The United States 1776-2024, Running on Water

[Stavros]

This is the end of running on the waves; we are poured out like water.

Most historians will agree that no single factor can explain the collapse, disintegration or fracturing of a complex political system. As the US faces its most lethal crisis since the 1860s, there is one factor that can help explain what might be its last days as a Union of 50 States. In his book Legitimation Crisis (1973) Habermas goes into some detail to explore the problems embedded in three overlapping spheres : the Political, the Economic and the Socio-Cutural. What we have here is thus a crisis of Legitimacy, and one that the US has faced before.

The difference this time is that I see no resolution to the crisis that can be effective in retaining the 'mass loyaty' to the Republic that is -or was- fundamental to the endurance of the Union.

In the 19th century, Slavery was nominally the dividing issue, though at a deeper level, it was the Plantation Economy of the Southern States that was obstructing the capitalist development that by the end of the century would create one of the three most dynamic econmies in the world.

The 1860s thus became the interregnum between the Old World of Colonial America, and the emergence of the New World of prosperity and freedom, albeit one that by 1899 had re-incorporated acoss the defunct Confederacy the 'soft' version of slavery known as Segregation, a compromise the North made with the South to compensate it for its losses.

In the 21st century, legitimacy is the thread that once binded, and may yet undo the Republic.

Historians will look back in amazement that a man so obviously ignorant and stupid, became the standard bearer of an alternative narrative that has repudiated both the values, and the practices that sustained the US since its revolution against the British Empire in 1776. The key to unlocking this enigma, is not so hard to find -it is precisely because Donald Trump is an ignorant man, and an incompetent manager, that those men and women with their own agenda, have played him like a puppet to obtain their cherished goal -permanent and unlimited power.

Most observers do not believe the 2020 election produced anything other than a just result, but the narrative that has submerged the result in 'controversy' is more than an act of resentment by a man and his supporters who can't believe and can't accept he lost.

It has become a litmus test of politics that has challenged the legitmacy not just of the election process, but of the whole of the US political system.

Just as it was said during the Terror of the French Revolution 'Ten men can make ten thousand tremble', so in the US, a minoity of people -roughly 30%, but a larger percentage of elected officials and their allies in the media, have undermined the US with their relentless attacks on the legitimacy of the outcome of the election, but in extension the voting system, the economy, and a range of socio-culural issues stamped with 'Made in America' with Racism and Gender Anxiety central issues in a narrative of Decline, which has as its only solution, what in effect is a new Revolution.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a semi-professional agitator, tweeted '1776' in relation to the attack on the US on January 6 2021, but not as comedy or satire. Critically, a blatant attack such as this, manifestly opposed to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution, marks out this event as one rupture in the fabric of the US which, as the Eagles and Vultures seem determined to do, may yet tear the US apart.

To re-configure the violence of January 6 as a Liberation not an Attack, allies all those who promote this with a key factor in any legitimation crisis -the breakdown of mass loyalty into violence, whether it is the actual violence of street protests resuting in casualties -Charlottesville or Kenosha- or the implied violence of Paul Gosar's lurid cartoon in which a democratically elected member of the House of Representatives is executed, as if there was no alternative means of de-electing her from office.

The most chilling example of this came a month or so ago in Idaho, when a member of the audience at an event organized by Turning Point USA said-

“When do we get to use the guns? ... That's not a joke. I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/pushing-election-lies-tpusa-audience-member-asks-charlie-kirk-when-they-can-use-guns

When the only response to a crisis of legitimacy is violence, there is an exsitential threat to the system as a whole. That it comes from somoene who probably votes for a party that has been using State law to remove millions of Americans from the electoral register, to deny them the opportunity to vote on election day, underlines the scope of the crisis, just as the comments by Senator Rafael 'Ted' Cruz on the secession of Texas cannot be dismissed as an offhand remark, but a statement of intent.

Thus one can draw up a list of such statements and actions, and link them to the violation of the law by Donald Trump as candidate in 2016 (the Federal Election Campaign Act), as President (the Hatch Act), and the insolent repudiation of the rule of the law and the Congress of the United States by fomer members of the Trump administration investigating the seditious attack on the US on January 6.

Taken collectively, the argument proposed by the Neo-Revolutionaries is this:
-the Constitution of the USA is not fit for purpose;
-the Separation of Powers no longer enables the US to function as an efficient administation and legislative body;
-the Rule of Law has been 'hi-jacked' by sectional interests at the expense of the 'American people'.

But the legtimation crisis begs the question, 'Who are the American people?' with the suspicion that just as Fascism in the early 20th century sought to define, and then re-define the Nation and those who belong in it, so the Neo-Revolutionaries can be seen as New Wave Fascists, determined to replace one system with another.

And because this campaign cannot command the support of the majority of the people, but has support in the old Confederacy, so the prospects of the Union of 50 states breaking up must be taken seriously if, as is claimed, re-districting provides supporters of Donald Trump with permanent power in those States opposed to the US as it is, a US they have come to hate and despise.

And just, as James Buchanan declined to use force to reclaim South Carolina when it seceded in 1860, one wonders if force would again be used, or declined, were Texas to secede from the Union.

The stage is set for a showdown as the New Wave Fascsts force their ageda on the US, not because they don't believe the US belongs to 'We the People' but because they want to re-define who the people are before committing to them.

There is a crisis of legitimacy in the US, and I fear it will not be resolved in the favour of the US as it is today. The US is running on water.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/18/trump-6-january-committee-1860

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/james-buchanan-why-is-he-considered-americas-worst-president/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation_Crisis_(book)

[Stavros]

Meanwhile, the same people who condemn the 'Far Left' Democrats are busy creating a One-Party State within the US to rival North Korea or the Russian Federation. Democracy, for the discples of twice-impeached, forever-in-debt, Cry-Baby Trump is a mechanism for rigging elections so that only one Party ever wins.

"In some cases, even when a majority of voters voted for one party to be in charge, the rigged districts meant that the losing party remained in charge. In Michigan, in 2018, voters chose Democrats (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/democrats) over Republicans for their statehouse by 52%-47%. Nevertheless, this led to a Republican majority in that statehouse of 58-52. In Wisconsin, losing the popular vote for the statehouse across the state by a 54-45 gave Republicans a 63-36 supermajority in that statehouse. Now that would truly impress a foreign autocrat – a system locking a minority into power despite a clear mandate by the voters that they wanted the opposite."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/28/republicans-are-quietly-rigging-election-maps-to-ensure-permanent-rule

[Nick Danger]

I've already educated you about gerrymandering, Stavros. The Republicans do it, and the Democrats do it too, the whole country is gerrymandered to hell and back and you're cherry-picking examples of Republican advantages out of your beloved liberal shitrags. You've gone from just being ignorant to now being willfully ignorant.

[Stavros]

The anniversary of the attack on the United States is upon us, the consequences still uncertain, but afraid. I am not sure Stephen Marche has it right as the so- called ‘left’ in the US is divided and incoherent with no representation in Congress worth writing home about. The anti-American terrorists are clear to see- they ignore subpoenas as they do not recognise the legal system of the US as legitimate, an attitude of contempt for the Constitution which they have never read or understood anyway, and foment the Personality Cult developed by the Russian-funded traitor, Coward-in-Chief and for years the ‘wing-man’ to Jeffrey Epstein still crying his eyes out in Florida.

Is it too late to save the US? Do enough people want to? But do those Americans who have lost faith in their country to the extent they welcome 800,000 deaths as an exquisite irrelevance really understand what New Wave Fascism means in practice? All those wannabe Nigels may soon find their cherished freedom is an Oathkeepee’s nightstick permanently in their ass.

“Two things are happening at the same time. Most of the American right have abandoned faith in government as such. Their politics is, increasingly, the politics of the gun. The American left is slower on the uptake, but they are starting to figure out that the system which they give the name of democracy is less deserving of the name every year.
An incipient illegitimacy crisis is under way, whoever is elected in 2022, or in 2024. According to a University of Virginia analysis (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/12/in-about-20-years-half-the-population-will-live-in-eight-states/) of census projections, by 2040, 30% of the population will control 68% of the Senate. Eight states will contain half the population. The Senate malapportionment gives advantages overwhelmingly to white, non– college educated voters. In the near future, a Democratic candidate could win the popular vote by many millions of votes and still lose. Do the math: the federal system no longer represents the will of the American people.
The right is preparing for a breakdown of law and order, but they are also overtaking the forces of law and order. Hard right organization have now infiltrated (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-supremacists-militias-infiltrate-us-police-report) so many police forces – the connections number in the hundreds (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law) – that they have become unreliable allies in the struggle against domestic terrorism.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/next-us-civil-war-already-here-we-refuse-to-see-it

[Nick Danger]

The anniversary of the attack on the United States is upon us, the consequences still uncertain, but afraid. I am not sure Stephen Marche has it right as the so- called ‘left’ in the US is divided and incoherent with no representation in Congress worth writing home about. The anti-American terrorists are clear to see- they ignore subpoenas as they do not recognise the legal system of the US as legitimate, an attitude of contempt for the Constitution which they have never read or understood anyway, and foment the Personality Cult developed by the Russian-funded traitor, Coward-in-Chief and for years the ‘wing-man’ to Jeffrey Epstein still crying his eyes out in Florida.

Is it too late to save the US? Do enough people want to? But do those Americans who have lost faith in their country to the extent they welcome 800,000 deaths as an exquisite irrelevance really understand what New Wave Fascism means in practice? All those wannabe Nigels may soon find their cherished freedom is an Oathkeepee’s nightstick permanently in their ass.

“Two things are happening at the same time. Most of the American right have abandoned faith in government as such. Their politics is, increasingly, the politics of the gun. The American left is slower on the uptake, but they are starting to figure out that the system which they give the name of democracy is less deserving of the name every year.
An incipient illegitimacy crisis is under way, whoever is elected in 2022, or in 2024. According to a University of Virginia analysis (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/12/in-about-20-years-half-the-population-will-live-in-eight-states/) of census projections, by 2040, 30% of the population will control 68% of the Senate. Eight states will contain half the population. The Senate malapportionment gives advantages overwhelmingly to white, non– college educated voters. In the near future, a Democratic candidate could win the popular vote by many millions of votes and still lose. Do the math: the federal system no longer represents the will of the American people.
The right is preparing for a breakdown of law and order, but they are also overtaking the forces of law and order. Hard right organization have now infiltrated (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-supremacists-militias-infiltrate-us-police-report) so many police forces – the connections number in the hundreds (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law) – that they have become unreliable allies in the struggle against domestic terrorism.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/next-us-civil-war-already-here-we-refuse-to-see-it




"Russian-funded traitor"

Is there any lie that's beneath you, Stavros? Or are you willing to say absolutely anything that makes it seem as if your pie-eyed progressivism isn't laughably toxic? 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. I'm a compassionate conqueror though, I know you guys are just biding your time until this forum goes back to echo-chamber status, and I do accommodate that periodically. But I've got my eye on you, Stavros.:bs:

[Stavros]

If we assume Nigel can think and read at the same time, he will know that during the 2016 campaign, the US was being attacked by Russia, and that every US citizen aware of Russia’s proven links to the Trump campaign had a moral and a legal duty to defend the United States from Russian attack. As Steve Bannon put it, the activities of the Trump campaign could be summed up in one word: “Treason”.Details of the links can be found here-


https://themoscowproject.org/

And here

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/548794-there-was-trump-russia-collusion-and-trump-pardoned-the-colluder

[Nick Danger]

If we assume Nigel can think and read at the same time, he will know that during the 2016 campaign, the US was being attacked by Russia, and that every US citizen aware of Russia’s proven links to the Trump campaign had a moral and a legal duty to defend the United States from Russian attack. As Steve Bannon put it, the activities of the Trump campaign could be summed up in one word: “Treason”.Details of the links can be found here-


https://themoscowproject.org/

And here

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/548794-there-was-trump-russia-collusion-and-trump-pardoned-the-colluder

Words mean what they mean, Stavros. "Russian-funded" is not what those articles say. It's a lie. You lied it.

[Stavros]

https://themoscowproject.org/collusion-chapter/chapter-1/index.html

Intelligent readers are invited to Chapter 1: ‘Bailed out by Russia’….

[Nick Danger]

https://themoscowproject.org/collusion-chapter/chapter-1/index.html

Intelligent readers are invited to Chapter 1: ‘Bailed out by Russia’….

Yeah, "intelligent readers," go ahead and give it a thorough read. Let me tell you what you are going to find out: Donald Trump has sold real estate to Russians. Just like...practically every realty company in the USA and the rest of the planet. Seriously, that's all the article concludes.

Also, Stavros, do you even bother to screen your sources? "The Moscow Project" is 100% sponsored and written by the Center For American Progress - (ex-Clinton and Obama advisor) John Podesta's post-Obama effort to remain politically relevant. There is no more politically-biased information source. Das Reich maybe?

What a farce. No wonder you're so blind to the truth, Stavros, your sources are glowing.

[Stavros]

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

[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.

1359526

[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/stephen-marche-next-civil-war-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 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/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 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) 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/commentisfree/2022/mar/01/republican-party-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 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-campaign-guts-gops-anti-russia-stance-on-ukraine/2016/07/18/98adb3b0-4cf3-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html) for Ukraine against Russia out of the Republican platform when he won the primary, considerable animosity (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/28/trumps-effort-rewrite-history-his-support-nato-ukraine/) 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 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/us/politics/paul-manafort-konstantin-kilimnik.html) with Russian intelligence agent Konstantin V Kilimnik, while campaign advisor Jeff Sessions was sharing information (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-discussed-trump-campaign-related-matters-with-russian-ambassador-us-intelligence-intercepts-show/2017/07/21/3e704692-6e44-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html) with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Manafort, Donald Trump Jr and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner held an illegal meeting (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/mueller-report-no-evidence-trump-knew-about-trump-tower-meeting-n995816) 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/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/time-to-confront-trump-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 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/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 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/joebiden) 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 (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/21/republicans-biden-trump-election-democracy)

[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) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/ex-labor-secretary-warns-donald-081055480.html)

[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 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/11/iowa-right-wing-republicans)

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 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/10/florida-ron-desantis-communism-bill-students)

Robert Reich on the 'second Civil War'...
The second American civil war is already happening | Robert Reich | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/11/second-american-civil-war-robert-reich)

[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 (https://thehill.com/news/house/3516209-house-gop-mounts-media-battle-in-prebuttal-to-jan-6-hearing/), Stefanik described the January 6 committee as “unconstitutional” and “illegitimate”. "
Republican media blitz aims to discredit Capitol attack hearings | US Capitol attack | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/08/house-capitol-attack-hearings-republicans-trump)

[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) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/texas-gop-goes-trump-big-192717477.html)

[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) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/texas-gop-goes-trump-big-192717477.html)

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 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/20/us-political-violence-civil-war): “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 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/29/us-civil-war-fears-poll)


-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 (https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/flip-script) 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) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/americans-starting-t-let-trump-101504234.html)

[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) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-compares-trump-hitler-072801658.html)

https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/G9dGUUHhBRUspJ0NKKGG2A--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY0MDtjZj13ZWJw/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/M5hShjjfXXC877JIp_ILCw--~B/aD00MjA7dz02MzA7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/the_huffington_post_584/da0e495fcdaa7d96c237440d0f736f2b

[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 “psychopaths are running the country right now (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1atFzbwVqSs)” and spoken approvingly (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blake-masters-a-new-kind-of-politics/id1547129171?i=1000554227184) of the anti-establishment philosophy of the 1990s Unabomber, and Vance, a frequent speaker on the university circuit during his book tour days who now says “universities are the enemy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FR65Cifnhw)”, fit the same mould. They and Thiel all have ties to a branch of the New Right known as NatCon (https://nationalconservatism.org/), whose adherents believe, broadly, that the establishment needs to be torn down, much as Thiel and his fellow Silicon Valley disrupters believed two decades ago that the future lay in destroying longstanding business models and practices.Thiel himself opined as far back as 2009 (https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/) 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 (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/15/peter-thiel-who-is-he-republican-donor-tech-entrepreneur)

[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 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/19/proud-boys-document-jan-6-violence) 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 (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/books/turner-diaries-white-supremacists.html)(1978 ), a fictitious account of a future US civil war. Written by William Pierce, founder (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/william-pierce) 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 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/06/how-close-is-the-us-to-civil-war-barbara-f-walter-stephen-march-christopher-parker)

[MrFanti]

This is the end of running on the waves; we are poured out like water.

Most historians will agree that no single factor can explain the collapse, disintegration or fracturing of a complex political system. As the US faces its most lethal crisis since the 1860s, there is one factor that can help explain what might be its last days as a Union of 50 States. In his book Legitimation Crisis (1973) Habermas goes into some detail to explore the problems embedded in three overlapping spheres : the Political, the Economic and the Socio-Cutural. What we have here is thus a crisis of Legitimacy, and one that the US has faced before.

The difference this time is that I see no resolution to the crisis that can be effective in retaining the 'mass loyaty' to the Republic that is -or was- fundamental to the endurance of the Union.

In the 19th century, Slavery was nominally the dividing issue, though at a deeper level, it was the Plantation Economy of the Southern States that was obstructing the capitalist development that by the end of the century would create one of the three most dynamic econmies in the world.

The 1860s thus became the interregnum between the Old World of Colonial America, and the emergence of the New World of prosperity and freedom, albeit one that by 1899 had re-incorporated acoss the defunct Confederacy the 'soft' version of slavery known as Segregation, a compromise the North made with the South to compensate it for its losses.

In the 21st century, legitimacy is the thread that once binded, and may yet undo the Republic.

Historians will look back in amazement that a man so obviously ignorant and stupid, became the standard bearer of an alternative narrative that has repudiated both the values, and the practices that sustained the US since its revolution against the British Empire in 1776. The key to unlocking this enigma, is not so hard to find -it is precisely because Donald Trump is an ignorant man, and an incompetent manager, that those men and women with their own agenda, have played him like a puppet to obtain their cherished goal -permanent and unlimited power.

Most observers do not believe the 2020 election produced anything other than a just result, but the narrative that has submerged the result in 'controversy' is more than an act of resentment by a man and his supporters who can't believe and can't accept he lost.

It has become a litmus test of politics that has challenged the legitmacy not just of the election process, but of the whole of the US political system.

Just as it was said during the Terror of the French Revolution 'Ten men can make ten thousand tremble', so in the US, a minoity of people -roughly 30%, but a larger percentage of elected officials and their allies in the media, have undermined the US with their relentless attacks on the legitimacy of the outcome of the election, but in extension the voting system, the economy, and a range of socio-culural issues stamped with 'Made in America' with Racism and Gender Anxiety central issues in a narrative of Decline, which has as its only solution, what in effect is a new Revolution.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a semi-professional agitator, tweeted '1776' in relation to the attack on the US on January 6 2021, but not as comedy or satire. Critically, a blatant attack such as this, manifestly opposed to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution, marks out this event as one rupture in the fabric of the US which, as the Eagles and Vultures seem determined to do, may yet tear the US apart.

To re-configure the violence of January 6 as a Liberation not an Attack, allies all those who promote this with a key factor in any legitimation crisis -the breakdown of mass loyalty into violence, whether it is the actual violence of street protests resuting in casualties -Charlottesville or Kenosha- or the implied violence of Paul Gosar's lurid cartoon in which a democratically elected member of the House of Representatives is executed, as if there was no alternative means of de-electing her from office.

The most chilling example of this came a month or so ago in Idaho, when a member of the audience at an event organized by Turning Point USA said-

“When do we get to use the guns? ... That's not a joke. I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/pushing-election-lies-tpusa-audience-member-asks-charlie-kirk-when-they-can-use-guns

When the only response to a crisis of legitimacy is violence, there is an exsitential threat to the system as a whole. That it comes from somoene who probably votes for a party that has been using State law to remove millions of Americans from the electoral register, to deny them the opportunity to vote on election day, underlines the scope of the crisis, just as the comments by Senator Rafael 'Ted' Cruz on the secession of Texas cannot be dismissed as an offhand remark, but a statement of intent.

Thus one can draw up a list of such statements and actions, and link them to the violation of the law by Donald Trump as candidate in 2016 (the Federal Election Campaign Act), as President (the Hatch Act), and the insolent repudiation of the rule of the law and the Congress of the United States by fomer members of the Trump administration investigating the seditious attack on the US on January 6.

Taken collectively, the argument proposed by the Neo-Revolutionaries is this:
-the Constitution of the USA is not fit for purpose;
-the Separation of Powers no longer enables the US to function as an efficient administation and legislative body;
-the Rule of Law has been 'hi-jacked' by sectional interests at the expense of the 'American people'.

But the legtimation crisis begs the question, 'Who are the American people?' with the suspicion that just as Fascism in the early 20th century sought to define, and then re-define the Nation and those who belong in it, so the Neo-Revolutionaries can be seen as New Wave Fascists, determined to replace one system with another.

And because this campaign cannot command the support of the majority of the people, but has support in the old Confederacy, so the prospects of the Union of 50 states breaking up must be taken seriously if, as is claimed, re-districting provides supporters of Donald Trump with permanent power in those States opposed to the US as it is, a US they have come to hate and despise.

And just, as James Buchanan declined to use force to reclaim South Carolina when it seceded in 1860, one wonders if force would again be used, or declined, were Texas to secede from the Union.

The stage is set for a showdown as the New Wave Fascsts force their ageda on the US, not because they don't believe the US belongs to 'We the People' but because they want to re-define who the people are before committing to them.

There is a crisis of legitimacy in the US, and I fear it will not be resolved in the favour of the US as it is today. The US is running on water.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/18/trump-6-january-committee-1860

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/james-buchanan-why-is-he-considered-americas-worst-president/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation_Crisis_(book)

Does this make you happy - is it a gloat?
Is this a "ha' ha'" post?

Because a lot of your posts sure appear that way.

If it is, be straight up and don't beat around the bush!

[Luke Warm]

The gloom and doom of the initial post didn’t age well, post 2022 mid-terms.

I suppose it’s more enjoyable for Stavros to talk about Trump - who is already on his way out the door - or Trumpism - which will have a limited lifespan - than it is to talk about Brexit, which has seemingly screwed up the UK for decades, if not indefinitely.

US politics is hard to get your mind around, even for US citizens. Getting all your information filtered through sources like the Guardian or BBC - which are sources I like well enough - and not having the same immersion as a US resident, makes it even harder. I’m not casting any shade, I know I don’t understand the nuances of Parliament, which is why I spend more time listening about it than I do expressing an opinion about it.

[Stavros]

The gloom and doom of the initial post didn’t age well, post 2022 mid-terms.

I suppose it’s more enjoyable for Stavros to talk about Trump - who is already on his way out the door - or Trumpism - which will have a limited lifespan - than it is to talk about Brexit, which has seemingly screwed up the UK for decades, if not indefinitely.

US politics is hard to get your mind around, even for US citizens. Getting all your information filtered through sources like the Guardian or BBC - which are sources I like well enough - and not having the same immersion as a US resident, makes it even harder. I’m not casting any shade, I know I don’t understand the nuances of Parliament, which is why I spend more time listening about it than I do expressing an opinion about it.

I don't think a lot has changed because of the mid-terms. One of the basic ideas I have advanced has not been affected, namely the trend toward State Autonomy, of the kind that threatens the integrity of the Union. Had there been significant changes in Texas and Florida, then perhaps my thesis would have become redundant, whereas the Autonomists have if anything strengthened their hold on State politics. Moreover, of the Republican-led House spends more time attacking the Biden family and opening investigations into the FBi, DoJ annd others, rather than deaiing with issues like housing and the homeless, would this not maintain their long term aim to discredit the Institutions of the USA on the basis that, that, like the Constitution, they are no longer fit for purpose?

Trump may be on the way out, but the trends he inherited that he took to what people thought was the edge of reason, continue to be the organizing principles of people like Kevin McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron De Santis. If anything, the GOP, of that is what it still is, has become even more extreme since 2020. One notes the creepy similarity between the Christian Nationalists of Russia, with their counterparts in Hungary, France and via MTG, the House of Representatives, with the real prospect of military aid to Ukraine being cut or even ended, though I am not sure if the House alone can do this. Nick Fuentes may be the grubby side of anti-Semitism, but fundamental to the Russian project is a deep anti-Semitism that also depicts Western Liberalism and all things LGBTQ+ as an existential threat to Christian life, which is the only life worth having. It could be that the House makes common cause with the Russians, rather than Americans. Another nail in the coffin of American Liberalism.

As for Brexit, there is plenty in the thread I started, and the documentation of business failure keeps on coming, though I have not updated the thread recently. Polls, if you believe them, show a distinct majority think it was a mistake, but the prospect of a break-up of our Union is less secure as our Supreme Court has judged a second Independence Referendum in Scotland cannot be held without Parliamentary approval, so it doesn't seem likely in the next few years though Nicola Sturgeon says the next General Election in Scotland will be, in effect an Independence Referendum. That said, Northern Ireland remains a weak link. If any constituent part of the UK goes first, it is most likely here.

[Stavros]

Does this make you happy - is it a gloat?
Is this a "ha' ha'" post?

Because a lot of your posts sure appear that way.

If it is, be straight up and don't beat around the bush!

It was a serious post. I don't know what you mean by gloat, but then I don't expect much in the way of intellect from you.

[Stavros]

A cardinal point about Brexit, is that while there are faint glimmers of backsliding by Rishii Sunak, both Labour and Conservative parties are committed to it, utterly incapable of admitting Brexit doesn't work, and that they have no way of dealing with failure.

I would suggest it is like arms control in the US -most Americans I believe want military-grade weapons banned, but nobody is going to do it, so from Sandy Hook to Uvalde via Parkland and Las Vegas, the message is simple -America is a country where guns kill people and we will allow people as many guns as they can have. If they kill people of all ages, so what?

Latest Brexit news-
Brexit blow: exports to Japan slump after ‘landmark’ free trade deal | Brexit | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/nov/26/brexit-britain-japan-trade-deal-exports-slump)

A hostile article-
Brexit has made Britain the sick man of Europe again | William Keegan | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/27/brexit-has-made-britain-the-sick-man-of-europe-again)

[MrFanti]

I don't know what you mean by gloat, but then I don't expect much in the way of intellect from you.
I rest my case.
Thanks for showing us the real you! :dancing:
(Part of which is GREAT at dishing it out but weak in receiving it in return - and thus your resort to personal insults)

[Stavros]

I apologize if you feel insulted. On my part I was merely stating a fact, borne out by your absence of any dialogue or debate in threads we have started, contributed to, other than one on Empire which revealed an inability on your part to understand a significant, and not particularly controversial point that I made. I can take as much criticism as there is though one always hopes it is based on the topic of debate. The rest is a matter of style.

Have a nice day.

[filghy2]

Does this make you happy - is it a gloat?
Is this a "ha' ha'" post?

Because a lot of your posts sure appear that way.

If it is, be straight up and don't beat around the bush!

It's strange that you should be asking about the point of another person's posting. When was the last time you actually posted a viewpoint on an issue, or responded to the substance of what somebody else said?

Or was this a 'ha ha' post?