US Politics: Red Whine Hangover

[OldGimletEye]

11 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

The moral of the story seems to be that hyperpartisanship is bad.  It leads to gridlock and loss of confidence in institutions.  This can eventually lead to an authoritarian take-over to 'get things done'.  

That suggests the cure here is not 'Trump is like Hitler' and 'McConnel is like Hindenberg' but a dialing back of hyperpartisanship.

Well I guess if the German Social Democratic Party along with the other parties in Germany in the 1920s and 30s would sat down and had a nice civil conversation with the Nazi Party everything would have worked out well?

Surely, the Nazis had some valid grievances. Any "reasonable" both sider would have surely understood that?

No I think the real lesson is that its too bad that the left, center left, the center, and even some on the right didn't ban together to smash the Nazis before they ever became threat.

I think Mein Kampf came out around 1924 or 1925. It's too bad more people hadn't read it and taken it seriously, so they'd know exactly what they were dealing with.

I know conservative sorts of people like to think they have a bunch of really good grievances. And of course, both siders, liking to think of themselves as being reasonable, like to think conservatives must have some legitimate grievances.

But, the problem here is most, if not all, the conservative "points" these days are horseshit. Perhaps we should go through them one by one just to demonstrate, no it's not both parties that are equally at fault here.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

25 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Well I guess if the German Social Democratic Party along with the other parties in Germany in the 1920s and 30s would sat down and had a nice civil conversation with the Nazi Party everything would have worked out well?

Surely, the Nazis had some valid grievances. Any "reasonable" both sider would have surely understood that?

No I think the real lesson is that its too bad that the left, center left, the center, and even some on the right didn't ban together to smash the Nazi's before they ever became threat.

I think Mein Kampf came out around 1924 or 1925. It's too bad more people hadn't read it and taken it seriously, so they'd know exactly what they were dealing with.

I know conservative sorts of people like to think they have a bunch of really good grievances. And of course, both siders, liking to think of themselves as being reasonable, like to think conservatives must have some legitimate grievances.

But, the problem here is most, if not all, the conservative "points" these days are horseshit. Perhaps we should go through them one by one just to demonstrate, no it's not both parties that are equally at fault here.

The ironic thing is that the left (i.e. the Communists) hated the Social Democrats more than the Nazis, and actually cooperated with Hitler to sabotage for the democratic parties in Germany and make the country ungovernable. 

This kind of Nazi/Communist alliance was then as we know repeated between Germany and the Soviet Union until operation Barbarossa in 1941. 

Had Stalin not helped Hitler out with invading Poland, and then supplied him with vast quantities of fuel and other raw materials for the subsequent invasion of France, Germany would probably have ended up stuck in a two-front gridlock like in WW1 without achieving much. The Soviet Union agreeing to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact really screwed over the Allied war plan. 

[Serious Callers Only]

The UN report bout global warming just came out saying things are worse than expected (10 years to 'arrest' global warming... this is the 'sanitized' version).

I only wonder if the pogroms are going to be just about the color of your skin or your refugee status, or your class status. Probably a mixture.

Oh and India is fucked. America will eat itself with its weapons and victimization culture. God knows that beef farms/eating won't be made illegal until the rivers are literally burning and if they try anyway, a legion of hicks will turn terrorist.

To be honest so am i. Just last week in the start of winter was 30C. In the high summer the high was 49-50C. Yeah.

[SeanF]

15 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

An interesting read:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitler-history-historian

 

 

Hmm. And here I wonder, after Hitler proved to be a disaster for the world and for Germany itself, if conservative aristocrats like Hindenburg said to themselves,"We can wash our hands of this whole affair. Hitler didn't do the true conservatism."

 

I think the argument is unconvincing.  Germany in the 1920's and early 1930's experienced levels of political violence that don't exist in the USA.  Every political party (even the liberal ones) had their own paramilitary wing.  The Weimar Republic was viewed as being (at best) a necessary evil, and was actively loathed by many people on the right and left.  Germans couldn't believe that they'd lost WWI, and believed themselves the victims of foreign aggression.  These views were pretty much held across the spectrum, not just by Nazis.  Then they were hit by the Great Depression, which affected Germany almost worse than any other country, and opinion radicalised still further.

US democracy enjoys broad public support, and hyperpartisanship has not resulted in political parties using violence against each other.   The USA remains the top dog, internationally.  It's not an aggrieved defeated power, thirsting to win back lost territories.  And, it has a very successful economy.  The factors that could drive a Nazi-type power into power, just don't exist in the USA.

Trump is a charlatan, but he's no Hitler.  A Hitler would have unleashed a wave of violence against political opponents (including some on the right) and moved rapidly to suppress rival political parties, and trade unions.  He's more of a Huey Long figure.

 

[mormont]

10 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think the argument is unconvincing.  Germany in the 1920's and early 1930's experienced levels of political violence that don't exist in the USA.  Every political party (even the liberal ones) had their own paramilitary wing.

But there is a significant level of political violence in the modern USA, you'd surely agree?

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The USA remains the top dog, internationally.  It's not an aggrieved defeated power, thirsting to win back lost territories. 

Agreed: but it has a President who rose to power by telling the electorate that it was an aggrieved and (effectively) defeated power, that the world was laughing at it and taking advantage of it. And many of its voters appear to believe him. When making this comparison, I'd argue that the beliefs of the voters are more important than the reality. 

Quote

Trump is a charlatan, but he's no Hitler.  A Hitler would have unleashed a wave of violence against political opponents (including some on the right) and moved rapidly to suppress rival political parties, and trade unions.  He's more of a Huey Long figure.

Maybe. But I'd argue it's legitimate for people to be worried that he may be more of the former: in fact, it's a good thing if they are. Vigilance is important in the fight against fascism. 

[SeanF]

14 minutes ago, mormont said:

But there is a significant level of political violence in the modern USA, you'd surely agree?

Agreed: but it has a President who rose to power by telling the electorate that it was an aggrieved and (effectively) defeated power, that the world was laughing at it and taking advantage of it. And many of its voters appear to believe him. When making this comparison, I'd argue that the beliefs of the voters are more important than the reality. 

Maybe. But I'd argue it's legitimate for people to be worried that he may be more of the former: in fact, it's a good thing if they are. Vigilance is important in the fight against fascism. 

Still nothing like on the scale of Germany and not being encouraged by political leaders. 

Vigilance is important, but overstating a case discredits it.  It's certainly reasonable to compare Trump to Salvini or Duterte. and I'm sure he'd love to be a dictator, but people like Hitler and Stalin and Mao really were in a league of awfulness of their own,

[mormont]

57 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Still nothing like on the scale of Germany and not being encouraged by political leaders. 

But it is being encouraged by political leaders, at least by one political leader, who happens to be the President. 

57 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Vigilance is important, but overstating a case discredits it. 

No. There can be no 'buts' in that sentence. If vigilance is important, then it's important. 'Buts' just undercut that. If people feel this is a false alarm, fine. But criticising people for being vigilant cannot help but have the effect of decreasing vigilance. 

[Rippounet]

8 hours ago, Altherion said:

I still think Trump can be a prelude to something worse, but I would be surprised if this worse thing came from the left. The US allows radical leftists to exist, but it is pretty good at stomping them the moment they come anywhere close to power: not only is nearly all law enforcement oriented towards this end, but the left is the party of gun control...

Oh, I agree. But the left will now participate in making things worse.

I would assume that, unfortunately, radicalism and violence are now going to spread on the left as well. As you well know, right-wingers assume it already has.

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

I think the argument is unconvincing.  Germany in the 1920's and early 1930's experienced levels of political violence that don't exist in the USA.  Every political party (even the liberal ones) had their own paramilitary wing.  The Weimar Republic was viewed as being (at best) a necessary evil, and was actively loathed by many people on the right and left.  Germans couldn't believe that they'd lost WWI, and believed themselves the victims of foreign aggression.  These views were pretty much held across the spectrum, not just by Nazis.  Then they were hit by the Great Depression, which affected Germany almost worse than any other country, and opinion radicalised still further.

US democracy enjoys broad public support, and hyperpartisanship has not resulted in political parties using violence against each other.   The USA remains the top dog, internationally.  It's not an aggrieved defeated power, thirsting to win back lost territories.  And, it has a very successful economy.  The factors that could drive a Nazi-type power into power, just don't exist in the USA.

First we don't know which factors are necessary and which are not. Fascism and its variants are not only popular in "aggrieved defeated powers" for instance. Second, a new economic crisis should be just around the corner (I expect it in less than five years).

Anyway, the bolded is what could change in the next decade or so. I would suggest it is already changing.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

But it is being encouraged by political leaders, at least by one political leader, who happens to be the President. 

No. There can be no 'buts' in that sentence. If vigilance is important, then it's important. 'Buts' just undercut that. If people feel this is a false alarm, fine. But criticising people for being vigilant cannot help but have the effect of decreasing vigilance. 

In that case, I'd say be vigilant about law-breaking, corruption,, and bias, rather than the rebirth of Nazism.

[Paladin of Ice]

3 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

The ironic thing is that the left (i.e. the Communists) hated the Social Democrats more than the Nazis, and actually cooperated with Hitler to sabotage for the democratic parties in Germany and make the country ungovernable. 

 

See also the idiot "accelerationists" on the Left who hated the center Left and moderate Left (who agreed with them about 80% of the time) far more than the Right who agreed with them somewhere between 0-20% of the time. Who were sure that if Trump got elected he'd bungle it so badly and so obviously that he'd destroy things and send people running to them and afterward they could remake the country.

They were of course forgetting how the Communist parties in Europe in the 30s (Germany, Spain, etc.) made that same bet and it didn't work out for them. Or the Leftists in Iran who were sure those silly religious fundamentalists would quickly lose power because what did they know about governing? Or how Ronald Reagan is still lionized by much of the US public instead of being remembered as an incompetent boob who exploded the debt, crush worker and union rights, allowed the stock market to go nuts, and encouraged the culture where "greed is good" and it's just expected that a CEO will make 300 times what the average worker in their company does, even if they do it by essentially looting the company and putting it in jeopardy of dying soon afterwards.

Hell, they even forgot their own criticisms of Democrats, who they say play defense too much and are too reliant on Republican fuck ups and going too far for the populace.

As for their prospects of succeeding, well, if the system still stands as it is now they're going to be blocked by the Trump court appointees and gerrymandering and the balance of power in the Senate. If the system falls and we have to go into USA 2.0, god only knows who is going to come out on top of that mess, because while FDR did it here in the States in the 30s and made a ton of necessary and popular left wing changes, overall more times you end up with a populist strongman when times get crazy and people just want order. You get Mussolinis and Putins, not woke hardcore leftists.

But I've ranted enough already and done too much to relitigate the 2016 elections. Now if you're on the Left the only choice is to stick together and try to act as one, because we've got no more room for losses to the Right.

[Martell Spy]

Oleg Deripaska: Russian Oligarch's U.S. Assets Frozen, Including NYC Mansion

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oleg-deripaska-russian-oligarchs-us-assets-frozen-including-nyc-mansion?ref=home

Quote

The New York City mansion of Oleg Deripaska—the Russian oligarch very closely linked to Paul Manafort—has been frozen alongside all of his U.S. assets, according to the New York Post. U.S. officials say Deripaska, who made his billions in aluminum, is close with Vladimir Putin and is allegedly involved in murder, money-laundering, bribery and racketeering. His assets include a mansion at 11 East 64th St. but he has reportedly arranged to have the children and ex-wife of business partner and fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich live there in his place. Deripaska bought the East Side property for $42.5 million in 2008, property records show.

 

[Martell Spy]

Trump’s successful neutering of the FBI’s Kavanaugh investigation has scary implications
A proof of concept for further erosion of the FBI.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/8/17947614/kavanaugh-fbi-investigation

Quote

 

Donald Trump’s instinct was right. A loyal FBI is worth a purge or two.

Case in point: Brett Kavanaugh is an associate justice on the Supreme Court.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, installed after Trump fired James Comey for refusing to limit the scope of the Russia investigation, said and did nothing as the White House ordered limits on a reopened background check of Kavanaugh.

The bureau agreed not to interview Kavanaugh or Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexually assaulting her, or to respond to many people stepping forward with new information. They agreed not to follow up on possible lies Kavanaugh is accused of telling in his Senate testimony. And they made other concessions unknown to the public or even Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

According to the New York Times’s reporting, White House lawyer Don McGahn made sure relevant questions went deliberately unexplored because, he believed, “a wide-ranging inquiry like some Democrats were demanding — and Mr. Trump was suggesting — would be potentially disastrous for Judge Kavanaugh’s chances of confirmation to the Supreme Court.”

At the end of the one-week deadline, the FBI handed a document to Congress that didn’t seek to clarify seriously the veracity of the accusations against Kavanaugh, but its existence gave Republicans the cover they wanted to back him anyway.

The upshot is that the independent FBI established after Watergate and whose existence everyone reaffirmed during Wray’s confirmation process is now dead. Other senior FBI leaders have already been purged, and Trump’s shameful treatment of Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr, and others has made it clear that he has no compunction about ordering further purges.

Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court dealt a serious blow to the integrity of the Court — and the implications of how he got there go well beyond to the entire legal order.

Bye-bye, Bob Mueller
The White House got away with stamping on an FBI investigation. Think of it as a dry run for a coming shutdown of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

It’s easy to forget, but the existence of a Russia inquiry isn’t a natural fact of American life. Barack Obama was president when it began, and then in the critical winter of 2016 to 2017, many Republicans, particularly foreign policy hawks, were uneasy with Trump and saw an investigation as a useful way to force him into policy orthodoxy. When Comey was fired, enough of that unease was still in place that many Republicans pushed for a special counsel to carry things forward.

Trump, however, has clearly signaled his desire to clean house and fire Mueller after the midterms. And the Kavanaugh fight has shown us (and, more importantly, shown Trump) that congressional Republicans are coming around to the idea that independence of federal law enforcement is overrated. His White House, meanwhile, though hardly a well-oiled machine, has demonstrated its ability to work the levers of power and get things done.

If the GOP is able to hold its majority or (as looks more likely, given current polling) pick up a seat or two, a firm Trumpist majority will be in place ready to govern with the principle that what’s good for Trump is good for the Republican Party, and subverting the rule of law is definitely good for Trump.

 

 

[Zorral]

6 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think the argument is unconvincing.  Germany in the 1920's and early 1930's experienced levels of political violence that don't exist in the USA.  Every political party (even the liberal ones) had their own paramilitary wing.  The Weimar Republic was viewed as being (at best) a necessary evil, and was actively loathed by many people on the right and left.  Germans couldn't believe that they'd lost WWI, and believed themselves the victims of foreign aggression.  These views were pretty much held across the spectrum, not just by Nazis.  Then they were hit by the Great Depression, which affected Germany almost worse than any other country, and opinion radicalised still further.

US democracy enjoys broad public support, and hyperpartisanship has not resulted in political parties using violence against each other.   The USA remains the top dog, internationally.  It's not an aggrieved defeated power, thirsting to win back lost territories.  And, it has a very successful economy.  The factors that could drive a Nazi-type power into power, just don't exist in the USA.

Trump is a charlatan, but he's no Hitler.  A Hitler would have unleashed a wave of violence against political opponents (including some on the right) and moved rapidly to suppress rival political parties, and trade unions.  He's more of a Huey Long figure.

 

That's just wrong.  Read the history of the US in the 1930's, and the enormous acts of enormous violence -- burning down entire towns, etc.  Of course, that never enters the equation of these arguments that the US was never violent like blahblahblah, because the violence is always specifically targeted at African Americans particularly, and the very poor.  People burned down entire communities that Eleanor Roosevelt got built to house, employ and educated the appalling impoverished, starving unemployed of the Appalachian coal mines of PA, when the mines were shut down by their powerful and wealthy owners. 

That's just for starters when it comes to the targeted, armed violence that took place regularly here in the USA just in the 1930's.

[SeanF]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

That's just wrong.  Read the history of the US in the 1930's, and the enormous acts of enormous violence -- burning down entire towns, etc.  Of course, that never enters the equation of these arguments that the US was never violent like blahblahblah, because the violence is always specifically targeted at African Americans particularly, and the very poor.  People burned down entire communities that Eleanor Roosevelt got built to house, employ and educated the appalling impoverished, starving unemployed of the Appalachian coal mines of PA, when the mines were shut down by their powerful and wealthy owners. 

That's just for starters when it comes to the targeted, armed violence that took place regularly here in the USA just in the 1930's.

I don't think that shows that the US in 2018 is like the Germany (or the US) in the 1930's.

[mormont]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

In that case, I'd say be vigilant about law-breaking, corruption,, and bias, rather than the rebirth of Nazism.

Why on Earth should one have to choose?

Besides, when it comes to the former three, they are all clearly and demonstrably present in the current administration. That's not at issue.

[Bonnot OG]

7 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think the argument is unconvincing.  Germany in the 1920's and early 1930's experienced levels of political violence that don't exist in the USA.  Every political party (even the liberal ones) had their own paramilitary wing.  The Weimar Republic was viewed as being (at best) a necessary evil, and was actively loathed by many people on the right and left.  Germans couldn't believe that they'd lost WWI, and believed themselves the victims of foreign aggression.  These views were pretty much held across the spectrum, not just by Nazis.  Then they were hit by the Great Depression, which affected Germany almost worse than any other country, and opinion radicalised still further.

US democracy enjoys broad public support, and hyperpartisanship has not resulted in political parties using violence against each other.   The USA remains the top dog, internationally.  It's not an aggrieved defeated power, thirsting to win back lost territories.  And, it has a very successful economy.  The factors that could drive a Nazi-type power into power, just don't exist in the USA.

Trump is a charlatan, but he's no Hitler.  A Hitler would have unleashed a wave of violence against political opponents (including some on the right) and moved rapidly to suppress rival political parties, and trade unions.  He's more of a Huey Long figure.

 

What do you call the violence at his rallies where protesters are beat up? What do you call Charlottesville where some how only, and lucky enough, only one person was murdered, or the near every weekend in Portland Oregon? 

There are legitimate concerns from people that know what they are talking about, espeically people that lived through Hitler and fought to kill the Nazis and end their regime. 


He has people in concentration camps, and is only expanding them.
 

[Serious Callers Only]

Attempting to neuter the FBI, attempting and succeeding in subverting the court ahead of prosecution, putting children in concentration camps and 'moving' young nubile adolescents in the dead of night with hoods over their heads while screaming and manhandled by thugs, to god knows where, because for sure no journalist does.

This regime will attempt to be permanent because its crimes are already unforgivable if 'stupid' america ever becomes aware of them in a brief break of russian and fox news propaganda, or if the nonbrainwashed section of the populace has proof and the means to prosecute them.

 

Any both-side or 'no so bad' conservative shill is a enemy of humanity at this point. Rape is not 'both sides' politics, survival from attacks on the environment and economy is not 'both sides' politics, fascist dictatorship is not 'both sides' politics and treason is not 'both sides' politics.

 

No doubt soon enough this list will grow to include war, domestic torture, brownshirt terrorists and genocide/enslavement because middle 'christian' america is just that hateful and the Trump regime is just that guilty.

[Zorral]

The Rise of Nazism in Germany and Britain, then and now:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/berlin-graphic-novel-resurgence-nazism-britain-american-a8534331.html

Quote

 

....“In my worst nightmares back in 1996, I never expected to see the resurgence of Nazism,” he says thoughtfully. “But now, it’s a crazy kind of experience having worked on this book for so many years and to see what’s happening in our societies.”

Just like in real life, no one in Lutes’ book wakes up one morning and suddenly decides they are going to be a Nazi. Things happen by degrees, people are changed, they are influenced by events and what they are told by political factions. Berlin is a salutary warning for our times....

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/30/graphic-history-of-the-rise-of-the-nazis

Quote

....Berlin isn’t the only new comic to take on Germany and its wartime politics. This autumn also sees the publication of a graphic novel version of Anne Frank’s Diary adapted by Ari Folman and illustrated by David Polonsky, the Israeli pair best known for the 2008 Oscar-nominated film, Waltz With Bashir; of the remarkable Heimat, a memoir by Nora Krug, a German-American illustrator who teaches at the Parsons School of Design in New York; and of The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt, a biography of the German-born Jewish philosopher by Ken Krimstein, a Chicago academic whose cartoons have appeared in the New Yorker. Is this a coincidence or does it have a wider significance? Though he has not yet read the other books, Lutes believes it does. “It’s so interesting,” he tells me. “On some profound level, we are all connected to this deeper thing. We are all processing, consciously or subconsciously, our world and having tapped into something that’s in the air, our books have bloomed simultaneously.”....

 

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

I don't think that shows that the US in 2018 is like the Germany (or the US) in the 1930's.

I think the entire point is to think about it before it happens though.

[Cas Stark]

8 hours ago, mormont said:

Sure, but nobody seriously suggests that hyperpartisanship is equally distributed in the modern US. It's primarily, and by primarily I mean about 90%, a Republican problem. Democrats cannot solve that. Only Republicans can. And they show zero interest in solving it. So what's your solution?

I disagree that the hyperpartisanship is at a 90/10 split, just like I disagree that it is only conservative policies that cause destruction, but you basically make my point...you see 90% of the problem is with the other side, this is the first step in dehumanizing your opponent and deciding that 'any means necessary' to defeat them is fine, because, hey they're Nazis anyway.  If this is 'both sides ism' so be it.