You've already lost your country.

Our news media, which has been good, should have called out the erosion of our institutions when it first happened. We entered a Constitutional Crisis when the Executive Branch disabled the oversight function of our Congress, ignored subpoenas and document requests.

Like Timothy Snyder says, at the point where you are waiting to be rescued, it's already too late.

The media keeps waiting for our Constitutional Crisis.

We've been in a Constitutional Crisis from the first day that the White House refused to obey a subpoena or turn over demanded documents.

The moment the Executive Branch disabled the oversight function of the Congress, we were in trouble.

That was years ago.

Kick and Rec.

The other two don't really stand up historically.

Point One:



This is true of almost every authoritarian regime that has taken root since the early 20th century. They are always novel for their time. This is why they arouse the difficult-to-understand devotion they do. (For explanations and examples, see Ruth Ben-Ghiat's new book Strongmen)

Point Two:



If people are bothered by this, it might be important. It didn't stop people from supporting Mussolini, who was preoccupied only with gratifying his personal needs. I think that's true of of Berlusconi as well, and perhaps many others (I hate to mix Communist regimes with Western examples, but there are some to think about here). These movements are about saying no to and attacking everything, they are never about a vision for the future. They always concentrate on a life-and-death struggle in the present that is imaginary. But it is a good point.

Point Three:



Fascist time, as Timothy Snyder calls it, is flat and independent of factual reality, and it is nihilistic in the sense that it doesn't worry itself about "future". Authoritarians remain in power by animating nostalgia for a past that didn't happen, and a false future, or no future at all, and just making the present about a fabricated life-or-death conflict between his supporters and the vague need to survive against some "enemies." That game can run on a long time. You'll notice, for example, when you look around the world at current authoritarians, that they never speak about Global Warming unless it is to declare it a hoax and part of a larger conspiracy against the autonomy of the state. It's "muslims," 'immigrants", conspiracies by Western Democracies, anti-Christians, etc...

There are some real epiphanies in the book The Death of Democracy by Benjamin Carter Hett, and also Ruth Ben-Ghiat's new book Strongmen. Ben-Ghiat takes us across a timespan of 100 years explaining how people like Trump gain, keep and (hopefully) lose power.

I, frankly, hope to Christ this Politico analysis is correct. It just feels out of touch with history.

Stronger arguments against a Trump run might focus on his physical and mental decline; those two factors have brought down regimes, especially since "virility" is one of the factors that makes an authoritarian charismatic in the eyes of his fanatics.

Kick and Rec

North Hollywood shootout





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout#Aftermath

The police were being outgunned, and the slippery slope turned into a waterslide.

Many of those who do are whistling past a graveyard IMO. I'm concerned about a lot of things--not particularly this lawsuit, but the "inside job" on Joe, Kamala and our Democracy.

Thank you for teaching me a new phrase.

I do find this interesting. I wish my dad were alive, because at one point he really studied Bill Gross and invested quite a bit with him. But Bill Gross' fall has been a spectacular tale of griping, accusations back and forth of betrayal and incompetence, and lawsuits galore, and included a terrible and vicious falling out with his closest and brightest protege, Mohamed A. El-Erian, who basically accused Gross of being senile. And the way Gross subsequently ran his bond funds, I don't entirely doubt it.

even "desperate." This is more like that trickle of blood that oozes out of the mouth of a movie character that's already dead.

Stevie Nicks: "All of us were drug addicts, but I was the worst"

https://www.loudersound.com/features/stevie-nicks-all-of-us-were-drug-addicts-but-i-was-the-worst

Christine McVie was asked to describe the significant moment in Fleetwood Mac history, the recording of the album Mirage:

nationalism and isolationism (amid fantasies of Autarky and Empire) is deeply worrying. We have problems to solve that can't be solved unless we cooperate and join forces. All that we achieved in the post WW2 era is slowly crumbling.