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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWe are seeing the end game of a 40+ year project..
…and Trump is just the useful idiot they’re using to con the people who have been primed for the moment through decades of brainwashing.
Since Reagan, their first useful idiot, and the era of trickle-down and deregulation, American pillagers and parasites (oligarchs who intend to take all and contribute nothing), have been dismantling democracy. The Supreme Corrupt Court has helped tremendously, installing G.W., another useful idiot, paving the way for endless dark money (“Corporations are people, my friend.” Romney), and removing protections for people and planet.
The Corrupt Court and RepubliCONS in Congress have been engaged in an ongoing coup, and unfortunately our government has not used every tool to stop it. The doj in effect gave immunity to the coup planners long before the Court gave it to Trump. Now we may be seeing a move by big donors (also oligarchs) to get the job done. President Biden’s bold promise to make sure the wealthy pay their fair share reminds me of promises made by Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders before they were taken down, also with the help of people in their party.
This is an end game, and no matter what happens to the Democratic ticket, every American who has not been poisoned by the dreaded kool-aid is going to have to wake up and get engaged. And the administration needs to use EVERY TOOL from now on. Otherwise the hellscape described in Project 2025 will be our reality.
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OneGrassRoot
(23,953 posts)OneGrassRoot
(23,953 posts)Vance is their guy.
polichick
(37,626 posts)Raven123
(7,797 posts)
Irish_Dem
(81,266 posts)Permanent and total GOP power.
BigMin28
(1,859 posts)was telling us this all the time during the W administration. They said it outright. People didn't take them seriously, and here we are
Irish_Dem
(81,266 posts)Relentless attack on the Clinton’s.
GoreWon2000
(1,461 posts)with Rove's and GOP SCOTUS's help.
Abigail_Adams
(333 posts)The captains of industry and right wing loathed FDR and his New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, unions, and anything that got in the way of taking all the country's resources for themselves. Fuckers.
Attilatheblond
(8,877 posts)They had been sending their people to Italy and Germany before WWII to see how Mussolini and Hitler got things done. Many of them were quite impressed with the fascists. Too many of them still are.
Joe Biden and most DEMs work for ALL the people and Biden has made a lot of changes that actually help the people who need policy support most. THAT is what turned the economy around.
Joe Biden came from the working class; he's the scrappy kid from Scranton. He is a keen observer and seems impervious to bullshit He understands how the levers of government work and he works them to help those who have been, and are being, exploited by the big money class. He truly believes, AND PROVES, that we all do better when we ALL do better. That's why the media talkers the big moolah guys pay are talking Joe down 24/7.
Sadly, there seems to be damned little empathy or ethics anymore. 'Sell out to get by' seems to be the order of today. It does NOT bode well for democracy here or anywhere. It's so short sighted that it scares me.
The big money hoarders are sick and addicted. Nothing will ever be enough for them. They chaff mightily at the fact that regular people are starting to make some progress keeping their heads above water. They would rather eat us, then each other. Joe and DEMs have to go as far as they are concerned.
Trump WAS just a means to an end. He is a fool to not see he won't be useful to them at all soon.
barbtries
(31,308 posts)but reagan's administration heralded the dumbing down of america, the end of fair doctrine (? is that right? when news was news and opposing sides were assured a chance to rebut each other on air), and the rise of right wing propaganda. But Hillary was right all along: a vast right wing conspiracy.
i hate republicans
summer_in_TX
(4,168 posts)At one time we had a SCOTUS who not only upheld the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine (in the 1969 FCC v. Red Lion decision), the Supreme Court added language in one of their decisions that certainly looked at the proposition that Americans should have a right to information from multiple perspectives to be the citizens the Founders envisioned.
If that had made it into legislation, it would have changed everything.
willamette
(182 posts)It was/is way more than half-vast.
willamette
(182 posts)Think. Again.
(22,456 posts)Let's not just win every race in this election, let's spend the next 4 years ending the republican party permanently.
Baltimike
(4,441 posts)
Lovie777
(22,979 posts)on surface with polling they are barely making it. The conclusion from what I'm seeing, that is why all of trashing and bashing of President Biden and the beginning of VP Harris. They do not have the numbers to win, period.
BComplex
(9,914 posts)swing it to the Supreme Court. Game over. Except we've got the numbers and we know it. That's really messing with their plans.
IzzaNuDay
(1,295 posts)He was corrupt as well. I often wondered if it could get any worse. I lived long enough to see it has!
bullimiami
(14,075 posts)And stupid trump comes along and starts a stampede and their only chance to salvage it is to ride it out.
I don’t think this is the end game any of them expected.
polichick
(37,626 posts)bullimiami
(14,075 posts)
Joinfortmill
(21,164 posts)American refused to see that Reagan was scewing them.
polichick
(37,626 posts)Reagan, the movie star cowboy - all American hero.
G.W., the harmless frat boy Republicans want to have a beer with.
Trump, the reality show business tycoon.
These people are ruthless in their manipulation.
Wounded Bear
(64,324 posts)Figurehead 'presidents' babbling bumper sticker messages and cutesy slogans that get people riled up about the wrong issues.
Projecting their own evils on others, coupled with deflection around anything they get caught doing.
The general public is so used to following the most recent shiny object and chasing the latest squirrels up random trees.
Bread and circuses, without the bread. People are starving, oh well.
Getting dark out there.
2naSalit
(102,793 posts)Having been thoroughly conditioned by the teevee for decades was easy to win over with carefully packaged candidates.
yonder
(10,293 posts)For decades, everything we think we NEED has been presented to us by some sort screen to maximize that need. It was easy to include those with political power along with the products.
The global digital burp of yesterday has reacquainted many with the once occasional 'Blue Screen of Death'. Like boiling frogs, most of us, myself included, rarely notice our daily exposure to a much more dangerous, cultural Blue Screen of Death.
2naSalit
(102,793 posts)Beck23
(411 posts)He acted in plays in college. If you want to see Bush act, look at his speech to Congress where he said Iraq bought yellow cake (uranium) from Niger. He lowers his voice to a almost a whisper when he said "yellowcake from Niger". Bad acting, but acting just the same.
Of course, the yellowcake story was a lie, proven by Joe Wilson. Cheney punished Wilson by declaring his wife (Valerie Plame) fair game and exposing her as a CIA agent, exposing her associates overseas to grave danger.
Also, a lot of those malapropisms, like "misunderestimate" were also staged IMHO.
Beck23
(411 posts)Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby revealed Plame's identity as punishment for Joe Wilson's exposing the Iraq/Niger lie. Libby was convicted of lying in the investigation. W Bush commuted his sentence, and, -wait for this, Trump pardoned him!
a kennedy
(35,978 posts)
gab13by13
(32,321 posts)The man behind the curtain is Leonard Leo and his big money donors; Paul Singer, Harlan Crow, the Kochs, and businessman named Barre Seid who put Leo in charge of a 1.6 billion dollar trust fund.
Leonard Leo isn't just a man who picks out names for the Supreme Court, that is just one thing he does. He was deeply involved in the removal of Harriet Miers for Samuel Alito. He also was the guy who pushed Brett Kavanaugh through for confirmation. Leo is the guy behind the overturning of Roe. Leo is behind bringing religion into government.
Leonard Leo is deeply involved in putting Federalist Society members into the state courts, he was behind North Carolina court getting a Magat majority.
Leonard Leo is the man who nobody but Sheldon Whitehouse talks about.
We also have a Federalist Society member as Director of the FBI.
We also have an US Attorney General who moderated 11 Federalist Society events.
Leonard Leo flipped Reagan's ideology right on its head.
Leonard Leo is the king maker and he has the money behind him.
hatrack
(64,887 posts)But, yeah.
polichick
(37,626 posts)At this dire moment the administration must reconsider some of these appointments.
soldierant
(9,354 posts)and I don't think Charley gets along with the other siblings. Maybe we need to start sayng "Charles Koch." Or if the rest of family is screwing with us in their own ways, which would not surprise me an iota, "Charles Koch and the other surviving Kochs." "The Kochs" has simply meant "Charles and David Koch" for too long.
Blue Full Moon
(3,484 posts)Timeflyer
(3,756 posts)AverageOldGuy
(3,835 posts)1947/8: Truman hosts NAACP leaders in White House; 1948 Truman orders armed forces desegregated. Southern Democrats lost their minds; Strom Thurmond (himself the father of a mixed-race daughter, Essie Mae), leads the "Dixiecrats" to walk out of the Democratic National Convention; Truman is not on the ballot in Alabama; Dixiecrats win MS, LA, AL, GA, SC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat
1970: Nixon's Southern Strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
1971: Lewis Powell's memo https://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/
1980: Reagan kicks off his presidential campaign with a "states' rights" speech in Neshoba County, Mississippi, site of the 1964 kidnap, torture, murder of three civil rights workers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan%27s_1980_States%27_rights_speech
Festivito
(13,890 posts)Paste it in google for yourself.
LiberaBlueDem
(1,167 posts)Nothing for the common people
It's all about money making and hoarding
Climate? Nothing. Health care? Nothing
rump told so many lies and continues, people are finally seeeing the nothingness in the repug lies..
Of course they still own the voting machine companies .. except for that new one Dominion
2naSalit
(102,793 posts)From colonial times where there were the wealthy, their corporals and everyone else. That's where they want to take this, a point in time when the wealthy truly had the freedom to act out all their sick fantasies against others with impunity.
barbtries
(31,308 posts)had a voice.
orangecrush
(30,260 posts)
PCIntern
(28,366 posts)We knew in the early 1980’s that they were on a mission to roll back everything. There were those who were dismissive like Michael Kinsley, who woukd just reject tgat notion out of hand. Many did not realize the capabilities and work ethic of these individuals involved.
While many were going to Studio 54 or its equivalent, those plotters were very busy planning their next moves, which blanketed the country.
They allowed progressive movements to continue all the while surrounding the liberals in local and state governments. Eventually they moved up the ranks and , with a complicit, stupid, asinine corporate media, are near to achieving their goals.
As long as Americans can watch action movies and drink alcohol in their homes, they won’t much care what’s going on. Until it reaches through the walls and assaults them. But by then, it’ll be too late.
Baltimike
(4,441 posts)
Alice Kramden
(2,951 posts)bookmarked
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(13,291 posts)It was a part of the effort to take the teeth out of the unions, and it pretty much worked. Among other reasons for getting Biden to step down is his strong support of and by unions.
One of the first things Dubya did when he took office was to use the Taft-Hartley Act to end the lockout (strike) of longshoremen on the West Coast. That pretty much stripped the union of any power at the negotiating table. Why should the corporations pay more for labor when the employees are forced by law to work at the existing rates, which would be less than unions could get via fair negotiations?
Hermit-The-Prog
(36,631 posts)[ ... ] Suppressing voting, changing legislative processes so that a normal majority could no longer prevail, sowing public distrust of government institutions— all these were tactics toward the goal. But the Holy Grail was the Constitution: alter it and you could increase and secure the power of the wealthy in a way that no politician could ever challenge. [ ... ]
[ Next best thing is to own the Supreme Court so as to interpret the Constitution in ways favorable to oligarchs. ]
Gravy Train to Oligarchy
MacLean explains that Virginia’s white elite and the pro-corporate president of the University of Virginia, Colgate Darden, who had married into the DuPont family, found Buchanan’s ideas to be spot on. In nurturing a new intelligentsia to commit to his values, Buchanan stated that he needed a “gravy train,” and with backers like Charles Koch and conservative foundations like the Scaife Family Charitable Trusts, others hopped aboard. Money, Buchanan knew, can be a persuasive tool in academia. His circle of influence began to widen.
[ ... ]
Buchanan’s school focused on public choice theory, later adding constitutional economics and the new field of law and economics to its core research and advocacy. The economist saw that his vision would never come to fruition by focusing on who rules. It was much better to focus on the rules themselves, and that required a “constitutional revolution.”
[ ... ]
Buchanan’s ideas began to have huge impact, especially in America and in Britain. In his home country, the economist was deeply involved in efforts to cut taxes on the wealthy in 1970s and 1980s and he advised proponents of Reagan Revolution in their quest to unleash markets and posit government as the “problem” rather than the “solution.” The Koch-funded Virginia school coached scholars, lawyers, politicians, and business people to apply stark right-wing perspectives on everything from deficits to taxes to school privatization. In Britain, Buchanan’s work helped to inspire the public sector reforms of Margaret Thatcher and her political progeny.
[ ... ]
A World of Slaves
Most Americans haven’t seen what’s coming.
MacLean notes that when the Kochs’ control of the GOP kicked into high gear after the financial crisis of 2007-08, many were so stunned by the “shock-and-awe” tactics of shutting down government, destroying labor unions, and rolling back services that meet citizens’ basic necessities that few realized that many leading the charge had been trained in economics at Virginia institutions, especially George Mason University. Wasn’t it just a new, particularly vicious wave of partisan politics?
It wasn’t. MacLean convincingly illustrates that it was something far more disturbing.
[ ... ]
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america
Abstractartist
(446 posts)Yes, but we have an advantage, and it’s called Donald Trump. Why you ask? Simple…
Trump can’t keep his fucking mouth shut. He’s a narcissist sociopath and needs to keep telling people out loud what most likely everyone involved in the Project 2025 ( and other crazy shit the right can come up with) wants to keep quiet until able to implement.
Think of it this way… what normal democrat, independent, or even moderate republican wants the bat shit 2025 started? And why would they vote for the ass that will try and start it. This is why the election committee needs to hit hard in all 270 states two major elements.
1. The president does not work alone like a king. The president has a complete administration working with, behind, around him.
2. Shitstain 2025 will be a horrendous aspect of life if implemented. Print it out, hand it out, read it to the voters in a town hall, on Twitter, Instagram Facebook…
GOTV FOR BIDEN/FOR OUR COUNTRY.
oldmanlynn
(821 posts)Dems need a long and short game as well. Instead our game is mostly GOTV.
C_eh_N_eh_D_eh
(2,222 posts)bdamomma
(69,532 posts)Voting seems to our only POWER now, we are the only ones to save ourselves. Are we going to rise to the occasion????
I am NOT ready to do this 
This election has consequences for everyone not only us. It will be a world-wide problem.
Hotler
(13,747 posts)If they take power there will be no religious freedom, only their warped views.
polichick
(37,626 posts)…same way they have used “pro lifers” and gun nuts - but those groups have metastasized into a big ugly monster.
HarryM
(464 posts)That Ronnie Rat Raygun started this whole overthrow of the US. For many years now.
S/V Loner
(9,545 posts)What really concerns me is their complete confidence that they will win. Vance is a good example. They doubled down with him as the VP choice rather than picking someone that might bring in voters that were on the fence.. Another thing is their saying the quiet part out loud. The racist remarks, the Fascist policies, 2025... the list goes on and on.
They have laid a foundation both in the courts and in the red States. I am also convinced that even with a Biden win they will become more brazen (I think that is why they are doing all the can to fire up their base including violence) and move the election resul=ts into the courts which will definitely end up before their Supreme Court.
That's just the way I see it. They put themselves in a position that they cannot afford to lose.
We are certainly living in interesting times.
polichick
(37,626 posts)They are counting on Democrats to fight with their hands tied behind their backs.
It will take the people and the administration doing every single thing possible to stop this train - and that includes indicting ALL of the coup planners and removing from power the Corrupt Court that is part of the coup. Even if it takes using the powers the Court just granted the president.
jalan48
(14,914 posts)Is there a reason they don't?
flying_wahini
(8,275 posts)That this country would be a different place across the board. I think of all they have destroyed;
Union labor, climate accord, education system and social programs.
These few people in the 1% really have destroyed our country, and they aren’t done yet.
But all the money in the world can’t buy our votes. We can still turn this bus around.
polichick
(37,626 posts)Democrats too quickly accepted “for the sake of unity.”
We don’t have that luxury now.
k55f5r
(520 posts)in the 1950's.
Posse Comitatus nutjobs and hard right church leaders.
JFK, then RFK assassinated
Reagan Crowned Dementia King
G.Bush Ex-CIA boss Elected President
CNAC Brave New World
etc...
Kid Berwyn
(24,395 posts)…replaced by a system that works perfectly for the wealthy and wicked.
The bastards tried to overthrow FDR, killed JFK, and are responsible for a hell of a lot more since then.
BFEE Just-Us
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10026954410
Thank you for a most important OP, polichick!
Stargazer99
(3,517 posts)
malaise
(296,102 posts)Must read
joanbarnes
(2,119 posts)The 'assassination' attempt was tRump's wakeup call that his time as a Useful Idiot is coming to an end, since Pyutin, et al decided they now want Vance.
SupportSanity
(1,582 posts)If he does get his chance to become dictator, we know Trump will call it his.
Now is the time to call it Trump's. And keep calling it Trump's.
Trump's Project 2025.
malthaussen
(18,567 posts)What we are seeing is the point of an underground revolution when it has to expose itself in order to progress. This is a moment of high vulnerability, and if mis-timed, can set the program back decades if not generations. The RWNJs are now coming into the open with all their ghastly ideas, making the choice a clear and stark one to anyone paying attention (which, frankly, in the US ain't many people). They think the time is right, or maybe they think this is the best chance they've got. They may be right about the latter, it is up to the voters of the country to show them they're wrong about the former.
-- Mal
DENVERPOPS
(13,003 posts)It sounds like you and I have been yelling the same things since Reagan (actually HWBush) was installed corruptly in the White House.
If I were to write a book about the last 44+ years, it's title would be: WHILE THE NATION SLEPT
barbtries
(31,308 posts)i don't how many times i've complained to my children that fucking republicans never sleep, they're like zombies.
DENVERPOPS
(13,003 posts)But it should be resurrected.........
But the book on those years would be so many volumes, that they would fill a library.......
JohnnyRingo
(20,870 posts)It is indeed a master plan that has had setbacks over the years, but they never stopped relentlessly pushing the agenda.
pwb
(12,669 posts)They better start facing reality or they will lose even more customers.
Viewership is down big time now. If one of them wakes up and joins society they would do pretty good IMO.
We have more big money enemies against us this election but
We win anyway..
TommyT139
(2,357 posts)For most media, the "customers" are not the readers/viewers. The companies who advertise are the ones paying to keep the product being cranked out, with a side business of figuring out who is consuming the media and what needs to be in print / on screen to keep us engaged.
PatrickforB
(15,425 posts)Biden is our nominee and we need to ram it back down the throats of these greed lizards and take back OUR REPUBLIC.
barbtries
(31,308 posts)been saying this for awhile. they can smell victory so they're smashing through all the barriers at light speed. my hope is that they went too far: women's rights, bump stocks, presidential immunity, the corruption of the court, etc.
when they lose in november the republican party should crumble. we need a super majority to even begin to repair the damage already done.
karl rove's wet dream coming true. a nation being propagandized to death by fascist overlords. for me it's already fairly dystopian, but the practical effects on people who don't pay enough attention to see what is happening are in for a very rough ride if we don't win in November.
nikatnyte
(345 posts)This has been heading toward a showdown for years. The tired, fading old guard of privileged white men vs. the diverse, youthful, vibrant coalition that is the real heart of our country. Even if they "win" in November (which I strongly doubt), they're on the losing side...and they know it.
Warpy
(114,615 posts)which Marx & Engels pointed out and those old Soviet economists expanded on. They were wrong only about the stime scale. Sometimes it runs more efficiently than others to deprive people of their share of the economic pie, the grabbers wanting to take it all, so the timeline between reform and collapse dan take decades or, once in a great while, centuries. The latter has occurred more with city states and an ever expanding empire, which is its own animal, but the process is the same. It was also dismally similar in the worker's paradise of the USSR, the grabbers turning to outright theft instead of merely wage theft to make themselves rich. And rich they got.
I've never been too polite to point out to people what was happening to them and why and they were never too polite to ignore me.
I'm beginning to think stopping this prices is like trying to hold back the tide with a teaspoon. It's frustrating and will not work.
I do know the crash that's shaping up is going to take nearly everything with it. The grabbers haven't left much behind.
GAJMac
(266 posts)czarjak
(13,639 posts)Make Might
Ask Fox.
WarGamer
(18,613 posts)Todays GOP Isn't Papa's GOP...
The last 40 years... hell, 70 years... has been the era of the Neoconservative movement.
The Neocons allied with the wealthy for financial support but they've never been invested in building a society run by oligarchs.
Now the neocons are dead and buried... with the exception of Dick and his daughter, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson and others...
Todays GOP, Trumpism is a greater threat because the Neocons only gave a shit about defeating the Russians, spreading a US military sphere of influence and empire building...
Neocons didn't give a SHIT about religious people except around voting time... or about working people or welfare or abortion.
Those were just campaign promises to their voters. But their primary aim was American Imperialism and spreading their form of "Democracy" at the barrel of an M16 rifle.
Trumpism is more rooted in ideology... but like the neocons, uses the wealthy for funding in return for looser regulations and money making environment.
Neoconservatism had it's roots well entangled in the Democratic Party, too... Trumpism is soundly rejected by the entire Democratic Party.
Bayard
(29,688 posts)
Rubyshoo
(1,959 posts)Quote by George Carlin
¨The upper class: keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class: pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there... just to scare the shit out of the middle class.¨
Initech
(108,783 posts)The billionaire oligarchs like the Kochs, Leos, Crows, and Mercers (who I have been lately referring to as the "fuckheads that be" because I refuse to acknowledge their power), have decided that fascism is the way and Trump is their useful idiot. If we can stop them in this election, we can stop them for good. If it's even slightly close, they'll try to find a way to steal it, like they stole Bush V Gore, and 2016 from us. But we must stop them at all costs. Fuck those that want to bring fascism and Nazism to the US. 