Stunning Trump revelations raise fears of a dark, violent future

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

EJ Dionne
@EJDionne
“What does it mean that for most elected Republicans, none of what we’re learning” from the extraordinary 1/6 revelations “is remotely disqualifying, either in a party leader or a 2024 presidential nominee?” @ThePlumLineGS asks.
The answer isn’t good.

washingtonpost.com
Opinion | Stunning Trump revelations raise fears of a dark, violent future
Why the GOP reaction to the Jan. 6 hearings may put us at a dangerous crossroads.
11:17 AM · Jun 17, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/17/trump-revelations-jan-6-hearings-violent-future/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/vTbss


As extraordinary revelations pour forth about Donald Trump’s plot to destroy our political order after the 2020 election, an unsettling question arises: What does it mean that for most elected Republicans, none of what we’re learning is remotely disqualifying, either in a party leader or a 2024 presidential nominee?

At the close of Thursday’s Jan. 6 select committee hearing, J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge widely respected by conservatives, issued a long-term warning. Trump and his allies pose a “clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said, who pledge to “succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”

“The former president and his allies,” Luttig continued, “are executing that blueprint for 2024 in open and plain view of the American public.”

This might seem like a narrow procedural prediction: If 2024 is super-close, they’ll attempt the same manipulation of our creaky electoral college machinery as last time. They might succeed. They’re putting those pieces in place right now.

That’s all true. But Luttig’s testimony, along with the shocking new revelations, point to something more fundamental at stake. These hearings are about what kind of long-term democratic future lies ahead: They represent an effort to minimize the possibility that we’re sliding headlong into a protracted era of chronic instability and rising political violence.

*snip*

[Hekate]

1. KnR

[calimary]

2. Can't say we haven't been warned.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Dark times coming indeed...nt

[Eliot Rosewater]

4. Yep, happening in broad daylight. But if someone suggests we act like we are in an

emergency and do something DRASTIC to open the eyes of Americans, we are told we are "ridiculous."

[CrackityJones75]

8. What Drastic things shall we do?

I am not trying to be a jerk. I am just waiting for someone to say what the drastic things are that we can/should do.

[Eliot Rosewater]

9. My first suggestion was a high profile Dem goes on MSNBC or CNN or any Sunday

news show and while describing the horrible situation we are in, accidentally but on purpose and rehearsed drops the F bomb a couple times, this way they get bleeped but what they say AFTER the F bomb goes viral.

And instead of 2 million people seeing it, maybe 40 million see it.

2020 as far as I can tell almost ONE HUNDRED MILLION Americans who could have voted, didn't. Think about that, they saw NO REASON to vote! Trump in office destroying everything and they saw NO REASON!

Those same people will not vote this time UNLESS they are awoken somehow. I dont know what else to do, but it has to go viral. It has to get to THOSE people.

Most of them not only dont watch TV they dont even own one.

PS

And then if we overwhelm the polls it makes it harder for the cons to just refuse to certify elections they lose.

And maybe, just MAYBE instead of what, 10 million at most Americans who are tuned in and aware of the danger we are in, it is 100 million, maybe.

I mean do we UNDERSTAND that when people hear the clip "Hang Mike Pence" that many or MOST of that 100 million dont know who that is?

[CrackityJones75]

11. So the drastic measure is using the F word?

I mean I don’t disagree that stronger language is needed. But I am not sure thats gonna wrangle up enough votes. Maybe though.

[Eliot Rosewater]

13. It is the point of getting those folks to hear the REST of what the person has to say...

The F word gets it on youtube...

Otherwise they never see it or hear it.

It could be something else, something that goes viral where the info is the DRASTIC emergency we are in NOW, not in 2024 or even November of this year but NOW!

Can you imagine how many Americans would be watching these hearings and being SHOCKED if this was 1975?

[Baitball Blogger]

5. It means they have given up on American democracy.

So now they're trying to take the country by force.

[Whiskeytide]

7. They never really like democracy in the first place. It was always in the way. n/t

[Whiskeytide]

6. Doesn't the phrase "clear and present danger" have ...

… some meaning with respect to presidential powers? Or was that just a Clancy novel?

[erronis]

16. There are a couple of other uses that predated Luttig and Clancy

In law: Schenck vs. the United States (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/clear_and_present_danger)

The clear and present danger test originated in Schenck v. the United States. The test says that the printed or spoken word may not be the subject of previous restraint or subsequent punishment unless its expression creates a clear and present danger of bringing about a substantial evil.
Requirements:

The clear and present danger test features two independent conditions: first, the speech must impose a threat that a substantive evil might follow, and second, the threat is a real, imminent threat. The court had to identify and quantify both the nature of the threatened evil and the imminence of the perceived danger.
Scope of the test:

The rule has been applied—with very mixed results—in cases involving—

● criminal prosecutions for opposition to war

● statutes penalizing the advocacy of the overthrow of the government by force or violence

● attacks on courts or judges or contempt proceedings against lawyers

● picketing

● regulation of prison inmates' access to newspapers, periodicals, and so forth

● incitement to commit crimes

● breach of the peace or disorderly conduct

and an earlier neocon efforts grouped under the "Committee on the Present Danger":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_the_Present_Danger
The second incarnation of this committee were perhaps the most damaging. And some of the players are still playing with foreign and domestic policy.

[unblock]

10. it's only "not remotely disqualifying" because the media refuses to hold their feet to the fire

if a male democratic politician is accused of, say, not making his hands visible at all times near a woman, they make it impossible for him to run a campaign or be an effective senator.

there's not a single time they can ever make a speech, statement, or public appearance without being hounded by questions about the scandal. the media will completely ignore the topic the democrat wanted to talk about and question them exclusively about the scandal, including seriously damaging questions such as "how can you serve your constituents effectively as someone accused of these horrible things"

but when republicans are shown to be involved in literal treason, the media shrugs and points to a poll and says oh well, i guess it doesn't amount to anything important.




if the media started treating these traitors like, well, traitors, *then* it would be disqualifying.

how about the media start asking them "how can you serve in congress when you've tried to overthrow the government"?
or "why should anyone believe you when you lie repeatedly?"
or "why should your constituents vote for you when you repeatedly vote down help for them?"
or "why should anyone support you if they aren't billionaires or gun manufacturers?"
or "why do you say you love america when all you do is sabotage any effort to make america better?"

there's no consequence because the media keeps treating republicans like a normal party.

they are not.

[erronis]

17. I'd take it several steps further. Many in the media empires are complicit and even encouraging

activities that spread the inflammation. It's easy to think that's just to boost eyeballs on their content (and ad revenues) but I think it's deeper and more evil for some.

[unblock]

20. Even just the profit motive, absent any journalistic principles, is damming enough.

I mean, that rationalization works to support hitler's propaganda machine, too.

Totally agree, the media in the aggregate would have to be implausibly stupid not to realize that they are massive helping the right wing and have been for decades.

[erronis]

21. I forgot to say I like your set of questions the media should be asking. Excellent.

[unblock]

28. Thanks. Really just the same sort of questions they ask democrats

whenever there's a scandal about them.

[Aristus]

12. Thanks a lot, all you "I just didn't trust Hillary" fuckbags!

Eat shit and die!

[maddiemom]

18. BUT, Hillary won the popular vote without them...

We still ended up with Trump. What happened? If I remember correctly there's this thing called the Electoral College...only counts for our highest office...

[Aristus]

19. My post was directed to all of those in the swing states, around a mere 100,000 or so voters

who could have voted for HRC and delivered the Electoral College to her, but chose not to.

The fact that she won the popular vote just makes the whole thing worse.

[maddiemom]

33. Get your point...

[Solly Mack]

15. Exactly what did people think they meant when they talked about wanting to

shrink government down and then drown it in a bathtub?

They were talking about doing away with the institutions of democracy - which in turn would not do away with government but would instead concentrate power into the hands of the few, the very few.

And that requires controlling the vote and its outcomes by any means necessary.

They wouldn't kill all the trappings of a democracy because the illusion is important - until it isn't.

So, you can vote - but only some votes count.

They'll still speak in terms of free speech - but only some speech matters.

You'll still have rights, per se - but only the rights they approve of.

But no safeguards, no regulations, no recourse, no "rule" of law to further rights and liberties. Because the only rule of law will be as they define it.

And they need the willing participation of enough of the population to achieve this - and this is achieved through appeals to prejudice over reason (i.e. white supremacy - replete with the patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, etc.., religious beliefs as a weapon, "them v. us", etc..)

This has been going on for decades at a seemingly two-step forward, one step back (so-to-speak) pace, with it speeding up under Trump.

There are no disqualifying acts for those who seek to destroy democratic principles from within because that's the goal and that has been the goal for a long while now. Trump gave them the opportunity to be more open about it because acceptance of the egregious in the name of "real" America/"real" Americans is considered a virtue - exampled by how some claim Trump has his problems but he is doing god's work, while others say he is saying what they think but supposedly not allowed to say (cancel culture) - they speak of Trump in terms of how they frame their own appeals to prejudice.

[erronis]

24. "shrink government down and then drown it in a bathtub" - more like moving the seat of government

Perhaps to Kansas (Koch), Michigan (DeVos), Russia (Putin). They'll keep whatever forces are needed to control the population and then starve any government programs that try to help the residents.

I do think we should ask every American to think seriously about living in the currently-embodied USSR and consider how they will like their new overlord.

Even the rabid maga crowd would not like having to drive a Skoda or stand in line for hours for a loaf of bread.

But they can't really think about outcomes - perhaps something to do with a shrinking pre-frontal cortex in mainly older, white males. That's where humans try to distinguish themselves from other living critters.

[SalviaBlue]

34. Or when they said they create reality...

“I'm talking, of course, about the statement about the "reality-based community." Here it is in its entirety:

The aide said that guys like me [Suskind] were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." [The New York Times Magazine]”

https://theweek.com/articles/854892/what-karl-rove-right-about-realitybased-community

Aside from the drown in a bathtub moment, this was the most chilling to me. I have always taken them very seriously.

Believe them when they show you who they are… etc.

[Solly Mack]

35. Yep

Democracy can be whatever they decide it is, same with freedom, etc. and it all can change in an instant into whatever else they claim it is.

[Botany]

22. Three days ago our power went of in Central OH so i listened to a local AM station for updates ...

... on the power and weather. The station 610 AM WTVN was nothing more than an open sewer
of sedition and right wing lies and all across America hate talk radio, on FOX and stations like it,
and web sites brain toxins are being spread. Hell, 70% of house republicans voted to overturn the
votes of more than 81 million Americans.

[Joinfortmill]

23. Look to 1930s Germany for your answer.

[Silent3]

25. Most will vigorously deny the revelations are true. But deep down, I doubt most care.

I think a lot of the time denial from Trump supporters isn't obliviousness to the obvious corruption and autocratic tendencies of Trump, it's a way of pretending not to be willingly corrupted themselves.

[Initech]

26. Fox News is doing everything they can to facilitate a civil war happening.

Fuck them.

[Crowman2009]

27. All we can hope for is that the Trump cult turn on each other.

[kimbutgar]

29. I am starting to be concerned that our Democracy is doomed

After hearing the TFG saying the republicans are going to take back congress in a landslide in November and there will be payback to all liberals I got scared.

[Butterflylady]

30. That will not happen if Americans

Are given the facts of what it will be like if this democracy goes down and it will if republicans take over. Inflation and higher prices for everything will be the last of their worries. No one is talking about what it will be like to be living under those conditions or how it can be prevented. It won't be pretty, so maybe putting a scare in people might just help.

[kimbutgar]

32. I agree scare the crap out of them!

I am pretty informed but after hearing what I heard today I was scared for the first time.

[Emile]

31. Send the terrorists all to GITMO and waterboard them daily.