If the GOP doubles down on fascism & racism, Lincoln’s “last, best hope for Earth” will rest in the hands of the European Union and America will become unrecognizable
RE: "Do they go back to being the party of the corporate and the rich as they were before Nixon, or do they double down on racial hate, misogyny, and violence as their main strategy for holding white voters to their side?"
The GQP is both - two sides of the same coin. The Party of the Oligarchs (leaders) needs the Party of the Bigots (followers) and vice versa.
In Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience, he documents this merger. The party is lead by authoritarian "social dominators" and "double highs" and they control all their authoritarian followers via a massive messaging machine that has been funded and fine-tuned since The 1971 Powell Memo by subsequent SCOTUS rulings.
“Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.” — John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience, https://www.c-span.org/video/?194148-1/conservatives-conscience
“And even if Trump accepts the will of the majority and the Electoral College and leaves the White House, his backers will remain a very powerful force, ready to give undying loyalty to him for as long as he wants, and then to the next dictator-in-waiting. And the next one will almost certainly be smarter than Donald Trump. You can be sure someone is watching Trump closely, planning to step into his place. Thus, if you want to remain free, you will probably have to outvote today’s ardent Trump followers , not only in November 2020 but for some time in future elections. You may have heard that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” -- John Dean, Authoritarian Nightmare: Donald Trump and His Followers, https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/authoritarian-nightmare/.
In addition, the GQP is funded by authoritarian captialists who control our authoritarian economic system. They have the billions necessary to maintain control of the GQP and continue the takeover and destruction of our democratic political system.
"The development of US capitalism, especially since the 1970s, has produced extreme economic inequality, the second major crisis in the last seventy-five years, and a political system in which money trumps democracy." -- Richard Wolff
It's not about the morphing of the GOP into the GQP Cult. It's about whether a large portion of the 80,656,679 registered voters, who DIDN'T VOTE in 2020, will vote in 2022 and 2024.
I feel convinced the morbid irony of it all will lead the few surviving well watered ones on space voyages to nowhere, forsaking memory of earth's divine garden of bounty and beauty they so jealously guarded for only themselves. The world wide war we are in will hardly end life on the planet, yet require perhaps a hundred million years to regenerate life forms possibly able enough to unearth the fossilized beauty of our remains and learn the lessons we could not fathom. I feel certain life's DNA will survive every poison we humans ineptly throw at it. Thank you ANDY
I read your report while watching the 2nd hearing of Jan 6 committee. And the fact we are still stewing over this completely illegitimate and criminal president - this whole “experiment” seems already DONE. I’m so tired of hearing about these completely criminal acts, I can barely stand to even think of continuing to live here. FIRST no one is addressing our climate CRISIS. It is happening. Go ahead, pay attention to the rich as always. I’m NOT needed here. There are other countries where I have felt “at home.” Yes I’m a senior and have few resources. But I have my mind, and I’m expanding the ways I see life. And WANT to see life. The US is clearly headed to a Very Bad Place to Live. I have no hope left
I have considerable hope left. It appears to me that much of America is waking up and I'm hopeful about the elections this fall as both abortion and guns are getting people's attention...
The hope left is faith in indomitable resilience in life itself to keep learning over the millions of years required to recover what we are destroying.
:Do they go back to being the party of the corporate and the rich as they were before Nixon, or do they double down on racial hate, misogyny, and violence as their main strategy for holding white voters to their side?" They will do both. It takes the bigotry to divide so the wealthy can rule.
What to do if we lose Q? The morbidly rich who profit from their antics will always find another way to manipulate the cultically loyal supporters of Trump. My guess is they will double down on the classics, and get their propagandists to exploit racism and the spectrum of other bigotries and stupidities that really whip up the base. I think the general hierarchy of public sector decision-making will remain the same (i.e., the oligarchs call the shots and their elected toadies implement (or ignore) the legislation and rules to benefit the oligarchs). Our best chance to stop this insanity is to elect a super-majority of highly competent progressives in both houses with their first order of business to nullify the powers of corporate personhood.
Narcissus fell in love with his own image, pined and died because of it. It's well past time to get over ourselves as a country. I think the real joke is that the rest of the world already has: we just didn't get the memo.
What Americans keep losing is quality of life. That's directly related to the fact that we don't change while the developed world moves on without us.
I am seeing real movement on social issues, despite the damn Republicans. We are just going to have to drag them, screaming, along. We can have nice things and must work to convince reasonable people they deserve them. Health care, education, decent wages, and a clean environment could be ours with or without our precious image.
I feel you're right - it's time to move on, forge a new path. Perhaps the change began when, as Thom points out in this article, both the GOP and Democrats ignored JFK's advice. I see your President as making an attempt, at least, to follow that advice, to "Let our patriotism be reflected in the creation of confidence in one another, rather than in crusades of suspicion.” It's sad to see progressives like AOC undermining Biden already in his efforts to forge a new path.
The Democratic Party sold out the American worker when the party bosses replaced 3 term VP Henry Wallace with Harry Truman knowing full well that FDR was likely to die in office. Party bosses selected the president much as the Supreme Court justices decided on GW Bush in 2000.
The use of white supremacy to maintain power by the elites goes back to Bacon's Rebellion that terrified them when white European indentured servants (who had no more rights than a slave and considerably less value to their owners) combined with black and native American slaves in fighting back in 1673. Legislation was quickly passed to keep whites and blacks apart to reduce their influence and power and it has been successful for the past 342 years by both parties. The Clintons used race baiting in both their presidential campaigns.
This is fine and good, but the more important question is when will the Democratic Party identify the NaziRepublican Party as the party ofthe 0.1% and the Dems as the party of the 99.99%.
Keep it simple, let the fools know they are voting against their own interests, not just voting to replace democracy and capitalism with untaxed hereditary monarchy.
At the end, you alluded to the EU as being the last major haven of democracy. In my opinion this will be if/when the US becomes on the verge of being fully fascist, via GOP claim of election victory in 2024, and it is obvious the GOP will make the US an ally with the other major authoritarian nations (Russia, China, etc.) if it becomes in charge of the Presidency.
I recently heard about a possible scenario, not involving the EU, but NATO.
I expanded this in my own mind, and this is the complete scenario I imagine:
It involves the coup in 2024 being clearly against the will of the voters, and the majority of the people clearly protesting, and showing the world that the claim to the presidency is illegitimate (fake state elector slates, whatever). The other NATO nations, including Canada, will see the evidence and agree. They will also see the dictator (Trump, DeSantis, Abbot, whoever) trying to enter the presidency as being ready to ally with their enemy (Russia).
Then the Pentagon and the Supreme Court will be the keys to what will happen next...
If the Supreme Court decides the swing state election officials who got elected in 2022 acted against the Constitution, by sending fake elector slates, that will be the first victory over the coup.
That would make it easy for the Pentagon to declare that the coup government is against the legitimate one (the one who actually won the 2024 vote). The Pentagon would then treat the coup government just as it would treat a foreign invader, and NATO would back up the Pentagon, with NATO possibly even mobilizing in Canada. Canada is already fearing a refugee crisis of Americans wanting to flee a dictatorship, and overwhelming the border. Your recent Daily Takes about Canada don't say that explicitly, but I am sure that is part of the nightmare they foresee.
I know, Thom that imagining this far ahead is fuzzy, and I have no expertise. And we need to focus on 2022, because that is where we can stop this nightmare from accelerating in just a few months. But I am already thinking ahead, because it is so existential. I'm sure many of us are, even though we want to focus mostly on actions this year. If you don't think it is premature, maybe you could invite experts on long term military planning on the Thom Hartmann program to give their opinions. If it is premature, forget I said it. :)
Thom. Pointing out blatant fallacies will probably never move your followers. But they do explain why so many will simply dismiss your perspectives.
Your false dichotomy concerning a Republican embrace of "white supremacy, misogyny, and fascism or go back to just being the party of the rich" simply reveals a sophomoric attempt to demonize your opposition. But more troubling, we see the exact same rhetorical approach used by people like Trump, to demonize his or their opposition. Yet somehow you justify using the approach. In the end this continues to empower your followers to justify the abject vilification of their opponents.
I suppose the choice never to define terms like white supremacy and fascism keeps things conveniently ambiguous. No doubt, therein lay the power of the rhetoric. But when we understand these terms in their descriptive context, those terms will apply only to a small minority of people. This allows your opposition to rightfully reject your arguments. That is unless your definition of the terms goes way beyond their traditional meaning. But if you don’t define them, we’ll never really know.
As I’ve previously mentioned, maybe you don’t care if your opposition rejects your thoughts. Perhaps you feel your opinions are objective and therefore you feel you have license to continue using this approach. But it's clear that both sides share these sentiments and unfortunately allow both sides to hate each other.
These convictions are resulting in terribly dangerous and irreconcilable differences. This fact, must make us rethink our rhetoric and our ideological demands. And taking this kind of rhetoric into account, I see the wisdom in Carl Jung’s belief. He claimed, “Our blight is ideologies – they are the long-expected Antichrist.” I believe his claim is a warning to us, not about Christianity but rather about the kind of people we've become.
RE: "Do they go back to being the party of the corporate and the rich as they were before Nixon, or do they double down on racial hate, misogyny, and violence as their main strategy for holding white voters to their side?"
The GQP is both - two sides of the same coin. The Party of the Oligarchs (leaders) needs the Party of the Bigots (followers) and vice versa.
In Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience, he documents this merger. The party is lead by authoritarian "social dominators" and "double highs" and they control all their authoritarian followers via a massive messaging machine that has been funded and fine-tuned since The 1971 Powell Memo by subsequent SCOTUS rulings.
“Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.” — John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience, https://www.c-span.org/video/?194148-1/conservatives-conscience
“And even if Trump accepts the will of the majority and the Electoral College and leaves the White House, his backers will remain a very powerful force, ready to give undying loyalty to him for as long as he wants, and then to the next dictator-in-waiting. And the next one will almost certainly be smarter than Donald Trump. You can be sure someone is watching Trump closely, planning to step into his place. Thus, if you want to remain free, you will probably have to outvote today’s ardent Trump followers , not only in November 2020 but for some time in future elections. You may have heard that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” -- John Dean, Authoritarian Nightmare: Donald Trump and His Followers, https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/authoritarian-nightmare/.
In addition, the GQP is funded by authoritarian captialists who control our authoritarian economic system. They have the billions necessary to maintain control of the GQP and continue the takeover and destruction of our democratic political system.
"The development of US capitalism, especially since the 1970s, has produced extreme economic inequality, the second major crisis in the last seventy-five years, and a political system in which money trumps democracy." -- Richard Wolff
https://truthout.org/articles/when-democracy-is-trumped-by-the-excesses-of-capitalism/
It's not about the morphing of the GOP into the GQP Cult. It's about whether a large portion of the 80,656,679 registered voters, who DIDN'T VOTE in 2020, will vote in 2022 and 2024.
I feel convinced the morbid irony of it all will lead the few surviving well watered ones on space voyages to nowhere, forsaking memory of earth's divine garden of bounty and beauty they so jealously guarded for only themselves. The world wide war we are in will hardly end life on the planet, yet require perhaps a hundred million years to regenerate life forms possibly able enough to unearth the fossilized beauty of our remains and learn the lessons we could not fathom. I feel certain life's DNA will survive every poison we humans ineptly throw at it. Thank you ANDY
Great comment and references, and you're absolutely right - the "two sides of the same coin" GOP feed off of each other.
I read your report while watching the 2nd hearing of Jan 6 committee. And the fact we are still stewing over this completely illegitimate and criminal president - this whole “experiment” seems already DONE. I’m so tired of hearing about these completely criminal acts, I can barely stand to even think of continuing to live here. FIRST no one is addressing our climate CRISIS. It is happening. Go ahead, pay attention to the rich as always. I’m NOT needed here. There are other countries where I have felt “at home.” Yes I’m a senior and have few resources. But I have my mind, and I’m expanding the ways I see life. And WANT to see life. The US is clearly headed to a Very Bad Place to Live. I have no hope left
I have considerable hope left. It appears to me that much of America is waking up and I'm hopeful about the elections this fall as both abortion and guns are getting people's attention...
The hope left is faith in indomitable resilience in life itself to keep learning over the millions of years required to recover what we are destroying.
:Do they go back to being the party of the corporate and the rich as they were before Nixon, or do they double down on racial hate, misogyny, and violence as their main strategy for holding white voters to their side?" They will do both. It takes the bigotry to divide so the wealthy can rule.
It's two sides of he same coin. See my longer comment below.
What to do if we lose Q? The morbidly rich who profit from their antics will always find another way to manipulate the cultically loyal supporters of Trump. My guess is they will double down on the classics, and get their propagandists to exploit racism and the spectrum of other bigotries and stupidities that really whip up the base. I think the general hierarchy of public sector decision-making will remain the same (i.e., the oligarchs call the shots and their elected toadies implement (or ignore) the legislation and rules to benefit the oligarchs). Our best chance to stop this insanity is to elect a super-majority of highly competent progressives in both houses with their first order of business to nullify the powers of corporate personhood.
Narcissus fell in love with his own image, pined and died because of it. It's well past time to get over ourselves as a country. I think the real joke is that the rest of the world already has: we just didn't get the memo.
What Americans keep losing is quality of life. That's directly related to the fact that we don't change while the developed world moves on without us.
I am seeing real movement on social issues, despite the damn Republicans. We are just going to have to drag them, screaming, along. We can have nice things and must work to convince reasonable people they deserve them. Health care, education, decent wages, and a clean environment could be ours with or without our precious image.
I feel you're right - it's time to move on, forge a new path. Perhaps the change began when, as Thom points out in this article, both the GOP and Democrats ignored JFK's advice. I see your President as making an attempt, at least, to follow that advice, to "Let our patriotism be reflected in the creation of confidence in one another, rather than in crusades of suspicion.” It's sad to see progressives like AOC undermining Biden already in his efforts to forge a new path.
The Democratic Party sold out the American worker when the party bosses replaced 3 term VP Henry Wallace with Harry Truman knowing full well that FDR was likely to die in office. Party bosses selected the president much as the Supreme Court justices decided on GW Bush in 2000.
The use of white supremacy to maintain power by the elites goes back to Bacon's Rebellion that terrified them when white European indentured servants (who had no more rights than a slave and considerably less value to their owners) combined with black and native American slaves in fighting back in 1673. Legislation was quickly passed to keep whites and blacks apart to reduce their influence and power and it has been successful for the past 342 years by both parties. The Clintons used race baiting in both their presidential campaigns.
This is fine and good, but the more important question is when will the Democratic Party identify the NaziRepublican Party as the party ofthe 0.1% and the Dems as the party of the 99.99%.
Keep it simple, let the fools know they are voting against their own interests, not just voting to replace democracy and capitalism with untaxed hereditary monarchy.
At the end, you alluded to the EU as being the last major haven of democracy. In my opinion this will be if/when the US becomes on the verge of being fully fascist, via GOP claim of election victory in 2024, and it is obvious the GOP will make the US an ally with the other major authoritarian nations (Russia, China, etc.) if it becomes in charge of the Presidency.
I recently heard about a possible scenario, not involving the EU, but NATO.
I believe it was in a recent video by Beau of the Fifth Column (https://www.youtube.com/c/BeauoftheFifthColumn/videos).
I expanded this in my own mind, and this is the complete scenario I imagine:
It involves the coup in 2024 being clearly against the will of the voters, and the majority of the people clearly protesting, and showing the world that the claim to the presidency is illegitimate (fake state elector slates, whatever). The other NATO nations, including Canada, will see the evidence and agree. They will also see the dictator (Trump, DeSantis, Abbot, whoever) trying to enter the presidency as being ready to ally with their enemy (Russia).
Then the Pentagon and the Supreme Court will be the keys to what will happen next...
If the Supreme Court decides the swing state election officials who got elected in 2022 acted against the Constitution, by sending fake elector slates, that will be the first victory over the coup.
That would make it easy for the Pentagon to declare that the coup government is against the legitimate one (the one who actually won the 2024 vote). The Pentagon would then treat the coup government just as it would treat a foreign invader, and NATO would back up the Pentagon, with NATO possibly even mobilizing in Canada. Canada is already fearing a refugee crisis of Americans wanting to flee a dictatorship, and overwhelming the border. Your recent Daily Takes about Canada don't say that explicitly, but I am sure that is part of the nightmare they foresee.
I know, Thom that imagining this far ahead is fuzzy, and I have no expertise. And we need to focus on 2022, because that is where we can stop this nightmare from accelerating in just a few months. But I am already thinking ahead, because it is so existential. I'm sure many of us are, even though we want to focus mostly on actions this year. If you don't think it is premature, maybe you could invite experts on long term military planning on the Thom Hartmann program to give their opinions. If it is premature, forget I said it. :)
Thom. Pointing out blatant fallacies will probably never move your followers. But they do explain why so many will simply dismiss your perspectives.
Your false dichotomy concerning a Republican embrace of "white supremacy, misogyny, and fascism or go back to just being the party of the rich" simply reveals a sophomoric attempt to demonize your opposition. But more troubling, we see the exact same rhetorical approach used by people like Trump, to demonize his or their opposition. Yet somehow you justify using the approach. In the end this continues to empower your followers to justify the abject vilification of their opponents.
I suppose the choice never to define terms like white supremacy and fascism keeps things conveniently ambiguous. No doubt, therein lay the power of the rhetoric. But when we understand these terms in their descriptive context, those terms will apply only to a small minority of people. This allows your opposition to rightfully reject your arguments. That is unless your definition of the terms goes way beyond their traditional meaning. But if you don’t define them, we’ll never really know.
As I’ve previously mentioned, maybe you don’t care if your opposition rejects your thoughts. Perhaps you feel your opinions are objective and therefore you feel you have license to continue using this approach. But it's clear that both sides share these sentiments and unfortunately allow both sides to hate each other.
These convictions are resulting in terribly dangerous and irreconcilable differences. This fact, must make us rethink our rhetoric and our ideological demands. And taking this kind of rhetoric into account, I see the wisdom in Carl Jung’s belief. He claimed, “Our blight is ideologies – they are the long-expected Antichrist.” I believe his claim is a warning to us, not about Christianity but rather about the kind of people we've become.