Trump is a symptomatic reaction to an Elitist power structure that looks down with total disdain on ordinary people. Trump is their way of saying F..U…
The effort to make January 6th the cause celeb for all that is wrong about American democracy only further highlights how disconnected the Elitist power establishment (the Deep State) is from any real concern over truly preserving democracy.
People can see the game is rigged and Trump’s their “man” for pointing it out. When he’s “gone” there will be someone else to take his place. Why? Because the game really is rigged.
If the Elitists were so concerned over preserving democracy, why has Hillary’s concocted “Russian Dossier” not raised any concerns? Or Hunter Biden’s laptop loaded with clear references to Joe Biden selling his political influence? Or Hillary’s rigging the democrat primary process against Bernie? Or why Trump’s request to post 20,000 National Guard troops outside the Capital on Jan 6th was turned down by Nancy Pelosi and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser? No Elitists want to address those questions because none of them help support the narrative….
The fact is that the rules for voting in 2020 were dramatically loosened — intentionally using COVID as the rational — all to make it far easier for democrats to ballot harvest and they did and it worked. Mark Elias lead a national effort to sue local election officials to force the rule changes. It was a deliberate strategy that worked. The result was the election of a guy who literally campaigned from his basement and won by absolutely the slimmest of margins.
If we’re going to “come together” as this article suggests we need to do, it means having to address a whole host of tough questions — and not just those concerning Trump and his supporters.
Coming together means coming together with mutual concern for the truth.
I’m not hopeful that will happen because this isn’t about “truth” — this is about political power and Elitists preserving it under the illusion of democracy…
I'm a liberal Democrat, never voted for Trump and never would. But even I am disgusted with this January 6 show trial. Trump was already impeached and acquitted for inciting the January 6 riot! How does this fact never seem to come up in the reporting on the committee?
Meanwhile the commission has revealed essentially nothing. If every politician who encouraged his supporters "to fight like hell' was guilty of some crime they would all be in jail. This author himself exhorts people to keep "fighting the good fight" two paragraphs later!
Congressional commissions, with their powers to subpoena, are supposed to research potential legislation, not act as unaccountable law enforcement agencies. The ghost of McCarthy looms large.
I do very much hope the Republican party moves on from Trump to someone I could consider voting for for even one second. His post-election scheming was absolutely inexcusable, among other things, if not illegal. But the 1/6 committee has generated no "momentum," it has been an embarrassing waste of time, just like the Russia collusion hoax before it.
I subscribe to several newsletters on Substack. Everyone of them that leans left has been stuck on Jan-6 articles for the last several months. Their focus on Jan-6 seems to coincide with the loss of their ability to successfully defend the accumulated performance and record of the Biden Democrats.
If Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had ever done anything remotely similar to inspiring a mob to try to intimidate Congress into overturning an election, I would not make excuses for it, I would not minimize it, I would not play what about the other guy. The fact that some of the most frequent commenters on this site are unwilling to do the same when it's their guy is, to put it mildly, not in keeping with what Persuasion was supposed to be about.
There is so much common sense when the author says, "But, frankly, unless they broke the law we should let the outer circle move on from the spectacle of MAGA in whatever sordid way they please." But there is a gentler and possibly a more helpful way to articulate it. I'd say they will eventually move on to something else, as most ordinary humans do after an obsession.
The non-persuadable won't or can't be persuaded. I lived for ten years in Oakland, California as a moderate nonpartisan, and after having worked in California politics for a quarter of a century, I was able to accept the blood-sport of local politics there because I knew that extremisms ultimately burn themselves out. The Occupy movement looked to a lot of us like it would never end; our freeways and bridges were "occupied," the public plaza downtown was occupied for weeks on end, and it was hard to see any logical end to the movement. Similarly, my friends in San Francisco across the bay could not imagine what horrors their off-the-charts progressivism would bring.
Neither the occupiers nor the San Francisco progressives ended logically, but they went about as fer as they could go as the song says, and then were brought back by the inevitable gravity of the central core. Neither city is anywhere near conservative, just as MAGA isn't progressive, but extremism will almost always and almost only exist on the extremes, and if its demands can't be presented as reasonable or logical on a broad scale, any victories will be temporary, and corrected in a more sensible direction.
Since you can't reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into, the only real solution has to be give the unreasonable passion time to cool. One of the worst parts of waiting right now is that too often one extremism simply replaces a former one, in what seems like an endless series.
But even in Oakland -- and in the modern Republican Party -- I see the center still holding. Having retired from politics, I can confirm what the Hidden Tribes report observed: the Exhausted Majority really does exist, it really is exhausted, and it really does have more votes than the polar margins do. Those votes are more broadly distributed throughout the population and not caring so much for the Daily Drama, they naturally attract less attention; and many of us don't want any.
But as the air comes out of Donald Trump, his audience, too, will disperse, just as the occupiers did, and the innumerable other movements from American history. And probably more rapidly, since our attention spans today are so much shorter. I suspect Mitch McConnell's waffling is little more than the patience of a party elder who recognizes that patience is his only tool. There will probably be more flare-ups in some states, and Judge Luttig's concerns about the 2024 election are my own. But from my perspective, that is only because too many states are putting into place election rules that will allow the remains of MAGA to cause mischief that could have nationwide implications in a 2024 vote count.
I trust the courts to sort that out -- unless, of course, the Democrats succeed in their current project to undermine the Supreme Court's credibility. I can only say that I hope that, too, is the kind of extremist fad that will fade away, and get replaced by something else.
From the article: “Never Trump” journalists like David French, David Frum, Sarah Longwell, and others who relentlessly hammer home the dangers and pathologies of the MAGA movement. "
Wasn't David Frum one of the major proponents for the Iraq War? I think people strolling in the Capitol on Jan 6 have received greater punishment than any of the people who pushed Iraq and the people who perpetrated the massive fraud called the Financial Crisis.
Hope we have hearing on those 2 events and Afghanistan.
Basically, just try to unite libertarian left- and right-wingers, individualists of all colours, and fight against collectivism, populism, nationalism through visionary and meaningful politics, including by involving people to cooperate via decentralised communities
"Red states across America are already preparing the ground for a constitutional crisis if the 2024 election is a close call" This is a common misconception. States where Trump loyalists are in control will declare Trump won their state, regardless of the outcome of the vote -- even if the result is not close at all.
What History Teaches Us About January 6th
Trump is a symptomatic reaction to an Elitist power structure that looks down with total disdain on ordinary people. Trump is their way of saying F..U…
The effort to make January 6th the cause celeb for all that is wrong about American democracy only further highlights how disconnected the Elitist power establishment (the Deep State) is from any real concern over truly preserving democracy.
People can see the game is rigged and Trump’s their “man” for pointing it out. When he’s “gone” there will be someone else to take his place. Why? Because the game really is rigged.
If the Elitists were so concerned over preserving democracy, why has Hillary’s concocted “Russian Dossier” not raised any concerns? Or Hunter Biden’s laptop loaded with clear references to Joe Biden selling his political influence? Or Hillary’s rigging the democrat primary process against Bernie? Or why Trump’s request to post 20,000 National Guard troops outside the Capital on Jan 6th was turned down by Nancy Pelosi and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser? No Elitists want to address those questions because none of them help support the narrative….
The fact is that the rules for voting in 2020 were dramatically loosened — intentionally using COVID as the rational — all to make it far easier for democrats to ballot harvest and they did and it worked. Mark Elias lead a national effort to sue local election officials to force the rule changes. It was a deliberate strategy that worked. The result was the election of a guy who literally campaigned from his basement and won by absolutely the slimmest of margins.
If we’re going to “come together” as this article suggests we need to do, it means having to address a whole host of tough questions — and not just those concerning Trump and his supporters.
Coming together means coming together with mutual concern for the truth.
I’m not hopeful that will happen because this isn’t about “truth” — this is about political power and Elitists preserving it under the illusion of democracy…
I'm a liberal Democrat, never voted for Trump and never would. But even I am disgusted with this January 6 show trial. Trump was already impeached and acquitted for inciting the January 6 riot! How does this fact never seem to come up in the reporting on the committee?
Meanwhile the commission has revealed essentially nothing. If every politician who encouraged his supporters "to fight like hell' was guilty of some crime they would all be in jail. This author himself exhorts people to keep "fighting the good fight" two paragraphs later!
Congressional commissions, with their powers to subpoena, are supposed to research potential legislation, not act as unaccountable law enforcement agencies. The ghost of McCarthy looms large.
I do very much hope the Republican party moves on from Trump to someone I could consider voting for for even one second. His post-election scheming was absolutely inexcusable, among other things, if not illegal. But the 1/6 committee has generated no "momentum," it has been an embarrassing waste of time, just like the Russia collusion hoax before it.
I subscribe to several newsletters on Substack. Everyone of them that leans left has been stuck on Jan-6 articles for the last several months. Their focus on Jan-6 seems to coincide with the loss of their ability to successfully defend the accumulated performance and record of the Biden Democrats.
Conversely, it is too late for liberals to live up to their best traditions -- and turn on Biden.
If Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had ever done anything remotely similar to inspiring a mob to try to intimidate Congress into overturning an election, I would not make excuses for it, I would not minimize it, I would not play what about the other guy. The fact that some of the most frequent commenters on this site are unwilling to do the same when it's their guy is, to put it mildly, not in keeping with what Persuasion was supposed to be about.
There is so much common sense when the author says, "But, frankly, unless they broke the law we should let the outer circle move on from the spectacle of MAGA in whatever sordid way they please." But there is a gentler and possibly a more helpful way to articulate it. I'd say they will eventually move on to something else, as most ordinary humans do after an obsession.
The non-persuadable won't or can't be persuaded. I lived for ten years in Oakland, California as a moderate nonpartisan, and after having worked in California politics for a quarter of a century, I was able to accept the blood-sport of local politics there because I knew that extremisms ultimately burn themselves out. The Occupy movement looked to a lot of us like it would never end; our freeways and bridges were "occupied," the public plaza downtown was occupied for weeks on end, and it was hard to see any logical end to the movement. Similarly, my friends in San Francisco across the bay could not imagine what horrors their off-the-charts progressivism would bring.
Neither the occupiers nor the San Francisco progressives ended logically, but they went about as fer as they could go as the song says, and then were brought back by the inevitable gravity of the central core. Neither city is anywhere near conservative, just as MAGA isn't progressive, but extremism will almost always and almost only exist on the extremes, and if its demands can't be presented as reasonable or logical on a broad scale, any victories will be temporary, and corrected in a more sensible direction.
Since you can't reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into, the only real solution has to be give the unreasonable passion time to cool. One of the worst parts of waiting right now is that too often one extremism simply replaces a former one, in what seems like an endless series.
But even in Oakland -- and in the modern Republican Party -- I see the center still holding. Having retired from politics, I can confirm what the Hidden Tribes report observed: the Exhausted Majority really does exist, it really is exhausted, and it really does have more votes than the polar margins do. Those votes are more broadly distributed throughout the population and not caring so much for the Daily Drama, they naturally attract less attention; and many of us don't want any.
But as the air comes out of Donald Trump, his audience, too, will disperse, just as the occupiers did, and the innumerable other movements from American history. And probably more rapidly, since our attention spans today are so much shorter. I suspect Mitch McConnell's waffling is little more than the patience of a party elder who recognizes that patience is his only tool. There will probably be more flare-ups in some states, and Judge Luttig's concerns about the 2024 election are my own. But from my perspective, that is only because too many states are putting into place election rules that will allow the remains of MAGA to cause mischief that could have nationwide implications in a 2024 vote count.
I trust the courts to sort that out -- unless, of course, the Democrats succeed in their current project to undermine the Supreme Court's credibility. I can only say that I hope that, too, is the kind of extremist fad that will fade away, and get replaced by something else.
From the article: “Never Trump” journalists like David French, David Frum, Sarah Longwell, and others who relentlessly hammer home the dangers and pathologies of the MAGA movement. "
Wasn't David Frum one of the major proponents for the Iraq War? I think people strolling in the Capitol on Jan 6 have received greater punishment than any of the people who pushed Iraq and the people who perpetrated the massive fraud called the Financial Crisis.
Hope we have hearing on those 2 events and Afghanistan.
Basically, just try to unite libertarian left- and right-wingers, individualists of all colours, and fight against collectivism, populism, nationalism through visionary and meaningful politics, including by involving people to cooperate via decentralised communities
"Red states across America are already preparing the ground for a constitutional crisis if the 2024 election is a close call" This is a common misconception. States where Trump loyalists are in control will declare Trump won their state, regardless of the outcome of the vote -- even if the result is not close at all.