Muerte de Gustavito
10 people murdered a day, and now a hippo
Posts
Trump’s erratic dismantling of American order and morals is raging into its third week. We know the Trump presidency is going to end in disaster for the country, for the world, and for all of us as individuals. Waiting around for this inevitable end seems like failing to act when a Category 5 hurricane is heading right for us. Catastrophe in the form of insulting and unconstitutional religious bans, calls for the re-embrace of torture and CIA “black sites,” the nauseating embrace of Putin, energized neo-Nazism, damaging insults to America’s allies, and even calls for shooting of protestors has become commonplace on the Trumpian right. Disaster is certain and we need to act now to stop this. And we need to act together. Virtually every commentator in the past few months has been saying this situation is not going to end well. This isn’t just the perspective of those on the progressive left or the ungovernable anarchist black bloc. It is the mainstream’s utter...
This is an excellent, and terrifying, analysis of the most likely Trumpian use of a "Reichstag Fire" moment to act repressively after a terrorist attack. Jane Chong, How To Deal with Reichstag Fire Fears in the Age of Trump As she notes with unalterable logic: " At this point invocation of the Reichstag fire is useful in only one narrow sense—to help prepare us mentally to mitigate and respond posthaste to the worst-case scenario: an actual attack on U.S. soil, paired with an unacceptably illiberal response from the White House." and pointing to a reason to be prepared: " there is little point worrying about whether the Trump administration has (in the limited sense) Reichstag-fire designs at all unless the object is to inculcate in the public sufficient awareness of what is happening so as to stave off the administration’s ability to capitalize on terror. Now is the time to start drawing lines—that is, before disaster puts a vice grip on our emotions...
The Republican Congress is going to help destroy the country along with its useful idiot Donald Trump. I thought David Frum's Atlantic article on the real and present dangers of the Trump reign was very insightful and worth reading Even better is this article from Ezra Klein How to stop an autocracy "The way to stop an autocracy is to have Congress do its damn job."
Richard Primus has an excellent and clear eyed analysis of what needs to be done: focus on the dfangers of the Trump presidency and do not squander needless energy on Gorsuch. "But I wouldn’t be surprised if the right prescription here were something like this: Don’t pretend that Gorsuch isn’t qualified. Do use the process to keep foregrounding Trump’s unconstitutional actions and attitudes, and the Republicans’ egregious behavior in Garland’s case, and the fact that most American voters voted against letting Trump be the one to fill the seat. And use the process also as a vehicle for bringing more energized people into the fight to defend the Republic against a uniquely dangerous President." "... That doesn’t mean that the Democrats should just roll over, behave meekly, and vote in favor. But it likely does mean that the Democrats need to see the confirmation process as an opportunity for shaping public discussion about Trump rather than as an occasion for att...