This is likely game over for Democrats and democracy in the US. Democracy has already been on the backslide here for some time, so it’s not overly surprising, but I don’t expect either to last the next couple of years.
By the time we got to the news that at least two Supreme Court justices and very likely more are being bought, and collectively shrugged rather than making that the issue until they were out, well, that wasn’t so much a landmark on the way down as another ordinary day.
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have....
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."
— Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45
It's the same looming issue with climate change.
And they all have the same undercurrent: doing something might cost us money, so we don't do it. Thus the economy being the greatest predictor of elections.
Whatever you think about Trump, 2016-2020 was in no way, shape or form comparable to the 30s under NSDAP Germany and to *insist* on making such comparisons ad nauseum is one of the reasons you were rebuked at the polls by the electorate.
It's also electrifyingly funny that Trump took the largest Jewish counties (e.g., Rockland, NY) -- those self-hating Jews must want to go back to the concentration camps. This is your brain on progressive logic.
That's one of the ones I took, certainly the one I remember most.
No Supreme Court justices are bought.
I share your concern about the lack of seriousness with which many seem to regard the Capitol riot, which is a black stain on our history.
You should read fuller accounts, it’s a fair bit more complicated than that.
The part that made it so harmful, at any rate, was the court deciding without prompting from the plaintiffs to buck their normal “as narrow as possible and don’t make things major constitutional questions unless you have to” policy and widen the case to be about something it initially was not, with the result that campaign finance control at all and keeping foreign money at least kinda out of US politics became impossible.
> No Supreme Court justices are bought.
Uh. I dunno what to say. Yikes.
Pretend George Soros had been giving Sotomayor gifts amounting to huge sums of money over many, many years in ways that plainly violate rules for lower court judges, and that she’s “accidentally” not disclosed a lot of it.
What do you call the controversy around Thomas and his billionaire benefactor?
It's happening to this day, too. Yesterday, "Oh, possibly Russian-originated bomb threats closing election stations? Sure, we'll talk about it briefly and move on." Elon Musk-funded PAC sending fake text messages from Kamala Harris saying that kids will be able to coordinate gender-affirming surgery while at school "outside of parental interference" and that she will be legalizing abortion upon delivery? "Oh, that might be illegal, maybe? Next story." are demoralizing in the amount of indifference they come with.
Concrete actions tell the real story.
I got mass downvoted earlier and a "talking to" from Dang in regards to me pointing out that a certain Ron Wyden having one bad vote about BDS/isreal isn't a good enough reason to throw the baby out with the bath water and turn against one of the only reliable techno-libertarians. This site is done with its purported liberalism.
What, exactly, is a "fedora-core atheist?"
How might such an atheist differ from an atheist who runs Debian or OpenBSD?
Trumps tends to be economically liberal internally and a conservative for international economics.
(not that MSNBC is a monolith, but) This article claims exactly the opposite: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-steal-elec...
> Trump didn’t need to file frivolous lawsuits before federal courts. The Supreme Court wasn’t given a chance to throw the election his way in a redux of 2000’s Bush v. Gore. The false bomb threats to polling places that have been ascribed to Russian actors don’t appear to have had any measurable effect. There’s been no reporting that indicates that the promised hordes of MAGA-trained poll watchers blocked any Democratic voters from casting their ballots.
> He just won.
Reagan was re-elected in the November 6 election in an electoral and popular
vote landslide, winning 49 states by the time the ballots were finished
counting on election night at 11:34 PM in Iowa. He won a record 525 electoral
votes total (of 538 possible), and received 58.8% of the popular vote
I am NOT saying Trump is literally Hitler, but the idea that democratic vote can't have un-democratic outcome in the long run is simply false. It can, and history showed us that more then once
How is that not anti-democratic?
If he actually believes the election was not stolen, whether or not it was, but act as if it was stolen, it would be un-democratic position, because he would, is his perceived reality, try to subvert a democratic process.
> He literally tried to overthrow the election 4 years ago
Not openly, the people who went to the white house weren't under Trumps command. He argued against the election result using the proper tools of the democracy, you are allowed to do that.
I'm not sure why worry now when we already know he handed over the power once. Maybe it wasn't willingly but he will be forced to step down in 4 years as well.
Fascist wouldn't fail?
Again, You know Hitler literally tried a coup, failed and then switched to 'democratic' means?
Hitler never left the seat of power once he got it. Trump did. They are not the same. Hitler did a coup to try to get power, he failed at that, Trump already succeeded grabbing power (he got elected) and then left it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/us/politics/trump-pa-rall...
He did so because he had no other choice. Mike Pence, of all people, rescued democracy. If it hadn't been for him, Donald Trump would not accepted the transfer of power.
And this is what the difference boils down to. You and I both know that Trump would have declared himself the winner no matter what the vote count had been. And we also both know that Harris is going to concede to Trump because the vote count says so.
If he had rigged the whole election I'd say it is fascism, but rigging a whole election is on such a different scale and planning and conspiracy level that it isn't the same thing, he didn't even try to rig the election. If he tried to rig it then it wouldn't be one such call, it would be hundreds with many accomplices.
This is some pretty hardcore rationalization even by modern standards. Trying to "cheat a few (10s of thousands of votes so you win a swing state)" is called trying to steal an election.
but rigging a whole election is on such a different scale and planning and conspiracy level that it isn't the same thing, he didn't even try to rig the election.
He literally did from many different angles. Asking for changed vote counts, fake electors, 60 court cases with no evidence, planning violence to stop the certification of the election.
How do you square what you are saying with these facts?
That's the one thing in the list I'm OK with. Determining whether a claim has legal merit and factual basis is what courts are for.
The full quote was that he was going to be a dictator but only on the first day. It's probably one of the dumbest things he's ever said, but the fact that he put a limit on his own supposed dictatorship contradicts him being a dictator. At any rate, while I'm not a fan of what he said, he definitely did not preclude the continuation of American democracy even if interpreted in the most literal possible way.
> this is the last vote you will need
He said that you [the people at his rally] aren't going to need to vote anymore because hes going to accomplish all his goals this time. Not that there won't be a vote or that his supporters won't be allowed to vote. They definitely won't be allowed to vote for him since he'll be at up against the term limit.
> we should stop so and so from voting and so on
This one I've never even heard before outside of him claiming that his opponents want to let non citizens vote
> They definitely won't be allowed to vote for him since he'll be at up against the term limit.
I'm sure if Trump were younger and up against term limits, he (and his party) would simply ignore them or change the rules. That's the kind of democracy-ending actions that could easily happen. Lucky for us, I think he's too old for this particular problem.
Didn't he literally say in his victory speech that he's now elected the 47th president, as he also was the 46th?
In the story Trump tells, he literally already is a third-term president.
I think normal people think that is OK but academics thinks it sounds stupid.
In the beginning I believe he got a boost from journalists feeling smart by nitpicking that to manufacture some "gotcha". He is way to easy to misquote to resist the temptation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_...
This stuff was not merely spicy words, it was dangerous. Democracy runs on norms and good people, and is precious and hard won. Trump being in power is a risk.
He was not. This is a popular misconception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power
Certainly there is a lot of voter intimidation, control of the press, etc. behind it, but I think that's precisely what is being debated here.
Nazi's were not the majority party when Hitler ran for president, they were the largest party, but not majority. They weren't even a majority even when Hitler was appointed (not voted) chancellor by Paul von Hindenburg, the man who won the presidential election. There were a few more steps before he acquired absolute power, but none of them involved voting. It's interesting, read the article.
Like I said, it's a common misconception.
(You could not "vote" a chancellor. In a lot of perfectly valid democracies, the PM position is always appointed, never directly voted, usually from the larger party or the at least the candidate most likely to pass a (constructive) motion of no confidence. So he was elected legally per the correct democratic process. Cleanly/Fairly -- that's another question. But would you really be surprised Hitler could win elections? He had pretty ridiculously good reputation in some circles. He would have likely polled pretty well even in the US.).
The Nazi party won elections, Hitler did not.
>>You know that Hitler was literally voted into power, right?
He was not. He lost the presidential election in 1932. He forcefully took the presidency after the Reichstag fire. He was appointed chancellor because the Nazi party won elections. He lost his. I can see where you think it is splitting hairs, but you specifically named Hitler and not the Nazi party. That might not have been what you meant to say, but it's what you said that I was refuting.
Also, Hindenburg didn't have to appoint Hitler, he could have chosen another from the Nazi party. He certainly didn't want to appoint Hitler, but some backroom negotiations that he wasn't a part of ultimately led to Hitler's appointment.
>So he was elected legally per the correct democratic process.
This is like saying the SCOTUS is elected because the President that appointed them was elected. They are not, they are appointed. Hitler himself never won an election.
FWIW, here are the 1932 election results:
Hindeberg 53.05%
Hitler 36.77%
Other Guy 10.16%
Thank you for sharing the truth. It’s worth understanding why Hindenburg chose Hitler as Chancellor, too. Hitler was popular, and seen as a useful force that might be controlled by the conservative elements of the German political system. It didn’t work out that way.
There’s no contemporary analogue to Hitler today in American politics. There’s no significant paramilitary force, for one. No true populist — in spite of trump’s rhetoric his policies don’t qualify.
Ironically, the closest to fitting the mold might be Vance? Somebody unelected, young, brokered his own access to power in exchange for political support (via Elon, Thiel).
Kamala Harris fits just as well: She was so unpopular in 2020 she dropped out before the primaries, then got picked for Vice-President. Then because Biden was in office, she again didn't get votes in the primary this year but instead was selected by the DNC when Biden dropped out.
Yes, I do consider this is splitting hairs. First, yeah, I do not think explicitly making the separation between Hitler and the Nazi party makes any practical difference to the argument. Let me know if you can think of one.
Second, Hitler did get into power through democratic means -- definitely not the presidency, but he was made chancellor, which is, to the best of my knowledge, equivalent to a PM and therefore head of the executive. Don't move the goalpost and claim that "Hitler didn't get into power until he illegally made himself president", because he was into power before that; as much as you could within the limits of the constitution. They voted him into office and he was made chancellor through legal means. For the last 2/3 elections that can still be considered "somewhat" free, his party got the largest number of votes.
He won the elections, and legally speaking had every right to be put into power and made chancellor. Or at least to try until he was voted out by a no confidence or failing to pass laws. He had no right to become president, much less to become dictator.
> This is like saying the SCOTUS is elected because the President that appointed them was elected. They are not, they are appointed. Hitler himself never won an election.
In a lot of democratic countries, the PM-equivalent figure is NEVER directly elected. Would you call Italy, Spain, etc. non-democratic countries just because the PM is appointed by parliament instead of elected directly? The PM is the actual head of the government; the head of state (monarch/president) is a figurehead.
> FWIW, here are the 1932 election results:
_Presidential_ election. President is much less important than you think if you see this from a US-centric view, because the actual head of government is the chancellor! The secretaries/ministers are appointed from the majority parties in parliament, not arbitrarily by the president as in the US. This is still pretty common in many European democracies...
And in all parliament elections, Hitler's party won with a comfortable margin:
1932 July elections : Nazis 230 seats (out of 608) ; next party 133. Almost 2x distance. Hitler's coalition : 267 seats and 43% of vote. Won by simple majority.
1932 November elections (arguably last fair elections in Germany) Nazis 196 seats ; next party 120. In coalition: 247, 42% of vote. Simple majority.
1933 March (definitely last free elections in Germany): Nazis 288 seats; next party 120. Coalition: 340, ~52%, absolute majority .
There's no other way to put this, even if you ignore 1933 results: the Nazis _and Hitler_ were put into power by the (simple) majority of the population. If they had lost even in % of votes to a second party, or something to the effect, then I would also argue that voters didn't put Hitler into power. But as it is...
And you can't really argue that someone could be voting for the Nazis (or coalition parties) without knowing you'd be voting for Hitler, considering how personalistic they were by 1932.
> Please don't feel like I'm scolding you, I really enjoy historical conversations, so thanks for this one.
This has been discussed ad-nauseum, even on wikipedia...
Disclaimer: I already mentioned that results of an election when there is literal vote coercion going on (intimidation, control of the press, etc.) cannot be considered fair. This doesn't negate the fact that he did win elections, and therefore this is still a valid lesson for generations to come.
That is the message continuously published here by generalist German newspapers, but I cannot find any substance behind it.
Here's a list, though: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/29/trump-dem...
- the Constitution needs suspending
- he needs extrajudicial purges
- vote counting shall be stopped at a particular time. Officials in charge of the mechanics of democracy need to be pressured explicitly about this.
- the peaceful transition of power needs to be interrupted
- expectations held together by norms hold no value. The very tradition of democracy is optional.
It might be irrational to spend effort voting —engaging in democracy— to elevate someone so skeptical of it. And your newspaper and even in this thread people are extremely polite about those doing so.
- The Federal Reserve should do what he says rather than be independent.
- Military generals should be as obedient to him as German generals were to Hitler.
I was not sure, because I had a hypothesis that Trump is just stupid and do not understand what he is doing. But before the current elections he talked a lot how he is going to abuse power to persecute political opponents, or just any opponents, if we believe his words, he is going to persecute everyone he doesn't like.
The purpose of the criminal justice system is not be a cudgel with which to eliminate political opponents. The infamous "34 felonies" were from a state trial in New York; the state of New York does not get to arbitrarily deny the rest of the country their choice in president. Evidently the rest of the country does not consider these to be serious enough to disqualify him from holding office.
Do you not find it _insane_ that he was awaiting a federal trial to determine whether he was guilty of interference in the previous election, was allowed to run, won, and will now make that trial just disappear?
I agree that it could be abused by an authoritarian to silence political rivals. But there are plenty of laws that can and already are abused, including to prevent justice from being served. For example, the several people close to Trump that were pardoned by him right before he left his 1st term.
"You can be president from a jail cell" is likely to be a "well that wouldn't happen" oversight on the Founding Fathers' plate, not an intentional design.
Because they objected to a powerful, unaccountable ruler with absolute immunity to the law.
> They were well aware that criminal prosecutions can be politicized and applied selectively.
And that's why they set up checks and balances, three branches of government, the Bill of Rights, etc. instead of a monarch. Asserting this means they wanted a monarch is... odd.
> If somebody can commit a felony and still get voted in by more than half the country that reflects poorly on the criminal justice system not the election.
I mean, yeah - the criminal justice system is clearly flawed here, as he's fundamentally getting away with the crimes. Garland fucked up by waiting too long; a judge Trump appointed successfully delayed the most serious criminal proceedings until they became meaningless, etc.
The election reflects poorly on the people. Which wouldn't have come as a big surprise to the Founding Fathers, who didn't really trust the people all that much - that's why we have the electoral college, after all.
I'm no Trump fan, but I'd much sooner trust an election over a judge and jury to decide who should be in charge
Regardless if the dems still exist in name or not, both them and democracy are done.
In my opinion Biden was clearly slipping 18-24 months ago. But even if that's wrong, the best way to show the country Biden was fit for another term and energize the party would have been putting him on stage to debate with other democratic leaders.
In the end a lot of the money and power is mostly in blue states.
This is a man who has talked about shooting political opponents on the campaign trail, I’d be astonished if he doesn’t follow through if there will be no consequences.
This is a bald faced lie. Stop talking rubbish.
> Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 246 (1944) (Jackson, J., dissenting). The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Then the claim that the President can in their official capacity assassinate others with impunity and protection from prosecution is no lie.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
You're living in a pre-Trump world. The Supreme Court changed the rules while you were asleep.
The side effects of this will both hurt his base, and offer opportunities for smart people. For example, careless tariffs can raise the cost of everything at Walmart by 60% with Amazon not far behind. You know this and I know this.
Tariffs also demonstrate to domestic companies that they don’t need to innovate. The material and labor to innovate will be cheaper overseas. You know this and I know this.
The greatest trick the rich ever pulled was convincing the middle class that poor people are the cause of all the problems in their life.
That said, I very much dislike Trump and would rather have an empty oval office (arguably we have that already), but I think his threat to democracy has been wildly overblown. Unless a rogue president throws out the book entirely, Congress would have to be the ones to actually get rid of most of our democratic processes and systems.
That said, if somehow that did happen one day I fully expect to die by their gun. At that point that army becomes an invading force and I'd feel like I have no choice but to fight.
I tend to believe him when he says that's what he wants to do. But you are right, one would hope the military would refuse such an unconstitutional order.
Further, he needed the second term then, so he couldn't go all crazy as he needed the people to vote for him once more. Now he doesn't have that limitation any more.
If Trump wanted to be dictator, why didn't he just do all that stuff in his first term and not worry about reelection in 2020?
Again, I'm not arguing he's gonna go full dictator, but i think it's a lot more likely this time around than last time.
And in general this sort of thing doesn't happen overnight; there's a process to things. It's like the old quip on how someone becomes bankrupt: "very gradually, and then suddenly all at once".
I don't know what will happen, but it's a dangerous path to walk. Maybe the next four years will be sort-of okay-ish, but what about the state of things in 10 or 20 years?
In large part, democracies work because we all believe it should work, and once that belief goes out the window for a critical mass of people then you're playing with fire.
The GOP in general has been engaged in scorched earth politics since Obama: all that matters is a win today and doesn't matter what conventions or institutions get damaged in the process. A healthy democracy would have disqualified Trump from running again in 2020. It would not play highly nihilistic power games with the supreme court. etc. etc.
It's absolutely not a healthy state of affairs.
This time around: 1. He allowed an insurrection and was voted in anyway, so his extremist followers are emboldened. 2. He surrounded himself with yes-men.
The difference between this term and his previous is going to be a much stronger focus on making any position he can appoint be one that doesn't tell him no. And it looks like many of the positions he can't (the senate and likely the house) are going that way too. That, to me, makes him represent a meaningfully larger threat to the balance of power in the US than his previous term.
In theory there are things Biden could still do right now to help preserve these institutions but I doesn't look like he will, or even like he has the mental capacity and empathy to be motivated to do so.
So voting is the end of democracy? Interesting take
extreme ignorance of authoritarian regime is particularly visible among people who think that things happen like in movies with singular figures like Darth Vader showing up and suddenly grabbing power out of some kind of ether.