Once you bought into "whatever means necessary", what evidence would it take to change your mind?
At this point, I agree with those who suggest that America cannot survive a competent Trump. So given the hypothetical future appearance on the campaign trail of a similar character with all of his faculties intact, I may have to revisit the question.
When confronted with the NYT ad, reactions from over 30% of the electorate fall into one of four categories: "Wait, what? I never heard of that. Must not be a big deal," "Fake news, the ad never actually accused anyone by name," "Meh, he didn't really mean it," and "Hell yeah, fry 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
So it's not clear that anyone else's warnings could have made a difference. It was up to the Deep State to stop him. They failed. Not much of a Deep State, I guess. Only Trump's own incompetence saved us from a horrific outcome... and that won't scale, as people like to say around here.
- people who had spent a lot of time in authoritarian dictatorships and recognized his personality in the dictators of those countries.
- people who are familiar with history, and saw that he mirrored the personalities of historical dictators.
- people who are familiar with cluster B personality disorders, who correctly recognized his narcissistic psychopathy.
- people who were close to him, like his family, who warned us about how he treats people close to him.
- people who went into business with him, who were unilaterally screwed over by his business practices.
- Hillary Clinton.
Listening to any of these people, or even better, all of these people, would have saved us from this whole mess.
Notably, all of these people are saying the same things today, and he's still the front runner of the Republican party. So really, the problem isn't Trump anymore, it's that a lot of people actually want a dictatorship, because they perceive they can use it to their political advantage. That's where we are now. There are no more excuses about who the man is. Trump wants to be a dictator, and Republicans like that idea. There's no more assumed good faith to be had here.
Exactly, that's my point. It has been clear for a long time who Trump is and what he stands for. Long before he ever ran for office. A great many people are either fine with his positions, indifferent to them, or vote without bothering to inform themselves about the candidate they're voting for.
Once that cohort grows to dominate the electorate, there's nothing (legal) that anyone else can do. Hence the "fair means or foul" part of the question. But it may not matter: he can't be stopped by fair means if he actually does represent the values of the electorate, and if he is stopped by foul means, his supporters will pick someone even worse.
Let me say that again: If a democrat you like says somebody is Hitler, then all is fair to stop him.
Brilliant! I hope you're getting paid for this.
And yeah, Hitlers are not hard to identify. They are psychopaths who find their way into positions of leadership. Like Trump. There’s nothing special or unique about Hitler —- he wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last.
But we don’t need Democrats to identify them, because they identify themselves with their actions (like trying to topple democracies when they lose elections). Some just notice it sooner than others, and now that Trump has made himself know as a psychopath beyond all doubt, we can look back and recognize those who called it years before he metastasized, and learn from the heuristics they used.