Polls a year out are meaningless. Obama was also “losing” at this point before his re-election.
Nationally, Democrats have been beating polls by 9+ points at the ballot box since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Reminder of what an absolute shit-bird Robert Kagan is.
‘No rational person would believe a word Robert Kagan says about anything. He has been spewing out one falsehood after the next for the last four years in order to blind Americans about the real state of affairs concerning the invasion which he and his comrade and writing partner Bill Kristol did as much as anyone else to sell to the American public.’ - Glenn Greenwald, Salon.
Kagan is one of the shitheads that got us to this point. He’s now concern-trolling us about how we shouldn’t bother opposing Trump.
I completely agree but I would just like to point out that Glenn Greenwald is also a massive shithead.
Yes, he absolutely is, but he was also correct in that particular assessment.
EXACTLY. I’m getting tired of these doom and gloom articles from journalists who know better.
Either the media wants a horse race or they absolutely don’t know how to poll post Roe v. Wade.
Probably both.
Or they’re consistently polling only LAN lines.
Nationally, Democrats have been beating polls by 9+ points at the ballot box since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
It’s really surprised to me how quickly this dropped from political discourse and analysis. We’ve had several off year elections and the midterms now where Republicans have underperformed. Polls have largely seemed to miss this trend.
There’s a lot of reasons to be hopeful right now. Republicans can’t control their messaging on abortion, and it’s very clear voters are unhappy about bans. Yet, Republicans in the House are only barely aware of it, and in the Senate you’d think they hadn’t seen any results at all. Tuberville’s continued hold for abortion reasons, while voters have made it clear anti abortion advocates can go fuck themselves, is remarkably visible. I don’t think it’s a mistake that Republicans are signaling they’ll bypass him if he doesn’t budge. Elections a month ago make it clear it’s a millstone around their necks.
We have an advantage to capitalize on, but it only matters if we press the advantage. We have to show up en masse to the election.
Moreover, the Democrats need to get their messaging together. Hammer in that THESE ARE THE PEOPLE who overturned Roe, who are currently cratering Florida and Texas, who allowed COVID to run rampant. Hammer in Tuberville blocking military promotions, hammer in Johnson and McConnell both effectively refusing to do any of their jobs, hammer in Trump nearly getting us into a shooting war with Iran (remember that assassination we carried out during a peace conference?) Remind the voters who exactly Trump is, what exactly he’s done, and what exactly he’s stated he’s going to do.
At this point, I think it’s advantageous for anyone who is set in their decision to lie on polls and say you’d vote for the opposite candidate in the hopes of making that side complacent and light a fire under your side.
Just because he’s a neocon piece of shit doesn’t mean he can’t be right. Also, dude, Glen Greenwald is no fucking saint either. That guy is a certified scumbag. At least with Kagan there’s a chance that he actually believes his bullshit, whereas with Greenwald, we know he’s an intellectually dishonest grifter.
Obama was also “losing” at this point before his re-election
Obama was about 46% and trending upwards at this point, Biden is 37% and trending downward. This is a pretty nice visualization of historical presidential approval ratings plotted with Biden’s. Takeway is while other presidents have tanked way harder (Nixon, Dubya, HW), Trump and Biden are basically tied for historical unpopularity on a consistent basis. Biden did hit mid 50s as he came in to office where most presidents get a bump, Trump didn’t even reach 50.
Same paper that just ran the “Women should stop shunning Trump supporters in their dating pool” article. I guess that’s so they’ll be less likely to abused under the pending dictatorship?
Same author?
Because papers often run a variety of opinion pieces…
Really wish people would stop posting / up voting garbage opinion pieces here. I want facts, not hot takes.
Big, solid, nuanced take against the 11 page opinion piece.
Maybe tell the other folks reading the same online conversation platform as you are what you thought made this specific link you decided to comment on “garbage”.
I am someone who is against opinion pieces in general, regardless of the content. Nate Silver also has an argument against them: the main difference with an opinion piece and normal journalism is that opinions don’t need to be fact checked. In which case there’s no reason for them to exist. If the argument cannot survive fact checking, it shouldn’t be published.
Opinions, columns, and editorials are all traditional news formats where a known personality gives their take on current events. Basically you can’t “fact check” someone’s commentary because they’re not reporting factual takes on current events, and you can’t really objectively say “your analogy to this historical event is not analogous enough” for instance because there isn’t really measures for these things. Nate Silver’s argument against them is itself an opinion that can’t be fact checked. “Fact checking” itself is also determined by the ideology you’re choosing to determine facts by or even which specific facts are chosen to be highlighted in an article. What is and what ought isn’t something that you can simply fact check.
The fact that it’s “traditional” is not a good reason to keep something around despite the negative consequences. The fact is, most news consumers do not know about the lower editorial standards of opinion articles, so opinion pieces have been a significant source of misinformation. This is how we get Jim Carey writing about climate skepticism in a major newspaper.
What’s so impossible about a fact-checked journalistic article entitled: “Should opinion pieces be eliminated?” Seems possible to me!
I think it’s just a silly proposal that’s hardly worth debating so I can see why it appeals to someone like Nate Silver. The notion that you could control misinformation by removing certain writing styles from circulation is incredibly stupid. Plus on social media everyone is an opinion writer now.
Moral ought from an is. Just because news sources have decided to put opinion pieces in doesn’t mean that it is right that they did.
That’s just intellectually lazy. We should be able to process analysis that isn’t our own.
Then you are also intellectually lazy, because there is no way you are verifying the truth of every claim made in the articles you read. The role of newspapers is to inform people, not make random claims of dubious truth and have readers “do their own work”. It’s astounding that people are actually against basic fact checking.
Did you notice how this opinion piece is littered with links sourcing what Kagan is talking about? This article is easily fact-checked. It’s not the author’s fault if you’re not willing to do your due diligence.
deleted by creator
You seem to think my objection has something to do with whether it’s obvious that this particular piece is an opinion piece? I have no idea why you think this. Completely bizarre, and what an unnecessarily aggressive tone.
I am against opinion pieces because most consumers do not know that they have lower editorial standards, making them a big source of misinformation. If opinion pieces had the same journalistic standards, I would not be opposed to them.
That sounds like a media literacy problem, not a problem with opinion pieces themselves. I have a degree in journalism and the idea that anyone could somehow not know the difference between a straight news story and an opinion piece is baffling. Do we not have basic critical thinking skills anymore?
deleted by creator
No thanks. I do not want to talk about or critique an opinion piece. I want objective political news from this channel. Leave opinion for the comments.
Who knew only anons had the dibs on writing or speaking their opinions!
24 hour news networks need to fill their time with opinion pieces. We have plenty of other content in other communities to fall back on. We don’t need filler content promoted here.
Hot take: rap rock is inferior to both styles it derives from and the rap in the middle is not as good as the traditional chorus.
Good point and probably not, but I’m too lazy to look right now.
Edited to add: Presumably same editorial team, so the seeming dissonance between the two articles isn’t lessened much by having different authors.
It really depends a lot. If it’s something by the editorial board itself, then it’s a very jarring difference. But you can have writers with polar opposite viewpoints in editorials. It used to be nice from a reader perspective to get that variety, but then the right went wacko.
That said, I do think it’s weird the section editor would approve something like “women need to date more conservatives”. Maybe they take the approach of not being responsible for what their authors say, but that crosses enough lines that it’s odd they didn’t step in.
No, these are op-eds, which are written by contributors and are different from editorials which, as the name suggests, are written by the editorial board. Op-eds traditionally were printed opposite of the editorial page --hence the name-- and were meant to be a space for subject matter experts or other thought leaders to publish opinion pieces that may or may not reflect the views of the editorial board.
I know these things because even though I’ve never worked for a newspaper, I am old enough to have gotten an undergrad degree in journalism back in the 90s before the newspaper industry died.
Oh interesting! I thought it was called op-ed for opinions & editorials
Good points, thanks for the peek into the industry. Without the usual sarcasm I will say you sound like you know what you are talking about. 🙂
Heh, I should clarify, I’m talking from my experience on my high school paper – which was a damn good paper that we worked our asses off on! But it’s a worthwhile stipulation to make. I’m pretty sure our processes were the same as industry for a lot of things, but I could always be wrong.
Consider it a peek into what’s probably maybe what it’s like. I think it probably does work the way I’ve described, fwiw
deleted by creator
That’s good to know, thanks. I’ll have to keep a close eye on it. I subscribe to the NYT as well but I’ve been souring on them lately too.
Same author?
Nah this is Robert Kagan, a Brookings Institute neocon, Republican who left in 2016, advisor to McCain for his presidential run in 2008.
Neither of these were written by the WaPo’s editorial board. They are both op-eds meaning they’re written by contributors and in the old print format would be placed opposite from the editorial page, hence the name “op-ed.”
Your comment shows a deep misunderstanding of how these things work and what function newspapers are trying to fulfill with them, but it’s probably not your fault since media literacy tends to be pretty abysmal in the US.
So the editorial staff has no say in what is published in their newspaper? That’s definitely a different view of what the word “editor” means than I’ve had in the past, you’ve got a point there.
Having said that, I got a much less snarky answer explaining some things already, so your sideswipe wasn’t necessary. Thank you sir and I hope the rest of your day is as lovely as you are.
I know these things because even though I’ve never worked for a newspaper, I am old enough to have gotten an undergrad degree in journalism back in the 90s before the newspaper industry died.
Maybe it’s not my abysmal media literacy but the fact that you know these things because you have a degree in journalism. Huh. Guess I’ll find something where you have a less than perfect understanding of my area of expertise or where I’ve had some secondary education, and be sure to point out how abysmal your literacy in that area is.
Non English speaker: inevitable means it will happen no matter what. They way i see it, its used wrong here correct? It should maybe have been ‘increasingly realistic’ or maybe ‘increasingly plausible’ but inevitable assumes that voting for someone else won’t stop it from happening
The title is a bit clickbaity, but the subtext is that if he is elected, dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.
And the ‘increasingly’ modifier further shows it’s only a potential outcome.
The author isn’t the most self-aware… Robert Kagan was a Republican strategist until 2016, he’s an interventionalist neocon, thinks the GOP “lost it’s way” rather than contributed to this by design.
I agree. I think that if Trump is elected and puts an end to democracy as we know it, but it won’t be a dictatorship of Trump, alone. Trump is but a mortal man. And whoever replaces him will be worse.
One of the many examples of how English is manipulated and massaged to mean whatever you want it to mean. A more accurate phrase they should have chosen is “increasingly likely”.
Technically, I’d say “increasingly inevitable” is a meaningless phrase. “Inevitable” is an absolute - an outcome either is, or is not, inevitable. Like they say, “you can’t be a little bit pregnant”, outcomes cannot be a little bit inevitable, or somewhat inevitable, or mostly inevitable, so the degree of inevitability cannot be increasing.
However, I think most native English speakers would not think twice about it, and would read it as something like: “a Trump dictatorship is approaching inevitability.” That’s how I read it, at least.
This is just the usual polarising fear mongering bullshit. Even “increasingly plausible” is a stretch.
Maybe the democratic party should focus more energy trying to understand what is that that makes so many people even considering trump.
When people turn the other side into a one dimensional caricature they just ignore the real world problems that make them lose elections.
It’s only inevitable if we do nothing
So pretty much inevitable then. :(
Kind of like Sandy Hook and Uvalde. Welcome to America.
As a non American I can’t understand how anyone could vote for Donald twice.
As a free-thinking human being, I can’t understand how anyone could vote for him once.
When you see his opponent it becomes easier to understand.
No, it doesn’t. In any way.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
As an American I can’t understand how anyone could vote for him once.
As a Canadian, I can absolutely understand how someone less informed in politics and (rightfully) angry at the political establishment would vote for Trump in 2016 just to flip the bird to Hillary. Americans need to understand why he won to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
After seeing how the super delegates worked against Sanders, and how blatantly undemocratic our process of selecting candidates truly is, a lot of people fell into the trap of “fuck it, burn the world down then”. I know a lot of people reacted that way when the Republican party’s obvious rigging of the 2012 nomination worked against Ron Paul even though the votes were tallied in some states that he was the actual victor, but the derailment of his campaign by announcing Mitt Romney as the winner did enough damage…even though the Republican party chairs for several states had to resign due to the obvious false declarations and ignoring of the votes counted in primaries happened.
The real problem is the lack of confidence in our democracy and the rampant apathy that works against constructive progress.
After seeing how the super delegates worked against Sanders
Especially because he was almost guaranteed to win against Trump, but they know where the money comes from and decided to go with Hillary, who was historically unlinked as a candidate. I think this ought to have demonstrated that real change cannot come from within the Democratic party and that they are not willing to be the left party people wish they were, they’re part of the downward spiral. (And yes they’re better than the GOP, always have to get that in for the concerned voters out there.)
lack of confidence in our democracy
It’s funny how this idea of “free and fair elections” has recently come up in such a historically corrupt system, it’s true that elections today are better than they’ve ever been in this respect, 2008 onward were incredibly tight on this. Seems like people forget how the 2001 election was stolen. Historically it’s almost a joke how bad they were. It was routine for busses to drive around picking up people and dropping them off at voting stations in exchange for a bit of money. It hasn’t even been 60 years since everyone in the US could vote! At first you basically needed to be a landowner and even produce from your land to be able to vote. The men’s suffrage movement was like a century before women’s suffrage.
I’m really glad you mentioned some of the progress, while it’s not ideal, it does remind me that we ended the Gilded Age, and we can continue to confront the robber barons of our time. In US history we’ve already had a few near misses where we almost went the road the Romans did by giving a wealthy person absolute authority. We have to stay aware and be ever vigilant.
That’s really when America as it exists today was created too, between the Civil War and WW1. Often glossed over in the popular mythology of America.
indeed. the democrats have been enablers to this whole process
I apparently have difficulty empathizing with people who aren’t paying attention to what they’re voting for (or against).
Americans need to understand why he won to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
It’s been estimated that 13% of Trump’s voters were Obama voters. The degree to which this impacted his victory is debated, but this group is almost invisible in the way Trump is understood in the popular discourse, which is almost entirely determined by… Trump’s own spectacle of rhetoric and the feedback it generates. The degradation of civic institutions and disenfranchisement is a major factor, experiencing this while you’re exposed to political marketing like, Kamala Harris doing a happy and smiley scripted bit where she tells children if they’re “authentic” they will succeed, not only does that not connect with the reality of people’s struggles but it’s a slap in the face to them.
I don’t. What was there to be mad at Hilary about that made people want to vote for a child raping, tax fraud committing, racist crook?
You have to understand that most people don’t pay that much attention to politics. They see a woman who embodies everything they hate about the US government establishment, and they see a guy who is raging against said establishment. If Dems had let Bernie win Trump would have been crushed.
I was working at this business owner’s home. Smart, genuine, kind guy in his mid-40s with a beautiful “nuclear” family. He said he was going to vote for Trump because his sister in law worked at one his properties and she spoke well of him. That was it. That’s how a seemingly respectable upstanding well-to-do member of the community chose the president of the United States. Or, at worst, that was the reason he felt compelled to tell others.
People in the US don’t understand what political ideologies are and literally vote for someone based off of “I’d like to have a beer with that guy!”.
My in-laws voted for him twice. They are pro-life, and that’s all that matters to them. Otherwise they support progressive policies like single-payer healthcare. But when it comes to abortion, they will vote for a literal anti-Christ to make it illegal. Funny that they are Catholic.
People who say they are pro-life will vote for the most pro-death policies, it’s crazy.
The cruelty is the point.
“pro-life” is a dog whistle. it’s anti-woman and everyone knows it
Its not funny. Its ludacris.
Your in-laws sound like uninformed rubes.
They kind of are, no college education and they don’t take the time to self-educate. Their support for single payer healthcare is something that both me and my husband have been working on with them for a while. I don’t think they are completely lost - they never showed the kind of hate I’ve seen from other Trump supporters. So I’ll keep trying.
So they’re going to vote for the guy that had an abortion?
If murder was legal, and somebody who was known to have committed murder was running, and you were confident that person would make murder illegal, and you were convinced that their opponent (who may have never committed murder themselves) would actively encourage more murder, maybe even pay poor people to commit murder, which candidate would you vote for?
This is exactly their reasoning. To a tee.
I can’t follow this argument. Try to be more concise.
Their decisions are logical based on their map, which is grossly inconsistent with the territory. Better?
Trust me, we’ve tried to reason with them. It’s maddening because they are otherwise mostly reasonable people, just ignorant politically and scientifically.
They’ll vote for him a third time. Believe me, folks. *accordion hands*
As a non-American I can’t understand how Bernie wasn’t voted in decades ago.
DNC sabotage his campaigns
If there’s anything the last few years taught the world, stupid people are far more numerous and far more stupid than we thought.
There are graduating seniors in high-school this year. That group of unregistered voters needs to be coaxed to register, and vote. They need easy, step by step directions. They need to understand their new power of citizenship. They can be tried as adults. They should know who the sheriff is. They should know its an elected position. They need to learn this shit, and most likely it’s not gonna happen in school. Please ticktock or whatever. Make it viral.
I still don’t understand why people have to register to vote. Everyone should automatically be registered to vote.
I think you know the answer.
Honestly I don’t
I live in a country where everybody who is entitled to vote, gets a vote in their mail box and a dedicated place where they can go and vote. They can even send in their votes before hand or vote in the local library.
I don’t see how one side or the other or any can benefit by low voting percentages
Republicans do better in elections with low voter turnout because old white people vote at disproportionately high rates.
But it has always been like this no? Have Americans ever not had to register to vote? Why cant all just be automatically registered to vote?
Republicans are currently making it harder for left-leaning populations to vote, by closing polling stations in urban areas or opposing vote-by-mail. Automatic voter registration is being actively resisted. That is “why”.
Voter registration became a thing in the 1800s to limit the voice of immigrants, adopted state by state.
Oregon first, and about a dozen other states since, have made registration automatic when you get a driver’s license or state ID.
So yeah it’s pretty much always been like this.
Central registered of all citizens with ID-number. I’m pretty sure your nation has it, as does mine. So the government knows where you live, and where you can vote. If you move these things are automatically updated. So it’s easy to make sure everyone can vote in the “correct” ballots ect.
None of this is true with the US
it’s because of racism.
But they better vote the way we want them to vote. /sarcasm
Perhaps we should have a way to flag opinion pieces.
Is anyone honestly confused as to whether or not it’s an opinion piece? I find that very hard to believe, but I guess you never know…
Yeah LOL. It’s just sooo over the top. Garbage like this I expect on Twitter. Gotta filter the noise on lemmy too I guess.
If you’ve ever wondered why no one killed Hitler on his rise to power, now you know.
The main difference is, in 2023, we know how Hitler rose to power. In 1933, Germans didnt.
Yeah, but that’s like… almost a 100 years ago. Completely different. SlashEs
I think that is a bridge too far for many reasons. First off I hate the Cheeto. He is a mudstain on used panties from a crackhead pornstar.
However, we have Hitler in recent history. We have many forms of media that they did not have to see how it’s going with everyone else. And let’s not forget that Hitler was smarter than Trump ever will be.
I don’t glorify Hitler lightly. He was a force that needed to be stopped and so does Trump. But that is were the comparison ends. Nazis became so huge because people were afraid of what would happen to their family if they didn’t. Here we will fight the morons back. Stop giving this man so much power and admiration. He’s a conman. A shitty leader. And a dumbass.
And let’s not forget that Hitler was smarter than Trump ever will be.
Not really. Hitler’s (supposed) “genius” exists in the same way Trump’s does - as propaganda and nothing else.
I didn’t call Hitler a genius. I called him smarter than Trump. Trump copies him. He at least (for the most part) came up with the strategies to inspire the changes in Germany. Even though they were shitty as fuck.
I didn’t call Hitler a genius.
Fair enough - you didn’t. But calling him smarter than Trump is still a stretch. Hitler wasn’t very smart at all. You don’t have to be smart to serve the interests that puts you in power… which is the only real function politicians serve at the end of the day.
Fortunately for the US, it’s actually very difficult to be a dictator in the White House - the US president is a cog for those “interests.” He takes his orders from them and not the other way around. That’s why Trump became so ineffective once he stepped into the White House and became isolated from his adoring MAGA crowd.
What should we do about it? Other than vote and try to talk people out of voting for Trump.
Basically, this coming election will be decided by the margins because almost everyone who follows politics–at all–knows who they’re voting for already.
Think about the number of people who follow politics and then understand that those people are already not the demographic that will likely decide the outcome. It’s the people who are surprised they Joe Biden and Donald Trump are on the ballot that matter.
It isn’t worth trying to pressured persuade either the right or the left. What we need is to activate and engage the non-participating section of the electorate. This is hard, but achievable. It’s people who work multiple jobs and don’t have time for politics that need to know it matters if they vote. Civil rights are not a given and 2024 will be hugely consequential.
Take your friends with you on election day! Register for vote by mail and bug your friends too! Take about it and don’t leave easy points on the table. Yes the options are terrible. Yes one of them will make the possibility of improving it ever infinitely more difficult.
The people saying it doesn’t matter do not understand what they stand to lose. It is so so much harder to build something than tear it down and our imperfect institutions will not save us. Politics matters and the luxury of not caring, will lead to co-optation and the loss of rights that are easy to take for granted now.
Target reluctant republicans that don’t like Trump but so far are only willing to abstain. I’m pushing hard for them to send the strongest message they can by voting for Biden. I think if we plant enough seeds they may go for it in the privacy of the voting booth, even if they won’t admit it.
It is possible, my kermudgen grandfather began voting blue in 2016 because of Trump
Technically it’s spelled curmudgeon, but your spelling makes me think of Kermit as a grumpy old frog-man so I think I prefer it 😆
T’is not an inaccurate description of ma gramps
Young people need to register. Help them!
That’s it. That’s the best we have short of organizing mass mass protests and raids. Which definitely isn’t going to happen.
Maybe Trump will have a heart attack before the election…
Removed by mod
What’s interesting is that if there really was a “deep state” that works like the radicalized right wing imagines, it begs the question - why didn’t this so-called “deep state” find a lone wolf/patsy like Oswald for OJ (Orange Jesus)?
Removed by mod
I’m stealing that
I’d rather he lives the rest of his life in prison, personally, and completely cut off from any kind of mass media platform.
Fight disenfranchisement and jerrymandering. Fight voter suppression. Be loud and get in the way of people doing bad things.
yup, vote, and call out any of the children larping revolutionaries who refuse to vote
Fuckin’ privs drive me up the damn wall. They act like they’re taking some noble stand for the palestinian people, meanwhile me the actual fucking palestinian am staring down the barrel of having to go without my Keffiyeh in public lest I get beaten, called a Sand N****r, and told to be grateful the bastards who did it to me didn’t bring a rope, all on the back of their militant refusal to lift a finger in solidarity and vote against Trump.
These so called allies of my people seem to like me much more as a potential martyr for their cause than as an agent for my own.
Don’t you guys have book depositories any more?
As long as there’s a royal family and house of lords…
deleted by creator
This is stupid fear-mongering horse s*** that ignores all the steps Americans are taking to fight against Trump being elected, and ignoring that they voted him out 3 years ago.
Stupid b*******.
People took steps against him in 2016 as well. And voting him out previously gives no guarantee of anything.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/
Polling is bullshit, but to the degree that it isn’t, it isn’t looking great. This isn’t some guarantee that Trump will lose. The boomers that vote republican do so EVERY election. The people who vote against them aren’t so reliable in comparison.
You’re on the internet. Censoring yourself makes you look childish. Just cuss. Also, it’s not fear mongering. The GOP has announced their intentions if they win.
The “inevitability” is fear-mongering.
So go f*** your gaping ignorant a****** with another s*** f****** bamboo pole , you twat.
So go fill your gaping ignorant armchair with another short floppy bamboo pole
That’s just uncalled for
It just looks ridiculous, doesn’t it? Who would take them seriously?
If you read the article, the author is not saying Trump winning the general election is an inevitability, but that him winning the nomination is inevitable and so is his rise to dictatorship if he wins the general. He never says Trump winning the general is guaranteed, and allows phrases that part as, “he could win the general”. All of those things are true baring unforseen circumstances.
Also, honestly that sentence would have been a lot funnier not censored.
Right, and instead of presenting the facts in an entertaining and sincere way, he writes a deliberately false and misleading title and article that bolsters conservatives and is intended to scare liberals.
Unproductive, fear-mongering b*******.
Which bastards are you talking about?
Please point to where the GOP has said they intend on installing a literal dictatorship. Please remember how many executive orders President Biden signed in his first 90 days in office as well.
Do you just forget that Trump almost succeeded in an insurrection and is now allowed to run as president again? How are you able to do that?
TDS is real.
It indeed is. Everybody who forgot what Trump did are truly deranged.
what did trump “DO” exactly. line it out for me. you seem to know. give specifics.
He instigated an insurrection and tried to overturn legal election results. How specific do you need to go?
I remember January 6th insurrection when Trump was in office
if you think that was an insurrection… you know what never mind.
Notice no one has actually answered the question, nor have they addressed the EO’s. How do you rule like a dictator in a representative republic? Sign more EO’s than any other pres had prior, totally wiping out everything your predecessor did. Last I checked nothing’s been proven that “TRUMP” caused, ordered, or even suggested your little so called “insurrection”. Saying something doesn’t make it true. But keep trying.
Again? Jesus.
you know you can swear on the internet right?
Some instances run profanity filters.
It’s a good piece and I think the analysis is largely accurate. But there’s one thing I think Kagan missed: Trump isn’t the only would-be dictator who could take power. He lists DeSantis and Haley as the closest competitors to Trump within the Republican Party, but he doesn’t point out that even if, by some miracle, one of them becomes the party nominee, they would assume the very same dictatorial powers Trump is threatening to wield. Neither of them is going to defend democracy when offered the reins of tyranny, and both could easily hold power for decades. Trump maybe has a single decade at most.
The problem isn’t simply Trump wanting to be President for Life. The problem is that the path has been cleared for any Republican to assume that role the next time one is elected. Project 2025 won’t work for Trump only. The next time we have a Republican President, expect it to be the last time we have a fair election.
Not to run interference for those shitbags cause most of them are just as evil but I wouldn’t say they all equally threaten democracy. For one I’m not sure their base would allow a woman to be dictator lol even if she won due to institutional fuckery
Anyone who thinks she wouldn’t try is deluding themselves. They’re both cut from the same cloth, but they’re not afflicted with dementia yet.
No, none of the other GOP candidates have anything even remotely like Trump’s grip on the base. Without that none of the above can happen. Trump got where he is through a long series of steps that Kagan details in the piece. There is no world in which some other candidate steps in and immediately plugs into the same kind of power that Trump has amassed as a result of Republican cowardice. Every one of them would have to start over with consolidating power in a party that’s swarming with amoral power-hungry grifters.
Trump isn’t the only would-be dictator who could take power.
honestly I think only trump has what it takes to form the cult of personality necessary to take over. he’s got the charisma to entrance 35% the country. DeSantis is more temperamentally fit to be the lieutenant you send in to do massacres than a figurehead leader
Well, bezos, it’s because you don’t actually care about a dictatorship as much as you care that your money pile gets bigger! What are you yelling at me for shitbird? You guys have the money n power! If you’re counting on my broken ass to fix the world you’re in deep shit
Bezos’ pile of money is so big if he got out today his great-grandchildren will have no fucking idea how to spend all their money. He has no reason to care what anyone fucking thinks until they start breaking out the forks and knives.
I mean other than the fact that money will not save them in a destroyed society or world. Why do you think they argue over the best way to control their security teams, shock collars or limited food? Because they only have as much power as they have control and it will slip from their grasp if they do fuck all with it and let it burn around them.
Billionaires will be fine. They have built their doomsday bunkers and they’re waiting for the dictators to genocide everyone else so they can crawl out into the sunlit depopulated paradise.
To be eaten by wolves surely. I just wish i could be alive to see it
It’s fun that you think Bezos takes any interest or part in the day to day workings of the WaPo.
Stop sucking Trump’s cock, www.washingtonpost.com. There’s nothing inevitable about Trump but lies, treason, and bullshit.
As with Napoleon, who spoke of the glory of France but whose narrow ambitions for himself and his family brought France to ruin, Trump’s ambitions, though he speaks of making America great again, clearly begin and end with himself.
As the author keeps comparing Trump to Napoleon and Hitler, I can’t help but wonder if maybe the US is due a conflagration. At what point do we admit that the American experiment returned a null result?
In the cases of France and Germany, the answer was violence. Oppression has never been defeated with pacifism. If history is our guide and conservatives are our oppressors, soon we may have to make some very difficult life and death decisions.
Conservatives have already embraced violence as part of their ideology, which I think makes the path out of their oppression more clear.
the choice of weather there will be violence isn’t ours to make, the conservatives have made it for us, and they chose violence. our choice is to resist or concede to fascism. conceding won’t make the violence stop, it will only make it worse and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise
Oppression has never been defeated with pacifism.
I was taught that Gandhi helped India defeat the oppression of the British Raj with pacifism.
Is that not the case? I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if Power taught me peaceful protest works every time.
as Orwell stated:
“As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”
Pretty sure two devastating world wars were a major factor.
I was taught that Gandhi helped India defeat the oppression of the British Raj with pacifism. Is that not the case?
You couldn’t have Martin without Malcom and you couldn’t have Ghandi without Ghadar.
it was a lie, of course.
I think it’s more that human societies are very rarely stable across 3 or more generations. The US has had a number of major crises through its history, it’s definitely due for another. Repeating the dead line about a failed experiment is kind of needlessly deaf to that history.
All you can do for now is stand up and fight it.
At what point do we admit that the American experiment returned a null result?
Probably when the commerce clause meant the fed can regulate shit you do in your home with your own body.
But even failed experiments give data. I’m a fan of the bill of rights, save for a few niggling details.
Polls are meaningless when nobody answers the phone and/or they call people who don’t actually vote. Kids today know to shut up and beat the shitbags at the polls. We are collectively punishing the Republicans for 40 years of attacks against our society.
There is a reason that no poll I’ve ever responded to has ever straight up asked me who I plan on voting for in the next election.
They can spin your feelings, They can’t spin a simple yes/no question.
Push polls are the only ones I’ve ever gotten, and those seldom and not for a long time.
Dang I didn’t notice that before. I was polled once and they only asked me what I thought of my current elected officials not who I planned to vote for.
Guess it wouldn’t get clicks if they were honest
