Everything is breaking.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Recent Posts
- Day 14: Louisiana Senator Approvingly Compares Trump to Stalin
- Day 13: Elon Musk Flexes His Muscles
- Day 12: While Elon Musk Takes Over, We Podcast With Driftglass and Blue Gal
- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
Like I’ve been saying…he’s trying to take the government down, one piece at a time.
A slow death by twitter-level actions.
AG
Is the government small enough to drown in the bathtub yet?
This reminds me that I need to renew my passport before they stop issuing any
Ah, yes. Of course Trump is not blatantly trying to forcibly take over the entire federal workforce, to purge all of the federal agencies of anybody who might not be a complete and total Trump loyalist. Not a bit of it!
It’s just about “implementing the President’s agenda.” I.e. it’s about a hostile takeover of the federal workforce which Trump and his fascist group in the White House think should be personally loyal to Trump. And they are not loyal to Trump, they are career civil servants with their own views on agency issues.
Trump is just following in the footsteps of Putin, who followed in the footsteps of Stalin.
Stalin organized his power base for a total seizure of power by staffing the central bureaucracy with his fanatical loyalists who would back him in any emergency. Controlling the federal police – in this case the FBI and Justice Department is absolutely central to any effort to overthrow our democracy and cement his hold onto power by military force.
In short Trump needs to totally remake the federal bureaucracy with his loyalists if he wants to seize power. We can put an abrupt halt to all that crap in less than 1 month if we can re-take Congress.
If not, then we’re likely to wind up with Trump seizing total power exactly like Vladimir Putin.
They’re totally serious about never giving up power no matter what. Trump says constantly to his adoring crowds “they want to take back power, but we’re not going to let them! We’re not going to let them!” And they all cheer.
He’s not talking strictly about voting either. He’s signalling his base that under no conditions, now that they’ve seized power and the Presidency, will they ever let Democrats take it back. That will be prevented one way or another. Permanently.
If they can’t rule by democratic means, they’ll use undemocratic ones. If bribery and corruption won’t do, then force will be resorted to. If violence and intimidation won’t suffice, then they need the ultimate power of the police and military, backed by the Courts and FBI. Then they can investigate, identify, infiltrate, disrupt and arrest their enemies. They can suppress their political activity and put them under surveillance.
Of course, all this stuff was standard procedure during the 1960s under Nixon and Trump and his Alt-right cronies are exactly the same as John Mitchell, Haldeman and Erlichman.
Precisely.
Thank you, Cugel.
There it is, in all of its mean glory.
We are about one or two missteps away from a police state.
AG
“all this stuff was standard procedure during the 1960s under Nixon”
???
Nixon became president on January 20, 1969. Democrats had been in the White House for the previous eight years. I do believe the FBI in those years was quite as involved in domestic spying and political dirty tricks as it was in the Nixon years. J. Edgar Hoover called he shots and he didn’t give a damn who was president.
Just another logical endpoint for the “conservative” movement, whose hostility to an effective central government has been a central tenet of the religion for almost a century.
But the deluge is now well and truly upon us, thanks to the incompetent white electorate. With the confirmation of Trumper’s illegitimate Justice Boofer today, we enter a new political existence; the old order of a Supreme Court as the legitimate final arbiter of statute and constitution has been irreparably shattered. Either the two Trumpite justices resign their seats or we must begin to formulate a rhetoric of refusal to enforce or comply with all 5-4 rulings of Chief Justice Roberts’ illegitimate majority. How long before progressive candidates will begin to utter that we must now destroy what had taken centuries to build?
With every depredation of the National Trumpalists, the Founders’ vision becomes more and more mutilated. While the statesmen of 1789 certainly did not envision a federal civil service of 2 million (or a globe-striding nation of 230 millions for that matter), nothing in their constitution prohibited an effective central (federal) government–although they did (unsuccessfully) attempt to check national militarism. What they did not envision was a monarchical executive, unchecked by legislature or judiciary. Indeed, the prez was virtually an afterthought, and a controversial one at that.
It is plain that Repub control of the federal government means a completely unchecked executive, free to run amok and implement whatever nonsense that animates his brain. That unchecked freedom apparently extends even to an unqualified Quisling imbecile in the office, so long as he was endorsed by the “conservative” movement and the mounting tribe of deplorables that make up its base. And it certainly involves turning a blind eye to the imbecile’s reliance upon the anti-democratic electoral college–which is now praised by “conservatives” as the Founders’ greatest accomplishment. The time bombs in the constitution have simultaneously exploded.
It’s quite clear at this point that the pigheaded white electorate will not alter their fascistic course short of national Gotterdamerung, and our failed constitution does not allow the nation to be better than this failed demographic. Indeed, with an illegitimate Supreme Court, the question becomes whether even Gotterdamerung can force a change in that course. “A republic, if you can keep it”, Franklin quipped. He likely knew we couldn’t.
The reason for the Constitution was to establish an effective central government. Which is why The Federalist Society’s name is a lie: They are anti-Federalist.
Are you really incompetent when you get what you want?
This, this, this. Clearly they are not incompetent, as they have achieved the goals they set out to accomplish. Trump and the Republicans got their Supreme, they’re gutting the Federal employee rolls, they have knocked down laws protecting the poor, the elderly, and the environment. They have established our nationalistic stature by repealing treaties and they’ve passed tax reform that rewards the rich, with pending legislation that will go even further.
Yeah, whether they are “incompetent” or lucky or just brazenly empowered, they seem to keep getting what they want. I just hope we can slow them down in November.
But, for how long will they continue to get “everything they want”? They instituted fascism in South Africa too, and you saw what happened to Apartheid there. It collapsed once the rest of the world stopped cooperating with it, and their own population of black people refused to go along.
There is simply no way they can effectively suppress permanently an emerging majority of the population. They think they can, but they cannot govern that way for long. It would mean chaos and blood in the streets. And that would be bad. Very bad for business.
I assisted a real estate client develop a 30 unit townhome development. He was ready to sell these very beautiful units. Then 9-11 hit and they didn’t sell a single unit for 1 full year! Nobody was buying. Banks were reluctant to lend. Nobody knew what would happen to the economy or when normal conditions would return or whether there would be further incidents, etc.
In short, homeowners just put off purchasing decisions on buying a home until they could gauge what the fallout from the attacks would be. People were frightened and frightened people load up on bottled water and flashlight batteries, and ammo, and they hunker down. They don’t make major purchases.
Guess what happens when they put off making major purchases because of political or economic uncertainty? We get a slump. IT’s bad for BUSINESS!
Elites BTW are the MOST prone to holding back on major purchases. They already have everything they need for survival, they are buying luxuries. Well, in times of crisis, you can temporarily put off buying luxury items for a while.
That might mean no second investment home. We’ll hold off on that purchase for a year and just see what happens with the market after this chaos.
And without those investors, the real estate market starts to actually decline. Prices are falling. Sales are falling, the market is falling as a result. People are losing serious money. Other rich people are just holding out of making investments and looking for safe forms of investment like bonds.
Wall Street may love Trump tax cuts, but they don’t love the chaos that goes everywhere Trump goes. They haven’t done anything really to oppose him so far. But, that’s because the wheels haven’t come off the wagon, so far. We’re not at the stage where there’s blood in the streets very often. Imagine if about 5 different Charlotte’s were going on at roughly the same time.
It happened before – in the Summer of 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King. Riots burned the heart of many American cities. It took over a decade to recover. I remember there were still burned out sections of Bridgeport CT for instance 10 years later in the ’70s. You could see burned store fronts from the riots right along the Post Road as you drove parts of Bridgeport through for years.
It’s still like that. I drive through earlier this summer. Bridgeport is básica a slum and an incinerator.
Touche. But of course it is precisely what they “want” that demonstrates they are objectively incompetent as American citizens, circa 2016.
I’d go somewhat further however, and argue that much of what they are getting they do NOT want, although (as manifest incompetents) they are unaware they are getting it. They do not understand they are getting a completely corporatist Court, and divesting the government of any future ability to resist the ongoing exploitation of the white rubes by the nation’s plutocrats, who are simply dying of laughter–most especially on Justice Boofer Day, which will become a plutocrat national holiday.
The “winning” rubes do not yet know what the fiscally insane and geographically discriminatory Trumpite tax cuts hath wrought, either for their 2018 returns or the tsunami of deficits and debt that are now inevitably approaching. They will not want the coming inflationary economy, white welfare cuts or the complete healthcare breakdown and chaos that National Trumpalism is intentionally implementing with its daily sabotage of the existing ramshackle system.
They also will not want the now irreversible climate change that will engulf their low-lying and flood plain dwellings with several Floods/Downpours Of The Century every other year, or the increasingly massive flood-filled hurricanes that have become the nation’s latest reality TV show. They also do not want the permanent decline in American global leadership that has incontestably already occurred, and which cannot be reversed because other nations have now seen that the nation is permanently lamed by their very existence as wholly incompetent citizens. There are no mulligans for electing Der Trumper, no stain remover for perpetrating such a colossal electoral error. The dog shit can’t be wiped off the shoe.
So yes, they think they have gotten what they want, and in many instances they have. But this simply proves their manifest incompetence, as they have reduced the country to (in their Dear Trumper’s words) a shithole.
Your conception of the purpose of a state differs from theirs.
States are mechanisms you can seize to deploy its coercive functions to reward your friends, punish your enemies, extract the maximum return from the public fisc via its compulsory powers of taxation.
The people actually running Zimbabwe don’t think it’s a failure. The people actually running North Korea don’t think of it as a failure.
Also, this WAS how states worked from their founding until what, 150-250 years ago at the earliest?
Well, he ran on breaking it.
The mid-terms are so important. Few people pay attention. So many have no idea how bad things are. Even the Kavanaugh confirmation is inside baseball. Thought maybe there’d be outrage and mass protests but we’re not really seeing it. Protests sure. But not to the extent that really makes everyone look up from their smart phone — from checking the scores or the latest fashions — and notice.
Seems it’s gonna take a true catastrophe. Perhaps the repeal of Roe will do it. Perhaps. If not, the economy will have to be rocked. And sadly, a flailing economy is always blamed on the president even when government is run well. I don’t know what it’s gonna take to wake people the fuck up.
Elections aren’t the same as revolutions. It may be enough that a committed minority are motivated and outraged. I hope so. Because a true revolution would not be pretty.
“For President Trump, meanwhile, the whole fight has, arguably, been a triumph, and exactly the sort of triumph he loves: divisive and loud, with enraged liberals sputtering and his political base riled up and loving it.” –Susan Glasser, The New Yorker, October 5, 2018
So was the political left in this country suckered once again? If Christine Blasey Ford had never spoken, Kavanaugh would still have been confirmed. Instead Ms. Ford became an unwitting organizing tool not only for women trying to break the chains of their own suffering, but also for Trump and his enablers.
So far nobody has figured out how to skillfully take on the Demagogue-in-Chief, who by all indications is supported by one hell of a lot of Americans who either favor autocratic rule or at least wouldn’t object to it too loudly.
The Republicans have massively underperformed in election after election during the Trump Presidency.
The essential claim here is that “our base shouldn’t protest or get riled up because the Republicans will hurt us.”
It’s the frame of mind domestic abusers want to force upon their victims. You can’t possibly believe this hogwash.
It’s a variant on Murc’s Law. Only Democrats have agency. When Republicans do something bad, blame Democrats.
It’s good when our voters are motivated. Don’t let the conservative movement gaslight you.
“It’s the frame of mind domestic abusers want to force upon their victims”
Gracias, centerfielddj. Gracias.
In another month we will test your thesis.
Your thesis seems to be “it might have been better if Blasey Ford had never come forward and if our base had remained quiet and depressed and let Kavanaugh sail through; that way maybe the Republicans wouldn’t have mobilized.”
That makes no sense at all. Among the things it does is move toward denying Blasey Ford her agency.
If your thesis is something other than what I’m stating here, please share.
Nobody is willing to take on the conservative movement because the only method that will work is violence.
They are willing to break democracy, collude with a foreign power, rob the public, restrict voting, all the name of a fascist theocracy. In short, they will do anything just short of violence because we are still in the civil war and they know violence is when they lose.
Their is no solution to this but violence. Either another civil war or losing a war to a foreign power. And after that the only permanent fix is completing the work of General Sherman and raising red areas to the ground, and then doing what German did post WW2 and banning fascist speech but we’d have to go one further and ban Christianity as well.
So unless the Democratic party is willing to kick that off, than no there is nothing they can do to take on the Republican party.
Among younger people it’s not the government that is illegitate, it’s the United States that is. The only solution is the destruction of the United States (full balkanization now is becoming a common cry), jailing and dealing with Nazi’s violently like we did in WW2, and cranking out the guillotines for the rich and the upper middle class.
Something is going to break and it’s going to break hard. And while it may kill us, it’s worth it. This all needs to burn.
Mitch McConnell should be assassinated. I’ll never say it again. But I had to say it once.