[RD] The threat to American Democracy

[Sommerswerd]

By the way, I think we may be in a similar be-careful-what-you-wish-for situation right now. In our hope that Trump never again occupy the Oval Office, we're favoring Anybody-But-Trump. The most likely contender is DeSantis. In Trump's case, we were sometimes saved from the evils he proposed by his lack of carry-through: his laziness, incompetence and stupidity. We shouldn't really be favoring the prospect of a more competent evil person (though I have to confess I still am).

I've heard people make this case before, and I've thought about it some, but eff that. No way I'd consider Trump as a less-bad alternative to anyone. Trump had me missing Baby Bush. As I've said, I think Ted Cruz would have at a minimum done better with the COVID response, (everyone saw he had his mask on when he was fleeing the Texas deep freeze to go Cancun) and that alone would have been a huge deal and saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the US, possibly millions of lives worldwide.

A competent Republican President is still a competent President. No more incompetent Presidents. No more Trump. Even Bush, for all his silliness was competent enough to surround himself with competent people to delegate to and take advice from. We've gotten a hefty dose of how bad things can get with Trump, and if he gets back in office, it will definitely get worse, way worse. I don't know what DeSantis is going to do, what racist, bigoted, evil things he has in store, which I'm guessing are many, but a steady, competent hand at the helm, steering the ship in a direction I don't want to go, and who will duly step down when he is required to, is preferrable to a maniac letting the ship be blown around aimlessly into every storm, intentionally crashing into every iceberg he sees just to see what will happen, and leading a mutiny rather than giving up the wheel.

Our choice unfortunately is always between the lesser of two evils. I don't want Trump back under any circumstances.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Well, I agree, and that's why I said that, for all those considerations, I still favor Anyone-But-Trump.

Trump is the most dangerous alternative in that, however unscrupulous other politicians may be, no one matches him for sheer, no-holds-barred amorality. The others are all kept in check by certain lines they themselves won't cross; not true of Trump. There's no line that he will hold himself back from crossing.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's long been the debate about whether Chaotic Evil was worse than Lawful Evil.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Trump literally asked his administration officials if he could drop nuclear missiles into hurricanes to weaken or destroy or disrupt them. Dude seriously just wants to do crazy stuff just to see what will happen, like a child... what will happen is the hurricane will make landfall as a swirling unstoppable cloud of nuclear fallout...moron.

Much of the unnecessary suffering and death in COVID was caused because he, again, like a child, just assumed that because the US usually makes it through the annual global pandemics with minimal harm/death relative to the rest of the world, that it would just magically happen again during his administration, with no concept of the notion that the reason the US usually makes it out virtually unscathed, is because the administration in place deals with the situation competently. All he cared about was that a pandemic in the US would make him look bad, so rather than take the political hit to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation and act competently to mitigate it, he instead denied the existence of the problem, thereby encouraging others to do so, which led to the US having the worst casualties in COVID on the planet.

He can't be allowed back in office. Its not just that he's unscrupulous and amoral. Its not just that he's racist and bigoted and misogynist and transphobic and Islamophobic and white supremacist. Its not just that he's dishonest and evil. Its not just that he's a thief and a liar and a con and a fraud. He's totally incompetent. He is totally irresponsible. In fact, to the contrary of what is sometimes suggested, his incompetence is partly what makes him so much more dangerous.

 

[Lexicus]

though I have to confess I still am

I'm not. I don't think it makes any difference who wins the Republican primary, at this point they are all to be considered equally evil and there is an equal imperative to stop them all.

 

[r16]

ı thought it was Tampa ... Naturally came nothing in the web searches , so had to add more terms to the bar . Accordingly it was actually Tulsa . A town which used to a Wall Street of the Blacks , where wealthy Blacks lived as Tulsa was the epicenter or whatever of an oil boom . You can't visit the place today , because it was apparently paved over . You know , the Wikipedia article most definitely does not say it was US Army Air Corps that bombed the city , trying to burn the entire Black neighbourhoods with primitive attempts at firebombs . Like Blacks stop the lynching of some Black guy in the way some "defends" in this thread and the answer was so bad , the electronic gear can not find the mass graves today . Infer whatever you want to from this last sentence . The final outcome was that the railroad station or whatever was made far larger to drive the Blacks out of sight and stuff . Searching for it on the web gave equally "interesting bits" , too . Like a context for this picture here ...



these dudes are the airborne lot . The Klan would march through a neighbourhood and people there didn't let them , apparently something involving municipalities necessary to give permits for gatherings of people and so on . So they dropped leaflets from their nice plane . No , being fat myself ı don't think all of them got on that plane ! March of 1922 or so . Turns out there was an immense interest in the Klan , before the number of memberships were ordered to decline and the movement was like exported . Like thanks to Hoover the cross dresser , who could not guarantee that they could control all of those Northern Industrialists who prided on their families having supplied the Union just 6 decades ago . You might not have an exact idea how close it came to not being an alternate universe ...

Spoiler :

Stars Against The Swastika

Focke Wulf Donnerkeils supplied to Allies through the Weimar Military Assistance Programme. In the front are two that belonged to 7th Long Range Aviation Corps that gained fame in escorting the massive Tu-4 raids that systematically destroyed the American industry starting with the burning of Chicago in June 1943. In the background are two that were flown by the Tuskagee Regiment. The Black volunteers had preferred the always faboulous looking Bf-110 but the Wildepferde could never stand the cold. And it was really bitter in Alaska after the T-Tag landings. By this time the men already knew they would never see those they had left behind again and how trains still carried millions to American SouthWest under the auspieces of the so called Manhattan Project.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I'm not. I don't think it makes any difference who wins the Republican primary, at this point they are all to be considered equally evil and there is an equal imperative to stop them all.

Well, that takes us back to the political calculations that are at the basis of this thread, then. Are we as sure that Biden beats DeSantis as that he beats Trump in another go-round?

Or is there someone who can beat Biden in a Democratic primary, or win in a Democratic primary if Biden doesn't run, who we can feel sure will beat DeSantis in the general?

You're absolutely correct that anyone the Republicans put up must be defeated. But what's the best route to that? Who should we most hope to emerge as the Democratic candidate, and who the Republican?

 

[Takhisis]

Trump had me missing Baby Bush. (…) Even Bush, for all his silliness was competent enough to surround himself with competent people to delegate to and take advice from.

No. Flat-out, no.

One) Bush got into office with shameless electoral fraud helped by a partisan court and, in turn, further helped pack the courts and gerrymander various districts.
Two) He was the direct forerunner of this. He supported the Tea Party in 2008 and helped its growth until it could stand it on its own.
Three) Bush seemed competent because of the wartime boost in support and because he had inherited a strong economy from the '90s expansion phase. He and his ‘competent’ people managed to deregulate their way into a crisis simply out of self-interested fanaticism. His cabinet, starting from his vice-president downwards, is a textbook example of regulatory capture.
D) The Iraq war.

I hope those are enough.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Or is there someone who can beat Biden in a Democratic primary, or win in a Democratic primary if Biden doesn't run, who we can feel sure will beat DeSantis in the general?

You're absolutely correct that anyone the Republicans put up must be defeated. But what's the best route to that? Who should we most hope to emerge as the Democratic candidate, and who the Republican?

Gavin Newsom...

I been sayin' it

As for the Republicans... I've got my slim hopes set on:

Spoiler :

 

[Gori the Grey]

Yeah, he has as bright a prospect as anyone.

 

[stinkubus]

DeSantis can't match Trump's showmanship. I think he'll fall flat on the national stage, and God help him if he has to debate Trump on TV.

 

[Cutlass]

I've heard people make this case before, and I've thought about it some, but eff that. No way I'd consider Trump as a less-bad alternative to anyone. Trump had me missing Baby Bush. As I've said, I think Ted Cruz would have at a minimum done better with the COVID response, (everyone saw he had his mask on when he was fleeing the Texas deep freeze to go Cancun) and that alone would have been a huge deal and saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the US, possibly millions of lives worldwide.

A competent Republican President is still a competent President. No more incompetent Presidents. No more Trump. Even Bush, for all his silliness was competent enough to surround himself with competent people to delegate to and take advice from. We've gotten a hefty dose of how bad things can get with Trump, and if he gets back in office, it will definitely get worse, way worse. I don't know what DeSantis is going to do, what racist, bigoted, evil things he has in store, which I'm guessing are many, but a steady, competent hand at the helm, steering the ship in a direction I don't want to go, and who will duly step down when he is required to, is preferrable to a maniac letting the ship be blown around aimlessly into every storm, intentionally crashing into every iceberg he sees just to see what will happen, and leading a mutiny rather than giving up the wheel.

Our choice unfortunately is always between the lesser of two evils. I don't want Trump back under any circumstances.

You severely overstate how competent Baby Bush's people were. They weren't as bad as Trump's. But the massive lack of competence was actually epic, compared to even Carter.

 

[Takhisis]

You severely overstate how competent Baby Bush's people were. They weren't as bad as Trump's. But the massive lack of competence was actually epic, compared to even Carter.

There's also that thing whereby Carter was at least a person with some sort of morality who, for us notAmericans, actually became a great president simply by not compulsively backing every single coup he could find.

And then Reagan got Bush Sr., no less than the former Director of Intelligence, head of the CIA itself, back into power as VP and also put him in charge of ‘deregulation’! Both were flags that Bush Jr. picked up again (as well as his vendetta against Saddam Hussein) but without his father's grasp of reality or pragmatism.



So you get two elements that you really need: 1) good intentions and 2) the capacity, not just moral and technical, but also in terms of what people and the rest of the government structure will let you do.

Bush was a major step downward and things only worsened from there.

 

[stinkubus]

The Carter administration armed the Indonesian government in its campaign of genocide against East Timor. Almost a million dead.

It was Carter, not Reagan, who started the deregulation craze and opened a new salvo in the war against organized labor.

Carter appointed Volcker as Fed Chairman. Volcker's prolonged regime of high interest rates broke the back of this country's heavy industries and there are thousands of communities strewn across the land which have never recovered.

It infuriates me that this man has been able to rehab his image.

 

[Lexicus]

Are we as sure that Biden beats DeSantis as that he beats Trump in another go-round?

Yeah, I think any other Republican is likely to do strictly worse than Trump.

 

[Narz]

DeSantis can't match Trump's showmanship. I think he'll fall flat on the national stage, and God help him if he has to debate Trump on TV.

I think after 8 years the man is a bit played out.

Like Eminem, out the door w shock value but couldn't stand the test of time

In 2016 the other Republicans didn't know how to prepare.

Biden already beat Trump once. DeSantis would likely be more difficult.

The democrats have a year and a half to find someone better than Biden (should be able to find a few million)

 

[Narz]

The Carter administration armed the Indonesian government in its campaign of genocide against East Timor. Almost a million dead.

It was Carter, not Reagan, who started the deregulation craze and opened a new salvo in the war against organized labor.

Carter appointed Volcker as Fed Chairman. Volcker's prolonged regime of high interest rates broke the back of this country's heavy industries and there are thousands of communities strewn across the land which have never recovered.

It infuriates me that this man has been able to rehab his image.

Sad. I really want to like Carter

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

There's a large part of Republican cultists voters who won't vote for anyone but Trump. If anyone but Trump runs for president, those people will stay at home. Because it means that the primaries were rigged (Trump would have lost the primaries you see, and this just isn't possible without fraud) by the Republicans.

 

[Rg339]

Like Eminem, out the door w shock value but couldn't stand the test of time

Eminem is still a god in rural American trailer parks, for better or worse

 

[Lexicus]

Eminem is still a god in rural American trailer parks, for better or worse

Yeah, bizarre example. His latest album went platinum and he's still widely considered one of the greatest emcees (I don't like his music all that much but I do respect his skills).