The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Kraken »

Turns out that overthrowing an election is harder than one would think. Perhaps winning another will be easier.

Let's start with Florida Man goes to Iowa.
The latest Iowa Poll, published this week in The Des Moines Register, says Trump is more popular in the state after leaving office. Pollster J. Ann Selzer says Trump remains very popular with Republicans and has made recent gains with independents.
...
Bardwell says misinformation has taken hold in the GOP.

"You can't put the genie back in the bottle, in terms of once this accusation is unleashed," he said. "And once it's believed by a large percentage of the Republican base, there's kind of no going back at that point. Mainly because kind of the psychological dynamics of misinformation are such that at that point, people will just find and then rationalize the position that they already have."

Trump's lies about 2020 haven't dissuaded Iowa Republicans from wanting to appear with him.

That includes Iowans who are up for reelection next year. Both Grassley and Gov. Kim Reynolds are slated to speak ahead of him at Saturday night's rally.
The question isn't so much whether trump is going to run as when he's going to announce. Dems hope it will be before next November, because nothing motivates D turnout like trump in the headlines.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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I don't understand how people can be so fickle. How can Trump be gaining with independents? He's still the same horrible person that he always has been, and at least to me, things are much better under Biden, who while he hasn't been perfect, has certainly provided the sense of stability and rationality that I wanted, even if I don't agree with some of his policies. Of course this is the same country that voted in Obama and then voted in Trump, so maybe the electorate is just crazy and irrational.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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Aaaaaaaand.....racist.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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Grifman wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 2:42 pm I don't understand how people can be so fickle. How can Trump be gaining with independents? He's still the same horrible person that he always has been, and at least to me, things are much better under Biden, who while he hasn't been perfect, has certainly provided the sense of stability and rationality that I wanted, even if I don't agree with some of his policies. Of course this is the same country that voted in Obama and then voted in Trump, so maybe the electorate is just crazy and irrational.
Biden's approval rating is underwater as he seems to lurch from crisis to crisis while his agenda slips away. Why anyone would fall back into the arms of trump is beyond my understanding...I guess because he's the presumptive nominee.

It's possible that trump doesn't really plan to run -- that he's just going to tease for as long as possible to vacuum up money while forcing the other GOP scalawags to kiss his ring. He enjoys the spotlight and adulation of campaigning more than the grind of pretending to govern. His hotels are foundering and he recently fell off the Forbes 400 list, so campaign contributions have to look better than ever to him.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Pyperkub »

I still don't think Trump will survive the next three + years.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by gbasden »

Pyperkub wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 3:26 pm I still don't think Trump will survive the next three + years.
I certainly want that to be true. But it won't matter. If he's dead some other R with no shred of decency or morality will be the nominee and we will be right back where we started.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Alefroth »

Grifman wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 2:42 pm I don't understand how people can be so fickle. How can Trump be gaining with independents? He's still the same horrible person that he always has been, and at least to me, things are much better under Biden, who while he hasn't been perfect, has certainly provided the sense of stability and rationality that I wanted, even if I don't agree with some of his policies. Of course this is the same country that voted in Obama and then voted in Trump, so maybe the electorate is just crazy and irrational.
That's why I was pretty confident he wouldn't win re-election, barring shenanigans. He barely won in 2016 and I just couldn't see how he would have managed a net gain of supporters over the course of his term.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by malchior »

He won 2016 and lost 2020 in what essentially was an EC coin flip. In 2024, it very well might be the GOP wins the coin flip and ends democracy or they lose the coin flip and it is take 2 on using normal uncertainty to taint/steal the election and end our democracy. The old electoral math has broken down. It is far more uncertain and chaotic.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Grifman »

Jaymann wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 3:11 pm Aaaaaaaand.....racist.
Sorry, but that doesn’t explain the shift from Obama to Trump.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Jaymann »

Grifman wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 9:32 pm
Jaymann wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 3:11 pm Aaaaaaaand.....racist.
Sorry, but that doesn’t explain the shift from Obama to Trump.
Of course not everything, but the question posed is how is he gaining with independents.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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And we have tons of data showing that racism/nativism were key components. Economics too but the racism is dead story upon electing Obama was pretty short-lived. Trump was very much propelled to prominence specifically because he attacked Obama using race as a wedge issue.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Kraken »

Grifman wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 9:32 pm
Jaymann wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 3:11 pm Aaaaaaaand.....racist.
Sorry, but that doesn’t explain the shift from Obama to Trump.
While I'm sure that trump's racist dog whistles touched many who hated Obama, Barry wasn't on the ballot. One might invoke sexism instead. Trump's racism wasn't overt yet in '16, but his disdain for women was certainly front and center and the D candidate was a widely disliked woman who had to sell voters the first female president.

Trump's rise was about rejecting the status quo more than anything else, and 2016 turned out to be a choice between radical change and the status quo. Race and sex might be red herrings. Bernie Sanders was the only anti-Establishment candidate on the left (insofar as a US Senator and lifelong politician can be an outsider). Maybe he would've lost, too, but he would have been a better foil...and being a white male would not have hurt.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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I think Trump is all about racism. I'd bet that 99% of the people who vote for him are racist.
And unfortunately that's about 45% of America.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by malchior »

Kraken wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 10:05 pmWhile I'm sure that trump's racist dog whistles touched many who hated Obama, Barry wasn't on the ballot. One might invoke sexism instead. Trump's racism wasn't overt yet in '16, but his disdain for women was certainly front and center and the D candidate was a widely disliked woman who had to sell voters the first female president.
I don't know how you tell this story without birtherism. Trump was overtly racist since the 70s or 80s depending on how aligned you were with New York City. Still, 10 years ago now Trump really started pouring gasoline in the birther camp. Stone and Bannon cooked up "Build that Wall' in 2014 and he tried it out in Iowa in 2015. It was what made him 'too toxic' for the very serious people but actually made him a major competitor.
Trump's rise was about rejecting the status quo more than anything else, and 2016 turned out to be a choice between radical change and the status quo. Race and sex might be red herrings.
Was sexism in there? I think definitely. However, she had high unfavorables only slight better than Trump w/ independents. The Republicans had successfully made being a Clinton a mark of corruption and elitism for many years before 2016.
Bernie Sanders was the only anti-Establishment candidate on the left (insofar as a US Senator and lifelong politician can be an outsider). Maybe he would've lost, too, but he would have been a better foil...and being a white male would not have hurt.
The CW is that he definitely would have lost but they lost a lot of workers in key places who think that someone like Clinton was the typical elitist who looked down on them and didn't understand them. That was a key factor in the general election. Especially the economics and reality that deep inequality was part of Trump's rise. The interesting thing was that Bernie had better favorables/unfavorables than both of them in wide parts of the non-GOP electorate. I've said this a long time but the Democrats got tunnel visioned on Clinton and ignored all the risks and warning signs.

In any case, this gets to how I divide this puzzle up. You have to figure out how he got nominated and then how he won the general. For the former, Trump used racism and the outsider card to cleave the GOP -- enabled by a clown car nomination process. In the latter, he was able to leverage a limited form of that racism and populism to beat the odds. Sexism is mixed in there and its only significant because it was so close. Throw in an inexcusable decision by Comey that hit on the corruption notes and we had the effective fracture date for the end of American democracy that seems to be barreling to an inevitable conclusion now.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Kraken »

Why Saturday's IA rally was more disturbing than most.
At Trump's past post-presidency events, you wouldn't find the state's leading GOP officials attending en masse. In fact, at a rally in Georgia last month, Trump railed against the state's Republican leaders for refusing to assist him in illegally overturning the 2020 election. Trump even told the crowd he'd prefer potential Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams as governor over his fellow Republican who's currently in office, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

Saturday's rally in Iowa, though, was different. This one was attended by longtime Iowa US Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson, and other mainstream Republican officials. Some of these very same people, who just nine months ago were slamming Trump for his role in the Capitol riots, were now only too happy to be seen supporting him. This is politics at its worst -- and at its most dangerous for our democracy.
...
Flash forward to Saturday, and there was Grassley beaming as Trump offered a "complete and total endorsement for re-election" for the 88-year-old Senator. Grassley responded, "If I didn't accept the endorsement of a person that's got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn't be too smart."
...
You don't need to be a historian to recognize the danger in a political party showing blind loyalty to one person. These GOP elected officials just several months ago rightly criticized Trump and his role in the false election claims that led to the January 6 attack. With their presence at his rally this weekend, it seems they've now changed their tune.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Grifman »

malchior wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 9:46 pm And we have tons of data showing that racism/nativism were key components.
Yes, racism was a key component - I'm not denying that. But that still doesn't prove that racism is what moved people from Obama to Trump which is the point I was making. The racists were already in the Republican camp for the most part. I'm looking at people who voted for Obama and then moved to Trump. You'll have to show me that racism played a part in that movement. That seems pretty counterintuitive as racists are unlikely to have voted for Obama.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by gbasden »

Kraken wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 10:05 pm Trump's racism wasn't overt yet in '16,
His first official campaign speech denounced Mexicans as murderers and rapists. I'm pretty sure that qualifies as overt.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by malchior »

Grifman wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 12:05 amI'm looking at people who voted for Obama and then moved to Trump.
Sure and the trouble is that there are no simple causal relationships such as just saying it was racism. It is a lever so to speak and one that just happened to be significant that year. The electorate shifts from year to year and the various issues that drive people wax and wane with each election. The electorate that voted for Obama in 2012 wasn't the same one for Trump v. Clinton in 2016. Big picture though lots of smart people said it was a combination of race, economics, and populism. There are raging academic debates about the influence of each variable on the election. A good example is this article talking about some studies conducted over the last few years. The one described in the article in particular shows that working, white class Democrats moved to Trump mostly due to racism and sexism but there also is some economics/populism mixed in as well.
Pacific Standard Magazine wrote:To the dismay of many, President Donald Trump has amped up his racist rhetoric of late, sending out angry, misleading tweets about Latin-American immigrants. Tufts University scholar Daniel Drezner argues this is his attempt "to ensure that his loyal base supporters are sufficiently energized to come out and vote GOP in the midterms."

Drezner doubts this will work. But a new scholarly analysis suggests Trump's instinct that racial prejudice drove him to victory is spot on.

"The 2016 campaign witnessed a dramatic polarization in the vote choices of whites based on (their level of) education," writes a research team led by political scientist Brian Schaffner of the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. "Very little of this gap can be explained by the economic difficulties faced by less-educated whites. Rather, most of the divide appears to be associated with sexism, and denialism of racism."

In the journal Political Science Quarterly, Schaffner and his colleagues note that a significant split between the preferences of highly educated and less-educated white voters is a relatively new phenomenon.
Edit: Updated with link to the original paper - here - and grabbed the beginning of their conclusion.
Scaffner et. al. wrote:The 2016 campaign witnessed a dramatic polarization in the vote choices of whites based on education. In this paper, we have demonstrated that very little of this gap can be explained by the economic difficulties faced by less educated whites. Rather, most of the divide appears to be the result of racism and sexism in the electorate, especially among whites without college degrees. Sexism and racism were powerful forces in structuring the 2016 presidential vote, even after controlling for partisanship and ideology. Of course, it would be misguided to seek an understanding of Trump’s success in the 2016 presidential election through any single lens. Yet, in a campaign that was marked by exceptionally explicit rhetoric on race and gender, it is perhaps unsurprising to find that voters’ attitudes on race and sex were so important in determining their vote choices.

How might have racism and sexism mattered for affecting the final outcome? One way to approach this question is to consider how the vote might have differed if whites without college degrees had the same average levels on the racism and sexism scales as whites who have college degrees. If we make such an adjustment in our data, we find that Trump’s total two-party vote share would have declined by 2 points. In other words, if non-college educated whites became somewhat more progressive in their attitudes toward racism and sexism so that they matched those of college educated whites, Clinton would have won the popular vote by 4 points instead of 2 points. Given the narrowness with which Clinton lost states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida, such a shift could have had a dramatic effect in terms of the Electoral College outcome.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Kraken »

gbasden wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 3:04 am
Kraken wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 10:05 pm Trump's racism wasn't overt yet in '16,
His first official campaign speech denounced Mexicans as murderers and rapists. I'm pretty sure that qualifies as overt.
True. Statement withdrawn.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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gbasden wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 3:04 am
Kraken wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 10:05 pm Trump's racism wasn't overt yet in '16,
His first official campaign speech denounced Mexicans as murderers and rapists. I'm pretty sure that qualifies as overt.
One of the first moments that I knew we were in real trouble was a discussion with a former Trumper co-worker about this.

During the run-up to the election, I asked her what she thought of those comments. Her response was "Trump never said that". We were a bit incredulous, so we pulled up the video of him saying exactly that, and her response was "that must be a fake, there's no way he would have actually said that. Someone must have made it up or taken it out of context." When asked what possible context could have made that any better, the response was "I don't know, but the fake news is always out to get him."

At the time I was somewhat staggered by the level of willful ignorance, especially from someone who I knew to be a highly intelligent, reasonable person. Little did we know or expect at the time the sheer number of people who would descend into full-blown MAGA'ism.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Grifman »

Skinypupy wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:08 am
gbasden wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 3:04 am
Kraken wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 10:05 pm Trump's racism wasn't overt yet in '16,
His first official campaign speech denounced Mexicans as murderers and rapists. I'm pretty sure that qualifies as overt.
One of the first moments that I knew we were in real trouble was a discussion with a former Trumper co-worker about this.

During the run-up to the election, I asked her what she thought of those comments. Her response was "Trump never said that". We were a bit incredulous, so we pulled up the video of him saying exactly that, and her response was "that must be a fake, there's no way he would have actually said that. Someone must have made it up or taken it out of context." When asked what possible context could have made that any better, the response was "I don't know, but the fake news is always out to get him."

At the time I was somewhat staggered by the level of willful ignorance, especially from someone who I knew to be a highly intelligent, reasonable person. Little did we know or expect at the time the sheer number of people who would descend into full-blown MAGA'ism.
Yeah, it's terrible. I don't have any friends that bad off, but some who are pretty close. Anything negative is just "fake news". I had one friend who posted a false accusation about Clinton on FB. When I showed her that it was false, her response was, "Well, it sounded like something she would have said." and that was it. No expression of, "sorry, I was wrong to post something false", she just moved on and continued to post false things again and again.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by malchior »

It wasn't all that surprising to me. I saw my father deep into Fox misinformation territory over a decade ago. It just got so much worse since then. My wife and I went to see John Cleese late last week and he was making political comments bad-mouthing #MAGA and I heard booing. I didn't see it first hand but heard that people stormed out of the theater mid-show mad that he'd lie about politics. My first thoughts were -- what did they expect? But second, when faced with cognitive dissonance or push back on their political envelope you see them respond with basic fight or flight. It's so ingrained that it is pure lizard brain. That is why it is so dangerous. It is very hard to deprogram that. Especially when the stimulus is ever increasing and ever present.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Kraken »

Whatever you think of Bill Maher, this is spot-on.

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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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No fan of Maher but I can't argue against his vision. :cry:
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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Now that I realize what kind of people Trumps supporters are, and how many they are, I don't hold out much hope for fairness and civility any more.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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It's too stressful and depressing for me to even post in this thread. :(
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by malchior »

That clip is probably going to be much more right than not. The time to defend democracy began in January this year. The Democrats pissed that opportunity away.

The thing that might not be true is that they'll go into 2024 still not seeing the danger. They may very well be battle hardened by what will happen with a GOP House in 2023. I don't think that will be entirely peaceful. I think the GOP will be riling up violence and division. Unlike the Democrats they'll be EFFECTIVE using their powers to push their message to the populace. This may see Democrats and the very few rational Republicans leaving politics as they start to reckon with the personal danger they might face.

The important thing in my mind is that the name of the game is systemic risk. It has been rising all year. As institutions like the courts increasingly act politically and other institutions fail to act (looking squarely at the DOJ) we will see pressure on multiple fronts build. It will mean there will be an increased chance of violence against members of Congress, governors, judges, and other political figures at the local, state, and federal levels. That risk is going to be all around. And there is always the chance that someone will light a fuse that blows everything apart.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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Almost sounds like a Viet Cong battle plan.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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I really wish I didn't watch that Bill Maher video.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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Kurth wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 11:23 pm I really wish I didn't watch that Bill Maher video.
Same. It seriously ruined my day.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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Carpet_pissr wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 11:29 pm
Kurth wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 11:23 pm I really wish I didn't watch that Bill Maher video.
Same. It seriously ruined my day.
I hope every D in the WH and Congress sees it. Or at least Manchin and Sinema. Image
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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If anyone really wants a pick-me-up, definitely do not click this link:

The Real Election Nightmare: He Could Win, Fair and Square.
The United States was unprepared for the scope of President Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election. By Election Day, Trump had spent months calling the election “rigged,” and historians and democracy experts warned of the damage that these false claims could make. But when the president stepped to a lectern in the White House late on Election Night and insisted he’d won, many Americans were taken aback. Much worse was still to come: Trump calling Georgia’s secretary of state, asking him to find 11,000 votes; attempting to weaponize the Justice Department; and instigating the failed January 6 insurrection.

Americans are ready now. If anything, they’re overprepared. Many members of the uneasy coalition of Democrats and former Republicans who oppose Trump are frantically focused on the danger of Trump and his GOP allies trying to steal the 2022 and especially 2024 elections. This is not without justification; many of Trump’s henchmen, meanwhile, are frantically focused on stealing it. But these watchdogs risk missing the graver danger: Trump could win this fair and square.

Trump winning in 2016 was a serious wound to the American experiment. His clinging to power in 2020 poured salt in that wound. Trump losing in 2024 and trying to steal the election would be even more catastrophic. But a straightforward victory—a very real possibility—could be a mortal injury.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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Hope the only path he gets is a straight one to Hell.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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Kraken wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 12:43 am
Carpet_pissr wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 11:29 pm
Kurth wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 11:23 pm I really wish I didn't watch that Bill Maher video.
Same. It seriously ruined my day.
I hope every D in the WH and Congress sees it. Or at least Manchin and Sinema.
I'm convinced more and more that they don't need to watch it, because they already know it, and are acting accordingly already. Which of course doesn't mean they are acting in the ways we THINK they should be, or even in ways that are aligned with our interests. Sadly.

Really hope I am wrong on that one.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by gilraen »

Bill Maher has been beating this drum for the last 4+ years. I've watched every episode of his show, and while I don't necessarily agree with him on some things, on this he's been absolutely spot-on. And no one is listening.
Last edited by gilraen on Thu Oct 14, 2021 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by malchior »

gilraen wrote: Thu Oct 14, 2021 2:44 pm Bill Maher has been beating this drum for the last 4+ years. I've watched every episode of his show, and while I don't necessarily agree with him on some thing, on this he's been absolutely spot-on. And no one is listening.
Yeah and the key thing is that the people in power who need to be listening or get the fuck out of the way are the same people who got us INTO this mess.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by YellowKing »

I think a lot of regular folk are listening, we just can't do a damn thing about it.
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

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You could vote the bums out! Oh...
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by Jaymann »

When I think about this crap, I always wonder how this era will be treated in the history books. I'm sure they had history books in Nazi Germany that said Hitler was the best thing since sliced strudel. Nixon was viewed as an aberration after which things got back to "normal." But in the global picture are we doomed to go down as a North Korea west?
Jaymann
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malchior
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Re: The Once and Future King: trump's path to restoration

Post by malchior »

Jaymann wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 11:03 am When I think about this crap, I always wonder how this era will be treated in the history books. I'm sure they had history books in Nazi Germany that said Hitler was the best thing since sliced strudel. Nixon was viewed as an aberration after which things got back to "normal." But in the global picture are we doomed to go down as a North Korea west?
Whatever darkness comes will be different. The mechanisms of power might be similar but the messaging and outcomes will be entirely unique to us. But let's take Nixon. He was taken as an aberration BUT now in context we can see that he is part of this narrative. The GOP that rebuked Nixon quickly went on to embrace darkness in Reagan and got steadily worse from there. It's a continuum. That is what people in hundreds of years might be studying. Assuming there isn't some massive data destruction event they'll have access to so much information and real-time video to see exactly what went wrong. That's not to say you can't see it now if you choose to but so many people are blinkered to it. In time, perspective will pull the major themes out. Racism. Nativism. Elite impunity. Police violence. The bottomless greed and grift. All these things are part of a bigger whole that is already dark but will likely intensify and become too obvious to ignore.
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