05-18-2016, 12:40 PM
A statue of Ben Franklin on Boston's Freedom Trail came off it's pedestal recently. Pundits are trying to determine if the cause was a windstorm, or the near certainty of a Clinton - Trump general election.
(05-18-2016, 10:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Trump Releases List of Supreme Court Picks
Image: Trump Releases List of Supreme Court Picks
Wednesday, 18 May 2016 02:10 PM
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has released a list of 11 potential Supreme Court justices he plans to vet to fill the seat of late Justice Antonin Scalia.
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called the list a "conservative dream team." He said it would be very similar to what conservative Sen. Ted Cruz would have released.
<snip>
Trump's list includes: Steven Colloton of Iowa, a judge on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Raymond Gruender of Missouri, also a judge on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals; and Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
It also includes: Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, a judge on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals; William Pryor of Alabama, a judge on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals; and Diane Sykes of Wisconsin, a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The state supreme court jurists include: Allison Eid of Colorado; Joan Larsen of Michigan; Thomas Lee of Utah; David Stras of Minnesota; and Don Willett of Texas.
<snip>
Rags Wrote:Wow, Trump sure does X'ers. 10 are GenX.
Quote:The Republican Party’s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only he would mouth the party’s “conservative” principles, all would be well.
But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone.
And the source of allegiance? We’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.
That this tough-guy, get-mad-and-get-even approach has gained him an increasingly large and enthusiastic following has probably surprised Trump as much as it has everyone else. Trump himself is simply and quite literally an egomaniac. But the phenomenon he has created and now leads has become something larger than him, and something far more dangerous.
Republican politicians marvel at how he has “tapped into” a hitherto unknown swath of the voting public. But what he has tapped into is what the founders most feared when they established the democratic republic: the popular passions unleashed, the “mobocracy.” Conservatives have been warning for decades about government suffocating liberty. But here is the other threat to liberty that Alexis de Tocqueville and the ancient philosophers warned about: that the people in a democracy, excited, angry and unconstrained, might run roughshod over even the institutions created to preserve their freedoms. As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France — that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power on the shoulders of the people.
This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over the past century, and it has generally been called “fascism.” Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. “National socialism” was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Fuhrer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how. Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who singlehandedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.
To understand how such movements take over a democracy, one only has to watch the Republican Party today. These movements play on all the fears, vanities, ambitions and insecurities that make up the human psyche. In democracies, at least for politicians, the only thing that matters is what the voters say they want — vox populi vox dei. A mass political movement is thus a powerful and, to those who would oppose it, frightening weapon. When controlled and directed by a single leader, it can be aimed at whomever the leader chooses. If someone criticizes or opposes the leader, it doesn’t matter how popular or admired that person has been. He might be a famous war hero, but if the leader derides and ridicules his heroism, the followers laugh and jeer. He might be the highest-ranking elected guardian of the party’s most cherished principles. But if he hesitates to support the leader, he faces political death.
In such an environment, every political figure confronts a stark choice: Get right with the leader and his mass following or get run over. The human race in such circumstances breaks down into predictable categories — and democratic politicians are the most predictable. There are those whose ambition leads them to jump on the bandwagon. They praise the leader’s incoherent speeches as the beginning of wisdom, hoping he will reward them with a plum post in the new order. There are those who merely hope to survive. Their consciences won’t let them curry favor so shamelessly, so they mumble their pledges of support, like the victims in Stalin’s show trials, perhaps not realizing that the leader and his followers will get them in the end anyway.
A great number will simply kid themselves, refusing to admit that something very different from the usual politics is afoot. Let the storm pass, they insist, and then we can pick up the pieces, rebuild and get back to normal. Meanwhile, don’t alienate the leader’s mass following. After all, they are voters and will need to brought back into the fold. As for Trump himself, let’s shape him, advise him, steer him in the right direction and, not incidentally, save our political skins.
What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and their party nothing. He will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White House by a mass following devoted only to him. By then that following will have grown dramatically. Today, less than 5 percent of eligible voters have voted for Trump. But if he wins the election, his legions will comprise a majority of the nation. Imagine the power he would wield then. In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that laid down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt?
This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.
(05-18-2016, 11:10 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: [ -> ](05-18-2016, 10:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Trump Releases List of Supreme Court Picks
Image: Trump Releases List of Supreme Court Picks
Wednesday, 18 May 2016 02:10 PM
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has released a list of 11 potential Supreme Court justices he plans to vet to fill the seat of late Justice Antonin Scalia.
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called the list a "conservative dream team." He said it would be very similar to what conservative Sen. Ted Cruz would have released.
<snip>
Trump's list includes: Steven Colloton of Iowa, a judge on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Raymond Gruender of Missouri, also a judge on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals; and Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
It also includes: Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, a judge on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals; William Pryor of Alabama, a judge on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals; and Diane Sykes of Wisconsin, a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The state supreme court jurists include: Allison Eid of Colorado; Joan Larsen of Michigan; Thomas Lee of Utah; David Stras of Minnesota; and Don Willett of Texas.
<snip>
Rags Wrote:Wow, Trump sure does X'ers. 10 are GenX.
(05-19-2016, 01:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]In the past I have been very doubtful about "Civil War" being the key challenge in this 4T. I'm now modifying this opinion. However, I still don't foresee a "War Between The States" situation. I see something more akin to the Spanish Civil War. And as we know that one was both a battle between forces of Fascism versus all other factions as well as an early proxy war between Fascist oriented nations versus Communist, Socialist and Republican Democratic ones. Seeing how many idiots are being swayed into the Trump camp it's clear that we have now reached the point that was feared by Founders and some later observers like Tocqueville. Mobocracy is here. So the battle lines, be it a full on war or merely a set of skirmishes will be a Fascistic or Fascistoid Mobocracy versus all others.
I'm in the "all others" camp and intend to cling until death to my 2nd Amendment rights. If it comes to a Civil War I plan to use firearms against our modern equivalent of Francoistas and to join the Freedom Fighters. I'm old now, with no kids, and I've done pretty much what I'm going to do in the Civilian world.
(05-19-2016, 11:29 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Great article by Robert Kagan above.
The only thing I wonder about is, how much would Trump bow down to the Republican Party's politicians and platforms? Will Trump feel the need to fall in line, as he is doing now? (witness his announced conservative field for Supreme Court pick) Will he feel the need to have a united Republican congress and Court behind him as he becomes virtual dictator of America to make it "great again?" I assume he'll largely fall in line, and that makes him even MORE dangerous.
And thus ever more need to get over the nonsense about Hillary and get behind her now.
(05-19-2016, 01:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]I'm in the "all others" camp and intend to cling until death to my 2nd Amendment rights. If it comes to a Civil War I plan to use firearms against our modern equivalent of Francoistas and to join the Freedom Fighters. I'm old now, with no kids, and I've done pretty much what I'm going to do in the Civilian world.
(05-19-2016, 06:38 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]It's not rocket science. The Spanish Civil War is instructive in this regard. In this type of scenario actual military split into factions as I'm sure law enforcement would as well. The "not-Fascist" camp of those would constitute the Freedom Fighters. This also answers the question regarding who to shoot - just as it always has been - the opposing forces. In this case, The Fascists.
(05-19-2016, 06:38 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]It's not rocket science. The Spanish Civil War is instructive in this regard. In this type of scenario actual military split into factions as I'm sure law enforcement would as well. The "not-Fascist" camp of those would constitute the Freedom Fighters. This also answers the question regarding who to shoot - just as it always has been - the opposing forces. In this case, The Fascists.
(05-20-2016, 07:15 PM)TnT Wrote: [ -> ](05-19-2016, 06:38 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]It's not rocket science. The Spanish Civil War is instructive in this regard. In this type of scenario actual military split into factions as I'm sure law enforcement would as well. The "not-Fascist" camp of those would constitute the Freedom Fighters. This also answers the question regarding who to shoot - just as it always has been - the opposing forces. In this case, The Fascists.
I think that both you and I are attracted to post-apocalyptic dystopia fantasy. I know I am. Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, "The Book of Eli," man those are fun, fun, fun!!
What you describe above has to follow many other preparatory stages. But fun to conjure up scenarios, eh?
(05-19-2016, 05:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]It appears to me that the inside power broker Repubs are still fighting against Trump and would prefer Clinton over Trump. If Trump manages to win somehow, I doubt that Trump would make amends with them.(05-19-2016, 11:29 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Great article by Robert Kagan above.
The only thing I wonder about is, how much would Trump bow down to the Republican Party's politicians and platforms? Will Trump feel the need to fall in line, as he is doing now? (witness his announced conservative field for Supreme Court pick) Will he feel the need to have a united Republican congress and Court behind him as he becomes virtual dictator of America to make it "great again?" I assume he'll largely fall in line, and that makes him even MORE dangerous.
And thus ever more need to get over the nonsense about Hillary and get behind her now.
Once in power, most leaders who achieved power through demagoguery end up $crewing the people most vulnerable -- those people who have no recourse if the promises made are not or cannot be met. What can they do? Wait until the next election? Donald Trump will quickly make amends with the "Establishment" Republicans who, once they see his largely-reactionary agenda, will ignore his style as he sells out many of those who voted for him.
The real danger arises should the Trump Administration enact 'reforms' that further consolidate the power of our economic elites -- like giving employers rights to determine how their employees vote.
Can anyone really trust him?
Quote:Presumably Republicans do quite well in Congressional and other elections, strengthening their control in the Senate and in state governments across the country. What happens next (after Atlas liberals collectively faint)?
Quote:* Does Trump acquiesce to the Republican establishment and sign off on some kind of "Ryan Plan" that eviscerates social spending while slashing taxes for the wealthy, or does he stick to his idiosyncratic guns and clash with Congressional GOP leadership?
Quote:* Will Democrats make big gains in the 2018 midterm elections (despite a map which forces them to be quite defensive)?
Quote:* Does Trump get primaried in 2020? If so, by whom?
Quote:* Which Democrats run for President in 2020?