The United States 1776-2024, Running on Water

[Nick Danger]

Perhaps someone can join the dots for Nigel? He is struggling, as usual.

You can join the dots for me, Stavros. I'm difficult but not impossible to convince. Just link the same story from a reputable, even partisan source, and I'll say "I was wrong" and never post in this thread again. I mean, Donald Trump, funded by Russia? Surely the New York Times or Washington Post would be interested in a story like that. Wonder why they haven't picked it up?

[filghy2]

It looks like he needs another of his long breaks to nurse those hurt feelings.

I may take a break from this site soon, it seems I've destroyed the will of the handful of vocal liberals here to continue their verbal diarrhea in the face of constant beat-downs.

So you waited two weeks just to save face?

[Nick Danger]

So you waited two weeks just to save face?

I...don't understand what you're saying here. You speculated I was taking a break two weeks before I decided I might? Only reason I was considering a break was because I wasn't getting any counterarguments here. If you want to keep playing, Nick keeps playing. I'm basically retired now so plenty of time on my hands for bantering with libruls.

[Stavros]

The link below reviews one of the recent books published in the US on it's 'Civil War', and is a good example of why the book by Stephen Marche, and a similar one by Barbara Walter miss the key point about the legitimacy crisis in the USA.

https://slate.com/culture/2022/01/st...ar-review.html

It seems clear to me that the 'Civil War' as it is unfolding, is not yet a shooting war, it may not even come to that. Instead, I see a transformation taking place in three phases, that takes States Rights to State Power, ending up in State Autonomy,

What States, Texas and Florida being good examples, have realised, is that its officials can swear as many oaths as are required to 'Protect and Defend' the Constitution of the United States, and then do the opposite, because they view the Constitution as a dead letter. Moreover, by re-defining the Law in terms congenial to the Republican Party governing the State, Congress becomes an irrelevance, while, crucially, the Supreme Court by refusing to interfere in what it says are issues for the State to decide, endorses the practical effect of creating State Autonomy, so that the United States no longers exists as a Federal Union. It becomes a loose collection of States with limited connections, mostly in finance, language and infrastructure, unless Texas decides to build a wall around the State to give physical meaning to its Autonomy.

Within these Autonomous States, the rule of law need only be shaped by Democracy if Democracy guarantees elections are won by only one party, with numerous States now creating election processes guaranteed to make Putin blush with envy at their transparent rejection of the Right of the People to Elect their Representatives. The people of Texas, for example are having their freedom trashed by Republicans who don't believe in it. In their Democracy it is not the votes that count, but who counts the votes.

Robert Reich today nails it when he links the Republican Party of Trump with Vladimir Putin's objective, not just in the Ukraine and Russia but in what he calls the 'Eastern Slavic Lands' -the replacement of an open democracy with a closed shop of One, in which only One person rules, as God and King, a nomenclature that sends Republicans dizzy with ecstasy when they contemplate the lifetime Presidency of Donald Trump.

A victory for Putin in the Ukraine is not just a defeat for Open Democracy in Europe, it paves the way for an assault on freedom and democracy in the US, led by a man without whose Russian money he would still be in his dad's office in Queens, counting the small change from his run-down apartment blocks.

"Trump Republicans continue to refuse to acknowledge the outcome of the 2020 election, claiming without evidence that it was “stolen” from Trump. In many states, on the basis of this big lie, they are making it more difficult for people who don’t share their beliefs to vote.
In several states they are laying the groundwork for ignoring the popular vote altogether and throwing a future presidential election to Trump or another strongman. They have stopped even pretending to be the party of free speech: they are banning books from schools and prohibiting teachers from talking about America’s struggles against racism and homophobia.
Putin’s attack on Ukraine, starting 24 February, and the attack by followers of Donald Trump on the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021 are different, of course, but they resemble one another in their contempt for democratic institutions and their attempts to justify violence by asserting a threat to a dominant racial or ethnic group."
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ty-trump-putin

[yodajazz]

You can join the dots for me, Stavros. I'm difficult but not impossible to convince. Just link the same story from a reputable, even partisan source, and I'll say "I was wrong" and never post in this thread again. I mean, Donald Trump, funded by Russia? Surely the New York Times or Washington Post would be interested in a story like that. Wonder why they haven't picked it up?

" I mean, Donald Trump, funded by Russia?" Are you saying, that you are not aware of the multi-faceted campaign from Russia to get elected in 2016? This extensive campaign was outlined in Part One of the Mueller Report. But even more expansive was the US Senate Intelligence Committee's report, on this. Both of these are still available online. The issue with the Senate report, is it took them over two years to complete. Each of the five volumes was released separately. By the time Volume Five was released, it was the summer of 2020, and all the major news was on the presidential campaigns. But perhaps a bigger factor was the Report's total size, was too big for any broadcast media to cover.

I think, that it is because my background of Sociology, that I am aware of mass psychology techniques from the right. The right has some strong and consistent techniques to distract people from the truth. The campaign to distract followers from the truth of Russia's 2016 involvement, has been very successful. It sits at the center of the American divide. You seem like an intelligent person, even though I have not read much of your writings. So for me, it is interesting, how a seemingly intelligent person, can be hoodwinked into a false reality. I will provide links in a follow-up post, if you respond. Thanks!

[Stavros]

Was it a case of Russia 'meddling' or 'interfering' in the US election, or was it as Rebecca Solnit reports an 'act of war'- just as Russia has attacked the UK twice using nuclear based chemicals, and infiltrated the Brexit Referendum campaign in 2016-

"This weekend, British investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr said on Twitter, “We failed to acknowledge Russia had staged a military attack on the West. We called it ’meddling.’ We used words like ‘interference.’ It wasn’t. It was warfare. We’ve been under military attack for eight years now.”

When they knew the US was under attack from Russia, why did the Trump campaign not inform the FBI, the CIA and relevant bodies -why, indeed, did they join the Russian attack on the USA? My view -because they are traitors, and it is what traitors do. These people are in it for themselves, the US is just a tool, for them, to make money, to gain power.

More from Solnit's article, even if much of this is known already-

"Of course the most striking role of the Russian government in the 2016 US election was its many, many ties with the Trump campaign, including with Trump himself, who spent the campaign and the four years of his presidency groveling before Putin, denying the reality of Russian interference, and changing first the Republican platform and then US policy to serve Putin’s agendas. This included cutting support for Ukraine against Russia out of the Republican platform when he won the primary, considerable animosity toward Nato, and ultimately trying to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 by withholding military aid while demanding he offer confirmation of a Russian conspiracy theory blaming Ukraine rather than Russia for 2016 election interference.
A stunning number of Trump’s closest associates had deep ties to the Russian government. They included Paul Manafort, who during his years in Ukraine worked to build Russian influence there and served as a consultant to the Kremlin-backed Ukrainian president who was driven out of the country – and into Russia by popular protest in 2014 (the Russian line is that this was an illegitimate coup and thus a justification for invasion is still widely repeated). Manafort was, during his time in the campaign, sharing data with Russian intelligence agent Konstantin V Kilimnik, while campaign advisor Jeff Sessions was sharing information with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Manafort, Donald Trump Jr and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner held an illegal meeting in Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked lawyer on June 9, 2016, where they were promised damaging material on the Clinton campaign. "
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-putin-network

[Stavros]

The article quoted/linked below gives more weight to the Legitimacy Crisis I argue is threatening the integrity of the Union of 50 States. Thus, Thomas Zimmer writes-

"It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an “un-American” project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism. Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of “real” America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism and wokeism.
...Republicans didn’t start from an assessment of how the 2020 election went down and come away from that exercise with sincerely held doubts. The rationalization worked backwards: They looked at the outcome and decided it must not stand. In other words, accusations of fraud gain plausibility among conservatives not because of empirical evidence, but because they adhere to the “higher truth” of who is and who is not legitimately representing – and therefore entitled to rule – “real” America.
...It is notable that Ellmers makes no claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” – he doesn’t allege manipulation, voter fraud, or conspiracy, and in fact explicitly acknowledges that more people voted for Biden than for Trump. He does not peddle conspiracy theories. Yet Ellmers maintains that the outcome of the 2020 election is illegitimate and must not be accepted.According to Ellmers, Biden’s presidency represents an “un-American” idea of multiracial pluralism – something that is fundamentally in conflict with what he refers to as “authentic America”. In his view, everyone who voted for Joe Biden and his “progressive project of narcotizing the American people and turning us into a nation of slaves” is also “un-American” and therefore not worthy of inclusion in the body politic. Ellmers declares that “most people living in the United States – certainly more than half – are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term”. Only “authentic Americans” are allowed in Glenn Ellmers’ United States – a racialized idea of “the people,” most clearly represented by “the vast numbers of heartland voters”.
On the other side are “un-American” enemies, not coincidentally characterized by their blind admiration for a young Black artist: “If you are a zombie or a human rodent who wants a shadow-life of timid conformity, then put away this essay and go memorize the poetry of Amanda Gorman.” Ellmers’ racist, anti-pluralistic vision is remarkably radical: he wants to redraw the boundaries of citizenship and exclude over half the population."

Full article is here-
The real – and far scarier – reason Republicans think Biden is illegitimate | Thomas Zimmer | The Guardian

[Stavros]

Not just in Florida, where soon the maths books will insist that 2+2=5. Is it too late to save the Union?

Ex-Labor Secretary Warns How Donald Trump Could Actually Steal The 2024 Election (yahoo.com)

[Stavros]

More steps toward the end of the Union -

Idaho, a State that has become the destination for 'Right Flight', where Democrats have become so irrelevant they might as well pack up and leave.
‘Republican and more Republican’: Idaho shifts ever rightward | The far right | The Guardian

Florida, where DaSantis believes the State must instruct children in what to think -forcing its schoolchildren to undergo 45-minute lessons on the 'Victims of Communism', but not an equivalent lecture 'Christianity, Genocide and Slavery' -which won't even need to go as far as China for its evidence, being abundant in Florida.
DeSantis signs bill for Florida students to learn about ‘victims of communism’ | Ron DeSantis | The Guardian

Robert Reich on the 'second Civil War'...
The second American civil war is already happening | Robert Reich | The Guardian

[Stavros]

This goes to the core, the denial of legitimacy, the denial of truth, or an attempt to so re-write the facts that what was evident for all to see on the 6th January 2020, like 9/11 'Never happened', which is how an American Evangelical Preacher once described that day.

Thus the Republican in Congress in effect saying the Congress of the United States is an Irrelevance-

"Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference told reporters on Capital Hill on Wednesday, “They are scrambling to change the headlines, praying that the nation will focus on their partisan witch-hunt instead of our pocketbooks. It will not work.”
In what amounted to an attempt at a prebuttal, Stefanik described the January 6 committee as “unconstitutional” and “illegitimate”. "
Republican media blitz aims to discredit Capitol attack hearings | US Capitol attack | The Guardian