#the un-american gop

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ Superman needs to pay a visit to Mar-a-Lago.

Ron DeSantis and the scandal-plagued Moms for Liberty would probably denounce that 1950s DC Comics Superman cartoon as "woke".

Liberal to moderate Americans should not be squeamish about using the term un-American. For too long the enemies of democracy and human rights in the United States have used it to demonize their political opponents.

We should be the ones to define what it means to be American. Fairness, equality, charity, civility, and opposition to tyrannical dictators are traits which a majority of Americans would agree on.

The MAGA Republican Party has supported voter suppression, bigotry, race-baiting, income inequality, and overseas dictators committing genocide. They are unquestionably un-American and even anti-American. Pointing this out is a no-brainer.

We can't keep the country on the right track without using the right language. As the Trump cult continues to move further from mainstream values we should be robust about pointing out how un-American they've become.

[danielleegnew]

No, you’re not overreacting. The United States of America is actually in jeopardy.

I literally no longer have any worry about who this message will offend. Because being offended means, on some level, it’s hitting a nerve. And I’m not responsible for people’s nerves. The Universe doesn’t actually pay much mind to the emotional ramifications of “offend”. They see it all as lessons. To put in terms more human—the heavens don’t really care if we get butthurt over observing…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When parties fail, movements step up

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

Does anyone like the American two party system? The parties are opaque, private organizations, weak institutions that are prone to capture and corruption, and gerrymandering's "safe seats" means that the real election often takes place in the party's smoke-filled rooms, when a sure-thing candidate is selected:

https://doctorow.medium.com/weak-institutions-a26a20927b27

But there doesn't seem to be any way to fix it. For one thing, the two parties are in charge of any reform, and they're in no hurry to put themselves out of business. It's effectively impossible for a third party to gain any serious power in the USA, and that's by design. After the leftist Populists party came within a spitting distance of power in the 1890s, the Dems and Repubs got together and cooked the system, banning fusion voting and erecting other structural barriers.

The Nader and Perot campaigns were doomed from the outset, in other words. Either candidate could have been far more popular than the D and R on the ballot, and they still would have lost. It's how the deck is stacked, and to unstack it, reformers would need to take charge of at least one – and probably both – of the parties.

But that's not cause for surrender – it's a call to action. In an interview with Seymour Hersh, Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal) sets out another locus of power, one with the potential to deliver control over the party to its base: social movements:

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/ordinary-people-by-the-millions

It's been done before. The parties are routinely transformed by power-shifts within their internal coalitions: since 1970, corporate Dems have consistently pushed the party to the right, making it the power of white-collar professionals and relying on working people showing up and marking their ballots with a D because they have "nowhere else to go."

Bill Clinton was the most successful of these corporate raiders, delivering the parts of the Reagan Revolution that Reagan himself could never have managed: dismantling tariffs and bank regulations, passing the crime bill and welfare "reform." He came within a whisper of (partially) privatizing Social Security.

This set in motion the forces that made Trumpism possible: when Dems told deindustrialized workers to "learn to code" and blamed them for the destruction of their communities, it opened a space for Make America Great Again, the (empty) workerist rhetoric of the GOP. The Dems' plan of putting "really smart people" in charge and letting them run things was a (predictable) disaster. "Really smart" isn't the same as "infallible" and really smart people can be spooked or bulled into doing the wrong thing – like Obama "foaming the runways" for the banks with the houses of mortgage holders, and leaving the bankers responsible for the Great Financial Crisis unscathed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

"Really smart people" can't get us out of this mess. Instead, we need the kind of muscular political action – the "whirlwind" – that characterized FDR's New Deal: "complete reformation of the banking industry.. just about every other industry as well. Regulation. Social Security. Public works. Antitrust. Soil conservation."

FDR got there by alienating his former classmates and refusing the go-slow entreaties of his cronies. He got there because there was a mass social movement that made him do it ("I want to do it, now make me do it"):

https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/i-agree-with-you-i-want-to-do-it-now-make-me-do-it/

Every time in US history where one of the political party duopoly listened to its base, it was because of a mass social movement: the farmers' movement (1890s), labor (1930s), civil rights and antiwar (1960s). As Frank says:

Social movements succeed. They build and they change the intellectual climate and then, when the crisis comes, they make possible things like agrarian reform or the New Deal or the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s.

Today, we see the seeds of those social movements: the new union movement. Black Lives Matter. Neobrandeisians with their "hipster antitrust." These are the movements that are creating "ideas lying around": ideas that, in time of crisis, can move from the fringe to the center in an eyeblink:

https://doctorow.medium.com/ideas-lying-around-33a28901a7ae

They are setting in motion another transformation of the Democratic Party, from its top-down, "really smart people" model to a bottom-up, people-powered one, kept in check by movements, not party bosses. As Frank says, "They require the mass participation of ordinary people. Without that, I am afraid that nothing is possible."

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/17/popular-front-of-judea/#speaking-frankly

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

“Their intentions aren’t exactly a secret. Government programs that attempt to redress decades of racist policies would be eliminated should Trump be elected to a second term. “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated,” Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told the news outlet.

A top Biden campaign official said Black voters needed to pay close attention to Trump’s plans.

Trump is “making it clear that if he wins in November, he’ll turn his racist record into official government policy, gutting programs that give communities of color economic opportunities and making the lives of Black and brown folks harder,” said former Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), one of the co-chairs of the Biden campaign. “It’s up to us to stop him.”

The warning comes as polling shows Biden’s level of support from Black voters has slipped. Democratic strategists have some fear about GOP plans to target Black men in the coming election. And they have major fears Black voters could stay home or vote for third-party candidates. Highlighting Trump and Miller’s plans could raise the stakes of the election for Black voters.

Miller, who pushed white nationalism and xenophobia in leaked emails, is at the heart of the effort. America First Legal, the right-wing nonprofit group Miller founded, has filed over a hundred lawsuits against “woke” corporations — like Disney, Mattel and Nike — that it alleges discriminate against white men. These complaints — many of which cite the 1964 Civil Rights Act — are laying the legal framework for Trump’s Justice Department to eliminate programs designed to counter racism, Axios notes.

Jasmine Harris, director of Black media for the Biden-Harris campaign, said the report should worry Black Americans.

“This report, in addition to all of the recent examples of shameless racism by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, serves as a warning to Black America: Donald Trump is a selfish and vindictive man who doesn’t give a damn about Black people,” Harris told HuffPost. “He will make our lives worse by using the very laws that the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement fought for, against us.”

Miller’s group is not alone in the effort to roll back DEI initiatives.

The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation crafted Project 2025, a sweeping playbook that lists policies and initiatives for the next conservative administration. The initiative is open about its goal to reshape the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. One of the mandates within the playbook is to “reorganize and refocus the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to serve as the vanguard for this return to lawfulness.”

Trump has affirmed to supporters that he aims make good on his promise to eliminate DEI. “We will terminate every diversity, equity and inclusion program across the entire federal government,” he told a crowd in Rochester, New Hampshire, in January.”

[contemplatingoutlander]

Trump’s anti-Ukraine view dates to the 1930s. America rejected it then. Will we now?

(Illustration: Brian Stauffer for The Washington Post)

This opinion column by Robert Kagan reminds us that history appears to be repeating itself. Trump's America First movement is an echo of the 1930s/1940s isolationist, neo-fascist America First movement that tried to keep the U.S. out of WWII. This is a gift🎁link, so you can read the entire article, even if you don't subscribe to The Washington Post. Below are some excerpts:

Many Americans seem shocked that Republicans would oppose helping Ukraine at this critical juncture in history....Clearly, people have not been taking Donald Trump’s resurrection of America First seriously. It’s time they did. The original America First Committee was founded in September 1940. Consider the global circumstances at the time. Two years earlier, Hitler had annexed Austria and invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia. One year earlier, he had invaded and conquered Poland. In the first months of 1940, he invaded and occupied Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. In early June 1940, British troops evacuated from Dunkirk, and France was overrun by the Nazi blitzkrieg. In September, the very month of the committee’s formation, German troops were in Paris and Edward R. Murrow was reporting from London under bombardment by the Luftwaffe. That was the moment the America First movement launched itself into the battle to block aid to Britain. [...] This “realism” meshed well with anti-interventionism. Americans had to respect “the right of an able and virile nation [i.e. Nazi Germany] to expand,” aviator Charles Lindbergh argued. [...] Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called for the immediate reduction of U.S. force levels in Europe and the abrogation of America’s common-defense Article 5 commitments. He wants the United States to declare publicly that in the event of a “direct conflict” between Russia and a NATO ally, America will “withhold forces.” The Europeans need to know they can no longer “count on us like they used to.”  [...] Can Republicans really be returning to a 1930s worldview in our 21st-century world? The answer is yes. Trump’s Republican Party wants to take the United States back to the triad of interwar conservatism: high tariffs, anti-immigrant xenophobia, isolationism. According to Russ Vought, who is often touted as Trump’s likely chief of staff in a second term, it is precisely this “older definition of conservatism,” the conservatism of the interwar years, that they hope to impose on the nation when Trump regains power. [...] Like those of their 1930s forbears, today’s Republicans’ views of foreign policy are heavily shaped by what they consider the more important domestic battle against liberalism. Foreign policy issues are primarily weapons to be wielded against domestic enemies. [...] The GOP devotion to America First is merely the flip side of Trump’s “poison the blood” campaign. It is about the ascendancy of White Christian America and the various un-American ethnic and racial groups allegedly conspiring against it. [emphasis added]  

Use the gift link above to read the entire article. It is worth reading.

____________ Illustration: The above illustration by Brian Stauffer originally drew me to this article. It does a great job of succinctly illustrating the Trump GOP's rightward march towards isolationism (and Putin-style dictatorship). [edited]

[socialjusticeinamerica]

“GOP Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) berated and interrupted Mangi in his Wednesday hearing in the Senate judiciary committee, demanding that Mangi, who is Muslim, share his personal views on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel and the Israeli-Hamas conflict in general.”

Three no good, white trash, redneck, mother f—kers, who are pimples on the ass of American democracy.

[truthdogg]

I think our national media can’t see the forest for the trees here. And many democrats seem to be missing it as well.

This Republican-led process is supposed to be a sham. The point is to make impeachment proceedings, all impeachment proceedings, look like a partisan tool. This is a deliberate and necessary part of the 2024 presidential campaign for Republicans.

When independent voters are polled about Trump and his impeachments are mentioned, that distinctly and consistently lowers his support. His impeachments are a serious weakness with voters, and the GOP knows it. They can’t un-impeach him, of course, but what they can do is to pretend that the trials were partisan (they were not), over policy (they were not), and that this is always the case.

They are counting on Americans forgetting what a clown show Trump’s entire presidency was. And frankly, it might work. Few people want to remember what those four years were like; they were awful in a whole variety of ways and most of us have gladly blocked it out.

Many Republicans also truly do believe that impeachment is a sham process in general and to be used as a political tool. They’re not entirely wrong, since it’s a political process. But the main problem with their approach is that corruption or truth doesn’t matter to them, it’s only about putting points on the scoreboard.

In this case, impeaching the DHS secretary does get them bonus points, even if that is not the main goal. It adds to confusion regarding border policy, and it potentially makes the DHS less effective. These are important outcomes when they’re trying scuttle any sort of solution to problems there as long as Biden is in office. This circus also potentially shifts the blame from Congressional Republicans for not funding the bills they’ve passed onto Mayorkas for not doing them, and away from Abbott for blocking the DHS rom the Texas border.

It’s all about deflection. Never about solutions. When Democrats claim this impeachment is about policy differences, they’re giving Republicans way too much credit. Policy isn’t important to them; this is about power.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Vivek's BASED Response to silly Colorado political stunt to "temporarily" remove Trump's name from the ballot.

@VivekGRamaswamy

This is what an *actual* attack on democracy looks like: in an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision, a cabal of Democrat judges are barring Trump from the ballot in Colorado. Having tried every trick in the book to eliminate President Trump from running in this election, the bipartisan Establishment is now deploying a new tactic to bar him from ever holding office again: the 14th Amendment. I pledge to *withdraw* from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same immediately - or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country.   Today’s decision is the latest election interference tactic to silence political opponents and swing the election for whatever puppet the Democrats put up this time by depriving Americans of the right to vote for their candidate of choice.   The 14th Amendment was part of the “Reconstruction Amendments” that were ratified following the Civil War. It was passed to prohibit former Confederate military and political leaders from holding high federal or state office. These men had clearly taken part in a rebellion against the United States: the Civil War. That makes it all the more absurd that a left-wing group in Colorado is asking a federal court to disqualify the 45th President on the same grounds, equating his speech to rebellion against the United States. And there’s another legal problem: Trump is not a former “officer of the United States,” as that term is used in the Constitution, meaning Section 3 does not apply. As the Supreme Court explained in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010), an “officer of the United States” is someone appointed by the President to aid him in his duties under Article II, Section 2. The term does not apply to elected officials, and certainly not to the President himself.   The Framers of the 14th Amendment would be appalled to see this narrow provision—intended to bar former U.S. officials who switched to the Confederacy from seeking public office—being weaponized by a sitting President and his political allies to prevent a former President from seeking reelection. Our country is becoming unrecognizable to our Founding Fathers.

6:56 PM · Dec 19, 2023

https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1737260590798671982?s=20

The BOZO'S admit that this trick will NOT work.

[pennsyltuckyheathen]

MAGARepublicans always take the low road in pandering to their racist, bigoted uninformed base (which MAGA Republicans prefer)

[tomorrowusa]

From Justin Baragona on Twitter.

Fox News just can’t understand why so many people find MAGA semi-fascism repulsive and un-American.

It’s not just that Democrats had an anti-MAGA message; it wouldn’t have worked if it didn’t genuinely resonate with the American people.

[anonymoushouseplantfan]

Holy. Shit.

Okay, this is one of those times when I freak out, and you guys have no idea why I’m freaking out because it’s just Patti Davis and not a big star like Michelle Obama. Well, this is big. This is a celebrity un-endorsement, but bigger. This is the Establishment talking. They brought in a presidential kid to tell Harry to SHUT THE EFF UP.

I remember way back then Michelle Obama also told them to stop rocking the boat and they didn’t pay attention. I think the powers that be are over these two idiots now.

---

Yup. That's why I sent it to you as soon as I saw it. And I now see that I was in such a hurry that I forgot to quote/indent the quotes from her piece -- apologies!

She is, however under the radar for a lot of Americans, Washington royalty, activist royalty (anti-nuke, anti-GOP for decades), California royalty, Democratic Party royalty. She also went to Northwestern (lol) for a year to study journalism. And a few years ago she wrote an op ed piece for The Washington Post condemning the racist comments her father had made in a 1971 phone conversation with Nixon (which Pres Nixon taped), about black African delegates to the UN. She has consistently walked the walk and talked the talk, and shown grace and growth.

______________________________________________________________

Exactly. A lot of people will read this a certain way...because they are meant to read it a certain way.

I'm very curious about that Colbert interview now. I thought it would be positive for Harry, but now I'm not that sure.

[seymour-butz-stuff]

If anyone wanted to understand the true priorities of the Republican Party, last week was one like no other. It was a week that would leave any decent American flabbergasted at the extent of Republican willingness to endorse betrayal and treachery against the American public. It clarified the willingness of Republicans to abandon all pretense of law and order to satisfy their aims. Frankly, it was a week that should, by all rights, forever erase any doubts about just how un-American and toxic to this country Republicans actually are. And for all the hype that surrounded it, the criminal indictment and formal arrest of Donald Trump played only a small part. At the exact time that Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was being arraigned in Miami and charged with felony violations of the Espionage Act in connection with his alleged mishandling of our nation’s classified documents, several of his Republican congressional supporters gathered in the U.S. Capitol for a fake “hearing.” This hearing honored the people who attacked the same Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, lauding, encouraging, and soothing them for their failed attempt to violently overturn the 2020 election. Earlier that week, a Republican congressman from Louisiana named Clay Higgins telegraphed a message on Twitter providing coded, helpful tactical advice to extremist white supremacist militia groups in the event they perpetrated a violent assault on the federal courthouse where Trump was being arraigned. Later in the same week, 196 Republicans—nearly the entire GOP House caucus—voted in favor of a resolution to censure and heavily fine Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for investigating and revealing the rank complicity between the Trump administration and the Russian Federation in influencing the outcome of the 2016 election.  These acts aren’t simply “un-American.” They’re clear evidence of a political organization that has collectively resolved to make a clean break with democracy.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

This is un-American bullshit.

[qqueenofhades]

Maybe I'm an old cynic, but I do believe that the reason the GOP has become so much more... performative with the white supremacy and cartoon supervillainy is because they need the distraction. Like, the cruelty is definitely a feature, not a bug, but at the end of the day they've been promising for decades that the GOP can deliver Eisenhower-era prosperity under a Reagan-era tax structure, which anyone with half a brain knows is fucking impossible. So they *need* to convince people that the only thing standing between them and "the American Dream" is *those people and their Agenda*. And since public sentiment really was getting more progressive, even if the gov't was taking its sweet time catching up to it, dog whistles just weren't cutting it anymore. So now we have this.

Unfortunately, the reason the Republican party is currently the way it is right now is because of Obama. (Thanks Obama, etc.) However, this is not his fault. It's because the white wing lost their goddamn minds when he was elected, open racist bullshit became acceptable political currency once more, and once you ring the fascist bell, you can't unring it. There used to be a lot of people, including Biden, who thought that once Trump was gone, the Republicans would just automatically un-crazy and come to their senses and be like "our bad, sorry about all the racism and theocracy stuff!"

Except... it doesn't work like that. Because they've been actively and drastically radicalised, their mindset isn't going to suddenly and automatically change back. Especially when the rabid Republican base has likewise been fed on red meat; they only want their candidates to be more fascist supervillain-y, not less. The only two sane Republicans left in the entire party, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, have been drummed out in disgrace due to working with the J6 committee and punishing Trump, and won't be returning to Congress. The rest of them have become mindless cult minions in the service of their almighty orange treasonweasel leader, and that's it.

Anyway, yes. White backlash to Obama was what got Trump elected, and while Dubya had terrible policies, at least he... had them? Whereas now the Republicans have no other purpose than to be hateful and reactionary and to undo every single civil rights advance of the last 60 years. Eisenhower, with his 90%+ tax bracket for the super-rich and generally progressive ideas, would not be allowed within a hundred miles of today's GOP, and would have to be a Democrat. So like... it's not even about the fact, as you point out, that you can't deliver Eisenhower-era growth on a Reagan-era tax structure. They don't even care about pretending to govern. All they are is a grievance machine and personal cadre for their Dear Leader, and want to drag the rest of America down into fascist hell with them.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

😡🖕

[evillordzog]

For all my American friends

Consider this: Trump is +40% in the GOP primary. 78% approval rating with GOP voters, 29% of whom are ride-or-die-Trump. Barring an accident with choking on a well-done steak, he will be the GOP nominee, making this platform *the GOP platform.*

Then consider this: winning presidential candidates tend to lift House and Senate candidates of the same party. The current House speaker is a Christian nationalist who was one of the primary architects of Trump's attempt to undo his 2020 presidential loss. The 2024 Senate map has Dems defending most of its remaining seats in red states, with only 2 seats to give, net. You think "MAGA Mike" Johnson and Mitch freakin' McConnell will be a check on a Trump power grab? If so, I have some lofts in Trump Tower to sell you.

The likelihood of a Trump win is the likelihood of 2-4 years of unified government under Trump who does not face re-election, a go-along very conservative legislative branch, and a hard right Supreme Court, which means:

* Abortion outlawed nationally.

* Free speech rights abridged - particularly freedoms of protest and freedoms of the press (see: Thomas' desire to revisit libel laws vs. the media)

* Books banned, nationally.

* Muslim bans and family separation policy, reinstated.

* Military action against Mexico over the border, authorized (it's terrifying how popular this idea is in GOP circles)

* LGBTQ protections, particularly marriage and trans rights, overturned.

* Tax cuts for the ultra-rich expanded and made permanent.

* Union organizing cracked down upon.

* Green energy and environmental protections of the IRA, reversed and the EPA either crippled or dissolved.

* Ukraine, Taiwan, Gaza, all abandoned to their fates.

* and of course, all 91 felony charges against Trump are dropped.

And that's just year one.

This is not scare-mongering: these are the *public, stated policy positions* taken by MAGA and the GOP right now. The Heritage Foundation's innocuous-sounding "Project 2025" is a roadmap white paper on dismantling the federal government under a second Trump term, and you can look it up anytime.

I get Joe Biden is old, and things are not improving quickly enough - maybe you don't feel anything is improving at all. Maybe you disagree with some, or a lot, of the administration's policies. Maybe you want someone younger or more progressive or more willing to fight the system that's failing too many people.

BUT.

Short of some miracle in the primaries, that wishlist just isn't on the table. If you are naive enough to make the perfect the enemy of the good, you'll get neither. You have one simple, stark, choice:

Anything except voting for the Dem candidate -- and that includes abstaining because you think the candidates are just as bad as each other -- is a vote for Trump, and the naked unalloyed evil he brings with him.

That is it, folks. That's the whole game.

The costs of failure here are far too high, for you, your children, your neighbors, your country, and the world the rest of us live in. You CANNOT allow these fascists to win, and that means we must do everything - and anything - it takes to stop them from getting hold of the reins of power. You CANNOT allow a revenge-obsessed narcissist and his fascist little cronies to take hold of the government, where they will absolutely pull the the ladder after them, as they always try to when they gain power. Because as we all know, things that are done in the USA are very hard to un-do, by design. And if you fail here, there's not really much of a USA left anymore.