You can see that Tom Nichols, a Never-Trump former Republican, is trying to make sense of Democrats. He thinks it’s absurd that Bernie Sanders said his first item in the White House would be to legalize marijuana. Tom doesn’t understand that big tents get messy. Diverse coalitions are not efficient. People in the big messy …
Long time and regular readers of this blog: Please forgive a bit of repetition. Some things need to be said more than once. LeiliHana asked: Yesterday I talked about why the criminal justice system is inadequate to deal with our current crisis. LeiliHana (and others on Twitter) are asking why we can’t remove the lawbreakers …
Claudia felt bewildered when she read yesterday’s reports on how Trump tried (again) to prevent people from learning that the Russians were helping his campaign. Yes, we have a lawbreaking president. But that is only part of the problem. The other part is that the lawbreaking president is being shielded by a major political party, …
In Nov, Fiona Hill testified that Russia was gearing up to attack the 2020 election. Last spring Robert Mueller testified that the Russians were interfering “as we sit here.” Today we learned that Russia is backing Trump’s re-election—and Trump was furious lawmakers were briefed about it. Just yesterday, Asha Rangappa, Alex Finley, and John Sipher …
Mar a Tacky asked: Indeed, cutting social security in an election year is counter-intuitive. The wealthy GOP oligarchs (and would-be oligarchs) hate social security because it helps get rid of income inequality and oligarchy requires income inequality. That’s why oligarchs create policies that harm their supporters. For more on that, see this post. For why …
Today, USA today reported that: When we say that the institutions are holding out, that’s what we mean. Oh, dear me. Federal judges have a lot of power. What I meant was that one of the democratic institutions, or safeguards, baked into the constitution system is that we have an independent judiciary. Federal judges are …
I’ve been informed by numerous people that it’s time for us all to panic: I’ve also been informed that I don’t know what I’m talking about because I have never lived under a dictatorship. (1) My husband’s family experienced the Pinochet dictatorship, so I have first hand accounts. (2) panic never helps. Panic didn’t get …
Judith asked: The reason Judith and others have lost perspective and feel at sea is because we’re in the grip of a nation being governed by crisis and spectacle. We can expect a dizzying round of crises and spectacles between now and November. If the Democrats and those opposed to Trump pull together, Trump will …
Alternate title: And the battle is never completely won. Tim asked: I explained that regime change they are tipping us toward is what Hungarian scholar Balint Magyar calls a “mafia state,” and linked to Monday’s post on mafia states . Born in Brooklyn then said: which is exactly right. The question is how much pain …
Someone posted this as a comment on one of my Twitter threads: Let’s take stock of where we are, and why we need to stay out of what-if rabbit holes. From Levitsky and Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die, 20th century dictators often came to power through military overthrows. Twenty first century autocrats use less …
