Trump on Venezuela: "We Are Going To Run The Country"
Showing posts with label Authoritarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Authoritarianism. Show all posts
Sunday, January 4, 2026
Thursday, December 18, 2025
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Some of what Dark Brandon said in 2022 is what some Democrats still want their leader to say today in 2025
... Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic. ... there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven
and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a
threat to this country. ... MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. ... They promote authoritarian leaders. ... They thrive on chaos. ... American
democracy only works only if we choose to respect the rule of law and
the institutions that were set up in this chamber behind me. ...
-- Joe Biden, 1 September 2022, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, PA
The voters' response to this in 2022 was to flip the Democrats' House 222 majority to a 222 Republican one.
In 2024, the Republican lead narrowed to 220-215. Special elections in Florida this week will either ratify that lead or narrow it some more.
All I can think of when I read about Democrats wanting a more angry, a more centrist candidate, a more combative leader who meets the moment, is that they had all that in Joe Biden and they dumped him
The outright treason against their own president is the Democrats' real problem with their own voters, who lost faith in them and voted for Trump instead.
Democrats are furious. And they want their leaders to get mad, too.
“I wish you’d be angry,” a constituent told representative Gil Cisneros, a Democrat of California, at a recent town hall. At an event in Minnesota featuring a panel of Democratic attorneys general, an activist voiced a similar sentiment: “Get angry, man,” punctuating the message with a profanity.
The anger roiling the party, slow to build, is now a forceful current coursing through the electorate and pulling in Americans terrified that the country is descending into authoritarianism. Democrats – with no leader to guide them and little power to wield in Washington – are scrambling to harness the sudden fury. ...
Of course, we all know that that Joe Biden, especially the centrist Joe Biden, didn't really have control of his own White House, covering up which until it couldn't be covered up anymore just shows that the incumbent wasn't really trustworthy either.
Sunday, March 9, 2025
Andrew Sullivan throws the title of a recent book by Hillarycon Rod Dreher in his face, who is now at the heart of this new authoritarian Trump presidency through his friendship with J. D. Vance
Dreher has succumbed to the abuse of Trump. He lives by lies. He thinks Zelenskyy was the bad guy in the Oval Office.
Sullivan has not succumbed to our "sociopathic president":
... What the world saw last Friday was the same, central Trump dynamic: the leader of a smaller democracy that has withstood three years of brutal attack by a far larger dictatorship ... was still publicly humiliated, because he dared air his concern of no security guarantees against Russia. “Just say thank you,” Vance harangued him. “Have you said thank you once?” I cannot recall any visiting head of state who has ever, ever been thrown out of the White House the way Zelensky was. Why? Because he did not submit.
... The challenge for liberals of all stripes is a familiar one in dystopian democracies and rigid dictatorships: Live not by lies. Keep your grip on reality. Avoid the propaganda now washing down on you like torrential rain. Find a refuge, as I did on Wednesday — a place where eternal truths remain, or where free thinking can endure (Spinoza is a role model, which is why the Dishcast discusses him this week).
Avoid hysteria, which Trump wants and exploits. But avoid also being co-opted by a single one of his lies, to see clearly, and to speak simply. Read those you disagree with; get off most social media; choose doubt over certainty; restraint over impulse; resist this authoritarian and irrational moment by refocusing above all on the simple truth, as best as you can, and fighting all those on both extremes trying to annihilate it. ...
Here.
It's a magnificent essay which everyone should read.
Rod Dreher was a Hillarycon in 2016 because of, wait for it, The Madness of King Donald. And so was J. D. Vance.
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Friday, November 8, 2024
Donald Trump is already hard at work making long lists of all the things he's not going to accomplish as president, which he'll foolishly fritter away his time on
Ten points about The Swamp.
Seven points about The War on the Drug Cartels.
Trump's saying all this stuff and we don't even know yet if Republicans will win the US House, where they have 214 seats as of right now and lead narrowly in 8 undecided races. If they win them all they'll have 222 seats, with 218 needed for the majority.
If not, well that'll be the end of all ambition, now won't it?
222 at best is a very narrow margin to accomplish anything anyway, a mere continuation of the status quo where Republicans in the House must tread lightly to keep the caucus unified with a very similarly sized narrow majority (220).
What kind of sweep was this? Once again the Trump movement . . . isn't.
It would be easy to call this stuff hubris from Trump. Let's just say he still hasn't learned anything about how to accomplish anything of relatively permanent value. He has NO priorities when everything is a priority. He is, once again, unserious.
The Senate will be in Republican hands, so we'll at least get more judicial appointments who might advance traditional American principles of law and order.
The scuttlebutt is that the first agenda item in Congress will be making Trump's expiring tax reform permanent.
I can imagine him having to waste the entire first year on this. He'd be better off quickly settling for its extension for another ten years under reconciliation rules, and then move along smartly to immigration and energy reforms before the midterms are upon us in 2026, after which he'll be the lamest of lame ducks.
If there's any hope of boosting GDP and improving everyone's pocketbook they've got to make energy reform the priority. And mere immigration enforcement solves an untold number of other problems which bedevil the country, like illegal drugs, crime, and social spending.
Spending bills will come as they will, and should simply aim to starve the federal government of money to shrink it, as could have been the case last time but nothing changed. The beast grows naturally because permanent spending programs are indexed to inflation. That isn't going to be stopped. Growing the economy to pay the bills is therefore job one.
I'm expecting very little positive from this lot, but I do hope J. D. Vance will emerge at the end of it to take us to a better future.
Democrats who say they fear Trump because he's an authoritarian are absolutely comic. Watch for rogue judges to hamstring him just like last time, and Trump will bluster and fume and things will simply muddle along.
But, of course, unforeseen events like wars have a way of intruding and making mooks of us all. Let's hope Trump can finally make a deal to end and prevent them.
Saturday, October 19, 2024
"Weird" didn't work, try "bizarre" lol
In which we learn that Zack Beauchamp is just jealous, wishing he could be as perceptive as Salena Zito, dammit:
In late 2016, the Atlantic published a campaign trail dispatch by Salena Zito, a conservative reporter, exploring Trump’s appeal to his voters. The piece was forgettable save one line, a description of Trump’s relationship to his fans that has been quoted endlessly for the past eight years: "The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."...
If we took all of [Trump] literally, really integrated the reality of what these steps would mean into our daily behavior, it would be hard to live life normally. The specter of out-and-out authoritarianism, a crashing economy, and an international system shorn of the alliances that keep the global peace sounds apocalyptic. Actually trying to envision the enormity of this world is psychologically taxing; trying to live as if this were indeed an imminent possibility invariably leads to a life monomaniacally devoted to trying to stop it.
Poor fella knows he suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It's a cry for help.
Thursday, August 15, 2024
Kamala Harris is nothing but an authoritarian, a cop, whose first instinct is to use federal power to ban things she doesn't like, such as grocery prices, guns, and hate speech
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Democrats betray liberalism, become the new authoritarians
Carl M. Cannon, here:
But the most glaring gap is between conservatives and liberals, i.e., between Republicans and Democrats. On the issue of free expression, at least, Republicans are not the authoritarian party. That distinction belongs to the Democrats, the party launched by Thomas Jefferson — the Founding Father who famously said that if he were forced to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” ...
If Republicans’ aversion to censorship was transactional, they would have identified Democratic-friendly misinformation for removal. But they didn’t. “Regardless of the partisan slant of the content, Democrats are more likely to support the removal of content, while Republicans are more likely to oppose removing content,” the study noted.
It was Democrats who more often employed situational ethics, giving a pass to misinformation that helped their side. Most Republicans didn’t differentiate based on which way the false headline cut.
Monday, July 31, 2023
Ron DeSantis is so finished the left allocates 4,000 words to Sid Vicious Blumenthal to tell you all the ways the Florida governor is nothing but a trolling nullity
 |
| "Give me my personality!" |
DeSantis is so finished he's
"flat, spotty, clotted, dim, implausible, non-viable, void, clueless, non-this, non that, mealy-mouthed, weak, crabbed, mean, reactionary, cruel, literal, comic, absurd, inconsistent, empty, authoritarian, insubstantial, contrived, static, drab, detached, vacuous, strained, forced, artificial, small, reckless,"
and in case you missed it the first time
"weak".
Sid Blumenthal, Hillary confidante, author of the birther narrative, wants you to know that Trump is right. Ron DeSantis has "no personality".
In The Grauniad, where else?
Friday, September 2, 2022
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
Hillary "vast right wing conspiracy" Clinton is still beating that same old, worn out, authoritarian personality drum she bought at a 1950s vintage store in the 1990s
... there is a plot against the country by people who truly want to turn the
clock back. They believe that the progress we’ve made on all kinds of
civil rights and human rights, the cultural changes that have taken
place, are so deeply threatening that they want to stage a coup.
Now, think about it, because that’s truly what is behind Trump and his
enablers and those who invaded and attacked our Capitol. They don’t like
the world we’re living in and they have that in common with, you know,
autocratic leaders from Russia to Turkey to Hungary to Brazil and so
many other places, who are driven by personal power and greed and
corruption but who utilize fears about change to try to get people to
hate one another and feel insecure and, therefore, be easily manipulated
by demagogues and by disinformation.
More.
The projection from the person behind the Steele Dossier is really something. Crackpot, loony-bin level stuff.
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
If it isn't obvious by now that you're an idiot, Johnny Reb tried to tell you
The Civil War was obviously a waste of time, blood and property.
For every Confederate statue now coming down at the hands of BLM there will eventually be three of a founder of America, a Yankee, or an abolitionist to match it. Eventually, the symbols of your country will be gone. That you'll just let them go shows the actual country is already gone.
This isn't a war on racism. It's a revolution against America. Racism is simply the pretext for it. It is led by the "worldly" type of communist, the black radical who:
"with the realist political outlook, hopes through its followers to destroy society, either from envy or revenge, because of the low place assigned in it to their personality and talents, or, alternatively, to carry away the masses by some program or other for the satisfaction of his own will-to-power".
"with the realist political outlook, hopes through its followers to destroy society, either from envy or revenge, because of the low place assigned in it to their personality and talents, or, alternatively, to carry away the masses by some program or other for the satisfaction of his own will-to-power".
Think Shaun King the "Christian", who now explicitly aims to obliterate the white Jesus from every one of America's ~375,000 congregations.
No good deed is going unpunished, but fools like Ann Coulter will still argue that blacks deserve and should be paid reparations: Those who have done no wrong should pay those who have suffered no harm, we are told.
140,414 dead Yankees are just chopped liver to these ingrates and fools.
No good deed is going unpunished, but fools like Ann Coulter will still argue that blacks deserve and should be paid reparations: Those who have done no wrong should pay those who have suffered no harm, we are told.
140,414 dead Yankees are just chopped liver to these ingrates and fools.
Pay all you want, it won't change a thing. Still more will be required of you.
They now think they have the upper hand and are out to replace you. "Diversity is our strength" means "their" strength, not yours. Diversity means your weakness, and the unchecked riots and looting are proof of it.
Christians 244 years ago took up arms against "tyrants" like these and called it "obedience to God".
I can't imagine finding one such person among us today. And you certainly won't find one among the paid mercenaries, the cops. They're just trying to make it to full retirement like everybody else.
Instead, most Christians have become Spengler's "credulous" type of communist, who:
"obsessed by doctrine or feminine sentimentality, remote from and hostile to the world, condemns the wealth of the wicked who prosper and also, at times, the poverty of the good who do not prosper. This lands him either in vague Utopias or throws him back upon asceticism, the monastic life, Bohemia, or vagabondism, which proclaims the futility of all economic effort".
On obsession with doctrine think First Things Magazine, think Sojourners, Christianity Today, and the Patheos crowd for the feminine sentimentalists and wealth condemners, think the Prosperity Gospel movement and the charismatic Dominionists for the critics of the Christianity which is content with little, think Rod Dreher's Benedict Option or the survivalists for the separatists, and also the libertarians who "go Galt", accountable to no one but themselves. Representative all.
They now think they have the upper hand and are out to replace you. "Diversity is our strength" means "their" strength, not yours. Diversity means your weakness, and the unchecked riots and looting are proof of it.
Christians 244 years ago took up arms against "tyrants" like these and called it "obedience to God".
I can't imagine finding one such person among us today. And you certainly won't find one among the paid mercenaries, the cops. They're just trying to make it to full retirement like everybody else.
Instead, most Christians have become Spengler's "credulous" type of communist, who:
"obsessed by doctrine or feminine sentimentality, remote from and hostile to the world, condemns the wealth of the wicked who prosper and also, at times, the poverty of the good who do not prosper. This lands him either in vague Utopias or throws him back upon asceticism, the monastic life, Bohemia, or vagabondism, which proclaims the futility of all economic effort".
On obsession with doctrine think First Things Magazine, think Sojourners, Christianity Today, and the Patheos crowd for the feminine sentimentalists and wealth condemners, think the Prosperity Gospel movement and the charismatic Dominionists for the critics of the Christianity which is content with little, think Rod Dreher's Benedict Option or the survivalists for the separatists, and also the libertarians who "go Galt", accountable to no one but themselves. Representative all.
Perhaps the only Christians who think in robust opposition to the communists are the followers of Adrian Vermeule who envision a once and future Roman Catholic authoritarianism from North to South America with a heavily Spanish content. In other words, when white supremacy fails, replace it with . . . not black.
"To put through the ideal requires
dictatorship, reign of terror, armed force, the inequality of a system
of masters and slaves, men in command and men in obedience - in short:
Moscow".
The answer to Bolshevism from the foremost grandmothers of Bolshevism is to double down on the Bolshevism. Pre-modern Europe was just a dress rehearsal.
I'm sure Black Lives Matter will be thrilled.
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