In honor of Donald Trump's latest indictment, I want to remind everyone of something. Although Vice President Mike Pence declined to accept Trump's fake slates of electors when Congress met to certify the presidential vote on January 6, the same wasn't true of Republicans in general. A total of 59% of House Republicans supported objections to the count in Arizona and 68% did so in Pennsylvania.¹
The Electoral Count Act, passed last year, will stop this kind of stuff in the future. But 96% of House Republicans voted against it.
Bottom line: It's not just Trump. We have an entire political party that went along with the coup attempt. There were just enough non-corrupt Republicans to stop it, but it was a close run thing.
¹The numbers were much lower among Republican senators. I don't know why.
By now their numbers will probably be even higher, at least in the house. Will any of of house Republicans dare to vote against Trump?
It seems obvious to me why senators would be less willing to ride the Trump train. Representatives generally represent very safe seats where their only worry is getting primaried from the right. Senators have to appeal state-wide, which in most states means that they want to avoid being seen as too extreme.
Good point.
Republicans can gerrymander blue urban areas out of the House, but statewide they have an impact.
They keep claiming Sleepy Joe was able to commit electoral fraud in numerous states but just for President, not down ballot lol
Right. Get Joe just enough votes in GA but then run the risk of a senate run off? Leave Ron Johnson in the Senate when polls showed him within the margine of error? Why not push him out?
Its just so stupid.
All true. The constitution doesn’t really provide a satisfactory remedy for when 51% of the country needs to protect the republic from the 49% who are rooting on the arrival of tyranny.
It’s more like 35% rooting on tyranny, with the rest of us rendered electorally impotent by the biases of gerrymandered house seats, overrepresentation of small states in the senate and the mess that is the Electoral College. Trump’s support has rarely exceeded about a third of the country’s voting age population… but those voters are efficiently distributed across the nation.
Given the scale of Trump's corruption, intended corruption and promotion of corruption, and the degree of criminality in every other part of the Republican party, it's time that we as a society begin acting against
soft on crime conservatives.
This article speaks directly to the topic of the post,
Neuroimaging study provides insight into misinformation sharing among politically devoted conservatives,
https://nordot.app/1058339543607787527?c=592622757532812385
It's not that people who are attracted to far right ideologies aren't aware of the harm those ideologies cause, which may seem self-evident to others, but that those who are attracted to it are anti-aware of that harm.
To be aware of the harm of far right ideology requires an engagement with and interest in history and culture and society, an interest in the context of the circumstances we live in, but that complexity causes far right supporters enormous anxiety and confusion so they wall it off. They react against the idea of context and focus on the closest thing in front of them, mostly themselves. Malicious characters like Donald Trump exploit this condition and validate it, captivating attention because they're able to focus that state of anti-awareness shared among their audience on themselves as the answer to everything they've walled off.
What they're looking for is exactly the same as religion, it's an aesthetic that comforts and protects them and keeps danger at a great distance, by which the world is explicable. The aesthetic becomes a religion when it survives the person who inspired it.
When a dangerous character who can exploit the anti-awareness of social conservatives is successful at it what he's doing is fundamentally projecting a state of comforted, protected infantility where blind self-centeredness, and gleeful vindictiveness, are the ideal state.
Who has ever done that better than Donald Trump? It's how they relate to him, he's their perfect self.
What to do about that?
Social approbation works, but it has to happen in person. They need to be around people they can trust who have significant alternate views.
Absent that jailing criminals who are in politics will eventually sink in --if Democrats actually run on the topic and run against the existence of the Republican party, a thing who's entire existence is to be an instrument of deception for the purpose of keeping corruption legal.
It's certainly a target rich environment if Democrats would stop listening to their 'critics' and campaigning like an actuarial table.
On social approbation, must be in person and you can't be aggressive about it. They have to make up their own mind.
My very conservative cousin has recently turned completely around on Donald Trump. I never talked to him about it, or really politics at all, but that I'm not very conservative must be fairly obvious. I think it has been my presence that allowed him an angle to come toward the topic in a comfortable, non-confrontational way.
If you're arguing with somebody about who they are you will get nowhere.
When I was a little boy, Johm Kennedy was elected President, and us Catholics, especially the Irish ones, were ecstatic. His picture was up behind the till in every small store in Dorchester. The nuns who taught me were over the moon.
One of our own finally had made it. We had arrived.
Trump is like that, except for assholes.
"I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
- Noam Chomsky
The reason the Republican party is in the tank for Trump is because they're the party of the Oligarchs. If were not but for a few thousand (extremely wealthy) people financing the Right Candidates, they wouldn't have jumped the shark the way they did.
The oligarchs may have created "the base", but I think they've lost control of the monster they created. I'm quite certain that the oligarchs would rather have a Romney than a Trump, but the base doesn't agree.
Yes. Of course. That is the inevitable course of events, is it not? Historically speaking, that is. Oligarchs will always, without fail, eventually start using their own product. But not before they've done a lot of killing, alas.
Eventually, this republican (representative democracy) experiment may come to an end. It is frustratingly slow, relies on norms over codification, is tied to capitalism which promotes its self-interests (of profit) over all else, and is leading us back to hierarchies of kings, castes, and oligarchies.
If technologists get their way, perhaps we'll be headed towards a Libertarian Socialism paradigm.
Whose symbol will be a square circle.
Touche.
Kevin loves a good intellectual theory. So how about this request:
The closest actual thing to today is McCarthyism. You can't use the rise of the Nazi party as that only ended through a world war, which isn't happening.
No, this whole Trump as "uber-don't-tell-me-what-the-F-to-do" man (which he absolutely is) and therefore only Trump can lead the fight against the libs who are hell-bent on telling everybody what to do is a world view. It seem the same to me as the world view that there is a Commie under every rug or around every office.
I mean, when you look back on it, of all things, why have Congressional hearings on whether there are Commies in the entertainment industry? What power did studios have anyway?
My point is, it eventually wanted. I read that the fall of McCarthy himself was going against the military, but I don't think these days we have a group as to which Trump insulting them would be a bridge too far, he's already insulted like 60% of the U.S. population.
So how does this end? Trump dies or goes senile and then boredom?
How did we go from commie blacklists to the 60's?
I don't want to say Trumpism is a religion because then we are all doomed with this for decades at least. Backing off from a religion takes ........ugh, I don't like to think how long it takes.
So, what you're saying is that the new "Oppenheimer" movie is particularly well timed? With its vicious and unfair congressional "hearings", badgeriing, spinning phantoms into major crimes, bureaucrats driven by insane desires for vengeance?
All good points. We have learned about the McCarthy anti-red frenzy of the 1950s, but less about any Democratic pushback. But today, we actually HAVE Democratic pushback, and the courts are starting to weigh in on the side of the law and constitution. Yay!
The trouble is, how slow the wheels of justice grind. We could have The Defendent in the White House in a year plus, out on appeal at worst, and in total control of the government and justice system.
Was McCarthy deified the way Trump is? I hadn't thought so, but I'm genuinely curious.
I was not around then but I would agree that probably McCarthy did not have the same personal following.
However, anti communism was just as broad as Trumpism is today (maybe more so), yet it eventually waned.
McCarthyism might have been broader, when you think about it, very very few could or did go on record against it.
But it never threaten to undermine democracy in the US. That is the difference between Trump and anybody else.
I agree it is not apples to apples. When you have an actual, not made up, cold war, and when you have an actual conviction of U.S. people who passed some nuclear info to the Soviets, its different.
But nevertheless sometime between 1960 and 1990 the wartime elimination of rights waned. I mean, if you ask someone who was blacklisted in the 1950s I think they might feel that democracy was in fact undermined.
But it is not the same in many ways.
"...just enough non-corrupt Republicans to stop it..."
"Non-corrupt" is an unverifiable value judgment. Their nerve failed; that is the good news. If we knew why, that might be either good news or bad; but we do not know why. (Their own word could certainly not be taken.)
It is not obvious that "their nerve failed". Most of house Republicans probably were happy to get rid of him, but were afraid of the response they will get from his supporters if they vote against him.
Probably still true for significant part of them.
I recall the many times Democrats voted for something they knew was right, knowing they would lose their seats in the next election, but did it anyway. The current crop of Republicans? Not so much.
(Let's give a shout out to Rusty Bowers, however. A modern "profile in courage.")
I'll see you and raise the Civil Rights Act of '64.
If "corrupt" is defined by deeds, not by thoughts, it's eminently possible to evaluate corruptness. Whether a politician refuses bribes out of personal conviction or because he's afraid of being thrown in jail doesn't matter a great deal; if he doesn't take bribes he's not, in that sense, corrupt.
What if they do a Ukraine where they take the money but then do what they want anyway?
I think they wanted a "Coup Light". Something would happen on television for a day or two and then Trump would get four more years--at least.
The ones who actually were willing to fight in the streets and the courts? Far fewer. Like the ones in "Seven Days In May". As soon as shit gets real, nearly all of them turn chicken.
Wonder if "extradition treaties" is peaking on Google?
"The numbers were much lower among Republican senators. I don't know why."
They aren't up for reelection every 2 years.
"There were just enough non-corrupt Republicans to stop it"
well, not corrupt enough at least.
Richard Nixon is smiling in his grave. He’s no longer the most corrupt US president in history.
Meatball Ron,
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2023-08-02/nh-republicans-size-up-desantis-as-he-offers-harsh-rhetoric-in-primary-campaign
If he were a real man he'd gouge out their eyes and skull fuck them, but no we get this pansy talk.
Because actual republican voters are mostly traitors. Compare the number of safe red seats to coup supporters by your metric and it's comparable though some red seaters voted as Americans. Republican Senators in general face less pressure from the base and more from the electorate.
Worst insurrectionists EVER .. they forgot to bring even one firearm! And as for questioning election results, https://gop.com/video/12-minutes-of-democrats-denying-election-results/. yeah the RNC put out the video, but the video is not fake.
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