2024 USA Election: Wishin' and Hopin'

[fred41]

Americans must choose between democracy and dictatorship, or competence compared to incompetence, it is that simple. Tim Scott and Byron Donalds want to drag their country back to the Plantation where everyone knows their place, and there is only one boss, and in the latter case seem to think Education Apartheid is America's only hope. After all, Capitalism is a form of slavery, and it has many willing victims, terrified of their own freedom.

They are not choosing between dictatorship and democracy…and Capitalism is not a form of slavery - especially since no country practices a pure form of it. That type of paternalistic hyperbole gives some credence to what MrFanti is implying (though, for some reason or other, he doesn’t defend his statement when he is given ammunition gratis).

It used to be (and still is, in many place here in the States) that comments like that, and some of the names used here to describe Conservative African American politicians, would usually only be wielded by other African Americans…due in part - because of the deeply racist ways in which they could, and continue to be weaponized. It is becoming a strange phenomenon , that white (often relatively wealthy) young people …using the cloak of Oppression Fighter - feel emboldened to spew racist tropes against black people that disagree with them politically. I saw the worst of this in some of the BLM marches - in wihich often white women, spewing spittle filled invectives against black police officers, loudly questioning the civil servant’s blackness.

Strange and troubling times indeed.

[filghy2]

They are not choosing between dictatorship and democracy…and Capitalism is not a form of slavery - especially since no country practices a pure form of it. That type of paternalistic hyperbole gives some credence to what MrFanti is implying (though, for some reason or other, he doesn’t defend his statement when he is given ammunition gratis).

The reason Mr Fanti doesn't defend his own statements is that he's blocked other members who have disagreed with him.

Are you really saying that you don't think Trumpism is a threat to American democracy? I don't dispute that Stavros overdoes the moralistic hyperbole, but I think you may also be engaging in a mixture of American exceptionalist complacency and false equivalence. Whatever you think about the behaviour of some left-wing protestors, it's hard to believe that it represents the same sort of systemic threat. These people are not being supported by the mainstream of the Democrat Party, whereas election denialism has taken over the Republican Party.

How do you look at Trump's attempts to overturn the last election - and the fact that almost the entire Republican Party has since come into line - and not see a threat to democracy? How can you look at Trump's authoritarian language about vermin, etc, and dismiss it as just rhetoric? Do you really think Republican 'adults' are going to stop him acting on his impulses this time?

[fred41]

Yeah, I don’t think Trumpism is a threat to American democracy. I’m confident in our system of government to protect itself from that. Either guy winning may not be good news (depending on one’s political views) , but it won’t be the apocalypse. I don’t know very many other people that actually feel that it would be. You obviously feel otherwise - I think it’s a pointless debate. It also wasn’t the main point to my response.

[filghy2]

You obviously feel otherwise - I think it’s a pointless debate.

What would be a non-pointless debate, in your view? You don't seem to want to debate anyone anyone who disagrees with you. You also seem to be a determined 'bothsidesist'.

[Stavros]

They are not choosing between dictatorship and democracy…and Capitalism is not a form of slavery - especially since no country practices a pure form of it. That type of paternalistic hyperbole gives some credence to what MrFanti is implying (though, for some reason or other, he doesn’t defend his statement when he is given ammunition gratis).

It used to be (and still is, in many place here in the States) that comments like that, and some of the names used here to describe Conservative African American politicians, would usually only be wielded by other African Americans…due in part - because of the deeply racist ways in which they could, and continue to be weaponized. It is becoming a strange phenomenon , that white (often relatively wealthy) young people …using the cloak of Oppression Fighter - feel emboldened to spew racist tropes against black people that disagree with them politically. I saw the worst of this in some of the BLM marches - in wihich often white women, spewing spittle filled invectives against black police officers, loudly questioning the civil servant’s blackness.

Strange and troubling times indeed.

When I say Capitalism is a form of slavery, it is because, hermits aside, people cannot live without money. We are slaves to it, but also to an economic system in which work is not a choice for most people, but a necessity, while at the same time in most economies they (or we) do not have a fair share of the wealth that is created, and just like slavery, cannot liberate people from this permanent loop of scarcity and necessity -isn't this why so many people dream of winning the lottery? Just because these ideas can be found in Marx doesn't mean they are redundant, though I think a lot of what he wrote has since become so. But his ideas about freedom from want are still relevant, though once anything to do with Marx becomes a term of abuse, the genuine philosophy fades into the background, but this is a debate for another occasion.

What strikes me about this other debate, and I admit some of my language has been provocative, is the extent to which the grovelling before Trump is being done by people -Black or White or Latino or Asian or whatever, who think he is an idiot and happily confirm they think he is a shameless liar. This has become a threat to American democracy if you accept that their real goal is not so much Trump the man, as Trump as the facilitator of Project 2025, for this is their end game.

Project 2025, rooted in the perceived failures of Nixon, Reagan and GW Bush, amounts to the most comprehensive re-structuring of the US since it began, for example, declaring the USA as a Christian Nation, with all the rest of the agenda that is laid out in the Project that I have linked in other threads.

I understand why you believe the US system is robust enough to get through the 'Trump era', but at the same time I wonder if you underestimate the degree to which sectarian politics of the kind seen in Texas, Florida and Alabama, to name just three, is not going to be replaced soon by something more congenial to a Jeffersonian view of democracy as a market place of ideas where men, perhaps women too, engage in debates and accept the result of a democratic vote.

This concept of the 'Conservative Nation' in effect replaces the existing form of the State, but is also only partially in favour of free Markets -what matters is a form of identity politics that is more likely to exclude people from the system than include it, much as in those States abortion law is intended to remove Women from the political discourse as independent citizens making their own choices, and make them, when pregnant, wards of the State that will monitor their progress in case they seek a termination, and punish them if they do. It demonizes and then excludes drag queens -I mean, for heaven's sake, drag queens!- as if they are, by definition a threat to children, adults and Judeo-Christian Civilization. These things are actually happening, and with Judges that support them, be they on the Circuits or the Supreme Court, I really do think the US is involved in a crisis that in many ways is worse than the Confederate Insurrection against the USA in the 1860s.

We already hear the same Trump Puppets declare they will not accept the results of the 2024 election, knowing in advance their guy can't win it, but what the hell, the days when losers accepted it have gone, just as Trump doesn't want Trial by Jury but Trial by Chums.

When Byron Donalds and Tim Scott join with others who have little but contempt for the country that made them, you must surely recognize that you are living in a crisis, and that there are no guarantees that the system that has served you since 1776 is going to survive as its founders intended. Because these people really don't care about that, and that may be the scariest thing about it, along with a gun culture that it seems to me cannot be undone.

In time, I think States will go their own way if they can't get their guy into the White House and their soldiers into Congress. The result will be chaos as bad as, or maybe worse than Brexit. And dare I say it is because we have actually experienced separation of this kind that I do hope it doesn't happen to you.

[filghy2]

Yeah, I don’t think Trumpism is a threat to American democracy. I’m confident in our system of government to protect itself from that.

I'm curious as to how you think that works. I assume you are aware of the following:
1. Most Republicans supported Trump's stolen election lie last time, despite the lack of evidence.
2. Since then Trump has increased his control over the party, with those who resisted him either forced out of politics or intimidated into acquiesance.
3. The Constitution does not enforce itself, but requires people from both sides to be willing to do so.
4. The majority of the Supreme are right-wing operatives who have been willing to twist legal principles to justify decisions that suit their own side.
5. There is a plan (Project 2025) to replace neutral public servants with Trump loyalists.
6. A number of other countries have ceased to be effective democracies in recent times. They still have the legal trappings of democracy, but the system is so tilted that only the ruling party can win.

Supposing Republicans were to gain control of both Houses and the Presidency,as occurred in 2016. How exactly would Trump be restrained in these circumstances?

[Fitzcarraldo]

Yeah, I don’t think Trumpism is a threat to American democracy. I’m confident in our system of government to protect itself from that. Either guy winning may not be good news (depending on one’s political views) , but it won’t be the apocalypse. I don’t know very many other people that actually feel that it would be. You obviously feel otherwise - I think it’s a pointless debate. It also wasn’t the main point to my response.

This is what a second Trump term will bring:
https://globalextremism.org/project-...horitarianism/

https://www.project2025.org/

[filghy2]

This is what a second Trump term will bring:
https://globalextremism.org/project-...horitarianism/

https://www.project2025.org/

The tragedy of the situation is that Trump and his acolytes have not bothered to hide their intentions, yet most Americans seem to have chosen to ignore it.

[Stavros]

The tragedy of the situation is that Trump and his acolytes have not bothered to hide their intentions, yet most Americans seem to have chosen to ignore it.

If not Trump himself, perhaps someone can ask Messrs Johnson, Rubio, Cruz and Hawley-

-The trial is rigged? How?
-The Judge is corrupt? In what way is he corrupt?
-It's a Kangaroo Court! What does this mean?

Maybe people have by now got so used to these ignorant insults that it seems the truth no longer matters. Boris Johnson could not survive in our system, yet Trump does in the US. I think it says a lot about the fragile condition of the American system right now. Can it be repaired? Maybe the truth is that a third or so of Americans no longer believe in what they have, and either want to change it, or have given up. As for those who do believe, they will be sitting on a chair with three legs for some time.

[Fitzcarraldo]

The tragedy of the situation is that Trump and his acolytes have not bothered to hide their intentions, yet most Americans seem to have chosen to ignore it.

Trump would just be a tool of Project 2025. He didn't come up with it. Florida Senator Rick Scott is more in line with the architects of it.