The "Green Bay Sweep"--One Year Later

[Dill]

(01-17-2022, 07:11 PM)hollodero Wrote: Yeah I don't think it has much to do with the filibuster. I get why it matters on voting rights, yet still In a sense, I feel often liberals tend to get sidetracked with topics like these. 

Dill Wrote:[url=http://thebengalsboard.com/Thread-The-Green-Bay-Sweep-One-Year-Later?pid=1146764#pid1146764][/url]There may be an analogy here to resistance to civil rights legislation back in the '60s

I'll keep this short, I don't think there's a real fitting one. Imho this is just too different in many core elements.

Two central terms of comparison would be use of the filibuster to block voting rights legislation and a large number of "independents" and other non-committed who don't see why minority civil rights should be an issue for them, if it is an issue at all.

Liberals tend to get "sidetracked" on the filibuster once they grasp how it has been used to block civil rights legislation. The nothing that filibusters is neutral and tends to favor "both sides" is one version of that "both sidesism we both deplore.

But you are right to note that there are also important differences between then and now. Eg, the civil rights violations today are not nearly so egregious an visible as they were in 1964.

(01-17-2022, 07:11 PM)hollodero Wrote: Our own democracies have issues. But if in some western european country a former higher official would go on TV after a lost election and describe in detail how they had planned to ignore the outcome and just rather put their guy in place, this would be a scandal beyond proportions. In the US, Peter Navarro does just that and it's rather for the laughs than anything else. This is all rotten to its core, and of course just a tiny example. But it's just so weird that even under these circumstances, the party that supports all that cannot possibly lose by more than 5 percentage points and then inevitably win big in one of the upcoming elections. It is clear where this ends. Even if some of the more lethargic folks believe in the system being unbeatable or that Nikki Haley will lead the republicans back to reason and righteousness or whatever dream.

This is why I am thankful we have posters from outside the U.S., who have not normalized and adapted to this astonishing state of affairs. Their registered shock is a salutary reminder of what used to be normal, and still is in successful democracies elsewhere.

For 50+ million Americans right now--and maybe 70-80+ in 2024--Trump's openly attempting to subvert an election is not a serious objection to his running again.

So we are in this crazy, strange situation in which we have hard public evidence of Trump's attempt to subvert the election, and no evidence what so ever that Biden stole the election. Worse, the proffered evidence, like conspiracies promoted by Giuliani and Sidney Powell, flip over into more evidence of Trump malfeasance.  And yet the party which actually tried to steal the election has been able to convince tens of millions that's what the other side really did, and so, as you say, cannot lose by more than 5% if they lose at all. 

You and I spent four years aghast at what Trump did and said, but his supporters had spent 8 years before that believing that Obama was equally outrageous and an existential threat to the nation--though the threat appeared at the time, and still does, to be wholly manufactured. Imagine if the cartoon history below of O's administration was factually correct. How is a vote for THAT president's Sec. of State any riskier than one for an outsider, a successful businessman, untainted by politics?  



That is in part why MAGA world is ready to "take back" the nation with illegal means. They believe libs have already done that. TRULY believe it. Party leaders believe otherwise, but not the mass of MAGA voters. And in contrast to previous elections, voters can no longer just vote out some official not getting the job done and try the other party's alternative. No matter how bad the GOP candidate is, you can't vote for the far more terrible party of treason and lies, who gave us an illegal president who was not born on U.S. soil. 

Something has happened to break their judgment, undermining trust in government (including the FBI,CIA, and CDC) and academia--all outside authority--rendering every false equivalence a credible trump of pro-democracy candidates and policies, and it happened between 1974 and 2016--and especially after 9/11.  I'm including here many "independents" as well, who have difficulty seeing much difference between Trump and every president who came before him.