WatDabney @ WatDabney @sopuli.xyz

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2 yr. ago

Well... I guess this, as all cases involving Trump now seem to, is going to hinge on whether this is a court that still follows the rule of law, or one of the seemingly growing number that follow the rule of demagoguery, shallow self-interest and corruption.

I would say that he's entirely and completely correct.

And I would also say that that doesn't change the facts on the ground - if Trump wins, democracy is dead. He and his backers and his coattail-riders will enact the plutocratic/christofascist autocracy of their dreams, and many, many Americans will die and the survivors, outside of the ruling elite, will be reduced to peasants and cannon fodder.

If Harris (or whoever the DNC saddles us with in an 11th hour switcheroo) wins, we at least have some chance, however small, of saving this country. Maybe.

Maybe is a helluva lot better than no fucking way.

This is what I was waiting for.

Faced with a black/asian woman, the Republicans just aren't going to be able to help themselves - their hateful bigotry is going to keep rearing its ugly head.

The key moment is going to be when Candidate Lardbucket himself lets some of his own racism and misogyny fall out of his festering gob. That's going to be glorious.

Keep going - you're doing great.

Every time the Republicans say the quiet part out loud, we move that much closer to the day when that walking drain clog in a suit gets his flabby ass handed to him at the polls.

I'd never considered this before, but I think you're 100% correct - that it is something that's notably important to them, and something that they should be denied. And not just that they should be denied that privilege because it's a satisfying bit of vengeance, but because they don't deserve it.

Yeah... the more I think about it, the more certain I become.

I would go so far as to say that it's vital that Biden handles court reform, because it has to be done before the election.

We can already be sure that Trump and his backers are planning legal challenges on whatever grounds might vaguely appear to be something resembling legitimate in the event that he loses, and we can also be sure that at least Thomas and Alito will rule in their favor, no matter how ludicrous their arguments might be, simply because they're entirely and completely compromised. They've already demonstrated that law is irrelevant - that they serve demagoguery, shallow self-interest, bigotry and corruption. And given the chance, they WILL do their parts to destroy democracy in the US.

We can't afford to give them the chance.

And that could be Biden's legacy - the president who led the efforts that saved America from a fascist coup.

I've seen no evidence that they are.

What little organic commentary I've seen has been cautiously optimistic at worst.

The barrage of anti-Harris stuff that all started appearing at essentially the same time reeks of astroturf.

Yes

Who cares if the people know the system is corrupt if there’s nothing they can do about it.

Because for the moment, there's not "nothing they can do about it."

Most notably, the dictatorial power they established for Trump's benefit is not yet in Trump's hands - it's in Biden's. And particularly in light of the fact that he's withdrawing from the race, he's entirely free to do whatever he pleases. Like, for instance, haveTrump and every single other person who's a part of this planned coup executed. Or, for instance, pardon any and all private citizens who might take it upon themselves to do the same.

The fascists aren't going to be safe until that power is in their hands. And that won't be until after the election.

The strategy you’ve outlined relies too heavily on their winning the election fairly.

Not at all

The only difference I see between him winning fairly and him losing is whether the act that will mark the moment at which the autocrats fully and publicly play their hand is the attempt to get him into office in spite of his loss or whatever they put the highest priority on after his win.

In either event, the time for them to play their hand is later - not now.

I actually hope that you're right, because that would mean that the cabal that intends to overthrow democracy in the US is much more stupid than I had thought.

In the first place, the whole idea that a candidate might be prohibited from dropping out and/or that the party would in that event be prohibited from choosing a replacement is farcical on its face. Beyond that, the SC explicitly ruled after the 2016 race that the DNC is essentially entirely free to do whatever the fuck they want. Additionally, they recently ruled regarding Trump's removal from ballots that states are not free to do whatever the fuck they want.

What that means is that in order to rule in such a way as to deny a replacement would reveal the complete and utter corruption of the system almost four months before the election, which would be an exceedingly stupid thing to do.

The far better strategy would be to just bide their time, let the democrats do whatever they choose to do, then implement the coup after the election (and preferably as close to the inauguration as possible) so they can accomplish it all at once, then hide behind the president's newly granted dictatorial powers.

I don't think Manchin has ever, in his entire life, actually done something "with a heavy heart," since that would require a conscience.

It's not a coincidence that I call the government this coup is clearly intended to establish a "plutocratic/christofascist autocracy."

I have no doubt that many in the Heritage Foundation are sincere in their christofascism, but I also have no doubt that the corporations and billionaires who are bankrolling the whole thing (not just the HF, but Trump, the corrupt supreme court, the complicit media and so on) care little to nothing about all of that. They understand both the popular appeal of religious fundamentalism and the avenues of control it provides, but their goal is much simpler - to gain as much authority as possible so that they'll be free to rob and plunder without the risk of facing an empowered and angry electorate.

The christofascists are definitely a threat, but in the wider scheme of things, they're just tools.

I know it's a tired cliche, but I wish I had more upvotes to give you.

I didn't want to go into any details, partly because I was counting on people who had gone through the same thing to just get it, but mostly because it would take at least a couple of paragraphs to even scratch the surface of the whole complex issue, and that wasn't directly relevant at the time.

And you nailed it.

I clearly remember - the worst part of the whole ordeal wasn't the times when he refused to face the fact that his faculties had diminished to the point that he could no longer drive safely - that was just frustrating. The worst part was the look of fear and dejection he'd get when he'd let down his guard enough to actually face that fact - those times when I could see that he fully understood and really agreed, and it crushed him.

So... yeah.

He opened his mouth and words came out. Some number of them were falsehoods, inevitably.

At this point, my working theory is that a crucial aspect ofTrump is that he actually has little to no understanding of the distinction between truth and falsehood.

It's not really that he "lies," since that's a volitional act - it implies a conscious awareness of the truth and a conscious decision to claim something else. Rather it's that he simply says whatever he thinks will serve his purposes at the moment, and that it's not even that he doesn't value the truth when he does, but that the whole idea of truth just doesn't even enter into it. As if he genuinely doesn't even grasp the concept.

That explains an aspect of Trump I've never understood - he's obviously extremely charismatic and convincing - people want to believe what he says. That stands in sharp contrast to the fact that, personally, he's some grotesque combination of cartoonish and repulsive. He's really, no matter how you look at him, foul on a very personal and immediate level - a gross, pale, flabby, oily, overly made up lump who looks (and notoriously smells) like what you'd get if a life-size drain clog got up and started walking around.

So how is he so charismatic?

I think it's because no matter what he says or to whom, he's entirely 100% sincere. In spite of knowing full well that he lies constantly, people, when talking to him, just find themselves believing everything he says, because he radiates sincerity. He doesn't exhibit even the slightest trace of even the subtlest of hints that he's not telling the truth because his brain isn't even able to make that distinction. The entire mechanism by which humans recognize and distinguish between truth and falsehood, is, in his brain, so broken that it effectively doesn't exist at all. So it's not even that he projects unwarranted sincerity alongside his falsehoods, but that he projects the exact same sincerity that anyone else could only entirely effectively attach to what they deeply believed to be completely true to literally every single thing that falls out of his mouth, and not consciously or deliberately, but simply because his brain is broken in such a way that his sincere belief in whatever is falling out of his mouth at the moment is entirely divorced from its truth value.

I know it's sort of trite, but every time I see one of these stories, it reminds me of how difficult it was to convince my dad to stop driving.

I'm an American, so yes - in a heartbeat.

Broadly, I wouldnt much care where it was, just so long as it was somewhere that was not being actively transfomed into a plutocratic/christofascist autocracy.

And in fact, there's virtually nothing that I want more at this point in time than to get the hell out while I can. I fully expect that if I don't, I'm going to end up in prison or dead, just like so many other vocal dissidents under so many other authoritarian regimes.

It (Israel) submitted written comments, saying that the questions put to the court were prejudiced and “fail to... acknowledge Israel-Palestinian agreements to negotiate issues, including “the permanent status of the territory, security arrangements, settlements, and borders”.

Imagine how brazenly dishonest one would have to be to actually, unironically try to condemn an international body for supposedly "fail(ing) to acknowledge Israel-Palestinian agreements to negotiate issues" when the specific matter at hand is ones ongoing policy of coming onto land that's clearly desgnated as Palestinian territory, throwing the residents off (and killing them if they dare to resist), then building an Israeli-only settlement on the Palestinan land you've just forcibly occupied.

Holy shit.

I'm instantly reminded of Nietzsche's "when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Of course they did.

At this point, one can very easily predict how the Supreme Court will rule simply by determining which ruling will benefit the wealthy, conservatives, whites, christians and/or whoever's bribed them and which ruling will benefit the common people, the poor and/or minorities. They WILL, in all cases, choose the former, then conjure up some specious justification for it.

The rule of law is dead. Welcome to the rule of demagoguery, shallow self-interest, bigotry and corruption.

Oh wow, I really riled you up.

Presuming, for the moment, that this laughable, trite and terribly cliched rejoinder is in any way true, how would it be relevant to anything?

Never mind though - that was a rhetorical question. I know, and I suspect you do as well, that it's not. It's just a casual, and at this point entirely predictable, bit of disparagement tossed out to give yourself what you erroneously believe to be an edge.

the real problem is the idiots who are paying.

I mean, I think that this is contentious enough to be worth picking apart.

Feel free. I'm more than willing to explain in as much detail as you want exactly why it is that I think that people who pay extra for early access to games are "idiots."

(Just, by the bye, as I think that people who don't wear seat belts, tahe the guards off their table saws or don't get covid vaccines are "idiots.")

I can’t imagine calling someone an idiot unless I thought they kind of deserved what was coming to them.

Which is exactly what I do in fact think.

It’s this schadenfreude you seem to feel that I take issue with.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

I don't feel any sort of pleasure or sense of fulfillment at their idiocy - I simply note it.

I’m especially curious about that one.

Oh, that would be this, actually:

demonstrates more contempt for one’s fellow man than decreeing that they shouldn’t even be allowed to make their own choices.

You are, for some reason, arguing against the concept of rules. I never asked you to do that.

In response to my statement that:

any consumers who, in such a situation, do not say no to a bad deal have nobody to blame but themselves

you wrote:

Do you suppose that choosing not to wear a seatbelt, a very bad deal, should be left entirely up to individuals, um, “stupid” enough to take it?"

Clearly, with that, you established that the point you wished to dispute was whether or not "choosing... a very bad deal should be left entirely up to individuals." That was the exact point of contention you stipulated.

So this:

You are, for some reason, arguing against the concept of rules. I never asked you to do that

is blatant bullshit. In point of fact, with the example above, that's the specific focus you introduced. Curiously, you said nothing at all about the "contentious" phrasing of my original post or my supposed "schadenfreude." That only came along now, in this desperate bit of backing and filling in which you're vainly engaged. Rather, your immediate and exclusive focus was on whether or not "choosing... a very bad deal should be left entirely up to individuals." The clear, and in fact only, alternative to that is that it should not be left up to individuals, so that's the position you've taken, and the position in support of which I'm still waiting for you to provide an argument.

Now - if that's truly not what you intended to say or imply, that would be another matter. And in fact, in any other situation, I'd be willing to simply grant that that wasn't your intent and amend my responses accordingly. We could simply cooperate to find the exact point of our disagreement and focus on that (and could both enjoy this exchange much more).

But you blew that chance a long time ago.

So that was in fact the position you took, whether intentionally or not. And I'm still waiting for an argument in support of it.