their feelings toward other people in real life.
I’m with Jonathan Chait on this one. But it really is six of one.
And I recommend WaPo’s Alexandra Petri’s superb comparison of the film ‘Cocaine Bear” and Ron DeSantis’ turgid tome, which lulled Petri to sleep... BUT, “then you jerk awake, realizing that Ron DeSantis has just said, in the most convoluted way possible, that the CONSTITUTION HAS ALREADY LAPSED & THAT HE IS THUS JUSTIFIED IN IMPOSING HIS WILL ON THE PEOPLE because he is right and they will thank him for it!”
(Will we, though?)
So there you have it. On the one hand, Trump, a tried and true despot willing to overthrow the Constitution; and on the other, DeSantis, a despot wannabe, who thinks the Constitution no longer applies. Have a dozen of the other.
"This has, apparently, triggered some folks on the left."
Yeah the nutty far Left is triggered just as easily as the nutty far right. And they are just as nutty. The major difference is that the nutty far left isn't in power. As a member of a political club with a mainstream liberal orientation, I am doing what little I can to keep it that way.
"I came pretty close to dropping an f-bomb on live television."
That would be totally unprofessional. Nonetheless, I would have painted my TiVo gold, saved the recording forever, and put it in my will that I wished to be buried with it.
The RD/DT debate is like the SouthPark episode asking which do you want, a giant douche or a turd sandwich, but on steroids. Can I have neither, please?
WRT Ryan (again):
If I grant that Ryan is sincere about reshaping/restoring "conservatism" after it passes through the valley of shit called MAGA, where does that leave him (and the party)?
1) He isn't currently doing anything to help bring that to pass.
We have what has become (by now) the standard narrative that I have to be in place in this mess as one of the adults in the room, so that it can be saved.,, while you basically stand around and do nothing but build a paper trail to cover your ass when the indictments come down or the civil suit hits.
2) What power does this guy (Ryan) have to actually do anything? Who, in GoP land, is actually listening to him or cares what he thinks, besides a few people who live in deep denial about the current state of the GoP (none of whom have any power, either)?
IOW, how the F does Ryan expect to save/restore the party? And to what? Is he still the largely thoughtless and idea-less disciple of Ayn Rand he was when he was in office? Where is THAT going to lead you and who among the GoP base is REALLY into that anyway?