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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2610 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Kellyanne Conway cites non-existent 'massacre' defending ban

    I'm of the opinion that even robust bureaucracies can be dismantled in short order by the right combination of fear, lies, and power.

I would be curious as to the basis for this opinion. The Beer Hall Putsch was 1923. The burning of the Reichstag was 1933. In between were ten years of Hitler doing everything he could to rise to power while preying on a millenia-old distrust of Jews. Meanwhile, the Arab Spring led to exactly zero democratic governments in the Middle East. Iceland effectively went bankrupt in 2008 and were back on their feet six months later.

    Can you imagine if a 9-11 happens on Trump's watch?

I'll be astonished if we don't have a significant terrorist event in the United States within 12 months. Bannon is praying for it - he's a crazy-ass Strauss-Howe 4th Turning end-times mutherfucker who thinks Strauss and Howe underestimated the impact of this coming bit of astrology since WWII was greater than the Civil War was greater than the Revolutionary War therefore this coming clusterfuck is going to be the Crusades or something. Steve Bannon is eager to get the Battle For All Time started so that we can move on to the Brighter Things Ahead. Anything Bannon can do to jumpstart this, he'll do.

But we've had crazies before.

Thing is, when September 11 happened Bush had been in the seat for 9 months. He'd been undistinguished and disappointing but most of the challenges and criticisms he faced were due to typical partisan beefing - of course a neoconservative Republican isn't going to do much about Enron, duh. But we were all ready to rally around our leader in our time of trouble and the goodwill he had moved mountains.

The Trump administration is doing everything they can to give everyone reasonable doubt about their approach to crisis, considering they're generating it by talking to Australia, ffs.

I suspect that if Bannon et. al. decided to ban muslims after a terrorist attack the Democrats would effectively roll over and take it. Cancel the visas of 100,000 vetted, approved immigrants and foreign travelers because you feel like it? It doesn't improve your credibility much. The longer this sort of thing goes on the less likely the country will be to look to Donald "I use the prayer breakfast to snark on Arnold Schwartzenegger" Trump.

People followed bush off a cliff not because he was president, but because he was presidential. The calculus is going to be different this time.

    I think if our desire for stability were strong, Hillary would have won in a landslide.

I think the Republicans have been spending 40 years discrediting Hillary Clinton, and 50 years discouraging their voters from thinking. When they told them that Trump would be an adequate president, everybody believed them.

I'm guilty of listening to the DNC - "the country will hold their noses enough to vote for a woman reviled by every Republican representative since 1985 despite the fact that they lost their shit over a black man." The other side is guilty of listening to the RNC - "despite all appearances to the contrary, this man will not turn the White House into a carnival sideshow while making you wistful for George W. Bush."

There were a lot of losers in this election. "Credibility of the major parties" was one of the bigger ones.





OftenBen  ·  2610 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    "Credibility of the major parties" was one of the bigger ones.

Taken in isolation, isn't this good for our political system as a whole? Maybe Joe the Plumber SHOULDN'T have such high confidence in the Red Team and the Blue Team. Maybe JtP should be skeptical of them, and have alternatives to them?

Yes to everything else, but a scattered and disorganized DNC and RNC hardly sounds like a bad thing to me.

kleinbl00  ·  2610 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I worry as to the cost.