I have never believed that this country would move past Trump. The thing that many R's missed for many years, decades even, was the anger and bitterness of the the Fox/Limbaugh/Levin/et al audience. It may not have been that way among the "educated" R's but in the hinterlands, those folks HATED all things Democratic.
I always loved to hear politicians say, "the voters are smart, they will make the right choice". Voters are not smart, mayber 1/3 of the general electorate is smart, maybe. The rest are simply moving through life trying not fall into open manholes. If the last 6 years have proven anything, they have proven that.
I listened to yesterday's WP Live podcast, which was an interview of Tim Scott, being curious how one of the Republicans generally deemed less psychotic might react to the Maralago search. Listening to it before bed was not the wise move, as it's hard to sleep when you're angry. He was interviewed by Leigh Ann Caldwell, and she did a good job, and Scott's answers were typical evasion and deflection. Lots of complaints about double standards between how people like Jim Comey and Hillary Clinton were treated and how poor (alleged) espionage act violator Donnie Foreign Agent have been treated. How the Mueller probe wasted millions of dollars going after Trump when it was an investigation that resulted in almost 30 people being indicted, showed links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and had Trump dead to rights on obstruction of justice. Tim Miller's tweet quoted in today's Morning Shots is a helpful review of all the smoke around Donnie Treason. Rotner's piece about the whataboutism is also excellent.
There was even a clip in the WP Live pod of Trey Gowdy, Trey Gowdy! complaining that Trump is being so badly mistreated while Clinton got let off easy, after Gowdy orchestrated the greatest witch hunt since Joe McCarthy when he went after Hillary. Which Kevin McCarthy bragged would hurt her politically and damage her in any potential runs for office.
These people are well beyond redemption. When the accumulation of investigations is interpreted, not as evidence of criminality, but as evidence of double standards, persecution, and setups, the conspiratorial mind has no hope of being led to the light.
Of course Republican voters will nominate an indicted candidate. At this point, we can't prevent that. And actually, Trump was the guy most able to prevent it and chose not to.
2024 is likely to be a repeat of 2020, and so it will be time to remind the voters that the choice has only gotten clearer in the intervening 4 years.
Isn't it obvious that Fox News, ubiquitously broadcast in public places and even government offices and military bases has spent the last 30 or so years brainwashing the American people and paving the way for a criminal dictator. This didn't happen accidently. This was a carefully though out plan. Control the message, control the people. They have persuaded good Christian Americans that a spoiled New York real estate scam artist is their new Messiah. Even when he coddles our enemies and steals our safety, they remain brainwashed. Good is bad. Peace is war.
Until normal people understand just how much MAGA *hates* (a strong word) post-college liberals, they're going to keep being surprised by how low MAGA is willing to go. Go back to 2016 and Trump's primary message: "this country is rigged against you, and it's the post-college liberals ("coastal elites") who rigged it against you and your children and there's nothing you can do about it until you take a wrecking ball to the entire system. I am your best wrecking ball. Pick me."
MAGA doesn't hate *billionaires* folks, they hate *post-college liberals*. The way MAGA sees it, political violence is just another form of something that can be used to subjugate others, and post-college liberals are already using their education and wealth to rig the system against MAGA, so why not rig the system against post-college liberals via political violence? We've already accepted a two-tier system in society whereby people with wealth can collectively use it to keep others from using the old system of meritocracy to unseat their children, so why not allow other forms of power-wielding to keep others out of positions of power too?
The nice thing about political violence is that it is open to all and isn't inherited and concentrated generation-to-generation the way wealth is. Political violence creates a playing field just as equal as democratic capitalism, whereby the most violent can consolidate power just like the most wealthy can in our current system. It's just that the wealthy folk would rather maintain the current system where their wealth keeps them on top because if we go back to a pre-Hobbesian world, they're going to have to defend their wealth with violence and that's harder to do than having a police force defend your property for you via a system of laws. What happens when that system of laws is bent toward helping the rich maintain power and destroying the meritocracy? Doesn't sound all that different from what the Taliban do, they just do it with guns instead of corruption. Here, the powerful do it with wealth instead of guns. The only thing that changes if rule of law goes away is that it's a different group of assholes running the show via hegemony instead of the wealth-hoarders who destroyed the meritocracy and ran the country that way instead. The end result is the same: concentrated hegemony, only if political violence and anocracy come about it won't be the post-college liberals running the show anymore. It'll be the folks the post-college liberals have been subjugating all this time.
I think it was Will Saletan who mentioned on Thursday's livestream that January 6 wasn't a game changer for some in the GOP, and America more broadly, because not enough people died. How much violence would make a difference? How many dead FBI agents would make the GOP say "enough"? I think I know the [unfortunate] answer. What's harder to estimate is what the folks at the margins are thinking. It seems sad and sick to think that only sustained right-wing violence against the government is the only thing that could get Americans to really and truly defeat Trumpism at the ballot box.
Perhaps the most amazingly hypocritical aspect of Trump's supporters is that when it comes to Trump's *behavior*, "unprecedented" is a selling point. He's a rule-breaker! He shakes things up! He makes the liberals cry and sticks it to the lamestream media!
Yet when it comes to how Trump is *treated* in response, suddenly "unprecedented" is a profound injustice. How dare he be treated differently from other presidents just for doing bad things that no other President ever did! How dare he be treated close to half as badly as we'd treat a Democrat for doing things half as bad! It's an outrage!
Andrew Yang is not reading the room. This is not politics as usual. This is about violence - the violence already here and the violence coming. Trump wants his followers to kill FBI agents, elected officials and anyone who defies him. Trump is a criminal who lusts for complete power. And the GOP has become the new Nazi party. They've been using the same rhetoric of Nazi Germany for years. FOX News hosts lie, incite and are enraging the base. Republican Senate and House members do the same thing. For God's sake, Chuck Grassley insinuated "new" IRS agents would kill Iowa farmers with AK 15's. Chuck's too stupid to understand AK 15's are Russian made . Then again he's probably in Russia's pocket. Regardless, this is not the time to think third party. This is the time to be prepared for mob violence or another Oklahoma bombing. The psychosis gripping people who support Trump is real. They would commit murder and die for him just as much as the fanatics who followed Hitler.
I get it that the MAGA comments address the "Means". They're okay with them. I think I also understand that the goal, generally, is/was to "end the Regime".
But what I still want to know from these people is, in concrete terms, what do they call the thing, the "Ends" that get left in its place?
After the physical topple of the Regime and all the Selfies, what did they think would affirmatively take the place of Democracy? (Travis just informed me it is called Anocracy.)
In the same vein, is there still no way to subtly change our NeverTrump meme into something concrete and affirmatively? Like ProDemocracy versus Anocracy? One of the most vexing challenges is syntax, that of fighting against a "Never" with another "Never".
In any case, since nature abhors a vacuum, isn't there a way to ask our questions in a way that can only be answered in the affirmative? A way that they would have to say they're happy WITH anocracy?
Ms Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger seem to be the only conservative Republicans left in the GOP, and both will apparently be unemployed in 2023. Mr. Yang has a good idea for another time. Splitting the liberal vote in '22 can only serve to strengthen the impact of the fascists, and could well deliver the presidency once again to the orange menace.
Today may be the day that the GOP jettisons Liz Cheney and reembraces Sarah Palin. This signals the extinguishing of the last vestiges of sanity in the party. The madness of ecstatic violence seems to be in the cards.
""There's nothing he could do that would make me stop defending him" is something I heard a Trump fan say in 2016. Another: "The more they attack him, the more I'll defend him."
They were such remarkable declarations of fealty to a political candidate that I could never forget them -- particularly since the attitudes expressed have been dominant in the GOP for years now.
The first statement appears to be literally true for Trumpites, and it's why they were unfazed by his depraved "shoot someone on 5th Avenue" comment. The second statement in effect means: "The more awful and illegal things he does, the more he's to be revered." Trumpites might pretend they're responding to unfair attacks, but eventually one must conclude that they love the transgressiveness.
It was clear from the start that Trump's disdain for rules & ethics was seen as an asset among the rank & file, who wanted him to "blow the whole thing up" and "burn the place to the ground." Elite Trumpites said he would only "break what needs to be broken." They said "we know he's flawed, but ..." he was allegedly more patriotic than all his critics, so we needed to indulge his rough "style."
Turns out that elite Trumpites seem to love Trump FOR his transgressions and will defend him more the worse his sins & crimes are shown to be. They'll try to spin the story as a Deep State setup to take down the Great Patriotic Hero, but at some point one has to conclude that they love his ability to get away (so far) with doing whatever he wants.
A commitment to defending Trump no matter what -- and scorching his critics and all the institutional guardrails -- has resulted in (or perhaps revealed) an inversion of ethics. Bad is good. Crime is virtue. Attacking the Constitution is a way of saving the constitutional republic. Recklessness with national security secrets is patriotic. The champion of Christianity is someone with no discernible piety or religious values. Etc.
I have never believed that this country would move past Trump. The thing that many R's missed for many years, decades even, was the anger and bitterness of the the Fox/Limbaugh/Levin/et al audience. It may not have been that way among the "educated" R's but in the hinterlands, those folks HATED all things Democratic.
I always loved to hear politicians say, "the voters are smart, they will make the right choice". Voters are not smart, mayber 1/3 of the general electorate is smart, maybe. The rest are simply moving through life trying not fall into open manholes. If the last 6 years have proven anything, they have proven that.
Acosta deftly revealed the vapidity of the Forward Party. I hope it helps to quickly dispatch this stupid idea.
I listened to yesterday's WP Live podcast, which was an interview of Tim Scott, being curious how one of the Republicans generally deemed less psychotic might react to the Maralago search. Listening to it before bed was not the wise move, as it's hard to sleep when you're angry. He was interviewed by Leigh Ann Caldwell, and she did a good job, and Scott's answers were typical evasion and deflection. Lots of complaints about double standards between how people like Jim Comey and Hillary Clinton were treated and how poor (alleged) espionage act violator Donnie Foreign Agent have been treated. How the Mueller probe wasted millions of dollars going after Trump when it was an investigation that resulted in almost 30 people being indicted, showed links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and had Trump dead to rights on obstruction of justice. Tim Miller's tweet quoted in today's Morning Shots is a helpful review of all the smoke around Donnie Treason. Rotner's piece about the whataboutism is also excellent.
There was even a clip in the WP Live pod of Trey Gowdy, Trey Gowdy! complaining that Trump is being so badly mistreated while Clinton got let off easy, after Gowdy orchestrated the greatest witch hunt since Joe McCarthy when he went after Hillary. Which Kevin McCarthy bragged would hurt her politically and damage her in any potential runs for office.
These people are well beyond redemption. When the accumulation of investigations is interpreted, not as evidence of criminality, but as evidence of double standards, persecution, and setups, the conspiratorial mind has no hope of being led to the light.
Of course Republican voters will nominate an indicted candidate. At this point, we can't prevent that. And actually, Trump was the guy most able to prevent it and chose not to.
2024 is likely to be a repeat of 2020, and so it will be time to remind the voters that the choice has only gotten clearer in the intervening 4 years.
Isn't it obvious that Fox News, ubiquitously broadcast in public places and even government offices and military bases has spent the last 30 or so years brainwashing the American people and paving the way for a criminal dictator. This didn't happen accidently. This was a carefully though out plan. Control the message, control the people. They have persuaded good Christian Americans that a spoiled New York real estate scam artist is their new Messiah. Even when he coddles our enemies and steals our safety, they remain brainwashed. Good is bad. Peace is war.
Until normal people understand just how much MAGA *hates* (a strong word) post-college liberals, they're going to keep being surprised by how low MAGA is willing to go. Go back to 2016 and Trump's primary message: "this country is rigged against you, and it's the post-college liberals ("coastal elites") who rigged it against you and your children and there's nothing you can do about it until you take a wrecking ball to the entire system. I am your best wrecking ball. Pick me."
MAGA doesn't hate *billionaires* folks, they hate *post-college liberals*. The way MAGA sees it, political violence is just another form of something that can be used to subjugate others, and post-college liberals are already using their education and wealth to rig the system against MAGA, so why not rig the system against post-college liberals via political violence? We've already accepted a two-tier system in society whereby people with wealth can collectively use it to keep others from using the old system of meritocracy to unseat their children, so why not allow other forms of power-wielding to keep others out of positions of power too?
The nice thing about political violence is that it is open to all and isn't inherited and concentrated generation-to-generation the way wealth is. Political violence creates a playing field just as equal as democratic capitalism, whereby the most violent can consolidate power just like the most wealthy can in our current system. It's just that the wealthy folk would rather maintain the current system where their wealth keeps them on top because if we go back to a pre-Hobbesian world, they're going to have to defend their wealth with violence and that's harder to do than having a police force defend your property for you via a system of laws. What happens when that system of laws is bent toward helping the rich maintain power and destroying the meritocracy? Doesn't sound all that different from what the Taliban do, they just do it with guns instead of corruption. Here, the powerful do it with wealth instead of guns. The only thing that changes if rule of law goes away is that it's a different group of assholes running the show via hegemony instead of the wealth-hoarders who destroyed the meritocracy and ran the country that way instead. The end result is the same: concentrated hegemony, only if political violence and anocracy come about it won't be the post-college liberals running the show anymore. It'll be the folks the post-college liberals have been subjugating all this time.
I think it was Will Saletan who mentioned on Thursday's livestream that January 6 wasn't a game changer for some in the GOP, and America more broadly, because not enough people died. How much violence would make a difference? How many dead FBI agents would make the GOP say "enough"? I think I know the [unfortunate] answer. What's harder to estimate is what the folks at the margins are thinking. It seems sad and sick to think that only sustained right-wing violence against the government is the only thing that could get Americans to really and truly defeat Trumpism at the ballot box.
Perhaps the most amazingly hypocritical aspect of Trump's supporters is that when it comes to Trump's *behavior*, "unprecedented" is a selling point. He's a rule-breaker! He shakes things up! He makes the liberals cry and sticks it to the lamestream media!
Yet when it comes to how Trump is *treated* in response, suddenly "unprecedented" is a profound injustice. How dare he be treated differently from other presidents just for doing bad things that no other President ever did! How dare he be treated close to half as badly as we'd treat a Democrat for doing things half as bad! It's an outrage!
Andrew Yang is not reading the room. This is not politics as usual. This is about violence - the violence already here and the violence coming. Trump wants his followers to kill FBI agents, elected officials and anyone who defies him. Trump is a criminal who lusts for complete power. And the GOP has become the new Nazi party. They've been using the same rhetoric of Nazi Germany for years. FOX News hosts lie, incite and are enraging the base. Republican Senate and House members do the same thing. For God's sake, Chuck Grassley insinuated "new" IRS agents would kill Iowa farmers with AK 15's. Chuck's too stupid to understand AK 15's are Russian made . Then again he's probably in Russia's pocket. Regardless, this is not the time to think third party. This is the time to be prepared for mob violence or another Oklahoma bombing. The psychosis gripping people who support Trump is real. They would commit murder and die for him just as much as the fanatics who followed Hitler.
I'm old enough to remember when Republicans criticized Democrats for supporting indicted politicians
I just happened to be watching MSNBC when you were on, Charlie.
When John asked that question you said "Yes."... But your face said "Well, DUH!"
Ends versus Means
I get it that the MAGA comments address the "Means". They're okay with them. I think I also understand that the goal, generally, is/was to "end the Regime".
But what I still want to know from these people is, in concrete terms, what do they call the thing, the "Ends" that get left in its place?
After the physical topple of the Regime and all the Selfies, what did they think would affirmatively take the place of Democracy? (Travis just informed me it is called Anocracy.)
In the same vein, is there still no way to subtly change our NeverTrump meme into something concrete and affirmatively? Like ProDemocracy versus Anocracy? One of the most vexing challenges is syntax, that of fighting against a "Never" with another "Never".
In any case, since nature abhors a vacuum, isn't there a way to ask our questions in a way that can only be answered in the affirmative? A way that they would have to say they're happy WITH anocracy?
Don't these people have families or rewarding jobs or even religion to give their life meaning?
Yang is a Musk level conman
Ms Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger seem to be the only conservative Republicans left in the GOP, and both will apparently be unemployed in 2023. Mr. Yang has a good idea for another time. Splitting the liberal vote in '22 can only serve to strengthen the impact of the fascists, and could well deliver the presidency once again to the orange menace.
Today may be the day that the GOP jettisons Liz Cheney and reembraces Sarah Palin. This signals the extinguishing of the last vestiges of sanity in the party. The madness of ecstatic violence seems to be in the cards.
""There's nothing he could do that would make me stop defending him" is something I heard a Trump fan say in 2016. Another: "The more they attack him, the more I'll defend him."
They were such remarkable declarations of fealty to a political candidate that I could never forget them -- particularly since the attitudes expressed have been dominant in the GOP for years now.
The first statement appears to be literally true for Trumpites, and it's why they were unfazed by his depraved "shoot someone on 5th Avenue" comment. The second statement in effect means: "The more awful and illegal things he does, the more he's to be revered." Trumpites might pretend they're responding to unfair attacks, but eventually one must conclude that they love the transgressiveness.
It was clear from the start that Trump's disdain for rules & ethics was seen as an asset among the rank & file, who wanted him to "blow the whole thing up" and "burn the place to the ground." Elite Trumpites said he would only "break what needs to be broken." They said "we know he's flawed, but ..." he was allegedly more patriotic than all his critics, so we needed to indulge his rough "style."
Turns out that elite Trumpites seem to love Trump FOR his transgressions and will defend him more the worse his sins & crimes are shown to be. They'll try to spin the story as a Deep State setup to take down the Great Patriotic Hero, but at some point one has to conclude that they love his ability to get away (so far) with doing whatever he wants.
A commitment to defending Trump no matter what -- and scorching his critics and all the institutional guardrails -- has resulted in (or perhaps revealed) an inversion of ethics. Bad is good. Crime is virtue. Attacking the Constitution is a way of saving the constitutional republic. Recklessness with national security secrets is patriotic. The champion of Christianity is someone with no discernible piety or religious values. Etc.