The United States 1776-2024, Running on Water

[Stavros]

Texas Republicans may be on the Road to a Christian Republic, and nobody will be surprised at the sophistry used to claim Biden is not the Legitimate President of the USA, and fewer still be surprised at the claim Homosexuality is 'abnormal' -but how many citizens of Texas agree with the Republicans and want to live in a separate country?

And if all mail-in ballots were to be banned, would this hurt Democrats but not Republicans, as in -do no Republican voters use mail-in ballots?

Texas GOP Goes All-In on Trump’s Big Lie, Says Biden Is ‘Acting President’ (yahoo.com)

[KnightHawk 2.0]

Texas Republicans may be on the Road to a Christian Republic, and nobody will be surprised at the sophistry used to claim Biden is not the Legitimate President of the USA, and fewer still be surprised at the claim Homosexuality is 'abnormal' -but how many citizens of Texas agree with the Republicans and want to live in a separate country?

And if all mail-in ballots were to be banned, would this hurt Democrats but not Republicans, as in -do no Republican voters use mail-in ballots?

Texas GOP Goes All-In on Trump’s Big Lie, Says Biden Is ‘Acting President’ (yahoo.com)

Not surprised at all that Texas Republicans are going all in with the Big Lie,and believe that Joe Biden is not the President,and Donald-D.A.M.N-Trump still is. And i think that most citizens of Texas agree with the Republicans and want to live in a separate country. And banning mail-in ballots would hurt the Democrats more,and this delusional theory by Texas Republicans shows that the Big Lie is alive and well.

[Stavros]

"Most experts believe a full-scale armed conflict, like the American civil war of 1861-65, remains unlikely.But many fear an increase of jagged political division and explicitly political violence, particularly as Republican politicians who support Trump’s lie about electoral fraud run for Congress, governor’s mansions and key state elections posts.
This month, Rachel Kleinfeld, a specialist in civil conflict at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Guardian: “Countries with democracies and governments as strong as America’s do not fall into civil war. But if our institutions weaken, the story could be different.”"
More than 40% of Americans think civil war likely within a decade | US politics | The Guardian


-This is the key for me, because once the institutions go, there is nothing to replace them which has the same nationwide consensus. But to think that the FBI, DOJ, Congress and much of the long-established media will go to satisfy the bruised ego of a pompous, crooked moron like Trump does make one wonder if he is so powerful. Or that he represents a resentment that won't go away, but has enough support in States to unravel the whole country. It is the reason why it is essential that if he broke the law and it can be proven, the law must take precedence over all other considerations. And soon.

[Stavros]

For a more positive view, one that argues the Supreme Court decision on Roe-v-Wade has changed the narrative-

"There are signs that most Americans aren’t ready to trade their rights and freedoms for a strongman and his election-denying, rights-infringing, violence-threatening allies. As the Cook Report’s Amy Walters wrote on 26 August: “The more Trump is in the news, the more dangerous the political climate for the GOP.”

Americans are starting to get it: we can’t let Trump – or Trumpism – back in office (yahoo.com)

[Stavros]

On the margins of history, or at its centre? The picture that tells us how far down the road to Dictatorship Trurmp and his friends are determined to go.

Hillary Clinton Compares Trump To Hitler In Disturbing Interview (yahoo.com)

[yodajazz]

This is only news, because of who is saying it. That is because many people, myself included have long recognized this. Some say that Trump's movement is like the old Nazi movement. But I say that it is the same, spirit, not just similar. Some of that comes from a larger world, or a spiritual view. Hitler's world view in his book "Mein Kampf" saw a world of limited resources, which had to be fought over for control, by nations or races. Meanwhile, the current "Great Placement Theory" is newer offspring of that idea. Whereas a person like me, believes that 'God' supplies our needs' according to our individual talents and actions. Many people do not believe in God. But I have come to see God as principles, Laws, or universal principles which can be observed in life. Love is a main principle in this scheme of things.

So yes, Hillary is right, on this in my view. Thanks for you posts!

[Stavros]

I don't think there is an exact match between the German National Socialists and their American 'cousins', excluding the American Nazis. Race is the common bond, but the QAnon people don't demonize Jews or other minorities as threats to the American way of life who must be in some way removed from the country, even if they think this.

The persistence of God in American life and politics is not something we sympathise with in the UK where politics is secular even if the leadership 'has religion'. It also complicates the narrative in America because if there truly is a God of Love, why are so many God-fearing Americans so cruel, callous and unkind?

Denying a woman a 'surgical abortion' when her foetus has failed to develop, and has no skull and no hope of life, demonstrates above all a complete indifference to the woman concerned. No sympathy, no emotional support for her, but a fixation on a foetus that has no hope of life.

But maybe the worst is not a belief in God, so much as the belief that a single person has been 'sent by God' to 'Save America' or whatever slogan comes to mind. That lunatic so-called 'Pastor' White to me is a fraud whose primary aim in life is to take money from people to spend on herself. That some Americans do believe Trump was sent by God is as depressing a thought as the sky-high 'Isis Finger' gesture at his rallies.

In God We Trust?

[Stavros]

The link below is to an article on Peter Thiel, a billoinaire who is funding Republican candidates who believe the 2020 election was rigged, but who also believes that change is needed in the US. It begs the question, What is an American Conservative? The article also has a link to the NatCon website which is a useful place to go if you want to know what the 'Christian Nationalists' are thinking, and in particular how they separate out the Liberal from their idea of the Conservative.

Here for example, is a menu of radical change, not Conservatism, as in 'what do you wish to conserve?'-

[Blake] "Masters, who has campaigned on the notion that “ that he no longer believed democracy to be compatible with freedom and expressed “little hope that voting will make things better”."

"Liberal democracy, in his view, had turned the United States government into a dissent-squashing Ministry of Truth working toward a “homogenizing, brain-dead, one-world state” – a problem to which only rightwing nationalism could provide an “all-important corrective”."

"Thiel’s bid to overthrow the system, in other words, goes well beyond his ability to determine which party controls the Senate next year. The money will solidify the notion that the country is being run by psychopaths, at least among a hard core of Republican voters, analysts warn, and will further harden the ideological battle lines that have split the country in two and made common ground ever harder to find. It also brings the extreme opinions of NatCon further into the mainstream, making it easier for radical Republican candidates to run and win in future races, they say."
Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy | Peter Thiel | The Guardian

[Stavros]

A few thoughts on the speech JD Vance has given to the NatCon audience.

-He collapses an entire University into a select few whose views he disagrees with, or are the truth and knowledge that are given to Chemists, Physicists, Medics and Lawyers really Lies and Deceit?

-He sneers at his alma mater, Yale Law School, yet what we have seen is not a flood of Liberal lawyers influencing real policy, but graduates of 'the enemy' dominating the Supreme Court of the USA, and an increasing number of people like Vance being appointed throughout the Trump administration, something he doesn't seem to think worth mentioning.

-He might have a point about University administrations, but if all Americans are equal, should they not have equal access to higher education? It might not suit everyone, and many who nave no university degree are successful in life, but is it not also true that a degree does lead to a better paid job? And, until the 1990s here, university education was free, and students like me were also given a grant to live on. I have never understood student fees and think they should be abolished.

-Being inclusive means Universities which in the past performed a conscious or unconscious bias against women and minorities, have woken up to the past mistakes, what is wrong with that?

-Vance clearly misunderstand Critical Race Theory, which is not intended to make anyone hate America. It's primary aim is to history and a history of the law, to show how Race has shaped public policy and law, and asks the uncomfortable question, how has the US changed since the end of Slavery? It is, after all, a critique, not a prescription. And in former Confederate States, is it not the case that Black voters are more likely to be denied the vote, for district boundaries to be draw to ensure Black candidates are not elected?

And what is the alternative to his dismissal of Universities? Does he want to purge American colleges of the academics he doesn't approve of, and replace them with those who meet his criteria, one of which I assume will be a devotion to Christian Nationalism?

In the end, it sounds to me like what Vance wants is a totalitarian state bound together by the laws and ideas Vance approves of.

[Stavros]

A bleak assessment, suggesting when, not if is the question.

"far-right groups such as the Proud Boys have told us how they plan to execute a civil war. They call this type of war “leaderless resistance” and are influenced by a plan in The Turner Diaries(1978 ), a fictitious account of a future US civil war. Written by William Pierce, founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, it offers a playbook for how a group of fringe activists can use mass terror attacks to “awaken” other white people to their cause, eventually destroying the federal government. The book advocates attacking the Capitol building, setting up a gallows to hang politicians, lawyers, newscasters and teachers who are so-called “race traitors”, and bombing FBI headquarters."
‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war? | US politics | The Guardian