Here’s an article from Vox that I thought I’d share because it is saying what I’ve been saying for the past three years: The real problem is not Trump, it is the GOP, especially #MoscowMitch. They agree with the assessment that I made three freaking years ago. almost to the day! Way back on 22 February 2017, I made this meme because I was so incensed at McConnell’s attitude towards governance.
If there was one thing that Obama achieved in his presidency, it was proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the GOP as led by #MoscowMitch was not interested in compromising with the Democrats in order to accomplish even a small part of their agenda because at the time of the gravest peril to the nation, the Great Recession bordering on another great depression, his interest was making Obama a one-term president by refusing all cooperation and obstructing everything he did to make him look weak and ineffective.
It that wasn’t traitorous enough for you, he proved it again and again by allowing the government to be shutdown and not only preventing the nominating hearing for Merrick Garland, but bragging that he saved the Supreme Court for a generation. Saved it from what? A majority of Democratically appointed justices, for cripe’s sake. Saved it from the Constitutional process of appointment and Senatorial advise and consent as we’ve done for decades.
The article makes the point that the law alone is not what makes a democracy a democracy, but the people who are in office. They base their arguments on the notion of critical legal studies while I’ve based mine on psychological principles underpinning decision making and group behavior, especially groupthink. This was the raisin of eating, as the French say, for Ye Olde Blogge existing in the first place. My first warning about groupthink having taken over the GOP was on 14 May 2016. So, I am more than a little happy to see that someone, anyone in the mainstream media is taking up the hue and cry as the last vestiges of our democracy falls.
I like the point they make that the GOP is hollowing out our democratic institutions and traditions to use them as a thin crust for their autocracy cloaking it in the whiff and smoke of democracy.
They come out and say it, but I’ll say it one more time. The GOP wants rigged elections and a rigged judiciary. They don’t ever want to lose another election. They don’t ever want another law overturned by a judge. They want to transfer the nation’s wealth to the 1% as quickly as possible because that’s what they think the proper function of government is.
Putin didn’t need to defeat us militarily. Putin didn’t need kompromat on the Ol’ Pussy Grabber. Putin didn’t need to have a conspiracy with the Ol’ Pussy Grabber. All Putin needed was to seed the GOP with money from his oligarchy and expect the quid pro quo that it buys. Once he was close enough to seduce the GOP by whispering the sweet sweet nothings of wealth beyond measure and power beyond accountability that he enjoys in Russia, he could induce the entire party to throw in with authoritarianism and overthrow our liberal democracy and give up any pretense of leading the world.
I’ve made the point that you are your vote. If you voted for it, you own it. The GOP could easily have 25th amendemented the Ol’ Pussy Grabber’s ass and installed Mother Pence, the highest-breasted queen to have ever graced Blair House with his presence, to appoint their appallingly radically incompetent judges and gut our environmental regulations to the detriment of the climate for fun and profit. Pence was a perfectly capable and willing puppet for such things.
By not 25th amendmenting his fat orange hairless ass, the GOP is telling us all that they like his corruption. For all the hand-wringing and pearl clutching that we’ve seen over the years from them, they had options that they didn’t take. It weren’t the base that they were afraid of. They coulda stood them down with their usual horseshit demagoguery and withstood the storm. They own his New Cruelty policies, his destruction of our alliances and treaties, his racism, his sexism, his xenophobia, his isolationism, his destruction of our democratic ideals, institutions, and traditions.
They may be telling themselves that can restore all of that once the Ol’ Pussy Grabber is gone from office, but those are just soothing words to quell the anxiety of the weak during the terrors of a dark night.
If the Ol’ Pussy Grabber is re-elected, we will have given away our democracy and proven that we really are the United Fucking States of Fucking Stupid.
Here, go ahead and read he article without all the angry sarcastic profanity that I supply it, but it makes the same point that I’ve been making for the past three years.
Trump’s impeachment acquittal shows how democracy could really die
The Senate’s sham trial revealed a philosophical flaw in American liberal democracy.
By Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp zack@vox.com Feb 5, 2020
Donald Trump’s impeachment acquittal is a warning sign that something has gone deeply wrong in our political system. It shows a kind of subtle corruption of the law that has, in other countries, led to the decline and fall of their democratic systems in their entirety.
Senate Republicans didn’t violate the Constitution’s rules for holding an impeachment trial. They adhered fairly reasonably to the letter of the law and can credibly claim they did all that was legally required of them. But this was a sham trial, one whose outcome was never seriously in doubt. By following the formal rules, Senate Republicans gave this fiction a veneer of formal legitimacy. All of them, with the brave exception of Mitt Romney, weaponized the letter of the law against its spirit.
This kind of corrupt legalism is a common practice among ruling parties in democracies that have fallen into autocracy. That these regimes contain the most direct parallels to what’s just happened in America makes clear the precise way in which our democracy is under attack. We should not fear a coup or seizure of authoritarian emergency powers, but a slow hollowing-out of our legal system to the point where the people no longer have meaningful control over their leaders.
Continue reading at Vox: Trump being acquitted shows how democracy could really die – Vox
Image Attribution
The image was acquired from a Creative Commons search. It was found on Pixabay. It was made by Yuri_B. It is licensed by Pixaby for reuse.
The Psy of Life 
there seems to be a slow creeping show of a brave souls
…….even tearing up the papers while the prez whines and snarles,,, she is a woman after my own heart !!!!!
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Howdy Francese!
Let’s hope that people standing up to Trump and the authoritarian GOP is a trend that will continue.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I am sooooo spooked with the mess with the potus…… he is more than chilling now, and looking more and more like a dictator …..I am really concerned at this point. Things are showing a strong sound of of the marching of the Bundistag….or the most recent version of it………
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Howdy Francese!
I just watched the first two seasons of Babylon Berlin on Netflix. It is a German TV show set in Weimar Germany in 1929 just as Hitler was rising. The similarities to our own time, the strife, corruption, nationalism, confusion about what should be done is, striking. The only real difference is that we don’t have the Treaty of Versailles humiliating us. In fact, we don’t have any excuse other than a small group of people wants to and their followers are willing to be useful idiots.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Calico Jack shares a Vox article
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I tried to track down the source of this quote and failed, but it seems to apply:
“The Law is whatever you can get away with.”
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Howdy Bob!
That certainly fits within the critical legal studies framework. All you need do is make a convincing argument and the law is on your side. Given our proclivity for motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, it isn’t surprising. That’s why it is important that we elected people who believe deeply in democratic ideals and follow not only the law, but the spirit of the law.
Now we have a preponderance of elected and appointed officials who do not and maybe we have a structural majority in the electorate who don’t either. If so, we’re fucked.
Huzzah!
Jack
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One of the basic rules of life: You work for who pays you. This applies especially to politicians seeking money to pursue election or re-election. I followed the logic of that in a post I just reposted from 2016. https://cabbagesandkings524.wordpress.com/2020/02/06/fixing-our-politics-you-work-for-who-pays-you-moblopomo-2026-8-of-30-2/
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Howdy Bob!
The GOP has learned that lesson in spades. They are doing the heavy lifting for industry and Putin. It is so unbelievable that people, literally, don’t believe it, but it is slowly dawning on everyone — I hope — that it is true. They are so deep into groupthink that they cannot see the peril that they’ve put themselves and everyone else into vis-a-vis climate change or the destruction of our democracy.
You can see the mindguards out in force during and since the impeachment trial. They are thoroughly squashing any attempts at dissent. Our only hope is that they make a choice that is so imperiling and immoral that it alienates two-thirds of the country and we vote them out without the decision actually destroying us.
Huzzah!
Jack
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With Trump rolling on the cocaine high of victory, the odds that he will do something far enough beyond the Pale to crash and burn (think of trade war with everybody and the resulting recession/depression, for example) are very high. Combine that with things like the Corona Virus and the extreme weather events the Spring and Summer have in store, and the consequences of hubris can come thick and fast. But even so, it is best to remember what the Impeachers forgot in leaving any room for the GOP Senators to spin acquittal.
“When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
The destruction of Trump and his enablers must be complete.
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Howdy Bob!
That’s the problem with electoral politics, though, isn’t it? The GOP and Trump have just enough supporters in the right states to govern as a minority for the time being. As long as there is little division between Trump, the Republican senators, and their supporters, we may not be able to hold them accountable. As people keep pointing out the 52 Republicans in the Senate represent a minority of Americans. That’s an advantage that the GOP plans on exploiting until they can render all elections moot.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Yep – Then there is the other line of attack, ultimately probably the more dangerous; The effort to undermine trust in the outcomes of elections, as in Trump’s insistence that 3 million illegal migrants voted for Hillary, and the 4Chan’ers reportedly jamming the Iowa Democrat’s caucus reporting lines. The message being, “If you cant trust the rigged elections, why have them?”
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