Excellence research and a remind of why, out of all the media sources I frequent, I always read Thom's entire articles, start to finish.
"A return to some semblance of normalcy in the GOP is essential to restoring a normal, functioning government to our nation, as Luttig points out. Odds are, however, it’s first going to take a widespread destruction of that party — provoked by huge Democratic wins in 2024 — to come about."
I don't see a return to semblance of normalcy in the GOP, even if they suffer significant losses in 2024. They will just resort to more lying and more violence. The base DOES see the terrible damage wrought by Nixon, the Bushes, and Trump, but they falsely attributed it to "the radical left" and their gay people, abortions and "wokeness." The leadership Is tells their base, using dog whistles, lies and code, that we are evil and to kill us. It's that simple. They WILL incite a civil war as they lose more and more elections because MAGA is PRIMARILY the warm-over Confederacy, itching for another fight. The looser edges of the base have been increasingly violent while the less extreme element excuses the violence as "political discourse" and "justified" to thwart the evil left (see Rittenhouse and before him, Zimmermann) as well as the corruption of the party. This all has been facilitated by the pulpit, with its generalized hatred of women, gays, trans, equality and secular government When a pastor of an all-white, male-ruled church tells me they don't discriminate against women or people of color, I can only look around and laugh at their complete lack of self-awareness.
I guess the good news is that after all the billions spent on propaganda, laws and regulations, only about ¼ of us believe in the griftings of the Republicans. They are the victims of not receiving the only immunization known to protect people from the virus of cult. After two generations of people being cheated out of a good public education, we have millions who have succumbed to an incompetent and corrupt authoritarian who serves Putin. Unfortunately, as long as money is speech and corporations are people, those that wield the powers of corporate personhood will quash any efforts to extend world class education to everyone and not just the “right” folk. Otherwise they would have to stop doing things adverse to our rights and our communities’ interests. Specifically, those things that enable them to extract more wealth and destroy more health around the world, and do it with impunity.
Failing paradigms become very dangerous at death's door.
The GOP has been composting itself since Reagan, culminating at present as an entity holding zero legitimacy. The Democratic party is certainly not free of flaw, let's be real. But there is absolutely no comparing the two. One is at least attempting to represent and administer the United States as a democratic republic - the other is flailing in death throes to oppress and obliterate the United States for not welcoming its every rapacious advance. The GOP is, beyond any doubt, the most perilous national security threat the US has ever faced. Period.
"Lady Liberty, if I can't have you - no one will."
Despite my feelings of "a pox on both their houses," I agree that the GOP is the biggest threat right now. But due to SCOTUS rulings, both parties are in the same pockets and they cannot win office without being there.
Very useful overview of the decline (self-implosion?) of the Republican Party over last several decades. I'd like to see more attention paid to Republican *voters* -- the millions upon millions who reliably vote Republican, who are registered Republican, but who have never been involved at any level with the party apparatus. To think of them mainly as Trump's "followers" is misleading, not least because they were around long before Trump.
Yes, in a way they were like iron filings that leap to attention when a magnet shows up, but unlike iron filings they had agency -- they had to be *willing* to leap to attention when Trump the Magnet showed up. Like all those "good Germans" leapt to attention when their magnet showed up. And yes, the devastation wrought by Reaganomics played a critical role, but the potential was there before Reagan was elected, as Thom has demonstrated here and elsewhere. Racism, misogyny, and fear of "modernity" were endemic in the body politic and not being effectively addressed, never mind dealt with.
What this column has me pondering is how the corruption of the GOP left those millions upon millions of overwhelmingly white people with nowhere to go. No way were they going to stick with (or join) the Democratic Party, since it was now the civil rights party (even though it had generally done better by labor and rural voters than the GOP). The Republicans wooed them effectively with racist dog whistles, opposition to abortion, and "traditional family values," all the while implementing pro-corporate policies that gutted the middle class, the working class, and rural America. So when Magnet Trump shows up and starts talking like a New Deal Democrat -- hey, they listened and wanted to believe. And since they weren't actively attached to a party in anything but name, they chose to join what looked like a movement that would take them where they wanted to go. They did indeed become Trump's followers, though that says as much about them as it does about Trump. And too many still don't realize that he didn't take them much of anywhere.
Very thought-provoking. I find the best analogy to be that of a mob boss, how everyone is afraid of the mob boss. I don't think it's the boss themselves they're fearful of, but the harm and destruction that can ensue from the boss's henchmen. This is what confirms for me that he's a cult leader - because his followers will do anything he directs them to do. If he had no followers, the man by himself is nothing to be afraid of.
“A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America. Today, there is no such shared set of beliefs and values and principles or even policy views as within the Republican party for America.”
It seems some of my original comment did not make it. I said that there is indeed that contrary to Judge Luttig, there is a shared set of values and beliefs within the Republican party: the Maggots.
The outliers like the Bulwark and Never Trumpers are almost as bad, they are for deregulation, lower taxes for the wealthy, in other words libertarians, who really don't give a rats for minorities of all stripes and women (by and large they are anti abortion). They full embrace the old Republican agenda, which is not at all populist in the sense of Bernie Sanders populism and is in fact Ayn Rand's philosophy of selfishness.
With such cowardly appeasers like the powerful, influential Schumer and Pelosi running the Democratic party I do not see much hope. We must remember that when both houses of congress and the presidency were in the hands of Democrats under Obama's first two years they had the chance to do something for the American people. But what did they in fact do?
They stopped talking about Candidate-Obama's previously touted "public Option" for medical care and failed to tax the rich; all while continuing their overseas military adventures and building more multibillion dollar aircraft carriers for the navy. Now we are told we must begin a cold war with China. It is not just the GOP that is failing. The Demo-Jackasses are failing as well. The best thing for this country is for the GOP to disappear and the demos to split into two new parties: The Democratic Socialists and the Old Schumer-Pelosi-Biden Democrats.
Both Clinton and Obama were disappointments, despite their smooth rhetoric. Clinton turned us into a police state by militarily arming the police. Obama grossly enlarged the targeted drone program of "non-judicial killings" (assassinations.) Both oversaw enlargement and enhancement of citizen surveillance. Both ignored abortion rights - in deed if not in word.
Yes, thank you Ms. Coyote your additions to my thread are accurate.
I've always said Clinton was the best Republican president since grover Cleveland. And Obama is a good public speaker, handsome and charming, and a CIA asset.
Go back and reread Thom's column. He documents very well the damage done during the decades that preceded Obama's election; IIRC he didn't refer to the global economic crash of 2007–2008. Both houses of Congress and the White House were in Democratic hands in 2009–2010, true, but you realize, don't you that countries can't turn on a dime, either politically or economically?
What Obama and his administration had to work with is what they had to work with. Bailing out the corporations that helped crash the economy may have been a mistake; we can't know what would have happened if it hadn't been done. But I'm 99% certain that the "dark money" billionaires would have pursued their subversive trajectory no matter what. As far as they were concerned, Trump was a unexpected gift from the netherworld. (Some of them seem to be somewhat less enthralled today than they were eight years ago.)
Ms. Sturgis, thank you for recognizing I am correct in saying both houses of congress were in Democratic hands. I am not impressed by blurry metaphors like "countries can't turn on a dime." The cowardly Democrats had time enough (two years) and the means (both houses) to act. Thank you also for pointing out that Obama and the cowardly Democrats bailed "out the corporations that helped crash the economy," further supporting my theme. I left that out. The corporations did not HELP "crash the economy." The corporations crashed the economy. Thank you also for admitting that the Democrat's cowardly act of bailing out corporations "MAY have been a mistake," once again supporting my theme. Democrats seem to stumble from one "mistake" to another.
Trump was not an "unexpected gift" from anywhere. He was created by and backed by billionaires who, with Democrat's help, live and thrive among us.
You have a great memory, and the article is very well written. I can't see any Republicans reading it though to fact check it and have an honest discussion. The base must be dreaming of taking all of those Democrats government jobs and all of their possessions for themselves in other words robbing the Democrats of all their dignity and financial stuff. Including enslaving them and dumping them off into the ocean with helicopters. The more evolved humans have no choice but to stop them. Failure to do so will be the last nail in the coffin for all humanity and even the Earth. I certainly don't see the Democratic leadership doing much to stop it. They have actually done more to protect Donald Trump and his insurrectionists.
Just wanted to share an acronym for what you stated today as the vision, intent and style of rule coming from the Republican party. And it fits perfectly with their behavior as “The Mob”:
The important thing is to recognize it's politically a farce. It's a media "party" led by the first media-created (or as in vomit, "induced") president.
Politics is about power and who it is that has the most say about most things - and all this media garbage has very little to do with that, as the real masters of the game dont even have to run or even show their faces on tv.
Instead, it's a big tv show that pretends that Political issues are nothing except what they are in the media.
Trials and law enforcement belong first and foremost in the media, whether it's collusion or me too. Forget about other institutions, just mass communication to angry crowds, phrased in terms of crowd pleasing slogans of anger.
Even in congress, in hearings, during impeachments and trials, even with foreign relations, the republicans literally just make tv clips all day.
We have to recognize that there are other willing participant / enablers - like these clownish media outlets / who lack any regard for (eg) the qualifications for government service, relations with institutions, respect for multiple constituents, etc.
Absolutely. I love that metaphor. I should mention it's personal because my daughter experienced the toxoplasma parasite and fortunately I was at that time working in an NIH lab giving her access to a researcher who administered a strong antibiotic saving the use of her eyes.
"We're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore "
From the 1976 movie, "Network ".
I remember the text from this movie well and I am reminded of it today .
The prospect of seeing Trump's mugshot smeared
across TV 24/7 for months & years is breathe taking . Wonder why depression, anxiety and hatred have spiked in record numbers? Refresh your memory. 👇👇👇👇hk4kF9Y_bI8UzP8#:~:text=We%20all%20know%20things%20are,t%20go%20out%20any%20more.
What an appropriate metaphor (including the additional metaphors)! But, we are living on this earthly planet, and some are only focused on the primitive level of survival. This intense and frightening drama grabs peoples' attention--a Higher Purpose can actually be even more challenging in the midst of this kid of human drama. The leaders who incorporate genuine humanitarian values gain our hearts. Both truth and compassion are what give us the lives we want to live in the midst of the chaos in this country. Thank you for contributing to this aspiration.
Excellence research and a remind of why, out of all the media sources I frequent, I always read Thom's entire articles, start to finish.
"A return to some semblance of normalcy in the GOP is essential to restoring a normal, functioning government to our nation, as Luttig points out. Odds are, however, it’s first going to take a widespread destruction of that party — provoked by huge Democratic wins in 2024 — to come about."
I don't see a return to semblance of normalcy in the GOP, even if they suffer significant losses in 2024. They will just resort to more lying and more violence. The base DOES see the terrible damage wrought by Nixon, the Bushes, and Trump, but they falsely attributed it to "the radical left" and their gay people, abortions and "wokeness." The leadership Is tells their base, using dog whistles, lies and code, that we are evil and to kill us. It's that simple. They WILL incite a civil war as they lose more and more elections because MAGA is PRIMARILY the warm-over Confederacy, itching for another fight. The looser edges of the base have been increasingly violent while the less extreme element excuses the violence as "political discourse" and "justified" to thwart the evil left (see Rittenhouse and before him, Zimmermann) as well as the corruption of the party. This all has been facilitated by the pulpit, with its generalized hatred of women, gays, trans, equality and secular government When a pastor of an all-white, male-ruled church tells me they don't discriminate against women or people of color, I can only look around and laugh at their complete lack of self-awareness.
I guess the good news is that after all the billions spent on propaganda, laws and regulations, only about ¼ of us believe in the griftings of the Republicans. They are the victims of not receiving the only immunization known to protect people from the virus of cult. After two generations of people being cheated out of a good public education, we have millions who have succumbed to an incompetent and corrupt authoritarian who serves Putin. Unfortunately, as long as money is speech and corporations are people, those that wield the powers of corporate personhood will quash any efforts to extend world class education to everyone and not just the “right” folk. Otherwise they would have to stop doing things adverse to our rights and our communities’ interests. Specifically, those things that enable them to extract more wealth and destroy more health around the world, and do it with impunity.
Failing paradigms become very dangerous at death's door.
The GOP has been composting itself since Reagan, culminating at present as an entity holding zero legitimacy. The Democratic party is certainly not free of flaw, let's be real. But there is absolutely no comparing the two. One is at least attempting to represent and administer the United States as a democratic republic - the other is flailing in death throes to oppress and obliterate the United States for not welcoming its every rapacious advance. The GOP is, beyond any doubt, the most perilous national security threat the US has ever faced. Period.
"Lady Liberty, if I can't have you - no one will."
-GOP, circa post-Eisenhower forward
Despite my feelings of "a pox on both their houses," I agree that the GOP is the biggest threat right now. But due to SCOTUS rulings, both parties are in the same pockets and they cannot win office without being there.
Very useful overview of the decline (self-implosion?) of the Republican Party over last several decades. I'd like to see more attention paid to Republican *voters* -- the millions upon millions who reliably vote Republican, who are registered Republican, but who have never been involved at any level with the party apparatus. To think of them mainly as Trump's "followers" is misleading, not least because they were around long before Trump.
Yes, in a way they were like iron filings that leap to attention when a magnet shows up, but unlike iron filings they had agency -- they had to be *willing* to leap to attention when Trump the Magnet showed up. Like all those "good Germans" leapt to attention when their magnet showed up. And yes, the devastation wrought by Reaganomics played a critical role, but the potential was there before Reagan was elected, as Thom has demonstrated here and elsewhere. Racism, misogyny, and fear of "modernity" were endemic in the body politic and not being effectively addressed, never mind dealt with.
What this column has me pondering is how the corruption of the GOP left those millions upon millions of overwhelmingly white people with nowhere to go. No way were they going to stick with (or join) the Democratic Party, since it was now the civil rights party (even though it had generally done better by labor and rural voters than the GOP). The Republicans wooed them effectively with racist dog whistles, opposition to abortion, and "traditional family values," all the while implementing pro-corporate policies that gutted the middle class, the working class, and rural America. So when Magnet Trump shows up and starts talking like a New Deal Democrat -- hey, they listened and wanted to believe. And since they weren't actively attached to a party in anything but name, they chose to join what looked like a movement that would take them where they wanted to go. They did indeed become Trump's followers, though that says as much about them as it does about Trump. And too many still don't realize that he didn't take them much of anywhere.
Very thought-provoking. I find the best analogy to be that of a mob boss, how everyone is afraid of the mob boss. I don't think it's the boss themselves they're fearful of, but the harm and destruction that can ensue from the boss's henchmen. This is what confirms for me that he's a cult leader - because his followers will do anything he directs them to do. If he had no followers, the man by himself is nothing to be afraid of.
“A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America. Today, there is no such shared set of beliefs and values and principles or even policy views as within the Republican party for America.”
It seems some of my original comment did not make it. I said that there is indeed that contrary to Judge Luttig, there is a shared set of values and beliefs within the Republican party: the Maggots.
The outliers like the Bulwark and Never Trumpers are almost as bad, they are for deregulation, lower taxes for the wealthy, in other words libertarians, who really don't give a rats for minorities of all stripes and women (by and large they are anti abortion). They full embrace the old Republican agenda, which is not at all populist in the sense of Bernie Sanders populism and is in fact Ayn Rand's philosophy of selfishness.
With such cowardly appeasers like the powerful, influential Schumer and Pelosi running the Democratic party I do not see much hope. We must remember that when both houses of congress and the presidency were in the hands of Democrats under Obama's first two years they had the chance to do something for the American people. But what did they in fact do?
They stopped talking about Candidate-Obama's previously touted "public Option" for medical care and failed to tax the rich; all while continuing their overseas military adventures and building more multibillion dollar aircraft carriers for the navy. Now we are told we must begin a cold war with China. It is not just the GOP that is failing. The Demo-Jackasses are failing as well. The best thing for this country is for the GOP to disappear and the demos to split into two new parties: The Democratic Socialists and the Old Schumer-Pelosi-Biden Democrats.
Both Clinton and Obama were disappointments, despite their smooth rhetoric. Clinton turned us into a police state by militarily arming the police. Obama grossly enlarged the targeted drone program of "non-judicial killings" (assassinations.) Both oversaw enlargement and enhancement of citizen surveillance. Both ignored abortion rights - in deed if not in word.
Yes, thank you Ms. Coyote your additions to my thread are accurate.
I've always said Clinton was the best Republican president since grover Cleveland. And Obama is a good public speaker, handsome and charming, and a CIA asset.
Go back and reread Thom's column. He documents very well the damage done during the decades that preceded Obama's election; IIRC he didn't refer to the global economic crash of 2007–2008. Both houses of Congress and the White House were in Democratic hands in 2009–2010, true, but you realize, don't you that countries can't turn on a dime, either politically or economically?
What Obama and his administration had to work with is what they had to work with. Bailing out the corporations that helped crash the economy may have been a mistake; we can't know what would have happened if it hadn't been done. But I'm 99% certain that the "dark money" billionaires would have pursued their subversive trajectory no matter what. As far as they were concerned, Trump was a unexpected gift from the netherworld. (Some of them seem to be somewhat less enthralled today than they were eight years ago.)
Ms. Sturgis, thank you for recognizing I am correct in saying both houses of congress were in Democratic hands. I am not impressed by blurry metaphors like "countries can't turn on a dime." The cowardly Democrats had time enough (two years) and the means (both houses) to act. Thank you also for pointing out that Obama and the cowardly Democrats bailed "out the corporations that helped crash the economy," further supporting my theme. I left that out. The corporations did not HELP "crash the economy." The corporations crashed the economy. Thank you also for admitting that the Democrat's cowardly act of bailing out corporations "MAY have been a mistake," once again supporting my theme. Democrats seem to stumble from one "mistake" to another.
Trump was not an "unexpected gift" from anywhere. He was created by and backed by billionaires who, with Democrat's help, live and thrive among us.
You have a great memory, and the article is very well written. I can't see any Republicans reading it though to fact check it and have an honest discussion. The base must be dreaming of taking all of those Democrats government jobs and all of their possessions for themselves in other words robbing the Democrats of all their dignity and financial stuff. Including enslaving them and dumping them off into the ocean with helicopters. The more evolved humans have no choice but to stop them. Failure to do so will be the last nail in the coffin for all humanity and even the Earth. I certainly don't see the Democratic leadership doing much to stop it. They have actually done more to protect Donald Trump and his insurrectionists.
Just wanted to share an acronym for what you stated today as the vision, intent and style of rule coming from the Republican party. And it fits perfectly with their behavior as “The Mob”:
Making
America a
Feudal
Idiocracy
Again
Aka, MAFIA!
The important thing is to recognize it's politically a farce. It's a media "party" led by the first media-created (or as in vomit, "induced") president.
Politics is about power and who it is that has the most say about most things - and all this media garbage has very little to do with that, as the real masters of the game dont even have to run or even show their faces on tv.
Instead, it's a big tv show that pretends that Political issues are nothing except what they are in the media.
Trials and law enforcement belong first and foremost in the media, whether it's collusion or me too. Forget about other institutions, just mass communication to angry crowds, phrased in terms of crowd pleasing slogans of anger.
Even in congress, in hearings, during impeachments and trials, even with foreign relations, the republicans literally just make tv clips all day.
We have to recognize that there are other willing participant / enablers - like these clownish media outlets / who lack any regard for (eg) the qualifications for government service, relations with institutions, respect for multiple constituents, etc.
Absolutely. I love that metaphor. I should mention it's personal because my daughter experienced the toxoplasma parasite and fortunately I was at that time working in an NIH lab giving her access to a researcher who administered a strong antibiotic saving the use of her eyes.
The metaphor with Republicans is very apt.
Tell this to MSNBC and CNN.
"We're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore "
From the 1976 movie, "Network ".
I remember the text from this movie well and I am reminded of it today .
The prospect of seeing Trump's mugshot smeared
across TV 24/7 for months & years is breathe taking . Wonder why depression, anxiety and hatred have spiked in record numbers? Refresh your memory. 👇👇👇👇hk4kF9Y_bI8UzP8#:~:text=We%20all%20know%20things%20are,t%20go%20out%20any%20more.
What an appropriate metaphor (including the additional metaphors)! But, we are living on this earthly planet, and some are only focused on the primitive level of survival. This intense and frightening drama grabs peoples' attention--a Higher Purpose can actually be even more challenging in the midst of this kid of human drama. The leaders who incorporate genuine humanitarian values gain our hearts. Both truth and compassion are what give us the lives we want to live in the midst of the chaos in this country. Thank you for contributing to this aspiration.