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ASPartOfMe
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25 Sep 2021, 4:06 am

Robert Kagan for the Washington Post
Robert Kagan is a top NeoCon. He helped found the Project For A New American Century

Quote:
The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things there should be no doubt.

First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is building a massive campaign war chest; and at this moment the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable. Barring health problems, he is running.

Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary. Trump’s charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried meekly to do in the California recall contest.

Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed “technical infractions,” including obstructing the view of poll watchers.

The stage is thus being set for chaos. Imagine weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power. Partisans on both sides are likely to be better armed and more willing to inflict harm than they were in 2020. Would governors call out the National Guard? Would President Biden nationalize the Guard and place it under his control, invoke the Insurrection Act, and send troops into Pennsylvania or Texas or Wisconsin to quell violent protests? Deploying federal power in the states would be decried as tyranny. Biden would find himself where other presidents have been — where Andrew Jackson was during the nullification crisis, or where Abraham Lincoln was after the South seceded — navigating without rules or precedents, making his own judgments about what constitutional powers he does and doesn’t have.

Most Americans — and all but a handful of politicians — have refused to take this possibility seriously enough to try to prevent it. As has so often been the case in other countries where fascist leaders arise, their would-be opponents are paralyzed in confusion and amazement at this charismatic authoritarian. They have followed the standard model of appeasement, which always begins with underestimation. The political and intellectual establishments in both parties have been underestimating Trump since he emerged on the scene in 2015.

The fact that he failed to overturn the 2020 election has reassured many that the American system remains secure, though it easily could have gone the other way — if Biden had not been safely ahead in all four states where the vote was close; if Trump had been more competent and more in control of the decision-makers in his administration, Congress and the states. As it was, Trump came close to bringing off a coup earlier this year. All that prevented it was a handful of state officials with notable courage and integrity, and the reluctance of two attorneys general and a vice president to obey orders they deemed inappropriate.

The Founders did not foresee the Trump phenomenon, in part because they did not foresee national parties. They anticipated the threat of a demagogue, but not of a national cult of personality.

The Framers did not establish safeguards against the possibility that national-party solidarity would transcend state boundaries because they did not imagine such a thing was possible. Nor did they foresee that members of Congress, and perhaps members of the judicial branch, too, would refuse to check the power of a president from their own party.

Critics and supporters alike have consistently failed to recognize what a unique figure Trump is in American history. Because his followers share fundamentally conservative views, many see Trump as merely the continuation, and perhaps the logical culmination, of the Reagan Revolution. This is a mistake:

What makes the Trump movement historically unique is not its passions and paranoias. It is the fact that for millions of Americans, Trump himself is the response to their fears and resentments. This is a stronger bond between leader and followers than anything seen before in U.S. political movements.

Trump is different, which is one reason the political system has struggled to understand, much less contain, him. The American liberal worldview tends to search for material and economic explanations for everything, and no doubt a good number of Trump supporters have grounds to complain about their lot in life. But their bond with Trump has little to do with economics or other material concerns. They believe the U.S. government and society have been captured by socialists, minority groups and sexual deviants. They see the Republican Party establishment as corrupt and weak — “losers,” to use Trump’s word, unable to challenge the reigning liberal hegemony. They view Trump as strong and defiant, willing to take on the establishment, Democrats, RINOs, liberal media, antifa, the Squad, Big Tech and the “Mitch McConnell Republicans.” His charismatic leadership has given millions of Americans a feeling of purpose and empowerment, a new sense of identity. While Trump’s critics see him as too narcissistic to be any kind of leader, his supporters admire his unapologetic, militant selfishness. Unlike establishment Republicans, Trump speaks without embarrassment on behalf of an aggrieved segment of Americans, not exclusively White, who feel they have been taking it on the chin for too long. And that is all he needs to do.

the most important thing Trump delivers is himself. His egomania is part of his appeal. In his professed victimization by the media and the “elites,” his followers see their own victimization. That is why attacks on Trump by the elites only strengthen his bond with his followers. That is why millions of Trump supporters have even been willing to risk death as part of their show of solidarity: When Trump’s enemies cited his mishandling of the pandemic to discredit him, their answer was to reject the pandemic.

Liberal democracy requires acceptance of adverse electoral results, a willingness to countenance the temporary rule of those with whom we disagree. As historian Richard Hofstadter observed, it requires that people “endure error in the interest of social peace.”

For a movement built around a cult of personality, these adjustments are not possible. For Trump supporters, the “error” is that Trump was cheated out of reelection by what he has told them is an oppressive, communist, Democrat regime. While the defeat of a sitting president normally leads to a struggle to claim the party’s mantle, so far no Republican has been able to challenge Trump’s grip on Republican voters: not Sen. Josh Hawley, not Sen. Tom Cotton, not Tucker Carlson, not Gov. Ron DeSantis. It is still all about Trump. The fact that he is not in office means that the United States is “a territory controlled by enemy tribes,” writes one conservative intellectual.

The Trump movement might not have begun as an insurrection, but it became one after its leader claimed he had been cheated out of reelection. For Trump supporters, the events of Jan. 6 were not an embarrassing debacle but a patriotic effort to save the nation, by violent action if necessary. As one 56-year-old Michigan woman explained: “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”

The banal normalcy of the great majority of Trump’s supporters, including those who went to the Capitol on Jan. 6, has befuddled many observers. Although private militia groups and white supremacists played a part in the attack, 90 percent of those arrested or charged had no ties to such groups. The majority were middle-class and middle-aged; 40 percent were business owners or white-collar workers. They came mostly from purple, not red, counties.

Most Trump supporters are good parents, good neighbors and solid members of their communities. Their bigotry, for the most part, is typical white American bigotry, perhaps with an added measure of resentment and a less filtered mode of expression since Trump arrived on the scene

While it might be shocking to learn that normal, decent Americans can support a violent assault on the Capitol, it shows that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their founding principles and institutions. Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920s and 1930s were also from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and neighbors, too. People do things as part of a mass movement that they would not do as individuals, especially if they are convinced that others are out to destroy their way of life.

It would be foolish to imagine that the violence of Jan. 6 was an aberration that will not be repeated. Because Trump supporters see those events as a patriotic defense of the nation, there is every reason to expect more such episodes. Already, there have been threats to bomb polling sites, kidnap officials and attack state capitols. Nor can one assume that the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers would again play a subordinate role when the next riot unfolds. Veterans who assaulted the Capitol told police officers that they had fought for their country before and were fighting for it again.

The party gave birth to and nurtured this movement; it bears full responsibility for establishing the conditions in which Trump could capture the loyalty of 90 percent of Republican voters. Republican leaders were more than happy to ride Trump’s coattails if it meant getting paid off with hundreds of conservative court appointments, including three Supreme Court justices; tax cuts; immigration restrictions; and deep reductions in regulations on business.

The GOP establishment hoped that the presence of “adults” would restrain him, protecting their traditional agenda and, in their view, the country’s interests, from his worst instincts. This was a miscalculation. Trump’s grip on his supporters left no room for an alternative power center in the party. One by one, the “adults” resigned or were run off.

More revealing was the behavior of Republican elder statesmen, former secretaries of state in their 80s or 90s who had no further ambitions for high office and seemingly nothing to lose by speaking out. Despite their known abhorrence of everything Trump stood for, these old lions refused to criticize him. They were unwilling to come out against a Republican Party to which they had devoted their professional lives, even when the party was led by someone they detested. Whatever they thought about Trump, moreover, Republican elders disliked Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the Democrats more.

The Republican Party today is a zombie party. Its leaders go through the motions of governing in pursuit of traditional Republican goals.

Yet whatever the legitimacy of Republican critiques of Biden, there is a fundamental disingenuousness to it all. It is a dodge. Republicans focus on China and critical race theory and avoid any mention of Trump, even as the party works to fix the next election in his favor. The left hand professes to know nothing of what the right hand is doing.

The result is that even these anti-Trump Republicans are enabling the insurrection. Revolutionary movements usually operate outside a society’s power structures. But the Trump movement also enjoys unprecedented influence within those structures.

Today, we are in a time of hope and illusion. The same people who said that Trump wouldn’t try to overturn the last election now say we have nothing to worry about with the next one. Republicans have been playing this game for five years, first pooh-poohing concerns about Trump’s intentions, or about the likelihood of their being realized, and then going silent, or worse, when what they insisted was improbable came to pass. These days, even the anti-Trump media constantly looks for signs that Trump’s influence might be fading and that drastic measures might not be necessary.

this time, Trump would have advantages that he lacked in 2016 and 2020

Those who criticize Biden and the Democrats for not doing enough to prevent this disaster are not being fair. There is not much they can do without Republican cooperation, especially if they lose control of either chamber in 2022.

How nice for them that everyone has decided to focus fire on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

Yet it is largely upon these Republicans that the fate of the republic rests.

Seven Republican senators voted to convict Trump for inciting an insurrection and attempting to overturn a free and fair election: Yet as much credit as they deserve for taking this stand, it was almost entirely symbolic. When it comes to concrete action that might prevent a debacle in 2024, they have balked. Specifically, they have refused to work with Democrats to pass legislation limiting state legislatures’ ability to overturn the results of future elections, to ensure that the federal government continues to have some say when states try to limit voting rights, to provide federal protection to state and local election workers who face threats, and in general to make clear to the nation that a bipartisan majority in the Senate opposes the subversion of the popular will

They can’t be under any illusion about what a second Trump term would mean. Trump’s disdain for the rule of law is clear. His exoneration from the charges leveled in his impeachment trials — the only official, legal response to his actions — practically ensures that he would wield power even more aggressively.

We are already in a constitutional crisis. The destruction of democracy might not come until November 2024, but critical steps in that direction are happening now. In a little more than a year, it may become impossible to pass legislation to protect the electoral process in 2024. Now it is impossible only because anti-Trump Republicans, and even some Democrats, refuse to tinker with the filibuster. It is impossible because, despite all that has happened, some people still wish to be good Republicans even as they oppose Trump. These decisions will not wear well as the nation tumbles into full-blown crisis.

Romney & Co. don’t have to abandon their party. They can fashion themselves as Constitutional Republicans who, in the present emergency, are willing to form a national unity coalition in the Senate for the sole purpose of saving the republic. Their cooperation with Democrats could be strictly limited to matters relating to the Constitution and elections. Or they might strive for a temporary governing consensus on a host of critical issues: government spending, defense, immigration and even the persistent covid-19 pandemic, effectively setting aside the usual battles to focus on the more vital and immediate need to preserve the United States.

Heading into the next election, it is vital to protect election workers, same-day registration and early voting. It will also still be necessary to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which directly addresses the state legislatures’ electoral power grab. Other battles — such as making Election Day a federal holiday and banning partisan gerrymandering — might better be postponed.

One wonders whether modern American politicians, in either party, have it in them to make such bold moves, whether they have the insight to see where events are going and the courage to do whatever is necessary to save the democratic system.


Thank you seems not quite right for such crushing morosity. I can not think of something more accurate to say at the moment.

I don’t agree with everything said here, the lack of turnout in post 1/6 events shows Trump supporters might not be willing to war as presumed by the author. And the fear mongering used by neo cons after 9/11(a lot of 9/11 conspiracy theorists have the Project of The New American Century as conspirators) to undercut rights so it is understandable to wonder if Kagan is doing the same thing in a different context. But I have been thinking along similar lines for a while now.

The general election is in three years in the future, the midterms in a little over a year away but now the Biden administration is cratering the Dems are divided, Republicans gaining control of Congress seems likely and Trump winning outright in 2024 seems much more plausible then in the immediate aftermath of 1/6.

To stop this from happening people that do realize what is going on have got to ally with people they profoundly disagree with and personally despise. We got to do a lot of selling out.

The author focused on the traditional political establishments complicity. While he got that right he omitted the rising establishment. In order to be willing to fight for the republic you have to believe in its basic principles. The woke believe these principles are a cover for an innately racist country. While the MAGA’s have hidden in the wake of post 1/6 Antifa and BLM have shown a willingness to take police force day after day, no snowflakes them. That is not a reason to be complacent about the right the author demonstrated the extra legal means being used now. It is a reason to be very pessimistic.


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Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 25 Sep 2021, 4:57 am, edited 3 times in total.

Sweetleaf
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25 Sep 2021, 4:19 am

Plus the environmental crisis, that makes it a double whammy.


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aghogday
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25 Sep 2021, 8:25 am



i Wrote This Poem About America's
Constitutional Crisis This Morning;

Actually It Has A Much Greater
Impact When i Read it As It's

Easy For me to Sound
Like James Earl Jones

Or Darth Vader

IF Necessary...

We Have 40 Times
More The Death Rate From
COVID-19 Than Australia, China,
Hong Kong, Korea, New Zealand
And Taiwan. We Have
4 Percent of The
World’s Population,
And Use 40
Percent of The
Global Human
Resources; Yes,
There Appears
To Be A Predictable
Equation Now For A
National “Pagan Religion
Of Selfish Deadly Greed”;
Yes Greg That Holds Hands
Binding
And Yes
Bonding
Together
Over The
Sanctity
Of Not
Breathing
Life; Yes, We
Are No Longer
“The Good Guy’s
Country” And

It Doesn’t
Appear, Since
We Slaughtered
Millions Of Native
Americans; And
Enslaved Millions
Of Humans; And
Worshipped
Money
More
Than
Life Now;
Refusing
Women
Voting
Rights Then;
And Refusing
Civil Rights
Based on
Religious
Ideology
With Yes,
Over 100,000
Innocent Muslim
Brown Folks And
Others Killed in
Yes, Planned
Unwarranted
Wars That

We Were
Ever Really
Any
Nation
Under Any
God Called Love.

Oh, How the
Mighty in
Selfish

Greed

Rise…

‘London
Bridges
Falling

Down,

My Fair’
Country
Is Slowly
Suffocating

As The Lady
Standing In
The Harbor’s

Flame Of
The Brave
And Free,

Life,
Liberty,
And Justice
For All Has

Gone

Out,

In The

Pursuit
Of Callous
Selfish Greed,

With Trump
Replacing
Lady
Liberty

As “Their
New Messiah”

Of This
Deadly
Religious

Cult

That

Worships
Death More
Than The
Sanctity

Of

Breathing Life…

The Religion,
The Cult of
Ignoricism…

The Oldest
Deadliest
Religion,
Responsible
For The Most
Harming, Raping
Maiming, Killing…

The Religion
Ignorant of
AgApe Love

For All Of
Nature in
Balance…

What’s
Missing
Most

Now,

Inhaling
Peace Exhaling
Love For All,

A Real
Religion
With A

HeART
Beat

For All…
This Breath
This, Gift of

Life
Now For Real.



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DW_a_mom
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25 Sep 2021, 11:42 pm

A political historian I like to follow has been sounding alarm bells for a while. The problem has been just how little us little folks can do about it.


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26 Sep 2021, 10:25 am

Politicians can't solve our problem.

Americans are insanely rich compared to billions of people elsewhere.

It has to happen, Americans have to become insanely poorer.

So, we should expect more Trumps who promise to return us to better times.


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26 Sep 2021, 3:52 pm

Trump HAS to come clean about (not the rest of his million lies, but )the one big lie. He must act like a conventional politician, and admit defeat, and congradulate Biden for winning. The lie threatens democracy itself- for many obvious reasons, but among them is that the chief has to set an example (like a parent) to his followers and show respect for democracy itsself. After doing the usual above thing THEN he can brag all that he wants about getting more votes than any previous defeated candidate in history, and about how we will do better next time in the next election.



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27 Sep 2021, 7:19 pm

There is no solution but all out war now. It's over. Purged all the s**theads from my life.



funeralxempire
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27 Sep 2021, 7:39 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Trump HAS to come clean about (not the rest of his million lies, but )the one big lie. He must act like a conventional politician, and admit defeat, and congradulate Biden for winning. The lie threatens democracy itself- for many obvious reasons, but among them is that the chief has to set an example (like a parent) to his followers and show respect for democracy itsself. After doing the usual above thing THEN he can brag all that he wants about getting more votes than any previous defeated candidate in history, and about how we will do better next time in the next election.


But his base doesn't want a democracy. They want a dictatorship that protects their feelings.


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03 Oct 2021, 8:37 am

Why Republicans Are Still Recounting Votes

Quote:
Crises, at least of the American variety, sometimes announce themselves long before the fact, like a save-the-date notice for a future cataclysm. The decade before the Civil War was so rife with talk about potential conflict over slavery that the shots fired at Fort Sumter seemed almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Prior to the 2008 housing crisis, several analysts recognized that market conditions could potentially culminate in a catastrophic crash. For many years, scientists have sounded alarms about rising temperatures and emerging viruses. The common theme in these warnings is our collective unwillingness to address them beforehand. At present, this appears to be the situation regarding American democracy.

Late last month, forty-six weeks after voting in the 2020 Presidential election had concluded, Republicans in the Arizona State Senate unveiled the results of a so-called audit of more than two million ballots cast in Maricopa County. The recount, which they had commissioned from the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas, determined that President Joe Biden had not only won the county but had done so by three hundred and sixty more votes than was previously known. Both Democratic and Republican officials in Maricopa County had denounced the recount, fearing that it would be used to cast further doubt on the most thoroughly scrutinized and legitimate election in recent history.

A more subtle mind than Trump’s would see the futility of having a questionable firm undertake an unnecessary recount only to offer findings that are counter to his immediate interests. But the point of the exercise, and of others like it taking place across the country, is not so much to delegitimize the past election as it is to normalize specious reviews of future ones—including, perhaps, a 2024 race in which Trump’s name is on the ballot.

Trump’s defeat, by more than seven million votes, was taken to be a sign that the most anti-democratic forces he represented would also be vanquished. The failed January 6th insurrection, which he encouraged and which sent his own Vice-President scrambling to escape a mob threatening to lynch him, seemed a fitting epitaph for his Presidency, and for the malice and the chaos that it engendered. His own incompetence had proved a great asset to American democracy. Since his loss, however, more efficient actors have stepped up to do his bidding.

After Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, refused to throw the Georgia vote in Trump’s favor, the G.O.P.-controlled state legislature passed a bill diminishing the authority of his office, and giving itself greater control over the way elections are administered. The legislature now has the power to, among other things, challenge election officials. Bills that restrict voting access have been passed in at least seventeen other states this year. Meanwhile, Republicans in Wisconsin and in Pennsylvania have initiated investigations along the lines of the Arizona recount—representatives from both states paid visits to Maricopa County. (Similar efforts in Georgia and in Michigan resulted in no changes to the election outcomes.) Most bizarrely, the Texas secretary of state’s office announced that it will conduct a review of the 2020 results in Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Collin counties, even though Trump carried the state by more than six hundred thousand votes.

We may yet avert a full-fledged constitutional crisis, but, should one arrive, we can’t say we never saw it coming.


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