01-06-2017, 06:37 PM
Sessions is going to be a brittle target for anti-racists.
I expect practically every Trump appointee to be rushed through the confirma5tion process and confirmed on partisan lines. Democrats are $crewed for at least the next four years in federal politics. About the only thing that Republicans will be unable to do is some egregious violation of the Constitution or to try to undo Supreme Court decisions directly. Stare decisis applies as a well-protected principle in jurisprudence.
I would not be surprised if Republicans tried to outlaw or 'merely' regulate the Democrats into irrelevance as Commies did in central Europe in the late 1940s. Such would indicate that they have no intention of losing any election.
If we do not have the White House or any meaningful power in Congress -- we have the streets. Most big cities have Democratic majorities with police chiefs who will not stop lawful protests. They will bust rioters, but tough luck to the rioters and especially any violent counter-protesters.
I expect one-sided, hurtful politics from Republicans for the next four years. In the meantime we Democrats will be honing our rhetoric and learning activism. This is a Crisis Era, and the drift toward hostility to the classist ideology of Republicans will be slow. It is unlikely that Trump and the Hard Right Republican Party will ever have anything to offer liberals except fear. In the British colonies in the early 1770s America went from being resoundingly Tory (just think of John Adams' rightful defense of British soldiers) to pro-independence as George III tried to tighten his grip. By early 1776 George III lost his grip on Greater Boston -- before people who had recently had no cause to oppose the King could not think of any alternative to independence.
I expect practically every Trump appointee to be rushed through the confirma5tion process and confirmed on partisan lines. Democrats are $crewed for at least the next four years in federal politics. About the only thing that Republicans will be unable to do is some egregious violation of the Constitution or to try to undo Supreme Court decisions directly. Stare decisis applies as a well-protected principle in jurisprudence.
I would not be surprised if Republicans tried to outlaw or 'merely' regulate the Democrats into irrelevance as Commies did in central Europe in the late 1940s. Such would indicate that they have no intention of losing any election.
If we do not have the White House or any meaningful power in Congress -- we have the streets. Most big cities have Democratic majorities with police chiefs who will not stop lawful protests. They will bust rioters, but tough luck to the rioters and especially any violent counter-protesters.
I expect one-sided, hurtful politics from Republicans for the next four years. In the meantime we Democrats will be honing our rhetoric and learning activism. This is a Crisis Era, and the drift toward hostility to the classist ideology of Republicans will be slow. It is unlikely that Trump and the Hard Right Republican Party will ever have anything to offer liberals except fear. In the British colonies in the early 1770s America went from being resoundingly Tory (just think of John Adams' rightful defense of British soldiers) to pro-independence as George III tried to tighten his grip. By early 1776 George III lost his grip on Greater Boston -- before people who had recently had no cause to oppose the King could not think of any alternative to independence.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.