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The GOP has lost it

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17 minutes ago, Del Scorcho said:

 

i've noodled on that a lot lately.  i grew up hearing it as folk prophecy and the people who seemed to be really animated by the idea of it were attracted to ideas, candidates, and... ahem...  working ideas that involve cooperation of a small cadre of powerful people who operate behind the scenes...  (yes that ought to be neutral enough but still descriptive...) that i found ... (oh boy i'm struggling here) unpalatable.

and now that it appears as though there's a real constitutional threat to legitimate elections and transition of power, probably the most american thing to have been invented in the history of government, what do we hear? certainly not a 'voice of gladness...'

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2 hours ago, 415hawaiiboy said:

It’s my opinion.  I don’t know everything about Turkey’s politics in the past 15 years but here’s what I know.  
 

- Erdogan won a very narrow majority (using the rural/urban political divide, and religious political bloc and ultra nationalism) to turn Turkey from mostly a secular leaning country to an Islamic Republic.  

- He used the term Deep State a lot and worked to dismantle the secular checks on power.  Starting with the Military which was a bastion of secularism since the days of Ataturk.  Later he purged the judiciary and government.  Eliminating checks on power. This happened over the course of 10 years.  I could have gone to Turkey in 2008 for a friend’s wedding and would have experienced something very different than in 2018.

- He was re-elected narrowly, and continued the reforms.  Changed the constitution.  Probably leader for life.  It was a slowish process.  Would have taken more than 4 years to do this; meaning, my point is a first term would be just the start and a second term would be a further acceleration (that we have not seen yet because of a pivotal November - a November to Remember).
 

That’s the reason for the analogy.  Anything in particular you disagree with?

Yeah, purged the judiciary for one. Trump’s legal embarrassments these past two weeks show he’s done a super job for a dictator there. Maybe those federalist society guys he’s been pumping through aren’t the dictator allowing types.

Not that that really matters. Authoritarian takeovers don’t happen in the law courts. Erdogan survived a failed coup. One with guns and fighter pilots, not sweaty, old, pathetic Giuliani ranting at a press conference.

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We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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3 minutes ago, Bob said:

Oh, well, yeah, that's not cool. I've turned off the news lately.. If electors from a state that voted for Biden were to vote Trump then that would break our democracy. BUT there's like a 0% chance of that happening.

Trump has invited the Michigan state republican party leaders to the white house today to try to convince them to do exactly this. But it's Ok to continue to support the man/party that is trying to do this as long as it is unsuccessful. The fact he is attempting this doesn't matter? 

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1 minute ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

Yeah, purged the judiciary for one. Trump’s legal embarrassments these past two weeks show he’s done a super job for a dictator there. Maybe those federalist society guys he’s been pumping through aren’t the dictator allowing types.

Not that that really matters. Authoritarian takeovers don’t happen in the law courts. Erdogan survived a failed coup. One with guns and fighter pilots, not sweaty, old, pathetic Giuliani ranting at a press conference.

I think inviting Michigan lawmakers to the WH in an attempt to subvert the election is deeply concerning, is it not?

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14 minutes ago, SalinasSpartan said:

Pretty good one. And it’s less then 2 hours long too, which is nice. 

Must be relatively old now, since filmmakers can't seem to make a movie under three hours anymore. Not great for a man of my limited attention span. 

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17 minutes ago, Rofl_copter_dos said:

the thing is that trump as a motivating force for GOP voters won't go away until he's either dead or so invalid he can't participate in the electoral process in some fashion so until that happens every GOP elected official who isn't a full on fever swamp dweller basically has to dance to his every whim.  But most congressional republicans are losers who can barely carry a room and every time they try and ape him it just falls flat.

You don't think Matt Gaetz is the charismatic leader that I fear can pull this off? Just kidding. He's a bigger dope than Trump.

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1 hour ago, NVGiant said:

I think @bornontheblueshould be removed from the list. He’s been pretty on point in saying this whole effort is nutty.

It is indeed batshit crazy. He has had two weeks to come forth with evidence of fraud and all we have is Hugo Chavez. 

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1 hour ago, NVGiant said:

The Nazis used lawyers and voters to gain power. (And before I get piled on, I’m not saying that would easily happen here, nor am I saying Trump is Hitler. Just pointing to historical fact.)

The Nazis were elected, but used a criminal, mafia like, arm that immediately became a secret police force to gain power. They used a Presidential decree to suspend rights, not lawyers, and their thugs to quickly take advantage by persecuting the opposition.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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1 minute ago, bornontheblue said:

It is indeed batshit crazy. He has had two weeks to come forth with evidence of fraud and all we have is Hugo Chavez. 

Definitely. You've been on point more than me, and I was never worried until that certification fiasco in Wayne County earlier this week.

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10 minutes ago, NVGiant said:

Must be relatively old now, since filmmakers can't seem to make a movie under three hours anymore. Not great for a man of my limited attention span. 

Well put it this way, it’s old enough that Tom Hiddleston (guy that plays Loki in the MCU) has a very small role in the beginning of the movie that has like one line. 

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16 minutes ago, Del Scorcho said:

I think inviting Michigan lawmakers to the WH in an attempt to subvert the election is deeply concerning, is it not?

NO!!! Because the entire theory is batshit stupid. It’s worse than the underpants gnomes plot, at least they only had one questionable step between hatching the plan and profit.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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8 minutes ago, bornontheblue said:

It is indeed batshit crazy. He has had two weeks to come forth with evidence of fraud and all we have is Hugo Chavez. 

So it’s true, dead people are impacting the election :hmmm:

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thelawlorfaithful, on 31 Dec 2012 - 04:01 AM, said:One of the rules I live by: never underestimate a man in a dandy looking sweater

 

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54 minutes ago, NVGiant said:

Agree. Service of ego is the prime motivation for power for a guy like Trump, making them inseparable. But my point was that his constant need to fuel his ego overpowers any other thought. So his instinct is to deny any problem at all, rather than use that pandemic for a power grab.

You’re right, we saw the seeds of it with the feds cracking protestor’s heads. Also, we saw how intelligent people can go along, some lured by the desire for law and order. In regard to the pandemic, some compelled by the desire to save lives. (I’ll point to people like me for that.) But ultimately, dumb and lazy was our greatest safeguard in this case, which is alarming. That’s not institutions working. That’s luck.

 

I think luck is a lot of it. I do think it's fair to point out that there's still a good chance the institutions hold against a more competent authoritarian, especially since the competent authoritarian would very likely have less of a rabid following than Trump. And installation of a kind of authoritarian state in this system requires a large, rabid following and slavish devotion from that following in the electorate and at the federal, state and local levels of power. Trump was able to gin up the devotion much more than I thought he would, which is the most concerning part of this. How would the institutions hold up under those circumstances if the guy with the devoted following has more competence?

 But the luck part of all this is that his devotion was built on the thing that defines his political career more than his ego - the fact that he is an agent of chaos. And you know what's interesting... I've read some people who have suggested that one of the things that the populace has developed in the 21st century with all the ads and the media and the social media and the reality shows and all the simulacra is a weird, keen intuition for sensing authenticity. I know that sounds crazy, but people have collective bullshit detectors that are as sharp as ever. And his followers intuitively knew him to be authentic about two things - his promise to be fully devoted to the religious right as long as they were devoted to him, and his effectiveness at being an agent of chaos in Washington. And remember - that's really why he won. People wanted to "shake things up" because Washington wasn't "working for them" or whatever. People knew he had a nose for chaos, for divisiveness. They could smell it on him. No one in the GOP had anything like that before. 

Whether it's due to laziness or being stupid or whatever, that nose for chaos both makes him uniquely popular with disaffected white voters (and yes, despite very small inroads in some minority populations, it's white voters who are least impacted by chaos in the statehouses) and uniquely incapable of pursuing any real, comprehensive authoritarian agenda. Maggie Haberman has said over and over about him that people need to stop assuming there's ever any real strategy or plan... one of the main things that drives his actions is the fact that he likes to just throw something out there, do something kinda nuts, and just see what happens. See how it plays out. Watch the spectacle he creates. It's like stirring up an ant hill or a hornets nest and standing back to see what it looks like. I think that serves his ego in a lot of ways... creating a national spectacle is a power and an ego boost in and of itself.

So you're right that it has a lot to do with ego, but also with a particular kind of combination of ego and lack of patience or will or discipline or knowledge. Even when the road map is right in front of you. Use a national crisis, real or imagined, to consolidate power. Only after you've consolidated the power do you move on to the stage where you deny any problems or crises, as they would threaten your own power. You only have to read a few books to see that. And dude really hasn't read even a few books. But how many charismatic malevolent spirits are out there right now, looking at his failures, armed with the knowledge of how to do it right? That last question may be alarmist. But I dunno any more. 

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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28 minutes ago, AndroidAggie said:

i've noodled on that a lot lately.  i grew up hearing it as folk prophecy and the people who seemed to be really animated by the idea of it were attracted to ideas, candidates, and... ahem...  working ideas that involve cooperation of a small cadre of powerful people who operate behind the scenes...  (yes that ought to be neutral enough but still descriptive...) that i found ... (oh boy i'm struggling here) unpalatable.

and now that it appears as though there's a real constitutional threat to legitimate elections and transition of power, probably the most american thing to have been invented in the history of government, what do we hear? certainly not a 'voice of gladness...'

This sounds arousing, can you expound? 

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There are only two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch. 

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