All legal and political issues aside -- which admittedly is a huge reach -- the biggest source of my resentment is that, over a year and a half after leaving office, Trump continues to clog up my TV screen, news feeds, and almost every other conceivable place to put my eyes and ears. And for all the wrong reasons.
Like the smell of an offended skunk, there is literally no escape from this man's words and actions. It is our American reality show culture at its worst, and we are an unwilling captive audience. It is more than just "how can we miss you if you won't go away?". It is "how can I respect or admire you if you make yourself so easy to loathe?". Each day a little more, there is nothing to respect or admire, and there is no end to the reminders of it. Mommy, make it go away.
On Stephanie Slade's argument that both left and right are converging on authoritarianism: the claim is hardly new. Research done decades ago (which was the basis for a paper I did in college in connection with the 1968 election and George Wallace's candidacy) established that authoritarian sympathies are correlated with both the left and right extremes on the political spectrum. What IS new is that the authoritarians on the left remain a minority in the Democratic party and do not seek to overturn election results, while those on the right have completely taken over one of our two dominant political parties, with the avowed purpose of using anti-democratic means to remain in power.
Just have to say this.......If I never see another tweet from Maggie Haberman, it will be too soon.
And, as I commented yesterday, McConnell's responsibility in the (coming) destruction of the Democracy cannot be overstated. His inability to do what was right for the Country instead of the Republican Party is going to reverberate for decades. History will not be kind. Without Mitch, many of the sycophants would never have had the power he allowed them (whether knowingly or no) to exercise. The cost to all of us is immeasurable.
"The New York lawsuit raises a legitimate question: how did our American political system allow someone who had for so long committed such offenses, if he is guilty, to be elected President in 2016?"
-- Michael Beschloss, 9/21/2022
I have to say I've been wondering about this since 2016. Why do our election laws allow an unrepentant criminal like Donald Trump to even be on a ballot???
I've worked for two financial institutions during my career and both times I was fingerprinted and background-checked. I highly doubt I would have been hired if those investigations uncovered any financial chicanery, and neither of my positions were anywhere close to upper management.
Also, during yesterday's press conference, AG James was asked a question along the lines of how Trump was allowed to get away with his financial crimes for so long. I asked the same question when I was following Paul Manafort's financial fraud trial in 2018. There was some major-league crimin' going on with him too!
It all re-enforces the notion that Donald Trump, and white-collar criminals in general, are "living proof that [no one is above the law] is objectively not true."
No, Left and Right are not both going for authoritarianism no matter what Stephanie claims and Charlie seems to approve. Charlie AGAIN writing this BOTH SIDES GARBAGE. It’s utter nonsense. Stop it, Charlie, if you really want to protect our democracy in the next election.
Two thoughts. It's Trump and other Republicans who think Black people get special privileges. He's so corrupt he steals even top secret documents. Okay, three thoughts. Numerous Republican state attorneys general actively support Trump's stealing of government property, and they don't even realize they're on the losing side. Oh, a fourth thought. You see how the Republicans are trying to establish that a former Republican president has more authority than a current Democratic president.
Yesterday felt like the end of our journey through the looking glass with Trump and a return to some measure of normalcy. It was especially heartening to see two of Trump's picks for the 11th Circuit strip the bark off the Trump minion in the district court.
Then came Trump's appearance on Hannity, and it felt the curtain being pulled back on the Wizard of Id.
The answer to Michael Beschloss's question is simple: Reaganism & a culture of decadent wealth-worship that started in the 80's and continues through present times.
Once we embraced rich people as the best people in the world to aspire to be, we set ourselves up for failure. Low taxes instead of high taxes, TV flattery instead of shame, praise instead of blame. It didn't matter HOW they got rich, only that they were rich and needed to be protected financially, because hey, you could be rich someday yourself too right? We're a silly decadent little nation who thought that billionaires at the top of rent-seeking industries were "job creators" rather than people who made it to the top in the worst ways possible just to live their best decadent lives in lavish high rises with golden fucking toilets and what not.
What the fuck is wrong with this country? Why did we ever think Reaganism was a good fucking idea? If Reaganism and wealth-worshipping was the Boomer generation's failure then the failure of Millennials to fix the inequality after Occupy Wall Street is just as bad. This country is going to economically fuck itself into anocracy and so many people can't see the writing on the wall because they just don't fucking understand how people stop caring about democracy when the economy is unfair as shit. We reap what we sow people. This is the America we refuse to stop building. "America: come for the wealth inequality, stay for the coming anocracy."
"The latest Marquette Poll shows that Johnson has eradicated Barnes’s lead, which poll director Charles Franklin chalks up to the boom in attack ads against Barnes, many of which portray him as soft on crime."
It isn't as if Barnes wasn't warned over and over again. Aside from their ideology being more palatable to us moderates than the right-wing nuts, how is that the progressive left is not the flip side of the MAGA coin, in terms of their extremism, political stupidity, and refusal to see reality? They just double-down and then find anyone and everyone to blame but themselves.
There's too much at stake in the midterms for us to be so reckless.
Barnes & others should do counter-ads AGREEING that our country is descending into crime & anarchy, while showing Jan 6 at Capitol & state capitols, headlines of Whitmer abduction plot, unruly crowds outside vote counting facilities, screenshots of the anarchists' social media threats, ending with 'a vote for Republicans is a vote to downplay & ignore crime.' Another option is an ad on Repub operatives that have been arrested for child porn and the like. Another option is to portray GOP as soft on white crime but hard on non-white crime.
In this era, Democrats cannot win by explaining their positions. They must turn the Republicans' words, actions, and lack of actions against them. They must take the actions of a few and make the GOP own them. And as Sarah says, why are these candidates not working abortion rights???
LATEST TRUMP DEFENSE: he clicked his heels together three times while thinking about the docs: and said there’s no place like MAL, there’s no place like….and next thing he knew the docs were in MAL.
“On the left, a new crop of socialists hope to overthrow the liberal economic order, while the rise of intersectional identity politics has supplanted longstanding commitments to civil liberties. On the right, support for free markets and free trade are more and more often derided as relics of a bygone century, while quasi-theocratic ideas are gathering support.“
If I am missing something here, please let me know, but I find this false equivalence infuriating. This article quotes Jacobin repeatedly. Jacobin does not have any influence I can discern on the Democratic Party platform. Yes, there is a left wing in the Democratic Party, and the pronoun crowd is obnoxious and overbearing. There are real problems with the demands of the transgender activists, and they need to be countered. But Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee, not Bernie Sanders. According to Axios, in 26 Democratic primaries with endorsements by Sanders, Warren and AOC, the progressives won only 15 and lost 11. Meanwhile, where Trump endorsed, he won 21 and lost 5. And whatever policy disagreements one has with Sanders, Warren and AOC, they are not supporting coups or violence when they don’t get their way.
There is nothing on the left that is equivalent to the right’s refusal to accept the results of elections they lose, of attempting a coup, or attacking and threatening violence against anyone who tries to hold Trump accountable for his crimes. There is one party that values democracy and is fighting to preserve it and that is the Democratic Party. In these dire times it doesn’t help that effort when one chooses to engage in fictitious false equivalence.
There never was a Team Normal, Tim, what there was was a Team I have Money to Make and Status to Maintain/Enhance, and a Fun Game to Play.
What is truly disgusting is that pretty much EVERYONE with a clue--the media, the GoP political class, the donors--knew and knows what an absolute piece of shit Florida Man is.
And were okay with it.
----------
I have been saying that we are headed for some form of authoritarianism for some time now. We are headed for it not because it is inevitable/unavoidable, but because the people who COULD act to forestall that will not do so.
I mean, in a sense, it IS inevitable/unavoidable. Not in the abstract sense but in the sense that human beings being human beings, and the people who could act being the TYPE of human beings they are, their failure to act is essentially a given.
It puts an interesting spin on considerations of inevitability and predestination and free will.
I think the authoritarianism of the Left will be more in your face and more contrary to American cultural common sense (FWTW) and thus many people find that less palatable than the mostly quiet but actually worse authoritarianism of the Right that is going to turn those Other people into second class citizens (at best), women into property, pretty much everyone else into an economic slave, and the US government into a corrupt goodie basket handing out largesse to the least needy, while cutting aid to the most needy.
Because, unfortunately, FAR too many Americans find the second more congenial and more in line with their sensibility as to How Things Should Be... because heaven forbid I should have to change my pronouns or understand that while sex is a biological fact, gender is something else.
I have to object that equating the far left with the far right, moderate rght or what we thought was the "normal" right is BS. The left is not remotely equal in courting authoritarianism. Yes, some try to cancel people that do not use pronouns correctly or other ridiculous stuff, but nowhere do they do anything close or in the same universe as the MAGA's or their enablers, the spineless GOP.
The Art of the Steal
All legal and political issues aside -- which admittedly is a huge reach -- the biggest source of my resentment is that, over a year and a half after leaving office, Trump continues to clog up my TV screen, news feeds, and almost every other conceivable place to put my eyes and ears. And for all the wrong reasons.
Like the smell of an offended skunk, there is literally no escape from this man's words and actions. It is our American reality show culture at its worst, and we are an unwilling captive audience. It is more than just "how can we miss you if you won't go away?". It is "how can I respect or admire you if you make yourself so easy to loathe?". Each day a little more, there is nothing to respect or admire, and there is no end to the reminders of it. Mommy, make it go away.
On Stephanie Slade's argument that both left and right are converging on authoritarianism: the claim is hardly new. Research done decades ago (which was the basis for a paper I did in college in connection with the 1968 election and George Wallace's candidacy) established that authoritarian sympathies are correlated with both the left and right extremes on the political spectrum. What IS new is that the authoritarians on the left remain a minority in the Democratic party and do not seek to overturn election results, while those on the right have completely taken over one of our two dominant political parties, with the avowed purpose of using anti-democratic means to remain in power.
Just think, if Trump hadn't entered politics none of his crimes would have come to light. Truly a very stable genius.
Just have to say this.......If I never see another tweet from Maggie Haberman, it will be too soon.
And, as I commented yesterday, McConnell's responsibility in the (coming) destruction of the Democracy cannot be overstated. His inability to do what was right for the Country instead of the Republican Party is going to reverberate for decades. History will not be kind. Without Mitch, many of the sycophants would never have had the power he allowed them (whether knowingly or no) to exercise. The cost to all of us is immeasurable.
Last night, DJT suggested that the FBI raided his private golf resort because they were looking for Hilary's emails.
I think we can all agree that Trump has officially "Jumped the Shark".
"The New York lawsuit raises a legitimate question: how did our American political system allow someone who had for so long committed such offenses, if he is guilty, to be elected President in 2016?"
-- Michael Beschloss, 9/21/2022
I have to say I've been wondering about this since 2016. Why do our election laws allow an unrepentant criminal like Donald Trump to even be on a ballot???
I've worked for two financial institutions during my career and both times I was fingerprinted and background-checked. I highly doubt I would have been hired if those investigations uncovered any financial chicanery, and neither of my positions were anywhere close to upper management.
Also, during yesterday's press conference, AG James was asked a question along the lines of how Trump was allowed to get away with his financial crimes for so long. I asked the same question when I was following Paul Manafort's financial fraud trial in 2018. There was some major-league crimin' going on with him too!
It all re-enforces the notion that Donald Trump, and white-collar criminals in general, are "living proof that [no one is above the law] is objectively not true."
No, Left and Right are not both going for authoritarianism no matter what Stephanie claims and Charlie seems to approve. Charlie AGAIN writing this BOTH SIDES GARBAGE. It’s utter nonsense. Stop it, Charlie, if you really want to protect our democracy in the next election.
Two thoughts. It's Trump and other Republicans who think Black people get special privileges. He's so corrupt he steals even top secret documents. Okay, three thoughts. Numerous Republican state attorneys general actively support Trump's stealing of government property, and they don't even realize they're on the losing side. Oh, a fourth thought. You see how the Republicans are trying to establish that a former Republican president has more authority than a current Democratic president.
Yesterday felt like the end of our journey through the looking glass with Trump and a return to some measure of normalcy. It was especially heartening to see two of Trump's picks for the 11th Circuit strip the bark off the Trump minion in the district court.
Then came Trump's appearance on Hannity, and it felt the curtain being pulled back on the Wizard of Id.
The answer to Michael Beschloss's question is simple: Reaganism & a culture of decadent wealth-worship that started in the 80's and continues through present times.
Once we embraced rich people as the best people in the world to aspire to be, we set ourselves up for failure. Low taxes instead of high taxes, TV flattery instead of shame, praise instead of blame. It didn't matter HOW they got rich, only that they were rich and needed to be protected financially, because hey, you could be rich someday yourself too right? We're a silly decadent little nation who thought that billionaires at the top of rent-seeking industries were "job creators" rather than people who made it to the top in the worst ways possible just to live their best decadent lives in lavish high rises with golden fucking toilets and what not.
What the fuck is wrong with this country? Why did we ever think Reaganism was a good fucking idea? If Reaganism and wealth-worshipping was the Boomer generation's failure then the failure of Millennials to fix the inequality after Occupy Wall Street is just as bad. This country is going to economically fuck itself into anocracy and so many people can't see the writing on the wall because they just don't fucking understand how people stop caring about democracy when the economy is unfair as shit. We reap what we sow people. This is the America we refuse to stop building. "America: come for the wealth inequality, stay for the coming anocracy."
"The latest Marquette Poll shows that Johnson has eradicated Barnes’s lead, which poll director Charles Franklin chalks up to the boom in attack ads against Barnes, many of which portray him as soft on crime."
It isn't as if Barnes wasn't warned over and over again. Aside from their ideology being more palatable to us moderates than the right-wing nuts, how is that the progressive left is not the flip side of the MAGA coin, in terms of their extremism, political stupidity, and refusal to see reality? They just double-down and then find anyone and everyone to blame but themselves.
There's too much at stake in the midterms for us to be so reckless.
Barnes & others should do counter-ads AGREEING that our country is descending into crime & anarchy, while showing Jan 6 at Capitol & state capitols, headlines of Whitmer abduction plot, unruly crowds outside vote counting facilities, screenshots of the anarchists' social media threats, ending with 'a vote for Republicans is a vote to downplay & ignore crime.' Another option is an ad on Repub operatives that have been arrested for child porn and the like. Another option is to portray GOP as soft on white crime but hard on non-white crime.
In this era, Democrats cannot win by explaining their positions. They must turn the Republicans' words, actions, and lack of actions against them. They must take the actions of a few and make the GOP own them. And as Sarah says, why are these candidates not working abortion rights???
The best!
Andrew Weissmann 🌻
@AWeissmann_
LATEST TRUMP DEFENSE: he clicked his heels together three times while thinking about the docs: and said there’s no place like MAL, there’s no place like….and next thing he knew the docs were in MAL.
8:11 PM · Sep 21, 2022
·Twitter for iPhone
“On the left, a new crop of socialists hope to overthrow the liberal economic order, while the rise of intersectional identity politics has supplanted longstanding commitments to civil liberties. On the right, support for free markets and free trade are more and more often derided as relics of a bygone century, while quasi-theocratic ideas are gathering support.“
If I am missing something here, please let me know, but I find this false equivalence infuriating. This article quotes Jacobin repeatedly. Jacobin does not have any influence I can discern on the Democratic Party platform. Yes, there is a left wing in the Democratic Party, and the pronoun crowd is obnoxious and overbearing. There are real problems with the demands of the transgender activists, and they need to be countered. But Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee, not Bernie Sanders. According to Axios, in 26 Democratic primaries with endorsements by Sanders, Warren and AOC, the progressives won only 15 and lost 11. Meanwhile, where Trump endorsed, he won 21 and lost 5. And whatever policy disagreements one has with Sanders, Warren and AOC, they are not supporting coups or violence when they don’t get their way.
There is nothing on the left that is equivalent to the right’s refusal to accept the results of elections they lose, of attempting a coup, or attacking and threatening violence against anyone who tries to hold Trump accountable for his crimes. There is one party that values democracy and is fighting to preserve it and that is the Democratic Party. In these dire times it doesn’t help that effort when one chooses to engage in fictitious false equivalence.
There never was a Team Normal, Tim, what there was was a Team I have Money to Make and Status to Maintain/Enhance, and a Fun Game to Play.
What is truly disgusting is that pretty much EVERYONE with a clue--the media, the GoP political class, the donors--knew and knows what an absolute piece of shit Florida Man is.
And were okay with it.
----------
I have been saying that we are headed for some form of authoritarianism for some time now. We are headed for it not because it is inevitable/unavoidable, but because the people who COULD act to forestall that will not do so.
I mean, in a sense, it IS inevitable/unavoidable. Not in the abstract sense but in the sense that human beings being human beings, and the people who could act being the TYPE of human beings they are, their failure to act is essentially a given.
It puts an interesting spin on considerations of inevitability and predestination and free will.
I think the authoritarianism of the Left will be more in your face and more contrary to American cultural common sense (FWTW) and thus many people find that less palatable than the mostly quiet but actually worse authoritarianism of the Right that is going to turn those Other people into second class citizens (at best), women into property, pretty much everyone else into an economic slave, and the US government into a corrupt goodie basket handing out largesse to the least needy, while cutting aid to the most needy.
Because, unfortunately, FAR too many Americans find the second more congenial and more in line with their sensibility as to How Things Should Be... because heaven forbid I should have to change my pronouns or understand that while sex is a biological fact, gender is something else.
I have to object that equating the far left with the far right, moderate rght or what we thought was the "normal" right is BS. The left is not remotely equal in courting authoritarianism. Yes, some try to cancel people that do not use pronouns correctly or other ridiculous stuff, but nowhere do they do anything close or in the same universe as the MAGA's or their enablers, the spineless GOP.