The 2024 Election

I’ll take it out a step or two. Look up any corruption or sex scandal in the last, say 20 years. The parties kinda look the same as far as who is defended and who is attacked. As far as I’m concerned, much of the political apparatus is more concerned with itself than with actual people who have actual lives. Politicians are almost like memes at this point, almost unreal and unrelatable. The vast party apparatuses behind them prop them up, which is why if we are to be a duopoly, I’d like the cast behind it to change every, say, 20 or 50 years or so. I’m talking complete turnover with fresh platforms, fresh candidates, fresh thinking. I don’t know that it’s better, but it probable can’t be worse.

Oh, also, I already cut this part of your comment, but where you essentially said there’s a desire to fire a bunch of people in the feds only to replace them with sycophants - I kinda agree. Dems tend to want to just hire and hire. Trump might want to fire to hire. I’d rather just fire, period.

That’s all just to drive home my point - neither demicans nor Republicrats represent my interests. I’m not willing to trade one vote against my interests for another. The whole realpolitik about one vote somehow transmogrifying into a vote for someone - neither of whom I supported or voted for - is a farce, pure and simple. I’m sorry, but that’s just how I see it.

 

I see little difference because, for shorthand, we can use Lewinsky and Stormy Daniels. In both cases it’s sex stuff I don’t particularly care about. People have sex, and I’m sorry that it offends some folks. But the defense comes along, and it feels very partisan. These aren’t good things, but also not directly connected to politics, and folks tend to excuse “their person” as long as their politics align with their desires. Likewise with policies, general political attitudes, etc. Partisans of both the demican and republicrat stripes tend to respond with tiredly predictable words and actions, and the parties themselves tend to like having that predictable opponent. Third party threats tend to provoke the same response from both, circling the wagons around their duopoly and maintaining the illusion that while we are set up for a duopoly, the natural course is that the two parties we have now are the natural ones to have. I absolutely disagree, and I don’t care for politics as usual, so therefore I don’t buy into it and will not spend a lot of effort trying to justify momentary decisions about how some politician of the moment is really that different within the relatively tightly controlled ecosystem which was able to bring them to the fore in the first place.

This is on top of my own politics not aligning with either major parties’ platforms. I just don’t buy into a majority of what those people claim to want. I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative so I landed within the libertarian camp by default, but I’m still not dogmatically tied to anything the libertarians do, and have my own criticisms. It’s a bit like looking at used car lots; yeah, there’s a bit of variety, but what you’re seeing is high demand stuff and you actually have to look elsewhere to get what you really want. I’m not going to get what I want from the major parties, and their games tire me. I’m just not interested in what they’re offering, particularly as the majors become more and more interested in embracing their faithful who seem to be more and more distant from any form of cooperating middle ground.

 

I can't wait to see the winner

 

This is why Republicans are dumb for tying their politics to morality. A lot of today's older democrats were the free love people of the 60s. Democrats typically support things Republicans see as anti-family: pro-choice, more women in the workplace, pro-LGBTQ+ rights, etc. To my knowledge, no Democrat has pounded on their chest and proudly declared themselves anti-family values, but plenty of Republicans absolutely pound on their chests and declare themselves pro-family values. They're the family values party. They are the Christian party.

Okay cool.

But the consequence of that is that people are always going to be far more critical of the family values Christian who is cheating on their spouse than on the other person.

Sorry. Republicans don't get a pass because they can't live up to the standards they set for themselves. All they have to do is not tie their entire political identity to taking the moral high road and then failing to take the moral high road. Until they change that, their person will always be much harder to excuse than the other. Don't hate the player, hate the Republicans for that.

 

Oh, I do!

 

Aside from being hypocritical, they ALWAYS vote against anything that they think will help working people. They favor the rich and super rich in all circumstances.

 

Let’s Be Honest, Trump’s Running As a Fascist

 

I wish the television reporters would devote even half the time they spend talking endlessly about this week's polls talking about how the candidates differ on issues.

 

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, "o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”
Heather Cox Richardson

Army Talk Orientation Fact Sheet #64 - Fascism! : Army Orientation Branch: Information and Education Division

 

Picture perfect description of one of our presidential candidates. And it ain't Harris.

 

“Violence misogyny and racism are now the brand of the GOP. This is the apotheosis of Trump’s Fascistic use of rallies to radicalize followers so they will be ready to follow the leader and commit violence on his behalf.”

‘Pure Fascism’: Authoritarianism Expert Breaks Down Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally

 

Here we are in the final week. The polls are so damn close and I can't help worrying that we might soon see Trump part 2. I know he lost considerable support with his racist rally in MSG, but will it be enough? Does the looming prospect of life under Project 2025 not scare a lot of people? Or is that what they want, a Fascist dictatorship? Are we about to find out if American Democracy is still viable?

And if Trump loses will we see a repeat of January 6, only worse and more wide-spread? And if he wins will the Anti-Trump crowd riot? Win or lose, it seems Trump's legacy will be how he has divided this country like no one else since the Civil War!

 

Trump isn't trying to win this election in any normal sense; he's not even campaigning in critical "swing" states, and his grand finale, Madison Square Gardens, is in New York, where he's trailing Harris by 16%. Instead of winning the election, they're planning on stealing it. At his hate rally at Madison Square Gardens, Trump coquettishly kept referring to "a little secret" between himself and MAGA traitor and election denier Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House (Johnson is one of the 147 member "sedition caucus" that participated in Trump's failed coup d'etat in 2021). Remember all of those election officials who quit after the last election due to a tsunami of death threats? About 70 of them have been replaced with election-denying MAGA cultists, which during the primaries refused to certify results at least 25 times. Trump doesn't have to win. Instead, they're planning on loosing by a close enough margin that he can simply unilaterally declare himself emperor, enough counties will refuse to certify the results as to make it impossible for states to certify their Electoral College slates, and the election will be remanded to the MAGA-controlled House of Representatives, where the sedition caucus will gleefully rubber-stamp it for Trump.
Game over.
Thanks for playing.

 

I hope you're wrong. However the blame for any capability to create such an outcome as you describe rests with the GOP and its senior people / top people over the past years, especially lead-up to 2016.
When I say senior, I don't mean old. Obviously the term 'top' is doing much heavy lifting because they have failed abysmally to protect America from an enemy within
They have failed to protect democracy.

The Dems are little better, in that regard. They carried on in office such that the upsurge in extremes, such as the Tea party, initially, were ignored. The potential consequences ignored as if it were someone else's problem. Well it is. Its the problem for the whole US, not just KH, who incidentally, is as much a Dem as those who ignored the move to extremism