shattered-pieces · 7 months ago
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I have nothing but contempt for people who are in free countries yet support a dictatorship, support the war on a free country. I suppose russian propaganda has gotten to them here, but that's no excuse. They should know better. It's so obvious to anyone with half a brain who looks at the russian invasion that it's wrong and must be stopped. Russia is a huge country who attacked its smaller neighbor. No justification. Any "justification" is propaganda. It is merely a war of expansion.
Fighting against it is as morally right as fighting the nazis in world war II. Because russia is also doing nazi like things to pieple, not "just" bombing peaceful cities and killing civilians on purpose. It's committing grotesque war crimes. Just because Ukrainians dared to be free. Just because they dared to resist the russian machine that wanted to spread darkness and tyranny over Ukraine, not satisfied with keeping it in their own country.
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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 8 months ago
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Steve Cousineau
* * * *
The weekend review: A tale of two speeches.
March 18, 2024
ROBERT B. HUBBELL
Democrats cannot rely on Republicans to defeat themselves in 2024, but Trump and the GOP are doing their best to set their party aflame. They stand on a burning platform and are dousing the flames with gasoline. It is a bonfire of ugliness and self-immolation that further weakens the GOP each day. Their chaos doesn’t make our job any easier, but it does make their job more difficult. Remember that fact next time you worry about the passionate but principled disagreements among Democrats.
Trump gave a speech near Dayton, Ohio over the weekend that was unhinged, dangerous, threatening, vulgar, and inflammatory. Trump's speech is drawing nearly universal condemnation from major media outlets and forced his campaign to issue “clean-up” statements that attempted defend indefensible statements by denying the plain meaning of Trump's words.
I will turn to Trump's speech in a moment, but it is important to focus on the comparison to President Biden’s speech over the weekend. Biden delivered a short address at an event for the press and White House staff at the Gridiron Club in Washington, D.C. The annual event brings the press and administration officials together for a night of pointed comedy mixed with serious talk about the state of the media in America. As expected, Biden gave a speech that was funny and self-deprecating. It was well received. See Factbase, Transcript | The President Addresses a Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington - March 16, 2024.
But Biden also addressed the serious issue of the role of the press in a free society. Biden said,
Folks, every single one of us has a role to play in making sure American democracy endures. This year, you, the free press, have a bigger role than ever. Let me state the obvious. You're not the enemy of the people. You are a pillar of any free society. And I may not always agree with your coverage or admire it, but I do admire your courage. Good journalism holds a mirror up to a country for us to reflect the good, the bad, the truth about who we are. This is not hyperbole: We need you. Democracy is at risk, and the American people need to know. In fractured times, they need context and a perspective. They need substance to match the enormity of the task. As a result, the choices you make really matter. And each story you [write] makes democracy stronger. I know it's possible because I know the American story. We're a great nation. We're good people, defined by core values of honesty, decency, dignity, light over darkness, courage over fear, and truth over lies. These are also the bedrock principles of good journalism. So, tonight, I'd like to toast the free press and toast to the American people and the enduring causes of democracy and freedom.
Biden’s comments praising and honoring the press were a class act coming from a guy who has been badly mistreated by the press for the last year. But “class act” is vintage Biden.
In contrast, in Ohio, Trump predicted that there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost the 2024 election, said that immigrants “are not people [and] in some cases they are animals,” repeatedly referred to President Biden as “that son-of-a . . . .”, said he did “not give a sh*t” about Republicans who don’t support him, referred to California Governor Gavin Newsom and “New Scum,” and made a vulgar comment about Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis. Otherwise, the 90-minute speech was disjointed and incomprehensible to those not steeped in MAGA conspiracy theories. See NYTimes, Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses. (This article is accessible to all.)
A Trump campaign staff person claimed that the “bloodbath” comment was meant to convey the effect of a Biden victory on the auto industry. (See the Times article above.) While it is true that the comment took place in the context of a discussion of the auto industry, the statement about a “bloodbath” was not qualified or limited in any way. Trump said there would be a bloodbath if he lost. Period. Full stop.
It was vintage Trump—oblique statements alluding to violence shrouded in plausible deniability. But Trump's followers are not steeped in nuance or subtlety. They hear “bloodbath”, and they think “violence.” That is why major media has not bought the Trump campaign’s attempt to twist the meaning and limit the damage from Trump's call to violence.
But for all the attention that Trump's “bloodbath” comment has received, another aspect of Trump's Dayton rally was more disturbing and unsettling. Trump began the speech by playing the desecrated version of the National Anthem that he recorded with January 6 convicted felons serving prison time.
As the bastardized song begins, a recorded voice says, “Please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6 hostages.” The recorded voice then refers to the January 6 defendants as “unbelievable patriots.” During Trump's speech, he effectively promised to grant the January 6 defendants pardons.
There is nothing subtle about Trump's messaging. By calling for a “bloodbath” and referring to the January 6 defendants as “patriots” who will be pardoned, Trump is creating a permission structure for another violent insurrection. That’s the real story—and one that deserves to be highlighted every day between now and November 5, 2024.
That truth will become clearer each time Trump gives another campaign speech. He can’t help himself. He telegraphs what he is thinking and plotting. We should believe him. And so should that portion of corporate America that continues to support Trump.
The good news is that insurrection is not in the best interests of the institutions that are currently propping up Trump in a perverted love-hate relationship. Markets thrive on stability, not violence and insurrection. Corporate America understands that better than anyone.
But it gets worse.
Within twenty-four hours of Trump's call for a “bloodbath,” he called for the imprisonment of former Rep. Liz Cheney and the other members of the January 6 Committee. See Newsweek, Donald Trump Wants His Top Republican Critic Jailed.
So—Trump is calling for a second insurrection and prosecution of the current and former congressional representatives on the January 6 Committee. It doesn’t get any less subtle than that. Even Trump's least intuitive followers understand what Trump is saying.
As Trump is becoming more explicit in his dictatorial aspirations, he is also deteriorating cognitively. Last week, I cited a New Yorker article by Susan Glasser entitled, I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You. The New Yorker article is behind a paywall, so you may not have been able to read it. But Ali Velshi interviewed Susan Glasser on MSNBC and covered the substance of the article—so you can listen to Glasser discuss her observations about Trump. The interview is here. See MSNBC, You need to see how much worse Trump is now: Glasser.
In short, we have an aspiring dictator in cognitive decline who is telling us what his strongman fantasies are. As Bill Clinton would have said, “That dog won’t hunt.” We should be able to leverage those weaknesses to our advantage. They are scary, yes. But a disciplined response should allow us to convert Trump's increasing mania to our benefit—in part, by convincing persuadable independents and disaffected Republicans that the unhinged candidate they see on the campaign trail is unfit to govern this great nation again.
This leaves only the strongman fantasies of Trump's followers. Their loyalty to Trump makes sense only if he is their strongman, as Professor Timothy Snyder explains on his Substack blog, Thinking About. . . . The Strongman Fantasy.
As Professor Snyder writes,
Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something.  But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it. 
There is probably little we can do to convince Trump's most cultish followers that Trump sees their support only as transactional and expendable. But Trump will continue to repulse portions of his remaining constituency by calling immigrants “animals,” praising thugs who killed police officers on January 6, mocking the disabled, calling soldiers “losers and suckers,” and desecrating the Christian principles that serve as the faith foundation for a majority of his supporters.
As I said at the top, we can’t count on Trump to defeat himself. But we should recognize that he is a weak candidate stranded on a burning platform, and he is acting as the chief arsonist. Every new voter we register and turn out to the polls will help build an insurmountable margin as Trump's former supporters at the margins reevaluate their past support for Trump. That is the only advantage we need in a closely matched election. We can make that happen—we already are!
[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]
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fullcolorfright · 2 months ago
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Maciste in Hell (1925, dir. Guido Brignone, Italian)
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threewaysdivided · 1 day ago
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Gaza is NOT an excuse to sit out this election
I don't usually post about politics on this blog (if anything I try to avoid it since I know it can be a distressing topic) but, to be honest, the upcoming U.S. presidential election has me concerned.
This is going to be one of, if not THE most globally consequential election of our time, and I have been deeply perturbed to see people spreading sentiment that sitting this vote out (or even voting for Trump) is justified by the Democratic Party's handling of the genocide in Gaza.
I was going to write a post about why I think that's really dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric, but then U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders came out and said the same things far better so I'm going to share his video, and some key quotes:
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"SOME of you are saying: "How can I vote for Kamala Harris if she is supporting this terrible war?" And that is a very fair question. And let me give you my best answer. AND that is that, even on this issue, Donald Trump and his right-wing friends are worse. In the Senate, in Congress, the Republicans have worked overtime to block humanitarian aid to the starving children in Gaza. [Current President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris] support getting as much humanitarian aid into Gaza as soon as possible. TRUMP has said Netanyahu is "doing a good job." And has said Biden is holding him back. [Trump] has suggested that the Gaza Strip would make excellent beachfront property for development. [...] AFTER Kamala wins, we will together do everything we can to change U.S. policy towards Netanyahu: An immediate ceasefire, the return of all hostages, a surge of massive humanitarian aid, the stopping of settler attacks on the West Bank, and the rebuilding of Gaza for the Palestinian people. AND let me be clear: We will have, in my view, a much better chance of changing U.S. policy with [Kamala Harris] than with [Donald Trump], who is extremely close to Netanyahu and sees him as a like-minded, right-wing extremist ally. [...] AS important as Gaza is [...] it is not the only issue at stake in this election. IF Trump wins, women in this country will suffer an enormous setback and lose the ability to control their own bodies. [...] IF Trump wins, to be honest with you, the struggle against climate change is over. [...] Trump believes [climate change] is a hoax. And if the United States, the largest economy in the world, stops transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel, every other country, China, Europe, all over the world, they will do exactly the same thing. And God only knows the kind of planet we will leave to our kids and future generations."
And now I am going to editorialise a few more points:
Firstly, I want to emphasise that the upcoming election is about damage control and harm reduction, not about political allegiance or moral purity. The point of casting your vote is not to signal support for a candidate, but to cancel out a vote for the more damaging candidate by voting for their opposition in the two party system. Let me be clear on that: under the U.S.'s current first-past-the-post voting arrangement, voting for a minor third party or independent is functionally useless during an election of this magnitude. It is a symbolic gesture that's functionally and morally equivalent to sitting out.
Story time: I come from a country which uses a preferential ranked-choice system and where voting is compulsory for all eligible citizens (a system which lowers campaign costs, incentivizes governments to make voting more accessible country-wide and limits attempts at voter suppression not that right-wing parties haven't tried). Despite us actually having a few substantial progressive third parties, there have been several times where I've sucked it up and voted for the major centrist party specifically to keep the major conservative right-wing party from gaining or maintaining power. We call this vote-them-out and keep-them-out politics - it's pretty much the default approach here, and it should be yours too because the idea of a "perfect party" is a fallacy. When human rights are on the line, pick the least-worst major option. The aim is to cancel out a vote for the other guy. Even with this, we recently lost our state to the major conservative-right party (running on a platform of youth-criminalization and abortion-bans) by a mere 8 percent margin - just in case you want evidence of how much impact a small number of votes can make, and how dangerous it can be to get complacent.
Secondly, for those Americans who still believe that not voting will keep you from being complicit in the Genocide in Gaza. Let me speak to you as a White Australian: you are already complicit in and benefiting from a genocide. Multiple, in fact. You and I both live, learn, work and profit on land that was forcibly seized through the murder and dispossession of First Nations peoples, similar to how Palestinians are being murdered and dispossessed of their land right now. When you enjoy chocolate and vanilla, you are benefiting from spices that were brought to the Global West via the colonization of Latin America, and that were historically (and in chocolate's case still is) cultivated by enslaved people. The phone/tablet/computer you are reading this post on is likely made using conflict minerals. I'm sorry, but you don't get to wring your hands over Gaza at a distance and pretend that sitting this vote out absolves you of genocide, while ignoring the ones your (and my) ancestors committed to bring you that luxury. You just don't. And again, as Senator Sanders said, Trump wants to bulldoze Gaza and turn it into Netanyahu's beachfront property development. You don't get to pretend that standing aside and knowingly letting someone else vote for him to do that is the more moral option.
Thirdly I want to point to that last part that I highlighted in Senator Sander's speech. I am not a USAmerican, but this election scares me because of America's global impact. If you are an American voter reading this, you need to understand that your country is too globally influential for you to neglect your civic responsibilities. I was working as a member of my country's national public service under a right-wing government during the Trump era and things got bad. A woman was raped inside Parliament House, video emerged of male staffers masturbating on female colleagues' desks and our then-Prime Minister quipped that it was a "triumph of democracy" that the women who marched in protest weren't "met with bullets". There was the same sort of culture-war mismanagement and misinformation about COVID-19, there were Neo-Nazis, and there was a failure to properly condemn or correct either of those things. Progress towards sustainability and clean energy slowed, and our Prime Minister secretly tried to seize personal control over five separate government departments. Sure, some of that would have happened with or without a Trump administration after all, we didn't need a Republican U.S. President to produce an onion-eating misogynist who hates homosexuals despite his own sister being one but the rest of the world looks to the U.S. to set the tone on what is acceptable in government. When the largest country votes in (or sits aside and lets other people vote in) someone as egocentric, openly prejudiced, corrupt, anti-science, greed-motivated, war-hungry, and dictatorially-minded as Donald Trump, it signals to other leaders that that is the acceptable standard. Even when it's absolutely not. When you choose to sit out (or cast a meaningless symbolic vote) rather than effectively use your civic power as a U.S. citizen, the outcome affects millions of global citizens who never had the option of giving their input.
Finally, I want you to listen to this podcast by Dr Robin DiAngelo and think about what the choice to waste your vote signals to the people around you. To the members of your community who are women, BIPOC, LGBT+, disabled, have migrant parents or who live countries that are effected by American policy (which is all of them, by the way. Y'all are big). We are not asking much from you. Queue for a slightly-annoying amount of time, get your identity confirmed at a sign-in table and then cast a ballot. Tick a box that indicates you'd rather let a qualified centre-left attorney and former senator have a chance of improving things, instead of a dictator-lionizing convicted felon who openly wants dismantle voting systems so that he'll never lose again. That's it. Get yourself to a polling booth and tick a box. We are not asking you to make an effort. We are not asking you to volunteer. We are not asking you run petitions, or call representatives or donate money or do meal deliveries or any kind of community work. Just tick a box. Vote. Anonymously. No one even needs to know what box you ticked.
If that is too much to ask of you, then what right do you have to call yourself any kind of ally? Think about the enormous privilege you are displaying by deciding that you can neglect this, and the fragility you are showing by deciding that a simple anonymous vote is too morally taxing. What reason would we have to ever believe you'd help us compromise on future solutions when you've shown you'd rather throw away possibly the last meaningful vote you may ever get on a Nirvana Fallacy? Why would we ever believe that we could rely on you to help or defend us when you couldn't even work up the courage and stamina to tick a box?
If that's too much for you, then fine. You're a coward, but fine. Just don't pretend to be anything else. And certainly don't hide behind the actual, ongoing suffering of real people as justification for your civic negligence. Do not use Gaza as an excuse to sit out this November 5th.
This website provides information on how to check your registration, register if you haven't, and find a polling booth. So does this one.
Do your duty. Get yourself ready. Go vote.
Then buy yourself some ethical chocolate to wash the bad taste out of your mouth.
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twnj · 3 months ago
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Choji: You've been staring daggers at the guy on that magazine since your mum dropped it off two days ago - who is he?
Shikamaru: Uh...Just some guy I know
Choji: Is he like, a rival or something?
Shikamaru: Something like that, yeah.
Choji: Like a rival in chess or.....? He looks like a douche, anyway.
Shikamaru: No I mean, he's nice enough...he’s a smart man, good head, good game, good reputation, good....career.
Choji: So, he's a douche.
Shikamaru:...Yeah...but much improved now you've drawn that cock and balls on his face 👀
Choji: Anytime, bruh 😌
Headcannon madness inspired by the wonderful Shikatema fic Grandmaster by @notquitejiraiya.
Thanks to @ferocityh for allowing me to bother her for a translation!
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tomorrowusa · 5 months ago
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Apparently the GOP used to have a reputation as the party of "law and order". That has certainly not been true since it became a Trump cult in 2016.
Republicans will now tell any lie to justify the violent rantings made by the Dear Leader and his terrorist base – both visible and underground.
The United States has never been this close to fascism – even in the pre-World War II era when there were Nazis openly organizing and there were pro-Hitler members of Congress.
The only way to preserve democracy this year in the USA is to vote for Joe Biden. Third party fantasies, Leninist "heightening the contradictions", and old school slackerism are all bullshit. There is no such thing as a "dictator for one day" in history.
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anxiously-awaiting · 4 months ago
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can u imagine the back pain he's got from holding up the sky AND those tits.
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ghoul-haunted · 3 months ago
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sometimes I'll see a post cross my dash where they refer to women as females in a specific kind of tone, and I'll check their blog, and 9 times out of 10 they're a deeply rancid anti-porn/sex can only exist as exploitation preacher, and just a little bit further and bam! the bioessentialism! and I'm like. damn! my batting average is pretty good. what a bunch of freaks.
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wilwheaton · 8 months ago
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Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule. Why not a dictator who will get things done? I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh. I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime. I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule. I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated. So I think that there is an answer to this question. Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.
The Strongman Fantasy - by Timothy Snyder
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reasonsforhope · 4 months ago
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is, by some measures, the most popular leader in the world. Prior to the 2024 election, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held an outright majority in the Lok Sabha (India’s Parliament) — one that was widely projected to grow after the vote count. The party regularly boasted that it would win 400 Lok Sabha seats, easily enough to amend India’s constitution along the party's preferred Hindu nationalist lines.
But when the results were announced on Tuesday, the BJP held just 240 seats. They not only underperformed expectations, they actually lost their parliamentary majority. While Modi will remain prime minister, he will do so at the helm of a coalition government — meaning that he will depend on other parties to stay in office, making it harder to continue his ongoing assault on Indian democracy.
So what happened? Why did Indian voters deal a devastating blow to a prime minister who, by all measures, they mostly seem to like?
India is a massive country — the most populous in the world — and one of the most diverse, making its internal politics exceedingly complicated. A definitive assessment of the election would require granular data on voter breakdown across caste, class, linguistic, religious, age, and gender divides. At present, those numbers don’t exist in sufficient detail. 
But after looking at the information that is available and speaking with several leading experts on Indian politics, there are at least three conclusions that I’m comfortable drawing.
First, voters punished Modi for putting his Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities on the economy and democracy.
Understanding these factors isn’t just important for Indians. The country’s election has some universal lessons for how to beat a would-be authoritarian — ones that Americans especially might want to heed heading into its election in November.
-via Vox, June 7, 2024. Article continues below.
A new (and unequal) economy
Modi’s biggest and most surprising losses came in India’s two most populous states: Uttar Pradesh in the north and Maharashtra in the west. Both states had previously been BJP strongholds — places where the party’s core tactic of pitting the Hindu majority against the Muslim minority had seemingly cemented Hindu support for Modi and his allies.
One prominent Indian analyst, Yogendra Yadav, saw the cracks in advance. Swimming against the tide of Indian media, he correctly predicted that the BJP would fall short of a governing majority.
Traveling through the country, but especially rural Uttar Pradesh, he prophesied “the return of normal politics”: that Indian voters were no longer held spellbound by Modi’s charismatic nationalist appeals and were instead starting to worry about the way politics was affecting their lives.
Yadav’s conclusions derived in no small part from hearing voters’ concerns about the economy. The issue wasn’t GDP growth — India’s is the fastest-growing economy in the world — but rather the distribution of growth’s fruits. While some of Modi’s top allies struck it rich, many ordinary Indians suffered. Nearly half of all Indians between 20 and 24 are unemployed; Indian farmers have repeatedly protested Modi policies that they felt hurt their livelihoods.
“Everyone was talking about price rise, unemployment, the state of public services, the plight of farmers, [and] the struggles of labor,” Yadav wrote...
“We know for sure that Modi’s strongman image and brassy self-confidence were not as popular with voters as the BJP assumed,” says Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies India. 
The lesson here isn’t that the pocketbook concerns trump identity-based appeals everywhere; recent evidence in wealthier democracies suggests the opposite is true. Rather, it’s that even entrenched reputations of populist leaders are not unshakeable. When they make errors, even some time ago, it’s possible to get voters to remember these mistakes and prioritize them over whatever culture war the populist is peddling at the moment.
Liberalism strikes back
The Indian constitution is a liberal document: It guarantees equality of all citizens and enshrines measures designed to enshrine said equality into law. The signature goal of Modi’s time in power has been to rip this liberal edifice down and replace it with a Hindu nationalist model that pushes non-Hindus to the social margins. In pursuit of this agenda, the BJP has concentrated power in Modi’s hands and undermined key pillars of Indian democracy (like a free press and independent judiciary).
Prior to the election, there was a sense that Indian voters either didn’t much care about the assault on liberal democracy or mostly agreed with it. But the BJP’s surprising underperformance suggests otherwise.
The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper, published an essential post-election data analysis breaking down what we know about the results. One of the more striking findings is that the opposition parties surged in parliamentary seats reserved for members of “scheduled castes” — the legal term for Dalits, the lowest caste grouping in the Hindu hierarchy.
Caste has long been an essential cleavage in Indian politics, with Dalits typically favoring the left-wing Congress party over the BJP (long seen as an upper-caste party). Under Modi, the BJP had seemingly tamped down on the salience of class by elevating all Hindus — including Dalits — over Muslims. Yet now it’s looking like Dalits were flocking back to Congress and its allies. Why?
According to experts, Dalit voters feared the consequences of a BJP landslide. If Modi’s party achieved its 400-seat target, they’d have more than enough votes to amend India’s constitution. Since the constitution contains several protections designed to promote Dalit equality — including a first-in-the-world affirmative action system — that seemed like a serious threat to the community. It seems, at least based on preliminary data, that they voted accordingly.
The Dalit vote is but one example of the ways in which Modi’s brazen willingness to assail Indian institutions likely alienated voters.
Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s largest and most electorally important state, was the site of a major BJP anti-Muslim campaign. It unofficially kicked off its campaign in the UP city of Ayodhya earlier this year, during a ceremony celebrating one of Modi’s crowning achievements: the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a former mosque that had been torn down by Hindu nationalists in 1992. 
Yet not only did the BJP lose UP, it specifically lost the constituency — the city of Faizabad — in which the Ayodhya temple is located. It’s as direct an electoral rebuke to BJP ideology as one can imagine.
In Maharashtra, the second largest state, the BJP made a tactical alliance with a local politician, Ajit Pawar, facing serious corruption charges. Voters seemingly punished Modi’s party for turning a blind eye to Pawar’s offenses against the public trust. Across the country, Muslim voters turned out for the opposition to defend their rights against Modi’s attacks.
The global lesson here is clear: Even popular authoritarians can overreach.
By turning “400 seats” into a campaign slogan, an all-but-open signal that he intended to remake the Indian state in his illiberal image, Modi practically rang an alarm bell for constituencies worried about the consequences. So they turned out to stop him en masse.
The BJP’s electoral underperformance is, in no small part, the direct result of their leader’s zealotry going too far.
Return of the Gandhis? 
Of course, Modi’s mistakes might not have mattered had his rivals failed to capitalize. The Indian opposition, however, was far more effective than most observers anticipated.
Perhaps most importantly, the many opposition parties coordinated with each other. Forming a united bloc called INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), they worked to make sure they weren’t stealing votes from each other in critical constituencies, positioning INDIA coalition candidates to win straight fights against BJP rivals.
The leading party in the opposition bloc — Congress — was also more put together than people thought. Its most prominent leader, Rahul Gandhi, was widely dismissed as a dilettante nepo baby: a pale imitation of his father Rajiv and grandmother Indira, both former Congress prime ministers. Now his critics are rethinking things.
“I owe Rahul Gandhi an apology because I seriously underestimated him,” says Manjari Miller, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Miller singled out Gandhi’s yatras (marches) across India as a particularly canny tactic. These physically grueling voyages across the length and breadth of India showed that he wasn’t just a privileged son of Indian political royalty, but a politician willing to take risks and meet ordinary Indians where they were. During the yatras, he would meet directly with voters from marginalized groups and rail against Modi’s politics of hate.
“The persona he’s developed — as somebody kind, caring, inclusive, [and] resolute in the face of bullying — has really worked and captured the imagination of younger India,” says Suryanarayan. “If you’ve spent any time on Instagram Reels, [you’ll see] an entire generation now waking up to Rahul Gandhi’s very appealing videos.”
This, too, has a lesson for the rest of the world: Tactical innovation from the opposition matters even in an unfair electoral context.
There is no doubt that, in the past 10 years, the BJP stacked the political deck against its opponents. They consolidated control over large chunks of the national media, changed campaign finance law to favor themselves, suborned the famously independent Indian Electoral Commission, and even intimidated the Supreme Court into letting them get away with it. 
The opposition, though, managed to find ways to compete even under unfair circumstances. Strategic coordination between them helped consolidate resources and ameliorate the BJP cash advantage. Direct voter outreach like the yatra helped circumvent BJP dominance in the national media.
To be clear, the opposition still did not win a majority. Modi will have a third term in office, likely thanks in large part to the ways he rigged the system in his favor.
Yet there is no doubt that the opposition deserves to celebrate. Modi’s power has been constrained and the myth of his invincibility wounded, perhaps mortally. Indian voters, like those in Brazil and Poland before them, have dealt a major blow to their homegrown authoritarian faction.
And that is something worth celebrating.
-via Vox, June 7, 2024.
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robertreich · 4 months ago
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Why Trump Is Partnering With Christian Nationalists
Donald Trump is portraying himself as a religious savior. He says Election Day will be: …”the most important day in the history of our country, and it’s going to be Christian Visibility Day.”
Trump has repeatedly compared his criminal trials to the crucifixion of Jesus, promoted videos calling his reelection “the most important moment in human history,” and that describe him as a divinely appointed ruler.
He claims to be a holy warrior against an imaginary attack on Christianity.
TRUMP: They want to tear down crosses//But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration. I swear to you.
He’s even selling his own version of the Bible.
Trump is playing to a rising white Christian Nationalist movement within the Republican Party.
Christian Nationalists believe that the law of the land is not the Constitution, but instead the law of God as they interpret it. Under this view, atheists and people of other faiths (including Christians of other denominations) are all second-class citizens.
Trump’s supporters are increasingly overt in their calls to replace democracy with a MAGA theocracy.
The idea that the will of voters is irrelevant because God has anointed Trump was a recurring message in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
In previous videos, I’ve highlighted how MAGA Republicans have embraced core elements of fascism. They reject democracy, stoke fear of immigrants and minorities, embrace a gender and ethnic hierarchy, and look to a strongman to lead and defend them.
The combination of fascism and Christian Nationalism is called Christofascism, a term first used half a century ago by the theologian Dorothee Sölle. Fascists rise to power by characterizing their opponents as subhuman. Christofascists take it a step further by casting opponents as not just subhuman, but actually demonic.
Framing opponents as enemies of God makes violence against them not only seem justifiable, but divinely sanctioned, and almost inevitable.
Christofascists want to strip away a wide range of rights Americans take for granted. Former Trump staffers involved in developing plans for a second Trump term have called for imposing “Biblical” tests on immigration, overturning marriage equality, and restricting contraception.  
And MAGA-aligned judges are already setting their dogma ahead of the Constitution. In his concurring opinion on the case that declared frozen embryos are people, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker cited God more than forty times and quoted the Book of Genesis and other religious texts.
Nothing could be more un-American than the Christian Nationalist vision. So many of America’s founders came here as refugees seeking religious freedom. The framers of the Constitution were adamant that religion had no role in our government. The words “God,” “Jesus,” and “Christ,” don’t appear anywhere in the Constitution. And the very first words of the Bill of Rights are a promise that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Christofascism, or any religion-based form of government, is a rejection of everything America has aspired to be — a secular, multi-racial society whose inhabitants have come from everywhere, bound together by a faith in equal opportunity, democracy, and the rule of law.
Beware.
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tobiasdrake · 2 months ago
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You know. Sometimes you look back at decisions made by entirely separate creators and it's like, fuck, with a more cohesive creative vision to connect these things together this could have been fire.
Like. Hear me out.
Thor 1 writes Loki as internally racist against the Jotuns. Upon discovering that he's a Jotun child taken as a spoil of war by Odin and then deciding that means he could never truly be worthy in Odin's eyes, Loki goes off. He creates an elaborate plan to give himself casus belli for complete unadulterated genocide against the Jotuns.
He's not trying to steal Odin's throne; He already has it. He even saves Odin's life as part of the plan, when it'd be so easy to let Odin die and then I guess Loki's king forever. Rather, he's trying to prove himself a Real True Son of Asgard by wiping Asgard's rival off the face of the map forever.
The Avengers writes Loki as a shameless fascist who thinks commonfolk exist purely to kneel to a strongman dictator, and that the natural state of people is to be ruled by their betters. The movie directly, on purpose compares his belief system to the fascist rhetoric of Nazi Germany so it can act like its take on Loki is deep.
Thor: Ragnarok says outright that Asgard is a colonizer state that became what it is through bloody conquest and subjugation. It asserts that any claim the nation may have to being this noble virtuous protector nation is just imperialist propaganda by an old fascist who ran out of enemies to subjugate and started to reconsider how he wanted history to remember him.
So. Like. Okay.
Loki is convinced that his ethnicity makes him unfit for Asgard and intends to commit a genocide against his own people to prove himself a Real True Son of Asgard.
Loki's belief system is directly called out as fascistic and reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
Asgard was secretly an imperialist colonizer state built on the bones of the subjugated, conquered, and enslaved this whole time.
...what a fantastic one-two-three punch this could have made if anyone involved in making any step of this process had been writing their film with the other two in mind.
There is a fantastic switch buried in these three films where it seems like Loki has a perverted idea of Asgard and then it turns out, no, actually, he really was behaving in the spirit of the culture that shaped him all along. Loki was the Real True Son of Asgard the whole time, and that was the problem.
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alphajocklover · 22 days ago
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I have a classmate who is attractive but he is too disciplined, for this Halloween, I want to see a different image of him as a vintage masculine man with white briefs and other things. I'm not sure if it's fit your rules but may I choose it as a trick.
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Your classmate, Aaron, was hot. Absolutely drop dead gorgeous. There was no way around it. His handsome jawline, his pouty lips, even his quaffed hair all drove you wild. There was just something about Aaron that drove you wild, which was strange because as attractive as he was, Aaron wasn’t really your type. Aaron was pretty much a classic twunk, while you had always been into muscle daddies and beefy bulls. Not only that, but he was nice as could be, while you always seemed to be attracted to… while, douchebags. Maybe it was because you had bad taste, or bad luck, but you always ended up with arrogant, dominant guys who treated you like crap. With Aaron however, you felt like you had finally struck gold. Sure he didn’t seem into you, but maybe something could come of it one day. The only real problem was that, while… Aaron was a stick in the mud. He was nice, he was handsome, and he was way too disciplined, especially for a college student. No parties, no rule breaking, just studying. He was a good guy, just… too good. 
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That was why you sent him the costume. You were hoping by wearing the – admittedly kind of slutty – strongman costume, that Aaron would be encouraged to go to the big halloween party and let loose a little. You knew it might not turn out, but you fantasized about him walking into the party in that costume, about him letting loose and showing a new side of himself, about the two of you getting tipsy and his hands wandering down your body…
What happened was so much better than your fantasies. 
When Aaron walked in, wearing that costume, it was like he was a completely different person. His walk bordered on a strut as he entered, seeming far more confident and less uptight than you had ever seen him. He sent you a charming grin as he walked over to you, one that made your stomach flutter and your knees weak. It was exactly what you had fantasized, yet better. The two of you spent the rest of the night partying together, playing beer pong and spin the bottle with the others as you slowly went from classmates, to friends, to something else. As the two of you, both drunk off your asses, started to fool around, you could swear his muscles were actually larger than before. You tasted the beer on his lips, you grinded against him… And then you blacked out. You don’t remember how the rest of the night went. You don’t remember anything from the next 3 weeks. All you can be sure of is that 3 weeks later, you woke up in a crappy motel, with Master Aaron’s cock in your ass.
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Aaron is no longer your classmate, and he’s definitely not a disciplined person now. He’s your Master. The magic of the costume, your fantasies about Aaron, and your darkest desires all mixed together to create your new life. A part of you, the last rational part of you that exists deep inside your head, is begging to go back, but the rest of you is just hoping you can make Master happy, and that your next punishment won’t be so rough. Master Aaron isn’t very disciplined anymore… but now he loves to discipline you.
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gardening--tools · 3 months ago
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me while playing fo4 because i’m an opinionated bitch and i disagree with bethesda’s character design
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anyway. presenting,
a detailed look at every companion’s appearance, according to me.
(these are all headcanons. they might not be yours, but they are mine. i wrote this as a fic-writing reference, but i don't mind sharing so long as we're all nice about it. also, spoilers ahead for companion quests, both in vanilla game and dlcs. you've been warned okay love you have fun. sorry in advance that you can clearly tell who my favorite character is.)
cw: heights represented by the united states customary system. sorry metric users :/
Ada. Modified RobCo Assaultron. 2074 model. SN has been sanded off and replaced with "ADA", painted carefully (lovingly) in blue script. It's clear that it has been reapplied multiple times, as many times as necessary. Post-Mechanist quest, she requests to have the names of her fallen friends painted on her body as well.
Cait. Pre-addiction recovery, scrawny-strong. Blood, muscle, bone and not much else. Very short. Like, south-side of 5'3". Has a very rectangular body shape. Hard angles. Was bright strawberry blonde when she was a kid, but it got darker as she got older. Hazel eyes. Freckles year-round and all over. She doesn't burn super easily, but she doesn't really tan either. Just freckles. Nose is crooked from being broken too many times. Post-addiction recovery she is a beef. cake. With Sole's help and resources she gains plenty of weight post recovery. Other than the normal weight gain that comes after recovering from addiction, she finds she enjoys exercise—especially weight lifting—and that it helps her manage her cravings. Her biceps are unfair. If I can be honest, I really only shared this so I can start proselytizing for my Fat Cait Agenda.
Codsworth. Standard GAI Mister Handy. 2076 Model. SN: 01HND-7619-0163. This is only visible because the 2076 Handys had their SN's embossed. All other markings that were printed or painted on have eroded away. A cute fact about Codsworth is that, despite his 200 years of wear and tear, he doesn't have a single dent on his exterior panels. Not. A. Dent. Scratches, yes. Scuffs, sure. No dents. He takes his structural integrity very seriously, thank you. He will brag about this if you let him.
Curie. Pre-companion quest, Modified GAI Miss Nanny. 2072 Model. SN has been scratched off and replaced with what is probably "CURIE", but the combination of chicken scratch writing and 200 year old marker makes it illegible. Post-personal quest, Generic Female Synth Body. Average body weight, brown hair, brown eyes. (I know she technically has "Hazel Blue" eyes but I disagree. It's my post and I get to make the rules here.) Her only deviation from "average" is her height. Generic Synth Height is 5'10", for both male and female synths. Takes time to look neat—neatly trimmed nails, trimmed hair, etc—and enjoys it.
Danse. M7-97 was a vanity design* so Danse looks a little different from the Generic Synth design. Still has the brown hair, brown eyes, but is a touch shorter than the standard. 5'8". Latino or Hispanic. His hair is insanely thick, but his beard always grows in a little patchy and with the odd blond patch just below his right ear. (This was not an intentional part of his “design.” Genetics, even synthesized genetics, get funky sometimes.) Carries weight like a strongman weightlifter. Thicker than average, even for the Brotherhood, so he's always had to have his flight suits and PA specially altered. (Thicker than average in regards to BODY TYPE you sickos– This is not that kind of post lmao.)
(This post from slocumjoe is a huge influence for my headcanon for Danse! Thank you for going through your archive to find it!)
Deacon. The Average Guy Ever™. Average height, average build. I'm firmly in the "Deacon is a Good Spy, actually" camp, so. Uncanny ability to adjust how he looks just by altering his posture. His weight has always easily fluctuated, so he can go from stick thin to bulked up in a matter of weeks. No matter how many surgeries he gets, he cannot hide the freckles. They always come back. He would have had piano hands if he hadn't been a chronic brawler in his youth. Knuckles are very crooked now. Eyes so blue they're nearly grey. Ginger. Has long eyelashes that are frankly illegal for someone who covers his eyes all the time.
Dogmeat. Dog. He has six toes on his back left foot.
Gage. 5'11". In an alternate universe, would tell people he was 5'9" just to fuck with them. Was a towheaded kid whose hair darkened significantly as he grew up. If he spends a lot of time out in the sun, though, it will turn a sandy blonde/light brown. He keeps his hair short because otherwise it gets very curly and floppy and it really kills his "bad-guy raider" vibe. Would be one of those white boys who tans super well but also thinks wearing sunscreen is for the weak. Scarred to shit. Holds onto muscle for a really long time. Underbite. Slutty little waist because I think that's funny.
Hancock. John Prime was already pretty wiry to begin with, and becoming a ghoul has only emphasized this. 5'7" but seems shorter because he's always leaning on something. Draping, even. He's like if a man was also a liquid, somehow. His remaining hair is incredibly thin, but is the most vibrant golden blonde anyone has ever seen. Eyes are dark due to discoloration, but sometimes—if he's taken in a ton of rads—the edges of his irises will glow subtly. Several piercings on his ears, but he used to have more. Lost them on account of his nose falling off. (You know how it is.) Replaced them with an astonishing collection of rings. Cheekbones that could slice a brahmin. Missing his fourth toe on his right foot.
MacCready. Definition of scrunkly. Not a lick of fat anywhere to be found. 5'5". Has a Gunner tattoo on the left side of his forehead and he hates it. It's why he wears his hat so low. Had an ear pierced once, but it got ripped out ages ago. His left earlobe is split now. He very clearly needed braces growing up but obviously didn't have access to that. Bottom teeth are crooked. His cuticles are picked to shit. Sandy brown hair. Cuts his own hair, but only cares about the hair around his face. Line of sight. Sniper. You get it. Is generally too lazy/uninterested in the rest, and will neglect it until it gets too long, so. Mullet (hot).
Nick. See, the problem with my synth grandpa is that this is the only character whose design Bethesda completely and utterly nailed. Like yeah, he does look like that. You got it. You did it. Perfect, no notes. Like all other Generic Synths, he's 5'10".
Old Longfellow. Exactly what you would expect an Old Hermit-Mariner Driven To Eldritch Madness By The Fog and The Sea would look like. The wildest eyebrows anybody has ever seen. Like you could take a comb through those bad boys. His hair is past his shoulders and fades into his beard. Stark white hair due to the stress of living alone on an island and from What He's Seen. You cannot convince me that there are not some Lovecraftian nasties living in the sea. They Know Longfellow, but Longfellow Knows Them. 6' until he stands up straight and then he's like. 6'5". Liver spots across his face and hands. Looks like he has cataracts in both eyes, but somehow can see better than you.
Piper. By far the companion whose Bethesda!verse appearance I disregard the most. In my heart she is a South Asian woman. On the taller side, between 5'8" and 5'9". Super thick, dark brown hair that in fact does just Look Like That (unfair). Her hair grows from fairly far down on her neck. Deep brown eyes. Spends lots of time on her makeup, even when she's out in the 'wealth chasing leads. Prefers red lips and dark liner close to her lid-lines. Her cupid's bow is super pronounced and she does her makeup to highlight it. On the softer side in regards to physique. Has a burn scar on her right forearm from a cooking mishap back when she was still trying to figure out how to live on her own and take care of Nat at the same time. Bites her nails.
Preston. Personification of someone telling you that everything is going to be all right. Tall, 6'. Pretty standard physique for someone who grew up on a farm and then became a soldier in a wasteland militia. Very square hands. Lets his hair grow out a little bit because he (forgets about it) likes it. Brown eyes that look like honey when the sun hits them. Other than the two scars on his face—one running down his left cheek, the other a small nick on his top lip—he has a scar from a bullet wound on his right shoulder. Has a stick and poke tattoo of the Minuteman coat of arms on his left arm, just where his shoulder meets his bicep. Top lip is bigger than his bottom lip. Dimples when he smiles. Huge smile, smiles with his whole mouth. Legs like an adonis. Someone get this man into some 4' inseam shorts, STAT.
Strong. Super mutant. He was a Butcher, so he's a little beefier than your average mutant. Of course, this is only known to other mutants, as the subtleties of mutant physiology tend to be lost on non-mutated humans.
X6-88. Generic Courser Build. While Generic Synths are designed to blend in with the everyman, Generic Coursers are designed to inspire fear in every man. (booo bad joke tomato tomato) 6'3" but stands so perfectly straight that he seems taller. Has the superhero build, but like naturally. Keeps his hair in a short fade. Bottom lip is lighter than the top lip. Has little lines around his mouth from all his frowning. Has one (1) singular scar on his chin. He won't tell you where he got it (it's from him eating it on concrete steps. That was the one mission he asked for an extension on, so the evidence of him beefing it would heal.) Also chronically wears sunglasses. Behind those aviators are grey eyes that are so pale and sharp, they almost look white.
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smiling-circus-au · 8 months ago
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Come, come! To the greatest circus to exist! You’ll be left speechless by the end of a function! Come, come!
MEET OUR WONDERFUL STAFF!
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DOGDAY, our great RINGMASTER! CRAFTYCORN, our skilled MAKEUP ARTIST and PROP MAKER! HOPPY HOPSCOTCH, our impressive STRONGMAN! BUBBA BUBBAPHANT, our unbelievable MAGICIAN! KICKIN’ CHICKEN, our fearless STUNT RIDER! PICKY PIGGY, our talented CHEF! BOBBY BEARHUG, our graceful ADAGIO! and finally, CATNAP, our incredible CONTORTIONIST!
Come, come! We will be waiting for you in
THE SMILING CIRCUS!
INFO:
THERE ARE NO CANON SHIPS IN THIS AU. HOWEVER, YOU MAY HEADCANON AS MANY AS YOU WANT WITH THE CONDITION OF BEING NICE TO WHOEVER DOESN'T THINK THE SAME AS YOU.
mod's first language is spanish, not english. excuse the grammar errors </3
mod speaking will 『be seen like this.』 don't want to see them? block both #.mod speaks. and #.mod answers. so you don't see me yap!
RULES:
✹ keep asks SFW. even if in this au they're adults, it makes me uncomfortable. insisting in this behavior will get you blocked. ✹ be patient. i am one person with a life outside of the internet, and a busy one at that. ✹ DO NOT SPAM MY INBOX. do not send the same ask multiple times. doing this will get you blocked. ✹ DO NOT DEMAND ART ANSWERS. i will draw whenever i want. insisting on this behavior will get you blocked.
NAVIGATION HELP:
CHARACTER INFORMATION
--TBA AS TIME GOES ON--
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contemplatingoutlander · 4 months ago
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Finally, The New York Times Editorial Board says Trump is unfit to hold the Office of the President of the United States!
This is a "gift🎁link" so you can read the entire, HISTORIC editorial by The New York Times Editorial Board stating in no uncertain terms that Donald Trump is unfit for office.
Below are some excerpts from the five subsections of the editorial: I Moral Fitness, II. Principled Leadership, III. Character, IV. A President's Words, and V. Rule of Law
I. MORAL FITNESS MATTERS
Presidents are confronted daily with challenges that require not just strength and conviction but also honesty, humility, selflessness, fortitude and the perspective that comes from sound moral judgment. If Mr. Trump has these qualities, Americans have never seen them in action on behalf of the nation’s interests. His words and actions demonstrate a disregard for basic right and wrong and a clear lack of moral fitness for the responsibilities of the presidency.
He lies blatantly and maliciously, embraces racists, abuses women and has a schoolyard bully’s instinct to target society’s most vulnerable. He has delighted in coarsening and polarizing the town square with ever more divisive and incendiary language. Mr. Trump is a man who craves validation and vindication, so much that he would prefer a hostile leader’s lies to his own intelligence agencies’ truths and would shake down a vulnerable ally for short-term political advantage. His handling of everything from routine affairs to major crises was undermined by his blundering combination of impulsiveness, insecurity and unstudied certainty. [...] The Supreme Court, with its ruling on July 1 granting presidents “absolute immunity” for official acts, has removed an obstacle to Mr. Trump’s worst impulses: the threat of legal consequences. What remains is his own sense of right and wrong. Our country’s future is too precious to rely on such a broken moral compass. [color emphasis added]
Below the cut are excerpts from the other four subsections.
II. PRINCIPLED LEADERSHIP MATTERS
Republican presidents and presidential candidates have used their leadership at critical moments to set a tone for society to live up to. Mr. Reagan faced down totalitarianism in the 1980s.... George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act.... George W. Bush, for all his failures after Sept. 11, did not stoke hate against or demonize Muslims or Islam.
As a candidate during the 2008 race, Mr. McCain spoke out when his fellow conservatives spread lies about his opponent, Barack Obama. Mr. Romney was willing to sacrifice his standing and influence in the party he once represented as a presidential nominee, by boldly calling out Mr. Trump’s failings and voting for his removal from office. These acts of leadership are what it means to put country first, to think beyond oneself. Mr. Trump has demonstrated contempt for these American ideals. He admires autocrats, from Viktor Orban to Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong-un. He believes in the strongman model of power — a leader who makes things happen by demanding it, compelling agreement through force of will or personality. In reality, a strongman rules through fear and the unprincipled use of political might for self-serving ends, imposing poorly conceived policies that smother innovation, entrepreneurship, ideas and hope. During his four years in office, Mr. Trump tried to govern the United States as a strongman would, issuing orders or making decrees on Twitter. He announced sudden changes in policy — on who can serve in the military, on trade policy, on how the United States deals with North Korea or Russia — without consulting experts on his staff about how these changes would affect America. Indeed, nowhere did he put his political or personal interests above the national interest more tragically than during the pandemic, when he faked his way through a crisis by touting conspiracy theories and pseudoscience while ignoring the advice of his own experts and resisting basic safety measures that would have saved lives. [...] A second Trump administration would be different. He intends to fill his administration with sycophants, those who have shown themselves willing to obey Mr. Trump’s demands or those who lack the strength to stand up to him. He wants to remove those who would be obstacles to his agenda, by enacting an order to make it easier to fire civil servants and replace them with those more loyal to him. This means not only that Americans would lose the benefit of their expertise but also that America would be governed in a climate of fear, in which government employees must serve the interests of the president rather than the public.... Another term under Mr. Trump’s leadership would risk doing permanent damage to our government. [color/ emphasis added]
III. CHARACTER MATTERS
Character is the quality that gives a leader credibility, authority and influence. During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump’s petty attacks on his opponents and their families led many Republicans to conclude that he lacked such character. Other Republicans, including those who supported the former president’s policies in office, say they can no longer in good conscience back him for the presidency. “It’s a job that requires the kind of character he just doesn’t have,” Paul Ryan, a former Republican House speaker, said of Mr. Trump in May.
Those who know Mr. Trump’s character best — the people he appointed to serve in the most important positions of his White House — have expressed grave doubts about his fitness for office.His former chief of staff John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, described Mr. Trump as “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” Bill Barr, whom Mr. Trump appointed as attorney general, said of him, “He will always put his own interest and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest.” James Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general who served as defense secretary, said, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try.” Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s vice president, has disavowed him. No other vice president in modern American history has done this. “I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Mr. Pence has said. “And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.” [...] It may be tempting for Americans to believe that a second Trump presidency would be much like the first, with the rest of government steeled to protect the country and resist his worst impulses. But the strongman needs others to be weak, and Mr. Trump is surrounding himself with yes men. The American public has a right to demand more from their president and those who would serve under him. [color/ emphasis added]
IV. A PRESIDENT’S WORDS MATTER
When America saw white nationalists and neo-Nazis march through the streets of Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and activists were rallying against racism, Mr. Trump spoke of “very fine people on both sides.” When he was pressed about the white supremacist Proud Boys during a 2020 debate, Mr. Trump told them to “stand back and stand by,” a request that, records show, they took literally in deciding to storm Congress. This winter, the former president urged Iowans to vote for him and score a victory over their fellow Americans — “all of the liars, cheaters, thugs, perverts, frauds, crooks, freaks, creeps.” And in a Veterans Day speech in New Hampshire, he used the word “vermin,” a term he has deployed to describe both immigrants and political opponents.
What a president says reflects on the United States and the kind of society we aspire to be. In 2022 this board raised an urgent alarm about the rising threat of political violence in the United States and what Americans could do to stop it. At the time... the Republican Party was in the middle of a fight for control, between Trumpists and those who were ready to move on from his destructive leadership. This struggle within the party has consequences for all Americans. “A healthy democracy requires both political parties to be fully committed to the rule of law and not to entertain or even tacitly encourage violence or violent speech,” we wrote. A large faction of one party in our country fails that test, and that faction, Mr. Trump’s MAGA extremists, now control the party and its levers of power. There are many reasons his conquest of the Republican Party is bad for American democracy, but one of the most significant is that those extremists have often embraced violent speech or the belief in using violence to achieve their political goals. This belief led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and it has resulted in a rising number of threats against judges, elected officials and prosecutors. This threat cannot be separated from Mr. Trump’s use of language to encourage violence, to dehumanize groups of people and to spread lies. A study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, released in October 2022, came to the conclusion that MAGA Republicans (as opposed to those who identified themselves as traditional Republicans) “are more likely to hold extreme and racist beliefs, to endorse political violence, to see such violence as likely to occur and to predict that they will be armed under circumstances in which they consider political violence to be justified.” The Republican Party had an opportunity to renounce Trumpism; it has submitted to it. Republican leaders have had many opportunities to repudiate his violent discourse and make clear that it should have no place in political life; they failed to. [...] But with his nomination by his party all but assured, Mr. Trump has become even more reckless in employing extreme and violent speech, such as his references to executing generals who raise questions about his actions. He has argued, before the Supreme Court, that he should have the right to assassinate a political rival and face no consequences. [color/ emphasis added]
V. THE RULE OF LAW MATTERS
The danger from these foundational failings — of morals and character, of principled leadership and rhetorical excess — is never clearer than in Mr. Trump’s disregard for rule of law, his willingness to do long-term damage to the integrity of America’s systems for short-term personal gain. As we’ve noted, Mr. Trump’s disregard for democracy was most evident in his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to encourage violence to stop the peaceful transfer of power. What stood in his way were the many patriotic Americans, at every level of government, who rejected his efforts to bully them into complying with his demands to change election results. Instead, they followed the rules and followed the law. This respect for the rule of law, not the rule of men, is what has allowed American democracy to survive for more than 200 years.
In the four years since losing the election, Mr. Trump has become only more determined to subvert the rule of law, because his whole theory of Trumpism boils down to doing whatever he wants without consequence. Americans are seeing this unfold as Mr. Trump attempts to fight off numerous criminal charges. Not content to work within the law to defend himself, he is instead turning to sympathetic judges — including two Supreme Court justices with apparent conflicts over the 2020 election and Jan. 6-related litigation. The playbook: delay federal prosecution until he can win election and end those legal cases. His vision of government is one that does what he wants, rather than a government that operates according to the rule of law as prescribed by the Constitution, the courts and Congress. [...] So much in the past two decades has tested these norms in our society.... We need a recommitment to the rule of law and the values of fair play. This election is a moment for Americans to decide whether we will keep striving for those ideals. Mr. Trump rejects them. If he is re-elected, America will face a new and precarious future, one that it may not be prepared for. It is a future in which intelligence agencies would be judged not according to whether they preserved national security but by whether they served Mr. Trump’s political agenda. It means that prosecutors and law enforcement officials would be judged not according to whether they follow the law to keep Americans safe but by whether they obey his demands to “go after” political enemies. It means that public servants would be judged not according to their dedication or skill but by whether they show sufficient loyalty to him and his MAGA agenda. Even if Mr. Trump’s vague policy agenda would not be fulfilled, he could rule by fear. The lesson of other countries shows that when a bureaucracy is politicized or pressured, the best public servants will run for the exits. This is what has already happened in Mr. Trump’s Republican Party, with principled leaders and officials retiring, quitting or facing ouster. In a second term, he intends to do that to the whole of government. [color/ emphasis added]
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